Tommy Boy
Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2005 2:22 pm
Today, I've got a particular ax to grind, against this ridiculous joke of a movie. It's stupid, completely stupid. First of all, what the hell is this movie named after- an Irish drinking song? Or is that Danny Boy, who cares?! Strike one! Like all of Chris Farley's comedy (which I believe was a huge part of what killed him, read on), this movie is one big assault of dumb, fat animal jokes. Tommy is already such a big, dumb, stupid guy without the constant fat jokes. And they are humiliating of Chris, though for some messed up reason, he's game in doing all of them. A guy making this much money really didn't have to kill himself for fame. I'm not talking about his physical death, that was more of a mistake brought on by an inner death wish than anything else. I'm talking about what eventually drove him down that dark road, he tried to get people to take him seriously and they refused to, because he had already dove headfirst into SNL's big/dumb/fat stereotypes. So in his film career, he revelled in them.
Did this make anyone respect overweight actors who sometimes played it dumb? No. And Chris surely found a great deal of fame while he was alive. The fact was that, not only didn't it last, but 1) it practically lead to his rampant, psychotic drug use, which later killed him, and 2) now that he's dead, his films are treated like works of genius... all because now he is dead. Is that fair? Really now, you know it's wrong.
Was Chris Farley funny? Sure... for about 10 seconds of his endless breakdowns. But the fact stands, as plain as day and as solidly as stone, that he should never have made a movie based on this stupid SNL character (all his SNL characters were exactly the same!!!), let alone several. Tommy Boy may not even be the worst of the bunch, but it's regarded as the best. Which is wrong, to the point of praying for the healing of humanity as a whole. What Tommy Boy as a movie was, killed itself. Why is it so popular? As hard as this is for people to swallow, some people are just not intelligent enough to understand the inadequacies of a film like this. Their liking it does not lessen this fact! Not in the slightest.
Back on the subject of the movie itself... The character is impossible to take seriously. The movie might have amounted to a lightweight Animal House, if it hadn't made the final fatal mistake of trying to be sensitive toward Tommy, trying to make him lovable, or sympathetic. They might have made it a little easier on us by lightening the amazing load of immature sex jokes the guy tells, when it's pretty obvious he would have only managed to bag dumb sorority girls. And the fat jokes... First of all, "fat guy in a little coat"... This got one of the biggest laughs in the movie, and proves single-handedly how stupid audiences can be. The coat is going to rip! We all know it is, only the smart ones in attendance know that that's where the movie will get it's laugh. Or maybe it's in that the coat is Richard's favorite or his only one... Either way, this joke is shameful and ridiculous.
We can only interpret "ugh, I can hear you getting fatter" as outright cruelty, Richard is bashing Tommy because... of his weight?! Now that's just an example of how incredibly artificial the comedy is in this film. You know who got the biggest kick out of lines like this? Richard Simmons! Tony Little, Tony Horton, Chuck Norris, Jane Fonda, that shaved head Sinead O'Connor-looking chick, and Randy from the Bowflex infomercials. The fitness nazi's, who would have been enemies to Chris Farley. Who's he pandering to? People who hate fat people. Do I hate fat people? No. I went to school in the 90s and we had self-examining and personal analytical faculties that cut through BS like that. I learned a little something: don't laugh at people you could ever consider freaks and don't laugh at exploitation unless you want to be exploited yourself. Long story short, would you want to be fat? It's one thing for an overweight person to laugh at our society as a way to cope. But this film is an obnoxious case of an audience laughing at a freakshow.
The whole movie is a freakshow. From the fat jokes, to the failed melodrama, to the sex jokes, starting with the age-old incest analogy. Of course in this movie, it's not an analogy because we discover the mother-and-son crooks aren't really mother and son. And of course, this movie doesn't know a thing about analogies and metaphors, it's that dumb! The set-up is the catalyst for the dregs of incest jokes from the audience, giggling like school children who don't know better. You should know better than to think that it's really funny, especially since it's reduced here to a sight gag. It's certainly a sight that's squeezed dry of any comedic potential whatsoever (like Ace Ventura's discovery of Lois Einhorn's "secret"). And truly the most shameful of pun opportunities: the sexy girl skinny-dipping in the pool. This was taken right out of National Lampoon's Vacation, and degrades quite naturally, into a forade of masturbation jokes. When a movie relies on a set-up like this for laughs... you know it's time to press the eject button, or walk out of the theater.
Then of course, was their just ONE screwball/buddy comedy in the 90s that didn't have a low-blow gag? The only value of a scene like this would be that it happened to Rob Lowe, who only did these movies to skewer his bratpack image in films he made over a decade before this one. And by this point, though he still has a lot of sex appeal and steams up small scenes like he and Tommy's girlfriend in the mailing room when he loses his shirt (oh yeah!), he's a little too old for all the jokes he participates in to work. Seeing him, for instance, being electrocuted while urinating on a fence, has all the appeal of Mickey Rooney being attacked by a pack of lions. A better villain or a younger rival, or just a more hateworthy guy, would have made a much more appropriate target for these bullseyes. Plus, though Rob had a few cute moments in Austin Powers 2, he peaked doing this sort of thing in Wayne's World.
Don't you also love how the movie makes Tommy's love interest an obsessive compulsive(?), as though it takes a freak to love a freak. But of course they keep her obsessiveness to a minimum so as not to lose our belief that she is perfect for him. After all, she is pretty, just like Nicolette Sheridan was in Beverly Hills Ninja (and totally out of his league). Though what she is certainly makes her a bit of a freak, the movie uses mean jokes to make Tommy a freak. Not that his overracting doesn't aid in tacking the final nail in. Do they make a good match? It doesn't even matter, and that's the real reason it's pointless to even add her as a character, which they only did to up the possibility the mainstream audience will ultimately find Tommy lovable, in spite of his being fat, which again is the main reason behind this movie. Just look at all the posters and photo ads for the movie. It's all psychological. He must have been goated by the photographer into leaning back to eccentuate his gut even more, and then standing next to spade, no one cares which one Tommy is, they go for the dirty jokes.
Why did people wait until the Scary Movie series to start harping on the fact that dumb / sex comedies (they were truly indivisible in the 90s) had at least 6 different writers each? This movie might have started that trend, or just have been another notch in SNL movies that had multiple writers. Yet... can't they write funnier or smarter jokes? I want to call attention to possibly the worst scene in the film: Tommy sells his first breakpad order, to a guy who's main selling point is the guarrantee they slap on a box. This guy has never done business with Callahan (Tommy's father and supplier of the parts he has to sell) before and he's already skeptical of picking up a product he's never sold and doesn't have a guarantee on the box. He's also a busy guy who supervises his whole factory, whether or not he has to. He dismisses them automatically after taking a look at the box and explains his policy, then after Richard gives Tommy a word of encouragement Tommy suddenly lights up (PLEASE! had anyone been watching his behavior prior to this scene?!) and manages to stop the busy man to listen to the most retarded logic for re-evaluating his guarantee policy, but because it's direct and to-the-pointless point, the guy caves in. However, crucial to the scene, he just says "okay, I'll buy from you" without actually thinking the logic over. This is not the type of guy to just do that, but it's a joke, get it? The movie creates a problem we're supposed to care/worry about, then uses the ultra-easy way out.
Movies like this didn't give Chris Farley a chance to be funny, they perpetuated the joke that became his desperate life. Even though it was inevitable, he shouldn't have died. More than anything else, just because history of this kind of career gave us the tragic example of John Belushi. He was the hottest thing on SNL, than he lost that to become a movie star. When that didn't work out, and when he wasn't able to make anyone serious about him beyond the image everyone else bought into which didn't allow him to be human, and just showed him as a dumb fat moron, he turned to the easiest method of coping for a rich bum : drugs. His human life spiraling out of control, him cashing all his fame chips in. In the end, all for nothing. No one thought about it until it was too late, no one was there for him he could trust. The people who wrote and directed this crap were not ready to share Chris's private pain, they instead profited from it. And so did Paramount and NBC. But it's all blood money. And if you buy the Tommy Boy: Holy Schnike Edition for any reason other than a sociological study guide or perhaps to donate to the Chris Farley memorial, than you have blood money on your hands too.
COUNT ME OUT! I will have no part in this.
Did this make anyone respect overweight actors who sometimes played it dumb? No. And Chris surely found a great deal of fame while he was alive. The fact was that, not only didn't it last, but 1) it practically lead to his rampant, psychotic drug use, which later killed him, and 2) now that he's dead, his films are treated like works of genius... all because now he is dead. Is that fair? Really now, you know it's wrong.
Was Chris Farley funny? Sure... for about 10 seconds of his endless breakdowns. But the fact stands, as plain as day and as solidly as stone, that he should never have made a movie based on this stupid SNL character (all his SNL characters were exactly the same!!!), let alone several. Tommy Boy may not even be the worst of the bunch, but it's regarded as the best. Which is wrong, to the point of praying for the healing of humanity as a whole. What Tommy Boy as a movie was, killed itself. Why is it so popular? As hard as this is for people to swallow, some people are just not intelligent enough to understand the inadequacies of a film like this. Their liking it does not lessen this fact! Not in the slightest.
Back on the subject of the movie itself... The character is impossible to take seriously. The movie might have amounted to a lightweight Animal House, if it hadn't made the final fatal mistake of trying to be sensitive toward Tommy, trying to make him lovable, or sympathetic. They might have made it a little easier on us by lightening the amazing load of immature sex jokes the guy tells, when it's pretty obvious he would have only managed to bag dumb sorority girls. And the fat jokes... First of all, "fat guy in a little coat"... This got one of the biggest laughs in the movie, and proves single-handedly how stupid audiences can be. The coat is going to rip! We all know it is, only the smart ones in attendance know that that's where the movie will get it's laugh. Or maybe it's in that the coat is Richard's favorite or his only one... Either way, this joke is shameful and ridiculous.
We can only interpret "ugh, I can hear you getting fatter" as outright cruelty, Richard is bashing Tommy because... of his weight?! Now that's just an example of how incredibly artificial the comedy is in this film. You know who got the biggest kick out of lines like this? Richard Simmons! Tony Little, Tony Horton, Chuck Norris, Jane Fonda, that shaved head Sinead O'Connor-looking chick, and Randy from the Bowflex infomercials. The fitness nazi's, who would have been enemies to Chris Farley. Who's he pandering to? People who hate fat people. Do I hate fat people? No. I went to school in the 90s and we had self-examining and personal analytical faculties that cut through BS like that. I learned a little something: don't laugh at people you could ever consider freaks and don't laugh at exploitation unless you want to be exploited yourself. Long story short, would you want to be fat? It's one thing for an overweight person to laugh at our society as a way to cope. But this film is an obnoxious case of an audience laughing at a freakshow.
The whole movie is a freakshow. From the fat jokes, to the failed melodrama, to the sex jokes, starting with the age-old incest analogy. Of course in this movie, it's not an analogy because we discover the mother-and-son crooks aren't really mother and son. And of course, this movie doesn't know a thing about analogies and metaphors, it's that dumb! The set-up is the catalyst for the dregs of incest jokes from the audience, giggling like school children who don't know better. You should know better than to think that it's really funny, especially since it's reduced here to a sight gag. It's certainly a sight that's squeezed dry of any comedic potential whatsoever (like Ace Ventura's discovery of Lois Einhorn's "secret"). And truly the most shameful of pun opportunities: the sexy girl skinny-dipping in the pool. This was taken right out of National Lampoon's Vacation, and degrades quite naturally, into a forade of masturbation jokes. When a movie relies on a set-up like this for laughs... you know it's time to press the eject button, or walk out of the theater.
Then of course, was their just ONE screwball/buddy comedy in the 90s that didn't have a low-blow gag? The only value of a scene like this would be that it happened to Rob Lowe, who only did these movies to skewer his bratpack image in films he made over a decade before this one. And by this point, though he still has a lot of sex appeal and steams up small scenes like he and Tommy's girlfriend in the mailing room when he loses his shirt (oh yeah!), he's a little too old for all the jokes he participates in to work. Seeing him, for instance, being electrocuted while urinating on a fence, has all the appeal of Mickey Rooney being attacked by a pack of lions. A better villain or a younger rival, or just a more hateworthy guy, would have made a much more appropriate target for these bullseyes. Plus, though Rob had a few cute moments in Austin Powers 2, he peaked doing this sort of thing in Wayne's World.
Don't you also love how the movie makes Tommy's love interest an obsessive compulsive(?), as though it takes a freak to love a freak. But of course they keep her obsessiveness to a minimum so as not to lose our belief that she is perfect for him. After all, she is pretty, just like Nicolette Sheridan was in Beverly Hills Ninja (and totally out of his league). Though what she is certainly makes her a bit of a freak, the movie uses mean jokes to make Tommy a freak. Not that his overracting doesn't aid in tacking the final nail in. Do they make a good match? It doesn't even matter, and that's the real reason it's pointless to even add her as a character, which they only did to up the possibility the mainstream audience will ultimately find Tommy lovable, in spite of his being fat, which again is the main reason behind this movie. Just look at all the posters and photo ads for the movie. It's all psychological. He must have been goated by the photographer into leaning back to eccentuate his gut even more, and then standing next to spade, no one cares which one Tommy is, they go for the dirty jokes.
Why did people wait until the Scary Movie series to start harping on the fact that dumb / sex comedies (they were truly indivisible in the 90s) had at least 6 different writers each? This movie might have started that trend, or just have been another notch in SNL movies that had multiple writers. Yet... can't they write funnier or smarter jokes? I want to call attention to possibly the worst scene in the film: Tommy sells his first breakpad order, to a guy who's main selling point is the guarrantee they slap on a box. This guy has never done business with Callahan (Tommy's father and supplier of the parts he has to sell) before and he's already skeptical of picking up a product he's never sold and doesn't have a guarantee on the box. He's also a busy guy who supervises his whole factory, whether or not he has to. He dismisses them automatically after taking a look at the box and explains his policy, then after Richard gives Tommy a word of encouragement Tommy suddenly lights up (PLEASE! had anyone been watching his behavior prior to this scene?!) and manages to stop the busy man to listen to the most retarded logic for re-evaluating his guarantee policy, but because it's direct and to-the-pointless point, the guy caves in. However, crucial to the scene, he just says "okay, I'll buy from you" without actually thinking the logic over. This is not the type of guy to just do that, but it's a joke, get it? The movie creates a problem we're supposed to care/worry about, then uses the ultra-easy way out.
Movies like this didn't give Chris Farley a chance to be funny, they perpetuated the joke that became his desperate life. Even though it was inevitable, he shouldn't have died. More than anything else, just because history of this kind of career gave us the tragic example of John Belushi. He was the hottest thing on SNL, than he lost that to become a movie star. When that didn't work out, and when he wasn't able to make anyone serious about him beyond the image everyone else bought into which didn't allow him to be human, and just showed him as a dumb fat moron, he turned to the easiest method of coping for a rich bum : drugs. His human life spiraling out of control, him cashing all his fame chips in. In the end, all for nothing. No one thought about it until it was too late, no one was there for him he could trust. The people who wrote and directed this crap were not ready to share Chris's private pain, they instead profited from it. And so did Paramount and NBC. But it's all blood money. And if you buy the Tommy Boy: Holy Schnike Edition for any reason other than a sociological study guide or perhaps to donate to the Chris Farley memorial, than you have blood money on your hands too.
COUNT ME OUT! I will have no part in this.
The nerve of some people 