Classic Movie Review Houseguest

Houseguest 

Directed by Randall Miller 

Written by Michael G. Di Gaetano, Roger Birnbaum 

Starring Sinbad, Phil Hartman 

Released January 6th, 1995 

Published January 7th, 2025 

Houseguest stars comedian Sinbad as a fast talking con-artist named Kevin Franklin. Kevin owes the mob $50,000 dollars via a failed business loan. With a pair of dopey mobsters, Pauly and Joey Gasparini (Paul Ben Victor and Tony Longo), on his tail, Kevin tries to flee the country but gets caught at the airport. After throwing a few curveballs to escape his would-be captors, Kevin stumbles upon the Young family, headed up by milquetoast lawyer Gary Young (Phil Hartman). 

Gary and his kids are at the airport to meet Gary’s oldest friend, one he’s not seen in person in more than 25 years. All that Gary knows about his buddy, Derek, is that he’s black and has agreed to show off his knowledge at a presentation at Gary’s kids' school. This is all the information that Kevin needs to pretend that he’s Derek and use the Youngs as a way to escape from the mob. But first, he has to get rid of the real Derek, played by Ron Glass, by crafting an off the cuff lie so stupid that you can’t help but feel dumber listening to it while feeling a sense of sympathy for actor Ron Glass as he feigns buying into this nonsense.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

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