WAYNE'S WORLD
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: It never Waynes, but it bores. Wayne
and Garth have the potential to do some funny comedy but most
of this film just sparks without igniting. Rating: 0 (-4 to
+4).
One of the most standard architectures for a comedy team is the straight and the wacky. The straight person will generally seem either just very normal or perhaps romantic. The wacky person is, well, wacky. Examples are Crosby and Hope, Burns and Allen, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Rowan and Martin, and even Bergen and McCarthy. Generally the wacky person gets most of the laughs and the straight person gets top billing just for setting up the wacky person's jokes. There is more potential when you have two or more comics playing off each other as you did with the Marx Brothers or what is to my mind the best of the teams, Laurel and Hardy. So Mike Myers and Dana Carvey--playing their SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE alter egos Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar--start with a plus. Both are comics. There is potential for some really good humor. Unfortunately, they rarely play off each other for laughs. Either each does his own thing or they just both do the same thing. Wayne's main thing is to make a joke or do something clever and then flash a big open-mouthed grin as if he were standing in front of a cheering audience. He also negates sentences by adding a belated " ... not." Garth's thing is to act a little befuddled and stupid. Not the most auspicious starting material, but with enough personality the team could have potential. Where they go wrong is that they are just not all that winning, and most of their gags are familiar and not funny.
Wayne and Garth have a public access television show on cable television. The show is done on almost no budget from the basement of the house where Wayne lives with his parents. The idea is that in spite of the low budget of the cable production, they are supposed to be the best thing on television. Sadly, their cable hijinx are not all that funny and leave one wondering what the attraction is to their cable program. (SPOILER ALERT: They sell out to commercialism but realize that commercialism is not what they really want. George Romero did the same basic plot considerably better in KNIGHTRIDERS.)
Besides the two main characters, the film features Tia Carrere as Wayne's singer girlfriend from Hong Kong. Her singing, like Wayne's program, is just never as good as the script calls for it to be. Rob Lowe is a sleazy, slimy television promoter who is more style than substance. One of the better bit parts is Ed O'Neill as the doughnut shop owner with a darker side.
As in an AIRPLANE! film, about a quarter of the jokes but, but unlike in an AIRPLANE! film, the jokes do not come nearly fast enough. At times the film drags. That is particularly bad since the plot is predictable and if you know what is going to happen, you wish it would get it over with. Nearly every funny joke in the film is an allusion to or lampooning the entertainment industry. Most are meta-jokes that poke fun at product placements or actors talking to the camera. There are several film and television allusions. They give the film some chuckles but still too few laughs. WAYNE'S WORLD is often on the edge of being funny, but rarely crosses that line. Even at 95 minutes the film is often too slow and just not rewarding enough. I give the film a flat 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzy!leeper
leeper@mtgzy.att.com
.
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