THE JERKY BOYS
A film review by Chuck Dowling
Copyright 1995 Chuck Dowling
I went to see THE JERKY BOYS in the theater on the first day it came out. Yes, The Jerky Boys are very juvenile and extremely profane, but there's just something about what they do. It's so simplistic, it's funny. If you are unsure about exactly what it is they do, basically these two guys from New York call various people and act rudely through a myriad of colorful characters. They have two albums out (with a third on the way) and someone got the bright idea to put these two guys into a major motion picture.
So anyway, I went to see the film on it's first day of release. Not so much because it was The Jerky Boys, but because my favorite actor, Alan Arkin, was playing the bad guy in the film. Well, after it was over, I remembered laughing a few times (mostly at Arkin).
Anyway, THE JERKY BOYS is about to be released on video, and so I decided to watch it again. For some reason, at no fault of Mr. Arkin's, the film was much worse than I remembered. For those of you who have seen it, I'll describe why.
The film's core audience has to be the people who have listened to the albums. So how come the entire movie is nothing but the routines from those albums? THE JERKY BOYS is a *very* poorly written film with many idiotic plot points and sadly, very few laughs.
Example, for some reason our heroes (?) are tied up to chairs in a meat locker. When the bad guys leave them, The Jerky Boys move their chairs back to back. The camera then cuts to something else, and when we come back, they are free. Ridiculous.
I can not recommend this film, not even to fans. I will say that Alan Arkin is truly funny in the film and almost makes it worth seeing if only he had been on screen more.
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