John Belushi's last film was a failed satire called "Neighbors." The deadly duo "Wagons East" and "Canadian Bacon" were John Candy's final efforts. Now, Chris Farley continues the tradition of corpulent comedians leaving a lame comedy as their legacy with "Almost Heroes," a sloppily made period piece that's collected plenty of dust in the Warner Brothers' vault since it was completed more than a year ago.
So much for "always leave 'em laughing."
Had Farley known he only had one more film to make, it's hard to believe he would have picked this to be his swan song. Directed by Christopher Guest without so much as an iota of the comic invention and energy he brought to "Waiting For Guffman" and "The Big Picture," "Heroes" is an odd send-up of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804; perhaps screenwriters Mark Nutter, Tom Wolfe and Boyd Hale were inspired by the Ken Burns PBS series. Like many films that studios would prefer to sweep under the carpet, "Heroes" has a cheapish look to it and shows signs of having been truncated in the editing room. Many scenes end abruptly with no punchline or resolution, and others appear to have been clumsily pasted together, with a surplus of reaction shots to cover up gaps in continuity.
Farley is typically boisterous as folksy trailblazer Bartholomew Hunt, who teams up with genteel explorer Leslie Edwards (Matthew Perry) in a race to beat Lewis and Clark to the Pacific Ocean. "Fear will be our breakfast and stark, raving terror our lunch," Edwards promises.
Along the way, Hunt, Edwards and their band of misfits run afoul of placid Indians, bad-tempered bears, an old coot who keeps a brothel full of scarecrows, and a Spanish conquistador with a mane Fabio would envy. What they don't discover is anything particularly humorous.
Although both Farley and Perry mug excessively in an attempt to tweak the dullish material, it's mostly in vain. Occassional sparks fly between the two, but "Heroes" ultimately does little to further Perry's screen career or enhance Farley's memory. James Sanford
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