Which is odd considering what a fan of Farley and Guest I am. this movie felt as though it was made by aliens who had done exhaustive research in human comedy, but lacked the basic human emotions needed to understand how laughter works.
While watching, I was filled with cosmic dread as I was forced to ponder whether or not my perception of reality is a simulation run by indifferent extradimensional beings with a malevolent agenda.
I have to agree.
This movie is STRANGE.
It has a good basic premise, nothing wrong with it. It has some good ideas for jokes and humor, but the execution ALWAYS fails for some reason. Many of the jokes fall flat, have bad timing, do not work, are over-extended, or just simply resort to the lowest common denominator-pandering fart-stuff.
It's one of those mysterious cases that look good on paper - great premise, nice joke material, lots of promise, an exploration-adventure-comedy with great actors and comedic stars, good musics, and competent production (I don't know how to evaluate things like 'direction' or 'camerawork', but it all seems competent to me).
How the heck did this movie become so hollow and humorless after all this, is anyone's guess. It looks like it could've been a timeless classic, a masterpiece of comedy, on the same league as Wayne's World, with just a few tweaks and proper comedy.
It's like everything else is there, the stage is set, wonderful locations, great actors, even good performances in some ways - Chris Farley could be so funny, but somehow.. isn't here.
This movie is an enigma, a mystery, a baffling production, where everything SEEMINGLY falls into place perfectly, but the end result just doesn't work AT ALL.
I keep watching it, hoping to see something I might have missed earlier, but nope - every time, I just watch this with empty eyes, and can't get anything out of it. How can these same actors be so funny in other movies, but completely flat here?
This is not one of the worst movies I have ever seen - it's more like, the most 'empty' movie I have ever seen, because it doesn't offer the viewer anything, beside some scenery and a bit of music.
It's one of those movies that you remember later as something 'possibly fun', because the premise is great and you remember people 'adventuring in gorgeous nature' - but when you watch it again, it's just the most 'blah' experience you can have with a movie.
It's not even impactful enough to be BAD. It just ... exists. Things sort of happen. That's about it. There's no excitement, no humor (many attempts, though), no intensity. Nothing to make you watch except the curiosity about this oddity.
As I mentioned before, another movie shares a similar problem, 'Men in Tights'.
Both movies prime the viewer with "Be ready to laugh, because we'll make fun of something famous", and.. then the laughter never comes. You are SO READY to laugh, but you never do. It's so weird how both movies manage to botch a wonderful premise that way.
'Men in Tights' actually does have one point where I laughed - the part where Robin fights Little John with the sticks, and then Little John is afraid of drowning. But they should've let him 'drown' so he could face his fears and realize nothing bad happened, and thus grown stronger.
I SO want to like this movie and Men in Tights, too, as the actors are great and charming, and the premises are so good, and both movies DO tell a coherent story, there's an actual plot you can follow, and so on. But you can't force yourself (or others) to like something that doesn't have anything you can grasp on to to like. Even a bad B-movie can have something you love about it, but these two movies are just so 'empty' in this way.
Both movies have SO much potential and promise, and neither movie DELIVERS.
I think this is the main core problem with both these movies - deliverance is the biggest thing that's missing. Even a fan movie can deliver, but these movies do not.
It's such a mystery, since the people involved HAVE been in wonderful productions that DO deliver. I can't figure it out.