THE JERKY BOYS
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Johnny Brennan, Kamal Ahmed, Alan Arkin, Brad Sullivan. Screenplay: Johnny Brennan & Kamal Ahmed and James Melkonian & Rich Wilkes. Director: James Melkonian.
There is a regular feature in "Sports Illustrated" magazine devoted to examples of astounding stupidity. It is titled "This Week's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us." That phrase kept running through my head as I sat through THE JERKY BOYS. Somehow, two obnoxious losers had managed to parlay a fascination with juvenile humor and prank phone calls into an incredibly popular pair of audio releases and a movie deal. For irritating people, they were being rewarded in the millions of dollars. And the worst thing is, *none* of it is funny. THE JERKY BOYS is a terrible idea badly executed. And it will undoubtedly be extremely profitable.
THE JERKY BOYS are Johnny (Johnny Brennan) and Kamal (Kamal Ahmed), a pair of unemployed buddies still living with their mothers in Queens, NY. With all the time on their hands, the boys enjoy running up hefty beer tabs and making wacky prank phone calls. One of these calls is made to organized crime boss Ernie Lazarro (Alan Arkin), with the boys claiming to be mafia big shots from Chicago. When Lazarro learns that they aren't who they claim to be, they find themselves on the run from Lazarro's goons, as well as from the local cop (Brad Sullivan) who over hears the phone call and believes that they boys really are with the mob.
Let us begin here: The idea of building a movie around prank phone calls is somewhat mind-boggling to begin with. THE JERKY BOYS is full of shots of phones ringing, of stationary speaker phones, of people talking on the phone. I'm hard-pressed to think of any way such a format could have been turned into riveting cinema. Then again, THE JERKY BOYS never had to be riveting cinema. This is a movie about one thing, giving two idiots a chance to do their schtick, which consists entirely of insults, threats and silly voices. There are a bunch of absurd setups which are designed to get the boys on a phone, an intercom or a dispatch radio, where they each display their gift for two voices (Johnny is either a nasal grouch or a nasal whiner, Kamal either a babbling immigrant or a snarling authority figure). In a strange way, it's a little like the old Elvis Presley movies, in which it didn't matter what was going on in the plot, as long as Elvis got a chance to sing. That was what the people were coming for.
But for people coming to THE JERKY BOYS expecting the same thing they heard on their best-selling CDs, they aren't going to get it. I have listened to the "Jerky Boys" CD, and I think it is spectacularly unfunny, but there could be some minor entertainment value in the befuddled reactions of the recipients of the calls. Of course, that simply is not possible in a movie; everyone is in on the gag, so you end up with a lot of reaction shots of actors fuming in mock frustration. And there are few things sadder than the fact that one of those actors is Alan Arkin.
Much has been and will be written about THE JERKY BOYS as not simply a bad movie, but as part of a horrible trend, the logical successor (if logical is the word I want to use) to the popularity of DUMB AND DUMBER, "Beavis and Butthead" and the like. Not only does treating THE JERKY BOYS in this way give it far more sociological importance than it deserves, it insults those other examples by comparison. As bad as DUMB AND DUMBER was, at least someone was trying; as stupid as "Beavis and Butthead" can be, at least they are rooted in satire. THE JERKY BOYS is simply junior high school humor aimed at junior high schoolers. It is aimed squarely at those who are guaranteed to burst into uproarious and self-righteous laughter at swishy gay stereotypes and copious expletives. If hearing someone intone the word "liverlips" several times is your idea of yuks galore, then by all means toss your $7 into THE JERKY BOYS' coffers. I suspect few moviegoers old enough to get into this movie legally will waste their money or their time.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 jerkies: 0.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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