Films That Time Forgot

The Check Is In The Mail (1986)

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Reviewed by Nathan Rabin
February 25th, 2004

Is he an American with a dream gone sour, or just another angry, paranoid manic-depressive possessed by a demon?" a smiling reporter asks his viewing audience about Brian Dennehy, the protagonist of The Check Is In The Mail. In addition to possibly being an angry, paranoid, demon-possessed manic-depressive, Dennehy is an affable husband and father driven half-mad by the relentless pace, superficiality, and absurdity of American life circa 1986. A pharmacist prone to dispensing paternal counsel along with condoms and diaphragms, Dennehy is looking forward to a much-needed family vacation in Hawaii, where he plans to escape both the workaday grind and the swarthy goons intent on collecting his gambling debts. But his family's plans go predictably awry when their flight is delayed. (As a frustrated fellow traveler comments, "This airline is like my ex-husband. When I'm ready to fly, they can't get it up!") Inspired by his experiences protesting the Vietnam War, Dennehy leads the grounded in a rousing chorus of "We Shall Overcome," cannily equating the annoyance of inconvenienced white middle-class travelers with the struggle for racial equality. Dennehy then illustrates why he's smarter than the average bear-like character actor; he appeals to a Jewish airline employee's ego and religious pride, comparing the airline drone to Moses, and Dennehy's Hawaiian vacation to the exodus from Egypt. Dennehy's ploy works, but his victory proves short-lived. Before long, he and his family are back in California, where some minor aggravations lead him to drop out of materialistic modern society by destroying his credit cards, buying a goat, eschewing electricity, and nearly getting burglarized by blacks who—in keeping with The Check's tone of painstaking racial sensitivity—are presented as easily frightened criminals. Dennehy's subversion of the dominant paradigm even warrants a television report during what must be an extremely slow news cycle. Eventually, his war with The Man proves untenable for both his long-suffering family and himself. Defeated but refreshed, he rejoins the rat race, content once again to merely be an American with a dream gone sour.