Raunchy, R-Rated 90s Comedy So Filthy That Its Stars Want You To Forget It Exists

Written by Robert Scocchi | Published 1 hour ago

The sci-fi comedies of the mid-to-late 1990s had a lot of fun with the “unauthorized medical experiments go terribly wrong” plot, and had very strong results. Rated PG-13 for 1996 Professor Al-Jawzi It cleaned house at the box office with $274 million, as did the G-rated film in 1997 Flapper In the amount of 178 million dollars. Both family-friendly remakes proved that there was a real market for this type of humor. So much so that Marlon Wayans wanted in on the action, but with a bit more of an R-rated edge in 1998 form meaningless.

If there was ever a word to describe meaninglessLook no further than the title. All the “unauthorized medical experiment gone wrong” beats are here, but with a lot more flatulence, low-key humor, and sexual innuendo. meaningless The film earned just $13 million at the box office against its reported budget of $15 million, effectively putting it in the red. Worse still, it currently sits on the Wall of Shame on Rotten Tomatoes with an unimaginably critical score of 6 percent, along with a slightly more forgiving 45 percent approval rating on Popcornmeter.

If you’re looking for the kind of Punisher that performed so poorly, it now only exists in ad-supported streaming, perhaps in a last-ditch effort to recoup losses, meaningless It is exactly what you should be looking for. I personally don’t hate the movie, but you have to be in a good mood to throttle this one.

Co-written by Craig Mazin

Co-written by Craig Mazin, best known for… Chernobyl and The last of us, meaningless It is a far cry from what the director later proved himself capable of. Honestly, you could say the same about Marlon Wayans, David Spade, Matthew Lillard, and Rip Torn. The problem with meaningless It’s not the talent involved, it’s the cinematic experience they embarked on here. They’re all funny people in the right context, but somehow they never know how to channel that energy.

meaningless The film revolves around Daryl Witherspoon (Marlon Wayans), a struggling economics student who works several odd jobs to make ends meet while supporting his family back home. To survive in the Dark Zone, Darryl engages in questionable practices such as selling blood, plasma, and other bodily fluids to appropriate places for extra money. When he learns about a controversial drug trial overseen by Dr. Thomas Weedon (Brad Dourif), Daryl jumps at the chance to get the money.

The experiment is simple on paper. Daryl injects a glowing green substance into his buttocks, which increases his senses fifteenfold. Here’s the catch. If he gets the potion wrong, he will completely lose one sense while the remaining four senses go completely out of control. As you would expect, this is exactly what happens meaningless.

David Spade does his usual comic antics

The primary conflict outside of the questionable chemicals coursing through Daryl’s bloodstream comes in the form of David Spade’s Scott Thorpe. Scott comes from a life of privilege and serves as Daryl’s direct competitor in an academic competition overseen by Randall Tyson (Rip Torn). Whoever wins, will quickly move on to a high-paying job on Wall Street, something Darryl desperately needs.

Spade is all typecast like the same slapable jerk he played in movies like Program Coordination Unit, Tommy Boyand black sheepAnd you’ll get more of the same here. As much as I hate Scott Thorpe as a character, I have to give Spade credit where it’s due. He plays this kind of role so convincingly that I actually hated him as a person for years because I didn’t think it was humanly possible to fake that level of smugness.

At first, Daryl uses his keen senses to impress Randall and undermine Scott, appearing to remember stock numbers from memory when in reality he is just reading a newspaper planted across the room that he can enlarge. But things quickly escalate when Darryl develops sudden bouts of blindness, extreme sensitivity to smell and taste, and the ability to hear what’s going on in the women’s room in minute detail while his lover, Janice (Tamara Taylor), talks to her invasive friend behind closed doors.

Meanwhile, Darryl’s roommate, Tim (Matthew Lillard), a punk and hockey player, suspects he is using hard drugs and intervenes whenever possible to keep him from going down the wrong path. If I had to describe Lillard’s vibe here, it’s what Machine Gun Kelly thought sounded cool and then based his entire pop persona on it.

Why did you fail?

meaningless It’s a remarkable fail because all the participants reliably deliver exactly what you’d expect from them. The problem is that in this context, we get a lot of toilet humor and a lot of gross-out gags without fully relying on her characterization. There are plenty of cheap laughs, most of which are based on farts and funny faces. As a concept, Pointless has potential, but it simply doesn’t work as a feature film because those gags can only stretch so far without being properly grounded.

I can see easily meaningless It works as a recurring sketch where Daryl, or someone like him, keeps getting into ridiculous situations thanks to the drug, and the whole thing is over in a few minutes. Sure some standalone gags would work in this format, but that’s not what we got. Instead, the film becomes an exhausting exercise in seeing how far he’s willing to push things.

meaningless It is streaming free on Pluto TV as of this writing.