Classic Movie Review Tommy Boy

Tommy Boy 

Directed by Peter Segal 

Written by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner 

Starring Chris Farley, David Spade, Brian Dennehy

Release Date March 31st, 1995 

Published April 1st, 2025 

Tommy Boy is now 30 years old and watching it again with wizened eyes, I noticed something about Tommy Boy that I’d never noticed before. Tommy Boy contains, almost unintentionally, a concept that I am calling ‘Utopian Capitalism.’ What is Utopian Capitalism? It’s the kind of capitalism that we were sold in school, a notion of capitalism where profits are important, but not as important as helping people keep their jobs. Callahan Auto, the fictional auto parts company at the heart of the plot, is an American company with many employees and is saved by Tommy through hard work and a dedication to people before profits. 

Tommy Callahan (Chris Farley) is the dopey scion of a multi-millionaire businessman, Big Tom Callahan (Brian Dennehy). Big Tom has run a great company funded by his ability to sell people on the quality of the products made in his Ohio plant. When Big Tom dies, the company falls into Tommy’s hands and to say that he’s not ready for this responsibility is a grave understatement. Tommy spent seven years trying to graduate from Marquette University and his major appears to have been being as drunk as humanly possible.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Classic Movie Review Coneheads

Coneheads (1993)

Directed by Steve Barron

Written by Tom Davis, Dan Akroyd, Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner 

Starring Dan Akroyd, Jane Curtin, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Phil Hartman, Sinbad, Michelle Burke 

Release Date July 23rd, 2023 

Published August 30th, 2023 

Am I more mature or less fun? It's a sad question that I was forced to confront as I sat through another movie from my youth that was not nearly as much fun as I remembered. Coneheads is an utterly dreadful movie. When I was a teenager, with a heavy nostalgia for the glory years of SNL that, admittedly, I had only experienced via reruns, I liked Coneheads The Movie. As I once said in a column on this very website, linked here, movies don't change, you do. That's very clear to me after watching Coneheads for what I thought would be a nostalgic look back at a cult favorite. 

Coneheads began life as a popular running sketch on SNL in the late 1970s. Beldar and Prymaat Conehead (Dan Akroyd and Jane Curtin), are aliens from the planet Remulak who are hiding out on Earth and trying to cover up the fact that they are very obviously aliens. They have giant cone shaped heads and they speak in a staccato monotone, like some kind of robot affecting a human voice. That's the joke, the juxtaposition of the attempts by Beldar and Prymaat to seem like suburban Americans versus the tension of them obviously being aliens. 

It's a great sketch premise. I imagine that it is a premise that Dan Akroyd had in mind for many years before he got his big break on SNL. It has the feel of something improvised on stage at Groundlings or Second City show. On SNL that improvised vibe fueled the 5 to 6 minute sketches with one character entering the world of the Coneheads and obliviously accepting the premise that these are normal suburban parents or someone growing more and more frustrated in their attempt to prove that they are aliens. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media