... but instead it's a campy comedy ... if the camp your parents signed you up for was porno-camp.
Now let's get a little intellectual. Maybe it's because I watched this film in Spanish for free on Vudu last night that my "artsy" brain neurons were firing in overload (I don't speak Spanish too well) but this film made me thing of "The Big Picture" (1989) with Kevin Bacon. This film represented the stuff that Nick Chapman would have been pressured into churning out once he got to "big time" Hollywood in the 1980s. Big time 1980's Hollywood... think about it for a minute... the two headliners of this film were basically the poster-boys of that era. I'm talking about Corey & Corey. In this film, you can see how Corey Feldman went from delivering an amazing and relatable performance as Teddy Duchamp, to phoning it in as Ricky Wade in a weak-sauce attempt to fill Bill Murray's comedic shoes in a franchise that, prior to his attachment, included a third installment where a dead porn star helps Patrick Dempsey score with the bimbos. "Meatballs 4" was technically a 90's film, but it perfectly captures the Hollywood ethos of the 80's, which Feldman and Haim career's were quagmired in. In fact, the rookie-meets-the-twins sub-plot, if one is allowed to use the word "plot" with this film, is literally a rehash of what didn't work so well back in Meatballs 3!
Speaking of the second of the 2 Corey's, we barely see Haim in this film. He appears second in the credits, but has about 3 minutes of total screen time in the entire picture. Knowing what we know now about Corey H's problems with drugs, it seems highly probably that his part in the film was conceived as much more that it amounted to. There is even a joke about it in the end, when somebody asks where Cliff (Corey's character) is and somebody said he had to turn in his badge -- clearly this was an inside joke tacked on at the end. This was the film where Feldman fired Haim over his drug use.
This is a film that could have been a great piece of satire. Given a legitimate treatment by somebody like Barry Sonnenfeld, this film could have flashed in and out of the fourth wall over the rise and fall of heart-throb, T&A films in a way that might have led to more activity in the audience's head above the shoulders, and less in the other one. Instead, the film pans on other Hollywood institutions, remaking a famous fight scene from one of the Rocky Films with two actresses whose boobs can't stop bouncing. Naming the town Amity and tacking a "no sharks" sign on the police station. 11 year old boys watching this film in the pre-Internet year of 1997 to catch a glimpse of mythical BOOBIES were neither interested in, nor capable of placing, those references.
When the dust settles, this film belongs in a syllabus for film studies majors that examines the rise of the low budget "pan everything" film. I am thinking of the never ending stream of Madea films, as well as all the "-*fill in the blank*- Movie" titles (e.g., "Disaster Movie"). As such I give it 6/10 stars, not because it's great cinema, but because it represents an integral part of the deformed and contorted disposable theme-of-the-decade soul of Hollywood. In the 1980s, that soul was pushing T&A films that pandered to a culture of casual sex, drugs and something that claimed to be rock-n-roll but was 90% Phil Collins and Madonna. By the 1990's, Madonna had become an "artist" instead of a pinup girl, and Phil Colin was setting up shop with Disney animation. But the two Corey's continued to plod along with the sex and drugs, the T&A films, and a misguided sense that teen idols never die, they just stagger from party to party a little slower now that they have to shave.
Now let's get a little intellectual. Maybe it's because I watched this film in Spanish for free on Vudu last night that my "artsy" brain neurons were firing in overload (I don't speak Spanish too well) but this film made me thing of "The Big Picture" (1989) with Kevin Bacon. This film represented the stuff that Nick Chapman would have been pressured into churning out once he got to "big time" Hollywood in the 1980s. Big time 1980's Hollywood... think about it for a minute... the two headliners of this film were basically the poster-boys of that era. I'm talking about Corey & Corey. In this film, you can see how Corey Feldman went from delivering an amazing and relatable performance as Teddy Duchamp, to phoning it in as Ricky Wade in a weak-sauce attempt to fill Bill Murray's comedic shoes in a franchise that, prior to his attachment, included a third installment where a dead porn star helps Patrick Dempsey score with the bimbos. "Meatballs 4" was technically a 90's film, but it perfectly captures the Hollywood ethos of the 80's, which Feldman and Haim career's were quagmired in. In fact, the rookie-meets-the-twins sub-plot, if one is allowed to use the word "plot" with this film, is literally a rehash of what didn't work so well back in Meatballs 3!
Speaking of the second of the 2 Corey's, we barely see Haim in this film. He appears second in the credits, but has about 3 minutes of total screen time in the entire picture. Knowing what we know now about Corey H's problems with drugs, it seems highly probably that his part in the film was conceived as much more that it amounted to. There is even a joke about it in the end, when somebody asks where Cliff (Corey's character) is and somebody said he had to turn in his badge -- clearly this was an inside joke tacked on at the end. This was the film where Feldman fired Haim over his drug use.
This is a film that could have been a great piece of satire. Given a legitimate treatment by somebody like Barry Sonnenfeld, this film could have flashed in and out of the fourth wall over the rise and fall of heart-throb, T&A films in a way that might have led to more activity in the audience's head above the shoulders, and less in the other one. Instead, the film pans on other Hollywood institutions, remaking a famous fight scene from one of the Rocky Films with two actresses whose boobs can't stop bouncing. Naming the town Amity and tacking a "no sharks" sign on the police station. 11 year old boys watching this film in the pre-Internet year of 1997 to catch a glimpse of mythical BOOBIES were neither interested in, nor capable of placing, those references.
When the dust settles, this film belongs in a syllabus for film studies majors that examines the rise of the low budget "pan everything" film. I am thinking of the never ending stream of Madea films, as well as all the "-*fill in the blank*- Movie" titles (e.g., "Disaster Movie"). As such I give it 6/10 stars, not because it's great cinema, but because it represents an integral part of the deformed and contorted disposable theme-of-the-decade soul of Hollywood. In the 1980s, that soul was pushing T&A films that pandered to a culture of casual sex, drugs and something that claimed to be rock-n-roll but was 90% Phil Collins and Madonna. By the 1990's, Madonna had become an "artist" instead of a pinup girl, and Phil Colin was setting up shop with Disney animation. But the two Corey's continued to plod along with the sex and drugs, the T&A films, and a misguided sense that teen idols never die, they just stagger from party to party a little slower now that they have to shave.