Farley, Spade follow footsteps of SNL alums in `Black Sheep'
Going in to see Black Sheep, I was pretty sure that it wasn't going to be up for any Oscars, Golden Globes or even the Screen Writer's Guild. I was expecting a reasonably funny and entertaining movie, and that is pretty much what I got.
"Saturday Night Live" veterans Chris Farley and David Spade headline the cast. Farley left SNL last season (as did many others, which is why SNL is so mediocre this year), but Spade is actually still piddling around the SNL set. The basic goal of most SNL stars is to move on to bigger and better things, such as movies or network TV. Many of them (Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Eddie Murphy, etc.) have gone on to do so.
Recently, some SNLers have had a tough time making that transition. Jon Lovitz is still showing up on the SNL set after he supposedly quit. Dennis Miller's show was on for all of about two weeks, and Dana Carvey is still searching for a breakthrough role in a movie.
Farley and Spade, along with their esteemed colleague Adam Sandler, are having slightly better luck, with 1995 hits Tommy Boy (also starring Spade and Farley) and Billy Madison (Sandler's breakthrough).
Most people were expecting Black Sheep to be Tommy Boy II . The plot is entirely different, but you could draw some similarities if you wanted to.
In Black Sheep , Al Donnelly, played by Tim Matheson, is running for the governorship of Washington. Farley plays Mike Donnelly, Al's brother, who really wants to be involved in the campaign but invariably just botches things up. So Spade, as Steve Dodds, is enlisted to babysit Farley during the campaign. As you would expect, Farley still finds a way to mess up the campaign. All sorts of funny things happen. He ruins a campaign rally by wrecking a truck, is framed for arson and appears as his brother while stoned.
The movie lacks some of the witty banter and zippy one-liners found in Tommy Boy , but Black Sheep does have its share. The movie at times just turns into Farley doing a bunch of sight gags like falling down, getting hit in the head, etc. This is funny enough, but better writing could have made this movie a blockbuster.
There's some great work done by a washed-up Gary Busey Jr. as psycho Vietnam vet Drake Sabitch--a change from the bad guys he played in a lot of '80s action movies.
In the end, Black Sheep certainly delivers what it promises, but it is a little worse than Tommy Boy , and it definitely falls short of Billy Madison . It just lacks some of the hilarious scenes that Billy Madison had, such as when Billy Madison pulls up to his old high school wearing an REO Speedwagon shirt, driving a Trans Am with fuzzy dice and playing Billy Squire's "The Stroke" on the stereo. Now that's comedy.
Black Sheep is funny, not original; it is notable because it belongs to the tradition of more-or-less funny movies that also star SNL alums.
This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the February 16, 1996 issue.
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