July 26, 1996
You know I love THE CABLE GUY, and there’s another favorite coming up, but to me there’s no doubt that KINGPIN is the comedy of 1996. In fact, I think it’s somewhere in my personal top ten comedies of all time, somewhere beneath PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, THE BLUES BROTHERS, THE BIG LEBOWSKI and TALLADEGA NIGHTS.
It’s the second film from Peter & Bobby Farrelly (now a team directing a script by Golden Girls writers Barry Fanaro & Mort Nathan), and definitely my favorite of theirs. I think of them as a little cheesy now, but the filmmaking in this one is strong, and that’s part of why it works. It’s stuffed with broad, rapid fire jokes, but it looks and feels like A Real Movie. It’s way funnier and sillier than the average comedy, but at the end when it acts like I care about the characters mending their relationships and getting what they want, it’s not being presumptuous. I really do! It’s a very precise tone that I rarely see pulled off this successfully.
I gotta give some credit to cinematographer Mark Irwin (SCANNERS, NIGHT SCHOOL, THE PROTECTOR, THE BLOB) and also to costume designer Mary Zophres (PCU), who did FARGO the same year and later returned to bowling wear for THE BIG LEBOWSKI. She creates such a world out of polyester and dagger collars, riding the exact line between sort of cool ‘70s swagger and completely out of touch loser. This is a movie where you can have a combover that almost counts as a separate character, yet feel confident putting Elvis Presley or Evel Knievel style showmanship in your outfit.
