This is a great week for beer-loving movie fans. Friday saw the opening of Edgar Wright\u2019s The World\u2019s End, which involves a nostalgic pub crawl featuring many pints being guzzled, and Joe Swanberg\u2019s Drinking Buddies, about employees at a brewery who spend their shifts drinking the wares. And tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the U.S. opening of Strange Brew (aka The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew). Last monday was the date it opened in Canada, so I guess I\u2019m showing some fitting incompetence here. I should blame my brother or something.<\/p>\n
Strange Brew is a feature-length adaptation by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas of their Canadian stereotype characters from SCTV, the McKenzie brothers. It\u2019s also based loosely on Hamlet, making it the oddest update of Shakespeare still to this day (sorry, She\u2019s the Man) and giving it way more plot than you\u2019d expect from a dumb comedy about knuckleheads trying to get a free case of beer. The movie also co-stars Max Von Sydow as the villain, which wasn\u2019t that rare a deal in 1983 but it\u2019s still pretty awesome.<\/p>\n
This movie isn\u2019t referenced enough these days, in spite of it being a major predecessor to Wayne\u2019s World, Step-Brothers, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and plenty of other modern favorites. It also has the best MGM lion logo parody since the Marx Brothers\u2019 A Night at the Opera. If you don\u2019t love this movie and the following scenes, you\u2019re a hoser, eh. Coo loo coo coo, coo coo coo coo!
\nMutants of 2051 A.D.<\/p>\n
Unlike the hosers in the movie theater who complain about Bob and Doug\u2019s cheap sci-fi movie, which makes Ed Wood look like Ingmar Bergman, I wouldn\u2019t have minded just continuing to watch \u201cMutants of 2051 A.D.\u201d But the actual movie of Strange Brew is pretty entertaining all the same. I can\u2019t help but think, though, that by this time in the warped world the McKenzies reside in that \u201cMutants\u201d went on to become a huge midnight movie classic. And really selling it as a 3-B movie (three beers and it looks good, eh) would work especially well at any Drafthouse type cinema. Speaking of which, why the heck wasn\u2019t this movie included in the Alamo Drafthouse Summer of 1983 series?<\/p>\n
Last Beer<\/p>\n
Mel Blanc! Yes, that\u2019s the voice of Looney Tunes that you hear as Bob and Doug\u2019s father in this brief scene that reminds us that we\u2019re watching a kind of live-action cartoon. Which makes it okay that there\u2019s a dog drinking beer. You just know Joe Dante was eating his heart out when he saw this.<\/p>\n
Hosehead Saves the Day<\/p>\n
And in case at any other time you forget this movie is a big cartoon, the climax will definitely cement the idea in your brain, as it features Hosehead the dog (played by Buddy the dog) flying through the air \u2014 with a temporarily grown Superman cape \u2014 to crash an Oktoberfest celebration featuring kegs of brew that have been villainously spiked with a mind control drug. Something I never thought of as a kid watching this movie over and over and over: it\u2019s extra funny that a beer fest is ruined by a \u201cskunk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bob Avoids Drowning In Beer<\/p>\n
Think that\u2019s silly? Let\u2019s go back a bit in the movie to one of my favorite gags as a kid. To avoid drowning in a brewery tank being filled up with beer, Bob (Moranis) drinks every last ounce. Which causes him to become a giant balloon of a man. But then how does he get out of the tank at such enormous size? Explode the wall of the tank with a massive burp. And that\u2019s not all. Then there\u2019s a fire at the brewery, and Bob comes to the rescue by pissing out the flames, which of course brings him back to normal. If this isn\u2019t the most ridiculously childish movie of all time, I don\u2019t know what is.<\/p>\n
Lie Detector<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t be the most ridiculously childish movie ever without a farting scene. In my opinion, this is the most smartly conceived farting scene in film history. That\u2019s not saying much, of course, but yeah I think it\u2019s a better joke than the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles.<\/p>\n
How You Handle the Press<\/p>\n
How many celebrities and trial defendants would love to have a lawyer or bodyguard that handles the press the way Jack Hawkland (Len Doncheff) does? This is total Zucker-Abrams-Zucker territory. He and Die Hard\u2018s Holly McClane should form a firm based in dealing with annoying journalists.<\/p>\n
The Hockey Game<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not much of a hockey fan, but I\u2019d go to more games if the players were controlled by awesome 80s synth sounds. I actually would prefer to highlight the scene when the suited-up asylum patients are just hitting each other because of random notes played on the keyboard. But this is a good enough scene particularly for the Star Wars stuff. The funny thing is, Return of the Jedi, which Doug is said to have seen 17 times, only opened in theaters a few months ahead of this movie \u2014 and long after the scene was written and shot.
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