Sketchy transitions: 8 comedy troupes that made the leap to movies
Run Ronnie Run, you're brutalizin' me.
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For sketch-comedy troupes, the road to movie stardom is a slippery slope—a tricky balancing act between maintaining the idiosyncratic characters and pointless throwaways that define your humor, while still kowtowing to the narrative conventions of a feature film. In the new Mystery Team—premièring at the Alamo Drafthouse tonight with a live appearance from the troupe (and because it's sold out, it's being followed by a just-added second show on Friday)—New York’s Derrick Comedy joins the pantheon of improv breakouts who managed to find that balance, creating a solid story with fresh, likable characters but that nevertheless maintains the manic energy of its cultishly adored YouTube vignettes. Here are some fellow troupes that made their own tentative forays onto the big screen with similarly successful, sometimes disappointing, and occasionally unwatchable results. (And for a complete list of sketch-to-film failures, just visit Lorne Michaels’ IMDB page.)
Run Ronnie Run (2002)
A disowned disappointment to its creators, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross' first and only Mr. Show film is far too clunky and uneven to measure up to their legendary sketch series. Much of that can be blamed on disagreements with the director, Troy Miller, who reportedly took the film from Bob and David, refused their input on the final product, and slashed many of its best scenes. Certainly anyone who’s seen the fabled two-hour “rough cut” would agree that the chopped-and-totally-screwed 86-minute version that was quietly released straight to video bears little resemblance to what could have been. Nevertheless, while the film focuses so heavily on Ronnie Dobbs’ redneck ways that it borders on Joe Dirt territory, a handful of hysterical non-sequiturs survived the cutting—like Odenkirk’s infomercial gone really, really awry.
Strange Brew (1983)
Sometimes government intervention is awesome: The best-known sketch to come out of influential comedy breeding ground SCTV was created to fulfill a Canadian requirement that all film and television have a certain amount of "recognizable Canadian content." Beer-slurping, "eh?"-spouting Bob and Doug McKenzie were as grotesquely Canadian as it gets without stuffing Wayne Gretsky into a maple-leaf costume—and while it may not be the tribute it was angling for, The McKenzie Brothers gave Canada genuine comedy cachet and helped transform the cast of SCTV into American stars. Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis brought their befuddled brothers to the big screen in 1983, transforming their The Great White North talk show into a Hamlet-inspired meta-film costarring Max Von Sydow. Not bad for a couple of hosers.
Monty Python And The Holy Grail (1975)
While Monty Python’s Flying Circus vacillates wildly from some of the most hilariously inventive sketches ever committed to film, to dated, pointless, excruciatingly dull stuff that only hardcore fans would defend, the group’s first film—along with its follow-up, Life Of Brian—is easily one of the greatest comedies of all time. Combining sly social commentary, Terry Gilliam’s surreal animation, cartoonish violence, and a harder-than-it-looks blend of high- and low-brow humor, Holy Grail more than earns its cult-like fanbase. (But chances are your wife doesn’t think it’s all that funny.)
Miss March (2009)
Leave it to two of New York’s The Whitest Kids U Know to create one of the most painfully whitebread comedies of all time. With a plot seemingly stolen from a J. Geils Band song and combined with every road-trip movie ever written, Miss March leaves no frat-boy cliché behind in its singular quest for slapstick and boob shots. Whitest Kids share many parallels with Derrick Comedy—both formed as student comedy troupes in New York City; both gained fame thanks to viral videos that spread on college campuses faster than a case of chlamydia—but thankfully it’s there that the similarities end.
The Blues Brothers (1980)
More than a decade before Wayne's World set off an avalanche of crappy Saturday Night Live movies, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi’s soul-powered Blues Brothers were the first to make the transition from Studio 8H to the silver screen. Along with the guiding hand of John Landis, most of the film’s success can be attributed to how fleshed-out the concept was: The duo’s “Jake and Elwood Blues” had already nailed down their musical act on the show and in concert, and The Brothers’ hard-luck story was detailed in album liner notes well before the screenplay was written. As a result, The Blues Brothers is everything a madcap musical should be, its non-stop chase scenes and random James Brown cameos anchored by two fully realized, loveable characters—as opposed to a single joke, like, "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if aliens tried passing themselves off as people, but they had cone-shaped heads?"
Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
Arguably more famous than the MTV show that launched it, The State’s loving lampoon of summer-camp movies like Meatballs is rich with the group’s usual, winking parodies of comedic conventions, improvised throwaways, and eminently quotable dialogue. It’s easily one of the funniest films of the decade—and certainly the last great film to come out of The State/Stella group, whose combined output includes the spotty-but-decent Reno 911!: Miami and The Ten, along with a whole host of forgettable cash-in crap like The Pacifier and Balls Of Fury. But even if they never measure up to the exceedingly high bar they set for themselves, at least they’ve got this one on the shelf, right next to our bottle of dick cream. Uh, we mean stick… team. Stickball! Go away, leave us alone!
Super Troopers (2001)
Another New York-based comedy troupe, Broken Lizard made its name with a handful of shorts before attempting its first feature, the extremely low-budget college comedy Puddle Cruiser. Despite good reception at Sundance, however, the troupe passed on all offers to distribute it; when its first real introduction to the world, Super Troopers, hit theaters in 2002, no one knew who the hell Broken Lizard was outside of its mostly collegiate fanbase. Nevertheless, the film became a word-of-mouth cult hit, thanks to its mining of the always fertile comedic ground of “police behaving badly” and sketch-like shenanigans such as the “Meow Game”—and a healthy dose of pot jokes didn’t hurt. Super Troopers was so successful that that it has garnered the ultimate rarity for sketch films: a sequel.
Kids In The Hall: Brain Candy (1996)
Having just suffered the death of its beloved sketch show, fans of The Kids In The Hall really, really wanted to like the Canadian troupe’s first film, and maybe hoped it signaled a Monty Python-like evolution for the group. Still, even the diehards are forced to admit that—despite sporadic moments of genius—Brain Candy is muddled and only intermittently funny. Some of that messiness can be blamed on ambition: The story incorporates dozens of characters and plotlines as the film meanders through the lives of those affected by the miracle anti-depressant GLeeeMONEX. Unfortunately the drug comes with devastating side effects, including but not limited to comas, failed gags, and wishing this movie had been a lot better—and that the Kids might try again before they get too old.
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