"Surfer-Dumb"
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What You Need To Know:
For the sheer energy of Carrot Top’s performance, he deserves an “A” for effort in this lowbrow, gadget, slapstick comedy which at times reminds one of a Marx Brothers film. Carrot Top even looks a little like Harpo Marx. However, the story line is a very old one, many of the gags are hackneyed and the humor often sinks to new lows in sophomoric sex and toilet humor. Occasionally, there is a good laugh, but not often enough. The only overriding theme is that undisciplined nice guys (who use crude language and have sex on the brain) don’t always finish last. Only the viewers who liked DUMB AND DUMBER may like this movie.
Content:
(Pa, Ro, Cap, LL, V, S, N, M) Mild pagan worldview with environmentalist, romantic & capitalist elements; 28 obscenities, 3 profanities & numerous toilet & sexual jokes; slapstick violence, including men hit men in the groin, implied men fighting men, men xerox body parts, & implied men abusing animals; implied fornication; naturalistic nudity in a shower & man dresses as woman; cigarette smoking; alcohol; and, rock music & false Hawaiian god idols.
More Detail:
Popular stand-up comedian Carrot Top (named for his red hair) stars in his first feature film about a bumbling surfer-bum-inventor, Edison, who gets to practice every gadget, slapstick, sex, and toilet joke he can remember in 95 minutes. Edison (Carrot Top), a red- hair, hair-brained inventor supports his surf-bum lifestyle and surf-bum buddies, Ty and Zak, with his ever-diminishing revenue from impractical inventions, e.g. a slurpie straw warmer so the customer doesn’t get frozen-brain. By accident, he repairs Armand Macmillan’s (Jack Warden’s) broken down car and shortly thereafter finds himself bequeathed Macmillan’s controlling stock interest in a gadget company. Hence, Edison is the new Chairman of the Board. He is assisted by the Macmillan’s sexy and efficient secretary, Natalie (Courtney Thorne-Smith).
Of course, this doesn’t go down well with Bradford Macmillan (Larry Miller), Armand’s greedy nephew, who wanted the money and the secretary. So Bradford plots with Miss Kosic (Raquel Welsh), a corporate raider who wants to buy Macmillan from Bradford, to drive the Macmillan stock down. According to Armand’s will, if the stock goes below $20 a share, then Bradford takes over as Chairman of the Board.
However, corporate greed is no match for undisciplined creativity and bumbling dumb luck. Edison wins the stodgy board of directors over by getting them to play Twister, averts a union strike by declaring a Luau Beach Party every Wednesday and expands business by his hottest invention, a completely portable TV dinner that has its own built in microwave and TV set and only costs $2.19 more. Moreover, his business success and worker friendly policies win over Natalie as his new girlfriend.
It seems that Bradford has lost until a man on a newscast files a class action lawsuit for $500,000,000 against Macmillan industries for microwave radiation exposure that has caused him to glow in the dark like a walking night light. Edison is baffled. He is sure that the TV dinners couldn’t have caused that much radiation. However, Bradford manipulates the employees’ stock and works out a corporate takeover by Kosic. Then at the final moment, Edison realizes that Bradford must have stolen Edison’s glow-in-the-dark gel and faked the man’s radiation. After a wild race through rush-hour traffic, Edison exposes Bradford for the liar he is with yet another of his inventions.
It boggles the mind to consider how many times this big-hearted, lovable loser turned corporate giant story has been told (a recent example is Chris Farley’s TOMMY BOY). Apparently, some distributors don’t yet consider it a cliché. The moral of the story is an old one: greed is bad; creativity is good. Though at times the story hints that Edison’s back-to-nature, surfer roots are to be credited with his creative genius, this is hardly a major theme.
In actuality, Carrot Top merely uses this time-worn structure on which to hang his unique gadget and slapstick brand of humor. One has to give him credit for his likable character, his high energy performance and his high number of gags per minute of running time. True, most of the gags are old enough to make Jack Benny blush, but Carrot Top does manage to cram a lot of them in CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD. The frenetic pace of the movie pushes the limits of the medium with unique angles, graphics, special effects, and time jumps. At times this vaguely reminds viewers of the writing/directing style of the early Woody Allen. However, the improbable story, strung together with a bunch of slapstick gags, feels more like a Marx Brothers film. Carrot Top even looks a little like Harpo.
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD is not a movie most adults would choose to see. The relentless sophomoric sex jokes, the gags at which only a 12-year-old would laugh and the hackneyed storyline do not recommend the movie. The movie doesn’t use the worst obscene language, but what it lacks in absolute crudeness, it makes up for with numbers of vulgarities, sexual innuendoes and toilet humor. Occasionally some really funny gags come along (such as using John Tesh’s CD’s for clay pigeons; or “Chia hair” for bald men), but it is probably not worth sitting through all the other stuff to get to them. Of course, the viewers who liked DUMB AND DUMBER may like this movie.
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