Henry Gibson

  • The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

    The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (TubiTV Streaming, September 2020) Films like The Kentucky Fried Movie are best appreciated as portents of better things to come. The number and later pedigree of people involved in its production is incredible—sophomore feature film from John Landis, first movie script by the legendary Zucker-Abrams-Zucker trio, appearances by George Lazenby, Henry Gibson and Donald Sutherland… all in semi-related comedy sketches relying on a lot of sudden crudity, silliness and bare breasts. The problem, though, is that if The Kentucky Fried Movie is amusing, it’s not quite as frequently funny—there’s a sense that it’s all juvenile and not quite ready for prime time, even as it does its best to get laughs. What may be funnier now than it was upon release is the deluge of references to a variety of 1970s pop-culture, politics and sports: either watch the film with Wikipedia in hand, or enjoy the even stranger sense of jokes flying over your heads. The Kentucky Fried Movie would have many inheritors—it’s an early prototype of a style of comedy that would become Airplane! and Top Secret! and The Naked Gun, but it’s not quite cooked yet. (It’s still funnier than any of the spoof movies of the 2000s, though.)

  • The ’burbs (1989)

    The ’burbs (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On TV, March 2017) I was wary of revisiting The ’burbs: what if it didn’t measure up to my good memories? Fortunately, I shouldn’t have worried: As a comedy, it’s still as increasingly anarchic as I recalled, and the film has aged relatively well largely due to director Joe Dante’s off-beat genre sensibilities. Baby-faced Tom Hanks stars as a driven suburban man daring himself to spend a week at home doing nothing. But his holiday soon turns to real work as he starts obsessing over his neighbours and, egged on by friends, suspecting them of the worst crimes. Set entirely in a quiet cul-de-sac, The ’burbs still has a few things to say about the hidden depths of suburbia, dangerous obsessions and the unknowability of neighbours. It’s also increasingly funny as actions become steadily more extreme—by the time a house blows up in the middle of the climax, it’s clear that the movie has gone as far as it could go. Corey Feldman (as a fascinated teenager treating the whole thing like a reality-TV show), Bruce Dern (as a crazed survivalist), Carrie Fisher (as a voice of exasperated reason) and Henry Gibson (deliciously evil) are also remarkable in supporting roles. The “burbs may take a while to heat up, but it quickly goes to a boil and remains just as funny today.