DIRECTORS
Bobby Farrelly
Peter Farrelly
SCREENWRITERS
Barry Fanaro
Mort Nathan
PRODUCERS
Brad Krevoy
Steven Stabler
Bradley Thomas
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Mark Irwin
MUSIC
Freedy Johnston
EDITOR
Christopher Greenbury
CAST
Woody Harrelson (Roy Munson)
Randy Quaid (Ishmael Boorg)
Vanessa Angel (Claudia)
Bill Murray (Ernie McCracken)
Chris Elliott (The Gambler)
William Jordan (Mr. Boorg)
Richard Tyson (Owner of Stiffy's)
Lin Shaye (Landlady)
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running
time: 113m
U.S. release: July 26, 1996
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
website
Other Farrelly
Bros. films
reviewed on this site:
- Dumb
and Dumber
- Me,
Myself & Irene
- There's
Something About Mary
|
The
ads for Kingpin make it look extremely cruddy -- within
farting distance of Police Academy 3. On the other hand,
it's gotten some raves; no less an authority than Roger Ebert
awarded it three-and-a-half stars. (What drugs did Ebert take
that made Kingpin "a very funny movie, and sometimes
even funnier than that"?) The truth lies somewhere in between.
Kingpin doesn't suck; it has some solid laughs. It also
throws many gutter balls.
The movie gets off to a great start, actually. It opens in 1969,
briefly introduces us to budding bowler Roy Munson, then flashes
forward to 1979, when Roy (Woody Harrelson) has just clinched
the Iowa state bowling championship. The directors, Peter and
Bobby Farrelly (Dumb
and Dumber), crank up the disco and linger on Roy's bell-bottoms.
Usually I groan at this retro stuff -- the '70s were a dumb decade
best forgotten -- but the Farrellys get an exultant rhythm going,
and the glitzy '70s seem the perfect backdrop for a bottle rocket
like Roy.
Roy soon crashes. He falls in with a slimy rival bowler, Ernie
McCracken (Bill Murray, sporting two of the ugliest hairpieces
in recent memory). Ernie gets Roy to run a scam on some gullible
bowlers, who glimpse Roy's championship ring and realize he's
a ringer. They shove his hand into a ball return, and it's played
for laughs. What is this, Natural
Born Killers? From then on, the Farrellys go for pitiless
frat-boy humor that makes National Lampoon look like The
Brady Bunch.
Cut to 1996. (What is this, an epic?) Roy, now a pathetic drunk
with a rubber hand, meets an Amish natural named Ishmael (Randy
Quaid). Ishmael bowls 270, which sounds great until he explains
that he bowls fifteen frames. Still, Roy sees Ishmael's potential,
and for a while Kingpin gets some mileage out of their
unlikely bond. There are a couple of classic gross-outs involving
Roy and farm animals. Don't even ask.
But then the movie hits the road and, oddly, loses its momentum.
To save the Amish farm, Roy and Ishmael must enter a tournament
in Reno to win half a million dollars. Along the way, they meet
a stunner named Claudia (Vanessa Angel), whose character changes
according to the whims of scripters Barry Fanaro and Mort Nathan.
Is she a waif or an ass-kicking vixen? A con artist or a kind
stranger who wants to help the guys? Good luck figuring her out;
I doubt the Farrellys (or the actress herself) ever did.
Kingpin has a meandering midsection, with far too much
cruel emphasis on Roy's hideous landlady, who keeps coming back
to haunt him. The Farrellys also can't get enough of Vanessa
Angel's curves, and when she's not around in the Reno scenes,
they zero in on countless bimbos. You don't expect comedies like
this to bow to feminism, but past a certain point the movie seems
to be playing to the Jenny McCarthy fans in the audience. Then
there's the climax, which avoids clichés yet is unsatisfying
anyway. The cast is game (the film could have used a lot more
of Murray), but Kingpin ends up with a seven-ten split
between hilariously tasteless and just plain distasteful. |
