Directed by Adam Resnick
Written by Adam Resnick, Chris Elliott
Starring Chris Elliott, Melora Waters, David Letterman, Andy Richter
Release Date January 7th, 1994
Published January 16th, 2024
Cabin Boy is a miserable attempt at comedy. That's surprising because, in general, comic Chris Elliott's absurd style of comedy is usually pretty great. I can remember being a kid and loving the weird gags Elliott did for David Letterman on Late Night. I remember some of his short-lived TV series Get a Life which also featured surreal running gags about Elliott being an overgrown child, one of the original Peter Pan Complex types. Elliott did a tremendous job of making man-children the subject of mockery. He targeted over-privileged mama's boys and clueless, entitled men who couldn't understand why the world didn't constantly bend to their will.
It's a good brand of comedy and you can sense him bringing some of that sensibility to 1994's Cabin Boy. Elliott's main character, Nathaniel Mayweather, proudly calls himself a Fancy Boy, even as others intend it as an insult to his ill-mannered over-privileged man child. As we join the story of Cabin Boy, Nathaniel is finishing four years of insulting everyone less rich than him. Witless, irritating and openly cruel, Nathaniel is exactly the kind of character who needs a comeuppance and a valuable lesson about not being cruel to people of lesser status. You might assume that that will be the story of Cabin Boy and it kind of is. But, the reality of Cabin Boy is far more disjointed and odd.
After getting kicked out of a limousine that is ferrying Fancy Boy Nathaniel to a luxury cruise how to his mansion in Hawaii, Nathaniel takes a wrong turn and ends up at the wrong port. Here, Nathaniel will end up boarding a stinking fishing boat called The Filthy Whore. Mistaking it for a themed cruise ship, Nathaniel becomes a stowaway on the fishing boat that is most certainly not headed to Hawaii. The salty smelly crew is a collection of character actors that includes James Gammon, Brion James, and frequent Chris Elliott collaborator, Brian Doyle Murray. Eventually the crew will add a woman, Trina (Melora Waters), as a very unlikely love interest for Nathaniel.
I've given a rudimentary shape to Cabin Boy but the reality is much less linear. In reality, Cabin Boy is a series of random, mostly unfunny gags that don't add up to much of a story. Among the failing oddities is a character played by Russ Tamblyn. The former star of West Side Story plays a half-man-half-shark, who falls in love with Nathaniel and thus ends up saving his life on more than one occasion. Tamblyn has a nice smile but nothing that the movie has him do is funny. He looks weird as a human-shark hybrid but if you aren't laughing at that description, you probably won't laugh at the character in the context of Cabin Boy.
