"Good
day, eh, and welcome to our new movie
review. I'm the reviewer, and this is my
friend, the editor."
"How's
it going, eh."
"Okay,
today's topic is a movie. A real beauty
that was shot in 3-B: three beers and it
looks pretty good there, eh."
"It's
called Hoser-Rama, you dim-twit."
"You
take off, you knob -- I'm talking to our
readers."
"Okay,
okay, geez, you boss me around..."
"Okay,
so this movie stars a duo, right, that
has done more to skew American views and
opinions on our friends from Canada
since, like, you know, the days of
Dudley Do-Rght: Bob and Doug
McKenzie.
"So
grab a brew,
a cruller, and some smokes, if you're so
inclined, and settle in for some Strange
Brew,
where
Bob and Doug kind of play an ersatz
Rosencrantz and Guilderstern; because
the plot is sorta based, loosely, on Hamlet.
If Hamlet
took place in Canada; and Elsinore was a
brewery instead of a castle; and if
Hamlet was a girl who returns to run the
brewery after her father dies under
mysterious circumstances, because she
doesn't trust her uncle -- who married
her mother right after the funeral
and...never mind...Where were we?"
After
the disastrous premiere of their new
sci-fi epic, the McKenzie brothers
accidentally spend their old man's beer
money, refunding a disappointed customer.
Then in an attempt to scam free beer from
Elsinore brewery, the boys instead become
embroiled in a plot of dangerous family
skeletons, and an attempt to take over the
world by Brewmeister Smith (Max Von
Sydow), by tainting Elsinore Beer
with a mind-controlling drug.
Smith
is the chief head-shrinker at the nearby
Royal Canadian Institute for the Mentally
Insane. (That's
the loony bin, eh. And it's connected with the
brewery by way of a secret tunnel.)
He gives the mind-control drugs to his patients and
runs them through drills, by having them
don armor and play hockey. (He's
going to conquer the world with
battle-armored hockey players??) It
was Smith who killed old man Elsinore, and
he's now in cahoots with the treacherous
uncle (Paul Dooley), who
helped make the murder look like an
accident. The return of daughter Pamela
(Lynne Griffin), the rightful heir, throws
a monkey wrench in their plans. She
intends to take over the brewery, so
another elaborate hatch is plotted, uh, yeah, to
murder Pamela and frame the McKenzies for
it.
But
Smith's
deathtrap, involving the boy's van, some
cut brake lines, and the bottom of the harbor, is
avoided thanks to the timely
intervention of about 150 empty beer
bottles and the air trapped inside them.
Shifting gears,
Smith drugs Pamela and gets her
committed to the RCIftTMI -- along with
the McKenzies, who unwittingly stole a vital
computer disc while running amok in the
brewery, drinking everything they could
find. They don't have a clue to what it
really is, and they don't have it, anyway;
they gave it to their dog, Hosehead.
Lobotomies
are prescribed all around, as Oktoberfest
quickly approaches -- the launching point
for Smith's mad scheme. With a little help
from fellow inmate Jean LaRose (Jean
Larose the hockey player? Angus
MacInnes -- a/k/a Gold "What good are
fighters against that" Leader from
Star Wars), they
all manage to escape. While Doug and LaRose
try to stop the tainted beer shipment, Bob
and Pamela head back to the cafeteria to
try and communicate with the ghost of her
father again -- long story.
But
they're
recaptured by Smith, and imprisoned in a
giant beer vat. Smith turns on the tap and it
starts to fill up. Can anything save them?
Can Smith be stopped? Is the world doomed
to a life of mass-induced organ-grinder hockey?
To
answer all three questions: Yes. Bob drinks all the beer,
expanding to the size of a whale. And yes. LaRose disposes of Smith after a
climatic duel, but Doug is too late to stop
the beer shipment. And finally no. With the help of
the ghost of old man Elsinore, Smith's
plan is revealed, so they send Hosehead
the dog -- who's a bigger lush than they
are, to the rescue. The dog flies (!) and
is mistaken for a giant skunk, breaking up
the Oktoberfest celebration, saving the
day.
The
film ends with the McKenzies gladly agreeing to
dispose all of the tainted beer for their
new boss, Pamela.
The
End
That
was a beauty,
eh.
Long
before Wayne and Garth, and long before there
was a Beavis or a Butthead, there was Bob
and Doug McKenzie. It
was these two slightly dimwitted,
anti-social, oddball Canuckle-headed
brothers who pressed inland from the
beachhead established by Jake and Elwood
Blues, showing that
translating some two-minute sketch comedy
pieces from the tube, to the big screen, was
a viable Hollywood commodity. I stress on
the some, but not all. And we've
been suffering from that little misconception
ever since.
But
I come here not bury the McKenzie
brothers, but to praise them. For unlike
most of the small screen to big screen
translations, this one is actually pretty
damned funny.
Born
out of necessity, the McKenzies began
their lives as network time filler for the
legendary Second City Television program: SCTV. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC)
needed an extra two minutes of material,
per episode, because the CBC ran fewer
commercials than it's American
syndicators. Wanting it fast, simple, and
cost-effective -- and most importantly,
the producers needed something with
a Canadian theme (to
appease some Canadian broadcasting code if
I'm to understand things right). So
Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas -- members of the famous
troupe that included the likes of John
Candy, Eugene Levy, Katherine O'Hara and
Joe Flaherty -- drew the short straw, and The
Great White North was born.
All
it consisted of was those two guys sitting
in front of a large map of Canada, decked
out in flannel, parkas, and toques,
drinking beer, munching donuts, and frying
up back-bacon; each skit concerned a
specific topic,
ranging from how to get free beer, to
spatulas, to the space shuttle. The skits
were totally improvised but turned out
hilarious. No one paid much attention to
them, though; they were just filler. How
could they have known that this little
throwaway piece would soon turn
into a full blown phenomenon.
And
it all happened by accident. If one of the SCTV troupe hadn't taken leave
of the show (I
believe it was Flaherty), America
might never have even seen the McKenzie
brothers. Short Flaherty's input, the
producers now needed more material
for the American show and gave the McKenzie
brothers a shot. And they hit. And they hit
big.
Everybody
wanted more, so in '81, Moranis and Thomas
cut an album as their alter-egos. Again,
the album was totally improvised.
"Bob & Doug McKenzie: The Great
White North Album" went on to go
platinum -- one of the last comedy albums to
do so; buoyed by a top 40 single,
"Take Off"; a collaboration with
Rush's Geddy Lee. Other highlights include
a sermon from Elron McKenzie, Doug's
sound-effects, a rousing game of beer
hunter, and the Canadian version of
"The 12 Days of Christmas."
McKenziese
also invaded America. Phrases like
"Take off, eh", "How's it
going, eh" and "That's a real
beauty, eh" joined the pop-lexicon,
and everyone was either a hosehead or just
a plain old hoser. (Loosely
translated -- a dickhead or just a plain
old dick.)
A
movie was inevitable, then, and MGM came
knocking. Moranis and Thomas shared both
the writing and directing chores. And how the
hell they ever got Max Von Sydow involved
in this baffles me to no end. I think it
works to their advantage that they didn't
go to an outside source for material.
These were their characters, but according
to all accounts, the actors were rapidly
burning out, and it does kind of show in
the film -- it definitely showed during
the film's promotional tour.
Unfortunately,
the popularity of the duo began to
overwhelm their creators, to the point of
resentment: both Moranis and Thomas --
and the rest of their SCTV collaborators.
All the attention they were getting was
causing tension between the rest of the
cast (notice
how no one else from SCTV
appears in this movie -- and Thomas and
Moranis are notably absent from their
first feature films as well), and
basically spelled the beginning of the end
for the SCTV
show.
All
of this didn't help Strange Brew when it hit
the screens in '83. As with all pop
culture, interest was fading, already, and
the movie came too late. Only the hardcore
fans were still interested -- so the film
didn't do very well at the box office, but
it has gone on to cult status on home video
and DVD. Thus keeping the McKenzies alive
while they were off our collective radar.
The
McKenzie Brothers enjoyed a brief
renaissance in the late '90s, when they
became spokesmen for Miller Brewing, trying to sell Molson beer to America, in a
series of hilarious commercials. The
fly fishing one made me laugh the hardest.
(The duo claimed they did it for the free
beer.) Rumors were soon running
rampant of a reunion movie, and all the
scuttlebutt called it Home
Brew; it even had an entry on the IMDB,
but that quickly and quietly fizzled out.
Luckily,
we at least still have this movie, their
album, and SCTV
reruns to get our fix. The
Strange Brew
DVD includes a sketch (and
only one sketch, rats,) from the
old SCTV
show as a bonus feature. (Hell,
I'd buy a disc of just all of them if
someone would put it out.) It also
includes an animated sales pitch for a
possible Bob and Doug McKenzie cartoon,
featuring both actors, although
Moranis seems to be confusing Bob McKenzie
with his Lewis character from Ghostbusters.
I
was nine years old when the McKenzie's
first invaded America. And they obviously
had a pretty big influence on me. I loved
them then and I obviously still love them now.
So
that's our review for today. So, good day,
eh.
|
