MEET THE DEEDLES

MEET THE DEEDLES is a comedy about two surfer brothers and their ridiculous adventures in Yellowstone Park. Relying on silly humor and unbelievable stunts, this PG movie encourages reckless behavior in teenagers without showing any consequences for their irresponsible behavior.

Departing completely from any sense of reality, MEET THE DEEDLES centers around two surfer brothers who live in Hawaii: Stew (Steve Van Wormer), and Phil (Paul Walker). They frolic in the ocean after having been kidnapped by their friends to celebrate Stew’s eighteenth birthday. However, they are quickly caught by the school patrol and expelled because of their past misbehavior and flouting of the rules.

Terribly distraught by his two sons’ antics, their wealthy father blames himself for their rebellious behavior because he has showered them with unearned material possessions. So he decides to send them to a youth camp in Yellowstone, Wyoming, in hopes of turning them into disciplined and respectable men.

From this point, the movie careens out of control on a wildly unbelievable ride as the brothers go to camp. Acting irresponsibly on their way to Wyoming, they put other travelers’ lives in jeopardy. For example, they use their skateboards as luges, weaving in and out of traffic, causing vehicles to collide or veer off the roadway. They then discover that the youth camp their father sent them to is closed and, through a series of preposterous and unlikely events, arrive at a ranger compound where they are mistaken for two ranger rookies, Mel and Mo. Seeing this as an opportunity to earn their dad’s respect and finding the lieutenant at the compound, Jesse, played by A.J. Langer, to be an attractive woman, they go along with this lie and begin to undergo training. Their primary ranger assignment is to eradicate the prairie dogs becoming a nuisance at Yellowstone.

In the middle of all this, there is a disgruntled ex-head ranger named Frank Slater, played by Dennis Hopper, who is out to get revenge on Yellowstone because he was fired six years ago. He has two goons working for him to carry out his plans to take over the Park. Using the prairie dogs to build the ditches needed for his plans to work, Slater decides that the Deedle brothers need to be taken removed so they can no longer mess up his plans. This sets up the conflict for the rest of the movie.

MEET THE DEEDLES relies more on gimmicks, unbelievable stunts and silly humor to get one’s attention than on good dialogue and plot. The brothers’ actions are exaggerated to the point of being neither believable nor comical. They are undeveloped caricatures of two wild and crazy surfers.

The brothers’ impulsive and thoughtless actions actually encourage reckless behavior. Director Steve Boyum portrays their antics as fun and thrilling, no matter what the danger is to themselves or others. These characters are primarily concerned with having fun at any cost. Their irresponsibility is not punished. In fact, the Deedle brothers get away with everything they do. They even become the heroes at the end of the film.

Values and expectations for children are greatly shaped by movies. It is regrettable, therefore, to have a movie such as this one targeted toward children because it promotes irresponsibility and disrespect for authority and for education. MEET THE DEEDLES is not appropriate for younger children and is not recommended for teenagers.