Wayne's World - Review

If you have been reading my reviews for a while, then you would know that I describe some movies as "Movies to watch at the cabin." Wayne's World fits that description perfectly. This is one of those movies that you watch with your buddies when you are up at the cabin on an old VHS player with some beers and some good old-fashioned movie snacks like Twizzlers, popcorn or nachos.

On one of my more recent trips up to our friends' cabin, we watched Wayne's World with a big group of people. Half of them women, half of them men. For all the best jokes in the movie, none of the women laughed at all and all the men were laughing hysterically. So naturally, I came to a solid, bulletproof conclusion. That is that women know nothing about comedy. Okay, I am kidding of course, but what it actually tells me is that this film isn't for everyone. This movie is a very smart comedy, in a dumb comedy shell.

The premise is that we have two guys in their mid 30's who still live at home but run a public access cable TV talk show called "Wayne's World" where they just act like idiots. Talking about female celebrities with a "strokability scale" and bringing on guest stars with stupid inventions like the "suck-cut" which I can only describe as a mix between a vacuum cleaner and a hair trimmer. It's totally ridiculous and it's "excellent".

Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) and Garth Algar (Dana Carvey) are the reason why this movie works. They are so charismatic and dumb and lovable that they could really talk about anything on screen and you would listen. Only Dana Carvey can make me laugh at him re-create the shower murder scene from 'Psycho' with donuts at an old fashion diner. The comedy is so random and dumb, it's perfect. This is by far one of the most quotable movies I have ever seen. It's right up there with Mean Girls.

Wayne Campbell sometimes talks right to the camera and even Garth gets in on the action too. These scenes are always absolutely hilarious. Whether it be Wayne simply explaining things to the camera to catch the audience up to speed or Garth to simply express his feelings with the audience, it's just another way that the film tells us that it knows the only purpose it has is to have fun and make you laugh.

The plot of the movie is very thin. You are not going to get some deep, intellectual thought-provoking story that makes you question life and humanity. No, you are getting a very simple story about how an advertising executive comes across Wayne's World on TV and decides to exploit it in order to advertise a local chain of video arcades. On top of that, he's interested in Wayne's girlfriend Cassandra, the lead singer of a heavy metal band. Simple stuff that allows for great comedy. Throw in a crazy ex-girlfriend of Wayne's, throw in a hot girl working at a diner that Garth is in love with, on top of that, throw in the fact that the owner of the diner might be a murderer who wants to tell the audience about his killings and throw in references to Terminator and Mission: Impossible and you have one 'excellent' fun comedy that is a love letter to the 1990s.

If you love rock n' roll, if you love the 90's, if you love Saturday Night Live style of comedy, if you love random jokes that really come out of nowhere and if you love to laugh, Wayne's Wold is for you.