Overall Rating
  Awesome: 70.59%
Worth A Look: 17.65%
Average: 11.76%
Pretty Bad: 0%
Total Crap: 0%
1 review, 28 user ratings
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| Kentucky Fried Movie, The |
by Chris Parry
"Tom Green wishes he was even a tenth as funny as this."
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At some point in the 80's, the clamps went on. The American movie system began to bow to special interests and censor itself away from nudity, confrontation and anything else that might ever offend anyone. Films that would have been seen as 'for adults' in the pre-ratings-happy 70's were suddenly not acceptable for release in the 80's, as studio executives clammered for the baby market and shied away from anything that might get mommy writing letters to advertizers. Then came the 90's, where the studios would have claimed that they'd reversed the trend, with 'outlandish' comedians like Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence and anyone who ever lugged a cable on Saturday Night Live, yet those of us who remembered what real guerilla comedy was all about, the folks who recall the but-gusting guffaws that the Zuckers gave us back when there were rules but nobody cared, see crap like The Waterboy and Deuce Bigelow as somewhere along the level of pond scum on the comedic evolutionary scale. And then, with 2000, came the evolution of a new, lower life form... Tom Green. We're going backward folks, and if you want to see the standard that we were at back when comedy was pure and offence was freely given to those looking to take it, then The Kentucky Fried Movie is for you.Released back in 1977 to some level of box office, if not critical, success, this marked the emergence of Jim Abrams and David and Jerry Zucker as comedy writing masters, and gave them the launchpad to bring us the Airplane! films, and most of the Leslie Nielsen Naked Gun films, to mention a few. Sadly, those names are now constrained by the same latter-day rules as everybody else and have moved from outlandish comedy to yawn-inducing farce like Rat Race, so all we really have is the oldies to keep the spirit of Lenny Bruce and John Belushi alive.
Essentially a series of comedy pieces satirizing TV, The Kentucky Fried Movie throws you curveball after slider - nothing comes at you predictably - and leaves you time and again thinking "how come that was okay then but isn't now?"
The acting - sucks. The direction - sucks. The production design - sucks. The screenplay - rocks all hell.
With the exception of the unfortunately long martial arts movie spoof in the middle, The Kentucky Fried Movie just keeps the laughs coming fast throughout. Sure, it looks like 1977, but somehow that makes it all the more fun. It's a step back in time and a realization that as far as we've gone, in some ways we've gone backwards.Bottom line, this flick is on TV late at night a lot, and even if you can't wait for the late night showings, it'll cost you about a buck to rent it for a week at your local non-Blockbuster video store. Risk a buck, you'll get a whole lot of laughs for the money.
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1452&reviewer=1
originally posted: 10/15/01 06:44:50
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USA
02-Jul-1977 (R)
UK
N/A
Australia
02-Feb-1978 (R)
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