4- The Michigan Daily - Weekend etc. - Thursday, March 16, 1995
SNL: TV good, silver screen not
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By Prashant Tamaskar
Daily Arts Writer
For the last 20 years, "Saturday
Night Live" has been entertaining
people with a style of humor that has
transcended the skills of its cast. This
explains the long-time success of the
late-night program, despite the loss of
such stars as Eddie Murphy, Bill
Murray,JohnBelushi andDanAkroyd.
Historically, popular SNL "players"
have used the show as a steppingstone
on their way to silver-screen fame. Yet
it has not only been the cast that has
found itself moving west for the riches
of Hollywood. Throughout the years,
theproducers of "Saturday NightLive"
have exploited its popularity by mak-
ing inferior movies based on well re-
ceived skits.
The only two SNL films that cannot
be categorized as flops are "The Blues
Brothers" and "Wayne's World." A
combination of good writing, clever
marketing and proper timing led to both
the critical and popular acclaim that
these two movies received.
However, most of the movies have
resembled the last two SNL films to hit
the big screen - "Wayne's World 2"
and "Coneheads.""Wayne's World 2"
shamelessly attempted to leech off of
the popularity of its far superior prequel
and failed. Even the talents of Mike
Myers andDanaCarvey could not save
the movie from a script that did not
contain much new material.
Even more noteworthy than
"WW2" was the release of
"Coneheads" last summer. No one is
quite sure why this film was made
nearly 17 years after the characters
were first introduced and the novelty
had worn off. Many of the original
people who first loved the Coneheads
skit had outgrown it, while to the ever-
important target audience ofhigh school
and college students the concept seemed
rather dumb and outdated. Needless to
say, "Coneheads" was not exactly a
smashing success.
However, neither of these debacles
even compare to the biggest flop of all
- the movie based on the androgy-
nous SNL character Pat. The film suf-
fered many setbacks, including pro-
duction problems. After it was finally
completed it went straight to video,
completely bypassing movie theaters.
Sadly, this gives you an idea about
what the producers thought about their
final product.
The main question to ask is: Why
are the movies based on "Saturday
Night Live" sketches so bad? There are
several potential answers to this ques-
tion. The first is that quite often the
skits are overdone before making the
movie. Unfortunately, SNL has a ten-
dency to milk popular characters for all
that they are worth. Consequently, by
the time the film based on a skit is
released, the material has grown stale.
However, to promote the upcoming
film, they create more related sketches
on the TV show. So, by the time the
movie is released, many viewers have
had enough of it already and have no
desire to see the film.
The second answer is that the
sketches are simply out of their ele-
ment when placed on a big screen. Just
because an act is funny for five minutes
doesn't mean it's going to be amusing
for an hour and a half. Also, placing
characters in movies can force the con-
text of the humor to change. Usually,
this is not very successful (an excep-
tion being Wayne and Garth often leav-
ing their basement in "Wayne's
World").
The final contributor to the failure
of the SNL movies has been poor
writing.The movies simply have not
had the same snap in their humor as the
TV show. And considering the talent
level ofmany ofthe performersitprob-
ably wouldn't be reasonable to blame
them for these disasters.
Unfortunately, it seems that the pro-
ducers of "Saturday Night Live" have not
realized that their movies simply are not
very highly regarded. Two more films,
staningAlFrankenas Stuart Smalley, and
Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon as Hans
and Franz, are soon to be released. While
the Hans and Franz movie comes as no
surprise, the other one is quite a shock.
Stuart Smalley is not that popular of a
character to begin with and this skit does
notgenerally elicitmuch laughter. Itcotild
end up being the worst SNL movie yet. If
this happens, maybetheproducersof"Sat-
urday Night Live" will stop releasing
bombs disguised as movies to the public
once and for all.
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Wayne's World is violent. See his bizarre sexual behavior as evidenced in this photograph.
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