The Beverly Hillbillies (1993)

(On TV, March 2020) I was frankly expecting the worst from The Beverly Hillbillies and ended up pleasantly surprised—the TV series that served as inspiration is known as a paragon of low-brow humour, and the very premise of Arkansas hillbillies striking oil and becoming rich enough to move to Beverly Hills seems custom-made for dumb humour. The good news isn’t that the film isn’t stupid, because it is—it’s that there’s some cleverness underlying the intentional stupidity. Of course, keep in mind that the film is directed by Penelope Spheeris, whose other films show a considerable amount of wit. The Beverly Hillbillies is clearly not as smart as in Wayne’s World here, but at least there’s the feeling that someone is paying attention to shore up what could have been worse. There’s constant self-awareness of the silliness of the script and plenty of winks at the audience even as the slapstick is going down. Making the most out of the limitations of the premise they’ve been handed, nearly every actor in the cast brings their A-game to the material. Special mention goes to Dietrich Bader, Erika Eleniak, Cloris Leachman, Lily Tomlin and Lea Thompson in various ways, some of them exceeding expectations (Eleniak), meeting them (Bader), looking cute (Thompson) or just being rocks of dependable humour (Leachman, Tomlin). Not everything works (there’s some crossdressing material that clearly reads as transphobic today) but if your tolerance for broad dumb comedy in which predictability is comforting, then The Beverly Hillbillies is a better film than you think. It works even better if your expectations are down on the floor.