I bought this movie last weekend and watched it right away. Actually, of that haul, I first picked out Revenge of the Nerds, but I then discovered that the disc was cracked and would play. Ah, gentle reader, I have not been in the habit of checking the condition of the dollar discs I buy–I have honestly only relatively recently gotten to the point where I consistently check to make sure that the folder contains the matching disc, but I might have to start checking the condition of the discs as well. Or not, if I don’t remember.
So this is a 1980s comedy whose plot we’ve seen before. When the daughter of a wealthy man is kidnapped, he contacts the Crumb and Crumb detective agency to investigate. That fellow, played by Jeffrey Jones (the principal in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, if you need a reminder), is not a Crumb, and he puts the bumbling current generation of that well-reputed family of detectives on the case. Crumb bumbles his way through various plots at cross-purposes, including the wealthy man’s oversexed second wife, played by Annie Potts, who hopes to kill him before he can change his will, and the head of the agency itself being behind the kidnapping, hoping to get the ransom money to be able to afford the lifestyle that the oversexed second wife wants.
So it’s a series of often slapstick set pieces populated by Canadian comedians, and, you know what? It’s not a bad bit of film. It has its moments of amusement and isn’t a bad way to pass some time. You remember when these kinds of mid-tier movies, not blockbusters but not complete slop. They probably made more economic sense when you had a whole tail of other revenue possibilities for them besides the theater–video store rental sales, home video sales, licensing to cable or television…. Now you’ve got, what, cinema and streaming? So we lose out on films like this. The pity.
So I’m not the biggest John Candy fan, but I’ll think about picking up Uncle Buck if I can find it for a buck.
