Movie Review - Tommy Boy
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1995 / 97 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz
The best thing that I can say about the movie “Tommy Boy” is that it reminds one how funny a movie “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” was. When you watch the jokes of this movie constantly fail, you can’t help but be reminded of what worked about the other movie.
After all, both movies featured a cynic and a fat man driving through the country in a car that kept getting worse and worse for the wear as the trip progressed. Both of the fat men in question were amiable enough men who just kept doing things wrong. But whereas “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” kept its characters tangibly human and identifiable, letting us understand and smile at their plight, “Tommy Boy” simply gives us a couple of cartoonish stereotypes of real people and then hits them with something. Usually in the crotch. When you don’t give a rat’s ass about the characters, I now understand, you don’t really laugh at something that happens to them. You don’t really care if they achieve their objective or not. In “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”, I had a genuine interest in whether or not the characters made it home for Thanksgiving. In this film, an entire town full of people’s jobs hung in the balance and I was only waiting for Rob Lowe to show up again.
“Tommy Boy” isn’t a particularly awful film, really. It’s just one that isn’t particularly clever or insightful. It doesn’t have any fresh ideas or anyone that you really care about. Well, that isn’t totally true. I guess I did care about Chris Farley’s character, until he started being REALLY retarded (that’s about forty minutes in, if you are keeping track). When he is quiet, he actually makes you feel sorry for him and want him to succeed. When he opens his mouth and starts getting loud, however, you just want him to shut up and go away. You can’t really feel sorry for many of the predicaments that he gets into because, frankly, anyone who wasn’t mentally retarded wouldn’t have gotten into these circumstances in the first place. And David Spade? This is one of the many reasons that I don’t really care if he never makes a movie ever again. He’s just an asshole here. Why should I care about the plight of an asshole? I shouldn’t. I don’t. We identified with Steve Martin’s character in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” because, while he was annoyed and upset with John Candy’s character, he usually just kept it to himself (as most of us would do). Therefore, when he did lose it and go off on Candy’s character, it was funny because it had been building up for so long and it wasn’t all that mean because you could see he felt sorry the instant the words were out of his mouth (again, just like most of us). We feel some measure of pity for Farley in this movie just because Spade verbally berates him so much. I didn’t find it funny so much as sad and mean-spirited. In case you are wondering, that does not equal comic gold. God, Spade is an asshole!
And what is the deal with comedies where the characters have to take some kind of road trip? I mean, am I the only one who thinks this is the most tired comedic plot in cinematic history!? How many times can we see two idiots hit the open road? It’s boring!!! I remember when Siskel and Ebert reviewed this movie and said that, compared to it, “Dumb and Dumber” was “the ‘Citizen Kane’ of stupid guys on the open road movies”. Well put. And there isn’t even a good reason for the road trip. It seems more like the writers could think of nothing else for the characters to do. Each joke is not established by those that came before it or by anything remotely close to clever writing. The film just bumbles from one stupid incident to another without really even understanding why it thinks we should even laugh at them. That it does occasionally luck onto something funny is just a sidelight.
Rob Lowe is the highlight of the film (now you KNOW you’re in trouble) as a guy who keeps trying to undermine Farley and usually ends up in pain for it. He’s funny just because he’s Rob Lowe and he has this “I’m so cool” look on his face while he is about to be electrocuted or attacked by a dog. Right here you understand what works about a better comedy. A low key approach is the best thing these scenes have going for them. In these moments, the fact that the character is not screaming or rolling around on the floor or being a huge retard is what makes it funny. He is calm in the face of the ridiculous, and that is what makes it funny. If only the rest of the movie had remembered this lesson. The episode with the deer in the back of Spade’s classic car is also pretty funny, I must admit it. As are the scenes in which they attempt to sing along with the radio.
Aside from those moments, however (which are few and sadly far between), you’d be a lot better off just renting “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and seeing how funny this movie COULD have been.
