May 26, 2010: Tommy Boy
What is there to say about Tommy Boy that anyone who cares hasn’t already said? Having seen this in the theatre upon its initial release in 1995 and having been of the appropriate target demographic (20-something male), my perspective on the film is of course terribly biased, even more so due to repeated viewings over the past 15 years. One of an endless parade of silly concept films at the time starring Saturday Night Live veterans, though in this case not based on characters from a sketch on the show, Tommy Boy fired on all cylinders and was a perfect showcase for then-rising stars Chris Farley and David Spade. But does it still hold up all these years later?
The answer is yes and no. I found that the film still comes across well, in part because of the comic chemistry between Spade and Farley, but particularly because of the terrific supporting cast. However, it definitely has weak spots, which stand in higher relief for me now that time always seems to be at a premium and my mind wanders toward thoughts of tighter editing and abandonment of scenes and jokes that aren’t working. Tommy Boy will still always hold a place in my heart, but I now have better insight into why some people don’t see the appeal.
The story is about a young college grad, played by Chris Farley, who has barely passed his final year and returns to his hometown with no idea what he will do next. Fortunately for Tommy, his father owns a successful auto parts manufacturing business and sets him up with an office job. David Spade plays Richard, right-hand man to Tommy’s father in the business, well-educated but geeky and friendless in contrast with Tommy’s affable doofus who makes friends everywhere he turns. Based on the opening scene of the film, we can tell that nothing has changed about these guys since they were little kids in this small town. Moving along in the story, taking a decade and a half as long enough to permit spoilers (fair warning), Tommy’s father’s sudden death throws the company into turmoil, and its future is seriously in question. Eventually it falls to Tommy to go on his father’s scheduled sales trip, to try and get the orders which are needed for the company to survive. Richard, knowing all the technical details about the products and the history with the customers, is assigned to go along, and suddenly we have an odd couple road trip, the perfect setting for a silly comedy movie.
From this point, Tommy Boy becomes more episodic, as various jokes and scenarios around driving, motels, sales techniques, and tension between the two men are presented. Fear not, though, because it never becomes disjointed, since we get into a comfortable pattern of days and evenings, and spreading the trip out over multiple days allows the jokes to be spread out a bit more – for example, there are two evening motel scenes rather than just one – so that things seem more realistic and not like just an excuse to pack in every gag they could think of. Tommy grows up and finds himself fairly quickly, but the setup before and the scenes after the road trip emphasize that this growth didn’t come out of nowhere. Tommy just didn’t have anywhere to focus himself before.
So what we have is more or less a buddy/road movie, and the two leads have good chemistry together, being real life friends as well. I thought it was courageous and a step above what this type of film typically does, to kill off Tommy’s father early in the film. Played by veteran character actor Brian Dennehy, he is a real presence on the screen and it’s a shock when he’s suddenly gone. I think it brings real tragedy and heart to the movie, where many similar stories don’t dare to tread, and I think it goes a long way toward keeping this film from being just another shallow excuse for sophomoric jokes. Tommy’s character is an exaggeration, to be sure, but his interactions with a young lady at work and his rapport with the line workers in the plant and even his gentle ribbing of Richard where he could be more cruel as others obviously have in the past, clearly paint Tommy’s character as inclusive and fair and moral, and his ascent to a respectable position of authority in the company wouldn’t have rung as true if we didn’t see that all those moments through the years have been preparing him for leadership.
The above-mentioned supporting cast is a sight to behold, and indicative of the cachet of such roles at the time, sparked in 1992 by Wayne’s World. Dennehy is a respected actor with decades of experience. Bo Derek played his new wife, and she’s a legend from when she blasted on the scene in the late 1970s, if not actually well-known for her actual acting. Dan Aykroyd is an SNL and comedy veteran and plays the pivotal part of a rival auto parts company owner. Rob Lowe (also in Wayne’s World) has built a solid reputation for being able to laugh at himself and the pretty-boy image he cultivated in the mid-1980s as a fringe member of the brat pack. And the underrated Julie Warner, as Farley’s love interest, turns in a sweet performance as a lonely small-town girl who never gets her due attention. The parallel with Warner’s own career strikes me as I write this, since it seems to me that she had a promising up-and-coming film career at that point, but has more or less bounced around on TV since then.
Tommy Boy was a moderate box office success, and did well enough to trigger a carbon-copy repeat (i.e. another Spade/Farley goof-fest) the following year. Black Sheep turned out not to be as strong even as Tommy Boy, being a poorly written mess. Tragically, Farley passed away in 1997 at the age of 33, another hard-partying victim of success and a frightening parallel to John Belushi, who had died the previous decade at a similar age and with a similarly promising comedy and acting career taking flight after a solid run on SNL. It’s sad that the world never got to see how Farley might have developed as an actor. While Spade remains quirky and not particularly bankable despite good success on TV, I always thought that Farley had bigger acting chops and could have taken a path more like what Adam Sandler has done, with dumb comedies mixed in with smart and perceptive comedies and the occasional successful dramatic turn. Oh well.
Tommy Boy remains one of my cherished films, although time hasn’t been as kind to it as I might have hoped. Still, it’s refreshing to see these comedies by SNL veterans from before the days when things started to get really raunchy in the late 1990s, because even I will admit that excessive coarseness can easily obscure the valid emotional moments which are essential in order to have a film really connect with its viewers.
I remember the good old days.
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