Coneheads (1993) review-good ideas, subpar execution

Life-long fans of Saturday Night Live have been eating well over the past eight months.

Not only did SNL air its 50^th anniversary special earlier this year, but the 2024 fall movie season graced us with a high-profile feature film chronicling the sketch comedy show’s inaugural broadcast in 1975.

As a casual fan, it’s still hard to believe this show has been on the air for half a century, serving as a pop culture incubator for several generations of comedy superstars (not just Molly Shannon).

SNL has had such a lengthy run that its producers have been trying to mine nostalgia for certain sketches as far back as the early 90s.

While Wayne’s World (1992) was greenlit to capitalize on a skit that was popular at the time, Coneheads (1993) was a much more confusing prospect, since those characters hadn’t appeared on TV (in live action) since 1979.

But SNL creator Lorne Michaels, in his infinite wisdom, clearly thought that people would flock to the theatres to watch Dan Aykroyd shuffle around in a phallic cranial prosthetic, since he managed to secure a $30 million budget for this project.

In retrospect, this probably wasn’t the wisest of investments, since Coneheads was a commercial and critical flop, harbingering the public’s less-than-stellar reception to SNL movies over the remaining decade.

While I’d like to be a typical film bro contrarian and tell you how critics and audiences were wrong for casting this movie aside, it’s hard to break from this consensus over 30 years later.

As it stands, the Coneheads movie is just off putting and unpleasant a lot of the time, even though its central schtick did eventually grow on me.

For this film adaptation, Aykroyd and Jane Curtain reprise their roles as Beldar and Prymaat, two aliens from the planet Remulak who crash land on Earth.

With repair to their spaceship impossible and rescue being years away, the extraterrestrial couple must carve out a living amongst the humans, all the while eluding the U.S. government.

While Coneheads has plenty of faults, the filmmakers at least do a better job of justifying its existence compared to other SNL movies.

Unlike Superstar (1999) or The Ladies Man (2000), the plot and characters are far better suited to a feature-length runtime. Beldar and Prymaat’s struggle to navigate life on Earth actually evolves over time, and the writers put in some nice details that parallel their story with the American immigrant experience.

Probably the best example of this is when the film introduces Connie, the couple’s offspring whose upbring on Earth clashes with her alien heritage.

Not only does Connie take to human customs (like shopping and blasting popular music) much more naturally, but actress Michelle Burke also embeds this generational divide into her performance by shedding her parents’ nasally monotone in favour of a kind of Valley Girl accent.

This injects the movie with a tangible sense of thematic conflict, giving the characters a lot more to do in the second half of the film beyond leaning into jokes about the Coneheads’ strange biology and inability to understand idioms.

The producers should also be commended for putting that $30 million budget to good use, leaning into the sci-fi aspect of the story by staging impressive scenes of space travel and a charming stop-motion monster fight on Remulak.

Unfortunately, you have to wade through a lot of unfunny BS to arrive at the goods parts, with the first third of the movie being a major slog.

Maybe it’s because I wasn’t familiar with these specific SNL skits ahead of time, but my introduction to the Coneheads’ signature tics and idiosyncrasies in this film was like hitting a brick wall.

Within the first ten minutes, Aykroyd and Curtain’s screeching and cartoonish mugging had already grown tiresome, and I seriously considered turning down my TV’s volume to minimize the impact.

To make matters worse, the first third of the film relies on a lot of shock humour that isn’t clever or insightful, with many of the gags boiling down to the writers thinking “what’s the grossest thing we can shove into Aykroyd’s mouth?”

That being said, I do admire the filmmakers for testing the boundaries of the MPAA rating system by smuggling grotesque body horror into a PG movie.

In one scene, Beldar goes to a dentist to file down his teeth and reveals several rows of hideous fangs behind his retracted mouth.

In another moment, a pregnant Prymaat floods an entire basement apartment when her water breaks, leading to a baby delivery scene where Beldar cuts the umbilical cord with his new teeth.

Even the climactic fight at the end has some pretty grizzly sights for a kids movie, since a couple Remulak jobbers get their head and limbs torn off by a stop-motion space troll.

While these gags barely elicited a chuckle out of me, I at least respect the writers’ willingness to make the audience uncomfortable and not settle for a completely sanitized experience.

Unfortunately, Coneheads is still meant to be a comedy and in that area the film mostly falls flat.

Outside of its overreliance on gross-out humour, the film’s remaining jokes become pretty predictable and fall into a familiar pattern, where misunderstandings about Earth culture are sandwiched between cracks about the Remulak’s unique physiology and speaking patterns.

That repetition may not be noticeable in an eight-minute sketch, but every subpar gag becomes magnified in a feature-length environment, and Coneheads doesn’t have enough standout lines or bits to even out this ratio.

And even though the actors do the best with the material they’re given (especially Curtain), one puzzling casting decision really threw me for a loop and torpedoed a romantic subplot that dominates the second half of the film.

This story thread revolves around Connie’s growing infatuation with Ronnie, an auto mechanic played by Chris Farley.

While Farley (rest in peace) was a man of many talents, he definitely looked his age and should have never been hired to play a character who is lusting after a teenager.

Even if Farley’s character is meant to be 18 or something, the scenes between him and Burke come off as extra weird and creepy, which is a major problem when so much of the story’s emotional weight is reliant on their relationship.

You could argue that this creepy dynamic is intentional, since the movie thrives on this kind of absurdist contrast, like how all the human characters never once remark on the Coneheads’ freakish appearance as being alien.

But Farley’s casting seems like it’s moreso a matter of convenience, since the rest of the cast is chock full of comedians who were already in SNL’s orbit during the early 90s.

So overall, I can’t really recommend Coneheads as a comedy, although I do admire some of the work being done at its core.

The writers at least had a solid foundational idea to play around with by using Beldar, Prymaat, and Connie to mirror the American immigrant experience. This framing gives the movie a sense of momentum as the plot moves forward and it never feels like the film is a series of random skits strung together with a loose plot.

This story about undocumented aliens becoming productive members of society is also especially relevant in today’s political climate, where the current U.S. government is so cartoonishly cruel and draconian in its treatment of these people that it makes the film’s main villain (an overzealous immigration agent played by Michael McKean) look like a choir boy by comparison.

Had the jokes been a little sharper, I believe that Coneheads would be on the same tier as beloved SNL features like Wayne World or The Blues Brothers (1980), rather than being relegated to the middle of the pack.

Thankfully, two of the movie’s writers (Bonnie and Terry Turner) would later find success creating 3rd Rock from the Sun, an NBC sitcom that used the same basic premise as Coneheads and even featured Curtain as a series regular.

Not only did 3rd Rock run for six seasons, but the show also picked up eight Primetime Emmys throughout its run, including multiple wins for series leads John Lithgow and Kristen Johnston.

So clearly this writing team had the talent to make this concept work; they just needed the right platform to give it room to breathe.

In that sense, the Coneheads movie could be seen as a (very expensive) learning experience, where the writers were given space to see what doesn’t work, refine their craft, and become better comedians down the line.

That opportunity to learn and grow is what draws so many up-and-coming comedians to SNL even in the 2020s, so Coneheads should at least be praised for staying true to that spirit of self-improvement.

Then again, I had to sit through multiple scenes of actors chewing on condoms like bubble gum, so my positive feelings for this film can only go so far.

Verdict:

5/10

Corner store companion:

Toblerone (because it’s triangle shaped and meant to be consumed in mass quantities)

Fun facts:

Release date: July 23, 1993

Budget: $30 million

Box office: $21 million

-The Coneheads made a total of 11 appearances on SNL between January 1977 and February 1979.

-The Coneheads movie features a smorgasbord of cameos from established comedians and up-and-comers who would go on to be majors players in the industry. This list of cameos includes: Adam Sandler, Drew Carey (in his film debut), Ellen DeGeneres, Sinbad, Eddie Griffin, Jon Lovitz (uncredited), Kevin Nealon, Phil Hartman, Tom Arnold, Parker Posey, Dave Thomas, Tim Meadows, and Michael Richards.

-Aykroyd and Curtain perform the original song “Conehead Love” over the credits in character as Beldar and Prymaat. This song would receive the full music video treatment to help promote the film.

-Prior to this film, SNL tried to turn the Coneheads into an ongoing cartoon series in 1983 via animation giant Rankin/Bass. The 22-minute special, which was never picked up for a full series, follows a lot of the same plot beats as the 1993 film, with Beldar and Prymaat crashing landing on Earth and adjusting to life amongst humans.

-Despite never scoring a sequel or returning to SNL as these characters, Aykroyd and Curtain reprised their roles as Beldar and Prymaat in a series of commercials for State Farm in 2015.

-Musical highlight: “Kodachrome” by Paul Simon (plays over a montage of Beldar and Prymaat raising their daughter in the suburbs)

The Ladies Man (2000) review-a pretty limp comedy

In the modern sphere internet movie critics, one of their favourite recent punching bags is the (relatively) new phenomenon of social media influencers starring in feature films or ongoing series.

“Oh look,” they say over a glass of Cognac. “Somebody decided to remake Airplane with noted corpse vlogger Logan Paul. How very pedestrian.”

“You think that’s bad?” another would chime in while polishing their monocle. “Check out this hospital drama where the entire cast is made up of Tik Tok stars.”

While these commentators are not wrong, I think their analysis often falls short in terms of putting these entertainment properties in the right historical context.

After all, out-of-touch movie executives have always been on the lookout for some flash-in-the-pan celebrity that they can turn into a star overnight, no matter what era of film we’re talking about.

Take, for example, SNL Studios’ output from the late 1990s and early 2000s, since this production company specialized in using middling characters from the late-night sketch show to headline theatrical releases.

While I’ve already talked at length about Bruce McCulloch’s Superstar (1999), Reginald Hudlin’s The Ladies Man (2000) suffers from largely the same problem, where the central protagonist cannot sustain a 90-minute runtime.

The story itself centres around Leon Phelps (Tim Meadows), a self-professed love guru who dishes out dubious sex and relationship advice over late-night radio.

When Phelps’ show gets thrown off the air due to lude conduct, the “ladies man” is forced to re-evaluate his priorities and figure out how he wants to spend the rest of his life (and with who).

Meanwhile, a mob of angry cuckolds is roaming the streets out for blood since Phelps secretly bedded all their wives and girlfriends.

Having never watched a Leon Phelps sketch before popping in this DVD, I was pretty baffled as to why this character was popular in the first place (to the point where SNL execs thought he could carry his own movie).

Outside of saying raunchy things at inappropriate moments, and dressing like a Soul Train reject, Phelps doesn’t have anything else substantial to offer in the comedy department, which puts the film on extremely shaky ground.

The whole movie I was waiting for Meadows to move past spouting grade school sex jokes and reveal an extra dimension to his personality, but that time never came.

Instead, all of Phelps’ character growth is boiled down to his evolving relationship with his producer Julie (Karyn Parsons), even though that romantic turn is telegraphed from a mile away.

The writers try and give this character a little more depth by providing him with a backstory at the very beginning of the movie, but this flashback doesn’t really play into anything later on and just serves as filler for a movie that’s only 84 minutes long.

Phelps’ status as a lothario and master seducer also left me scratching my head.

Even though Meadows is a good-looking guy, he carries the same kind of cheesy bravado of a pre-teen boy who just discovered his first chest hair, with cringy pick-up lines that wouldn’t even work during happy hour at Chili’s.

It would be one thing if the writers framed Phelps as a kind of Johnny Bravo character, who talks a big game but constantly gets rejected.

But judging by the sheer amount of the scorned husbands and boyfriends who what the “ladies man” dead, Phelps’ obnoxious style of courtship is irresistible to the opposite sex, apparently.

This sloppy writing creates a disconnect between the character and the audience, since we’re never given any opportunity to see him as a person who could potentially operate like this in the real world.

Of course, these shortcomings could be tolerable if the jokes were at least funny, but The Ladies Man severely fumbles in this department as well.

While the movie did elicit a chuckle from me here and there, most of the gags were dead on arrival because of how lazy and predictable they are.

For example, 25-minutes into the film Phelps scores a short-lived gig at a Christian radio station; a scenario that any half-baked writer could spin into comedy gold.

Unfortunately, they only thing this crew could come up with involves Phelps interviewing a nun who spouts off a bunch of unintentional double-entendres like how she is going to “assume a missionary position” in “Bangkok.”

The film’s running gags don’t fair any better, since most of them involve taking tired concepts and completely driving them into the ground.

One of the worst examples of this involves Will Ferrell’s character (one of the cuckolded husbands), whose repressed homosexuality is tied to his affinity for Greco-Roman wrestling.

In fact, the film is so devoid of imagination that some of its supporting players spontaneously break out into a poorly choreographed musical number just to fill up two minutes of screen time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihEpAuaoZ98

Just to be clear, I have nothing against raunchy sex jokes or “LOL SO RANDOM” humour, but those elements need to be presented with some level of finesse in a feature film. Otherwise, I might as well be watching a “funniest nut shot” montage on YouTube.

With that being said, The Ladies Man does at least contain a couple decent supporting characters that help make the movie’s surrounding mediocrity a little more digestible.

The strongest of these is played by Billy Dee Williams, who doubles as Phelps’ mentor and the story’s narrator.

Not only are Williams’ silky tones welcome in any movie, but the writers also sneak in some decent fourth-wall breaking jokes where the actor’s monologue constantly gets interrupted by other characters in the film.

And Karyn Parsons is really grounded and likable as Phelps’ assistant Julie, so much that you wonder why she is wasting this quality performance on a film that has barely enough material for a five-minute sketch.

In the end, The Ladies Man’s biggest shortcoming is that it fails to justify its own existence as a star-making vehicle for Meadows, who never really got another chance to be a leading man after this movie flopped (both critically and financially).

However, this isn’t entirely the comedian’s fault, since not even a more versatile performer like Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock or Jamie Foxx could make this sub-par material sing.

But if Meadows wanted to bring a character like Leon Phelps back in 2020, the door is definitely open for him on an online platform like YouTube, where seemingly every celebrity is spending more and more of their time because of COVID-19.

Just don’t be surprised if such a move is met with scorn and derision by the internet commentators I mentioned earlier, since there’s nothing that these folks love more than tearing down a mainstream actor moving in on their territory.

Verdict:

3/10

Corner store companion:

Compliments Wieners (because it they’re short, cheaply made and don’t leave you satisfied)

Fun facts:

-Release date: Oct. 13, 2000

-Budget: $24 million (estimated)

-Box office gross: $13,743,212 (worldwide)

-According to Wikipedia, Tim Meadows appeared as Leon Phelps on SNL a total of 15 times between October 1997 and October 2000. His last appearance as the character took place on Oct. 7, 2000 (a week before the movie was set to premiere).

-At the time of this movie’s release, Meadows was the longest running cast member on SNL, having been with the sketch show since 1991. His record was surpassed in 2005 by Darrell Hammond and again in 2017 by Kenan Thompson.

–Surprise cameo: Julianne Moore makes a brief appearance as one of Phelps’ former flings who has sex with him in a full clown regalia. This role took places two years after Moore was nominated for a Best-Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Boogie Nights (1997).

–The Ladies Man is also the title of a 1961 comedy starring Jerry Lewis, who stars as a nervous young man trying to overcome his fear of women.

– Musical highlight: “Sweet Thing” by Rufus and Chaka Khan (because the title of the song is the pet name that Phelps gives to all of his lovers)

Superstar (1999) review-is a comedy supposed to make your skin crawl?

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that Saturday Night Live has an extremely spotty track record when it comes to producing feature films.

For every classic like Wayne’s World (1992) and The Blues Brothers (1980), the late-night titan could dish out bonafide clunkers like Coneheads (1993) and Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) as well.

Bruce McCulloch’s Superstar (1999) definitely falls into that latter category, since this film spent way more time creeping me out than making me laugh.

The film stars Molly Shannon as Mary Katherine Gallagher, a Catholic high school student whose only ambition in life is to become a Hollywood “superstar” so that she can parley that fame into getting her very first kiss.

While Gallagher’s awkwardness makes that task seem impossible, she finally gets the chance to shine when her school puts together a talent show, where the grand prize is getting to work as an extra in an upcoming movie.

Now, I’m no SNL scholar, and I’m certainly not an expert on Shannon’s run with the late-night sketch show between 1995 and 2001 (that program came on way past my bedtime).

But even though I had no idea who Mary Katherine Gallagher was, I went into this film with an open mind, thinking that Shannon and fellow SNL-writer Steve Koren crafted a movie that would illustrate why this character deserved the big-screen treatment in the first place.

Well, if their goal was to introduce me to a new horror movie villain who is more disturbing that Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter combined then mission accomplished.

If I were to describe Mary Katherine Gallagher using only three words it would be “severely emotionally disturbed,” since she consistently yo-yos between being hyperactive, aggressive and withdrawn in pretty much every scene.

While this quirky behavior is mildly tolerable in the first five minutes of the film (which is, coincidentally, the average length of an SNL skit), Shannon’s gimmick grows increasingly creepy and unnerving with every passing moment.

When she isn’t breathing heavily or making out with inanimate objects, Gallagher seems to be harboring some deep-seated homicidal rage that’s bubbling right beneath the surface.

The only way she can relate to her fellow humans and their emotions is through re-enacting scenes from old movies, which creates a rift between her and the other characters that isn’t endearing at all.

It also doesn’t help that the writers make her simultaneously behave like a nymphomaniac and a small child; two things that should never go together in a screenplay unless you’re making a critique of bad character writing.

And while the film’s plot is designed to get the audience to root for a nerdy underdog, I couldn’t help but think that this story could be easily turned into a serial killer movie with some selective editing and a new score.

Now, I get that director Bruce McCulloch probably made Gallagher creepy and unnerving on purpose, since he and his fellow compatriots from The Kids in the Hall reveled in putting these kinds of depraved weirdos on TV.

But the reason why a lot of these skits work is they were over in a couple minutes, meaning the audience doesn’t have enough time to think about how these characters would function in the real world.

By exposing us to someone like Mary Katherine Gallagher for over an hour, your mind can’t help but think about things like how many dead cats she keeps buried in her backyard.

Besides that, everything surrounding the film’s main character isn’t much to write home about either.

The plot is paper thin and beyond cliched, featuring a lazy talent show finale that’s served as the climax for an endless number of other high school comedies.

Except for Will Ferrell as Shannon’s love interest, pretty much all the other side characters are completely forgettable since they aren’t given anything to work with.

And the vast majority of the film’s sight gags lack serious imagination, barring some brief detours into dated movie parodies and dream sequences that feature Ferrell as God.

Of course, all of these shortcomings could be forgiven if Superstar consistently made me laugh throughout its runtime. But beyond the first five minutes, and a few decent lines from Ferrell, this movie is a giant comedy dead zone until the credits role.

While a lot of that is due its repulsive protagonist, Shannon should be given some credit for taking on this kind of role in the first place, since she’s fully committed to make herself look as unhinged as possible.

And to her credit, this kind of edgy character work would prove successful in other projects.

During the same year this movie came out, Amy Sedaris achieved cult comedy status through playing 45-year-old high school freshman Jerri Blank in the Comedy Central series Strangers With Candy. Although, part of the reason why that show work where Superstar failed is because the creators of Strangers admitted that Blank was a disturbed person in virtually every episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CH-9tVbKCM

And even though I loath Napoleon Dynamite (2004), it recycled Superstar’s plot to much better results, since the writers at least managed to capture a quirky snapshot of middle America oddballs that resonated with audiences.

All Superstar managed to do was kill the public’s interest in Mary Katherine Gallagher. Following the movie’s premiere in October 1999, Shannon would only portray the character one more time on SNL before leaving the late-night sketch show in 2001.

And since these SNL films are only made to boost the profile of certain intellectual properties, I don’t think that’s the result they were looking for.

These days, SNL relegates most of its cinematic ambitions to digital shorts and the odd pre-recorded skit, which is probably for the best.

Heck, that recent Joker parody featuring David Harbour as Oscar the Grouch generated more demented laughs in three minutes than Superstar could during its entire feature-length runtime.

Verdict:

2/10

Corner store companion:

All the cleaning supplies in your residence (because you’ll feel unclean after watching this movie)

Fun facts:

-Release date: Oct. 8, 1999

-Budget: $34 million (estimated)

-Box office gross: $30,636,478 (worldwide)

-Before staring in Superstar, Molly Shannon, Will Ferrell and Mark McKinney all previously appeared in the 1998 SNL feature A Night at the Roxbury.

-According to Wikipedia, Shannon played Mary Katherine Gallagher a total of 20 times on SNL between 1995 and 2015. Her last appearance as the character was Feb. 15, 2015 during the show’s 40th anniversary special.

-SNL produced a grand total of 17 films within the span of 31 years. Their debut feature was Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video in 1979 and their last was MacGruber in 2010.

-A large chuck of Superstar was filmed at the University of Toronto.

-Musical highlight: “Beautiful” by the Go-Go’s (plays over the film’s opening credits)