“I managed to take out the tiger with a can of mace, but the shopowner and his son... that's a different story altogether. I had to beat them to death with their own shoes.”

Hot on the heels of the success of Wayne’s World in 1992, we got Wayne’s World 2 in 1993, which like most sequels, delivered more of the same, but MORE. The results are interesting.

Plot
So Wayne Campbell’s life has improved for the better. He’s dating a hot musician, moved out into an apartment and his cable access show is a success, but he’s still not satisfied with his life. Then in a dream, the ghost of Jim Morrison (along with a weird naked Indian guy) tells him to host a concert. And lo, Waynestock was born. Though all is not well in Aurora, IL, as Wayne’s girlfriend’s producer is trying to become more than that, and Wayne has to deal with the realities of getting his concert off the ground. So, you know, this movie actually has a plot.

Characters
Wayne Campbell: Mike Myers again with more character development ensuing as he tries to, in a way, grow up and do something with his life that has some kind of meaning.

Garth Algar: Dana Carvey again, and this time, Garth gets an honest to God subplot that focuses on his romantic misadventures.

Cassandra Wong: Tia Carrere again as Wayne’s girlfriend. Her character doesn’t change much from the first movie’s formula. They’re together, some guy gets in between, misunderstanding leads to separation, happy reunion.

Bobby Cahn: Christopher Walken hamming things up as Cassandra’s lecherous producer. On the one hand, he’s got less to do and is less of a threat than Rob Lowe’s character in the first movie. On the other hand, its Christopher Walken as the Villain.

Milton: Chris Farley (who was in the first movie for like one scene) is a friend of the guys and joins their crew for Waynestock.

Del Preston: Ralph Brown plays an addled, burned out roadie that Wayne & Garth visit in England to recruit for Waynestock. The guy’s totally insane, but a legendary roadie, and he had the same Jim Morrision dream, so he signs on. The badass of the film for his mad-eyed delivery of anecdotes.

Visuals/Effects
Stephen Surjik, who’s done a lot of TV work, goes for a very similar look as the first movie. Lots of sight gags, a hell of a lot of cameos and the pacing moves along at a nice clip.

Writing
Mike Myers, Bonnie Turner and Terry Turner do a better job with the story this time around as stuff actually happens and characters actually develop. There’s some good jokes, but some gags seem to go on longer than they should, like the dubbed kung-fu fight and the whole “The Graduate” segment. Still, it has a lot of the elements that made the first one work.

Sound
Carter Burwell’s original score is completely overshadowed by a very solid rock soundtrack. Edgar Winter, Golden Earring, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, the Village People and an appearance by Aerosmith are a few of the songs involved.

Conclusion
Wayne’s World 2 is a fine enough sequel to the first movie. The story is a little bit more involved, but its not quite as funny as the original. However, major points for Christopher Walken and an actual plot.

“She's a fox. In French she would be called "la renarde" and she would be hunted with only her cunning to protect her.”

There are very few Saturday Night Live sketches that have managed to successfully translate to the big screen and be well received. I mean sure, you’ve got The Blues Brothers, but then you’ve also got It’s Pat, The Ladies’ Man, and Blues Brothers 2000. So a critically and financially successful SNL movie is a rare bird indeed, and that’s how we get to 1992’s Wayne’s World.

Plot
So its based on an SNL skit where two slackers in Aurora, Illinois have a usually music-centered cable access show filmed in a basement. Now, for the movie part, we get a sleazy executive who takes notice of the show and its underground following, buys it, tries to commercialize it and turn the, uh, heroes I guess, into sellouts and steal Wayne’s girlfriend. No really, that’s pretty much it for the plot.

Characters
Wayne Campbell: Mike Myers does a great job in the movie role that made him. And why not, I say? I mean sure, he’s a caricature of early 90s teen slackers (and he was very obviously not a teen in this movie), but he’s a genre savvy and fun character who’s aware of his current limitations and ambitions to rise above them. Wayne’s not a revelatory character by any means, but he’s got more layers than a simple caricature.

Garth Algar: Dana Carvey is Wayne’s sidekick, a big-haired, really shy geek with the usual quirks. Kind of a standard sidekick character, but he does the job well for Wayne and makes a good comedic foil. Then he gets an awesome (and extremely cheesy) badass moment near the beginning where he takes on a bully in a bar.

Benjamin Kane: Rob Lowe is our Villain, a scheming, oily and standard issue evil corporate guy full of smarmy, insincere charm. That’s pretty much all there is to him. As Garth expertly puts it, “if he were an ice cream flavor, he’d be pralines and dick.”

Cassandra: Tia Carrere is Wayne’s love interest, a hot bassist and singer in a local rock band, she and Wayne hit it off and the Benjamin gets in the way as a real threat since he has the means to help promote her career.

Russel Finley: Kurt Fuller is Benjamin’s lackey who gets sent over to help produce Wayne’s World (the show within the movie, not the-oh never mind). Naturally, he’s the nice henchman and eventually sides with the heroes.

Noah Vanderhoff: Brian Doyle-Murray is the owner of a chain of arcades (yeah, remember those?) in the Chicago area whom Benjamin approaches with the show as a means of advertising. He really doesn’t give a damn about the show either way and isn’t much of a presence anyway. Has a wife played by Colleen Camp.

Stacy: Lara Flynn Boyle plays Wayne’s crazy ex-girlfriend who hasn’t accepted the fact that he broke up with her.

Visuals/Effects
Penelope Spheeris keeps the movie going forward with many a nod and wink to the audience. Visually, its all pretty normal stuff, but the film’s got a quirky energy as it moves from gag to gag. Using the actual Aurora, IL as a location helped a lot too.

Writing
Mike Myers, Bonnie Turner & Terry Turner turn in a script that, while fairly fluffy on the surface, is loaded with lots of quotable moments, pop culture moments and absurdist touches that blur the line between the story, the fourth wall and other movies, like a part where out of nowhere, Wayne gets pulled over by a cop who’s played by Robert Patrick as the T-1000. It comes out of nowhere and is never mentioned again, but the movie is full of those kinds of gags.

Sound
Original score by J. Peter Robinson, which is completely and totally overshadowed by the rock soundtrack. You’ve got songs from The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix an appearance by Alice Cooper and a lot more. Though the crowning musical moment has to be the drive in the Mirthmobile (a Gremlin) where the guys sing along to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” If anything in the movie can be considered iconic, its that scene.

Conclusion
Not much to say about Wayne’s World. It’s a fun, quotable movie that doesn’t pretend to be more than simple popcorn fare, though it will check to see if you’re paying attention from time to time. With the passage of time, its also become something of a pretty effective time capsule of the early 90s. Definitely recommended.

“I'm not kidding, that boy's head is like Sputnik; spherical but quite pointy at parts!”

Wow, the Big Twenty. That’s pretty awesome. To celebrate, how about a movie I’ve never seen before: the 1993 Mike Myers comedy So I Married an Axe Murderer. I don’t have much of a preface for it except that it comes from a time when the world had Wayne’s World Mike Myers, and not The Love Guru Mike Myers.



Plot
A young slacker living on the West Coast (bear with me, it’s the 90s so you might have to stretch the imagination) is terrible at relationship commitment, resulting in normally being single. Things change when he meets an attractive young woman that he clicks with, but then circumstances lead him to suspect that she might be a serial killer. Hilarity ensues for 93 minutes.

Characters
Charlie Mackenzie: Charlie is (apparently) a poet in San Francisco who frequents an coffee house with an open mic night kind of deal. Charlie doesn’t do commitment well, and his friends and family keep ragging on him for that. His arc kicks in when he meets Harriet and starts dating her and realizes he doesn’t want to let this one go. Complications set in when little coincidental evidence starts piling up that his new girlfriend might be a serial killer. Myers is funny and likable in the film, throwing out amusing dialog. He gets better when it comes to the scenes where he’s terrified of his girlfriend but doesn’t want her to suspect that he suspects. He also drives a VW Kharman Ghia convertible, which is a pretty sweet ride.

Harriet Michaels: Nancy Travis is the love interest. Charlie first meets her when he stops into the butcher shop she works in for some haggis for his dad. When he eventually returns, they hit it off and start going out. But there’s… something she’s keeping from her new boyfriend.

Tony: Charlie’s best friend and an undercover cop/detective. Gradually grows in importance during the film as things take a turn for the criminal. Gets a great moment where he’s complaining to his captain that being a cop isn’t what he expected: too much paperwork, not enough gunfights, commandeering civilian cars and being yelled at by the chief to reign it in or he’ll have his badge. The captain is a friendly, sympathetic fellow played by Alan Arkin, who calls back to that initial scene with a fantastic payoff scene.

Rose: Harriet’s sister. Charlie meets her quite awkwardly after spending the night at Harriet’s loft. She’s a bit creepy in her friendliness to Charlie.

May Mackenzie: Charlie’s mom, a horny old dame with the hots for Tony. Her reading of the Weekly World News is what first plants the seeds of doubt in Charlie’s head.

Stuart Mackenzie: Mike Myers again, this time as Charlie’s cantankerous, conspiracy theorizing, extraordinarily Scottish father. Stuart is the unquestionable badass of the film for constantly swearing, drinking, shouting and verbally abusing his younger son “Heed” for his very large cranium. The Scottish accent that Myers uses in this film is pretty much the same as the one for Shrek and Fat Bastard, but here its, well, it predates them, so its more original and charming.

There are also a large number of cameos from various actors like Steven Wright, Phil Hartman & Charles Grodin (the dad from Beethoven) among others.

Visuals (Direction/Effects)
Directed by Thomas Schlamme, who’s done a lot of television work, the movie makes numerous subtle and not-so-subtle references to cop and murder movies. There are some nice scenes, but ultimately, the visuals are subservient to the story and the comedy, playing up the tense scenes intentionally for laughs.

Writing
The script by Robbie Fox does a great job of showcasing Myers’ comedic chops. Granted, some of the scenes with Myers hamming it up with some deliberately bad jokes grated on me a little bit, but nothing game breaking. Also, the side characters, like Tony, get some great funny spotlighting, and the whole movie moves along at a nice clip.

Sound
I hope you like the Boo Radleys. Seriously. Get ready to hear “There She Goes” a dozen times. Aside from that, the movie also has a great soundtrack filled with other solid early nineties hits that made me wistfully nostalgic for the era of stonewashed jeans (and jeans jackets).

Conclusion
This is one of those movies that I wish I had seen earlier. Its nothing Oscar worthy, but its effectively funny, kind of heartwarming and based around a rather novel idea for a romantic comedy. Absolutely recommended.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2482307865/
Real trailer can be found at IMDB, what follows below is just a clip since I can't find the trailer on Youtube.