{"id":5163,"date":"2024-10-09T04:21:39","date_gmt":"2024-10-09T04:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=5163"},"modified":"2024-10-12T20:56:37","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T20:56:37","slug":"coneheads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/09\/coneheads\/","title":{"rendered":"Coneheads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Coneheads <\/strong>(1993)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (comic nudity, double entendres)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Steve Barron\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Tom Davis, Dan Aykroyd, Bonnie Turner and Terry Turner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Newman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Francis Kenny\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 23, 1993 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Michelle Burke, Michael McKean, David Spade, Chris Farley, Sinbad, Michael Richards, Eddie Griffin, Phil Hartman, Adam Sandler, Mitchell Bobrow, Jason Alexander, Lisa Jane Persky, Dave Thomas, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Drew Carey, Kevin Nealon, Jan Hooks, Parker Posey, Joey Lauren Adams, Julia Sweeney, Ellen DeGeneres, Tim Meadows, Peter Aykroyd, Jonathan Penner, Whip Hubley, Jon Lovitz, Tom Arnold.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $21.3M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Bringing an SNL sketch to the big screen is tricky business. For every success like The Blues Brothers and Wayne\u2019s World, there\u2019s a failure like Superstar and It\u2019s Pat. It\u2019s not easy getting a feature length film out of material typically viewed in six-minute segments on a weekly late night comedy show. I had every reason to believe Coneheads<\/strong> would fail. The odds of it being any good were against it for the reasons given above. Also, it arrived about fifteen years too late to the party. The Coneheads, a family of aliens from the planet Remulak, identified by their cone-shaped craniums, were popular on SNL in the 70s<\/em>! In 1993, it\u2019s highly unlikely audiences would be interested in a movie based on characters not seen on SNL in more than a decade. And they weren\u2019t. It bombed with a disappointing box office take of just over $21 million. HOWEVER, in my own opinion, it\u2019s one of the better SNL-inspired comedies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I saw Coneheads<\/strong> at an advance screening sponsored by one of the local rock stations. These events usually come with promotional items. Everybody received a rubber cone head as they entered. The theater was wall-to-wall Coneheads that night. Children, of which there were several, seemed especially amused. I silently wondered how many of the kids in attendance even knew about the Coneheads. This was before YouTube so unless their parents had old SNL episodes on tape, it\u2019s doubtful they ever saw a single sketch.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin reprise their roles as Beldar and Prymaat Conehead, an alien couple trying to adapt to life on Earth. They get a backstory in Coneheads<\/strong>. While on a mission to conquer our planet, their spacecraft is shot down by the military. The stranded aliens attempt to fit in with the \u201cblunt skulls\u201d by setting up house in a trailer and Beldar getting a job as an appliance repairman. When his boss (comedian Sinbad) learns his star employee is an illegal alien, he arranges for bogus documentation which only alerts INS to his presence. Agent Seedling (McKean, This Is Spinal Tap) makes it a mission to capture the aliens. That is, until he gets promoted and leaves the case for the next agent. That leaves Beldar and a pregnant Prymaat free to settle in suburban New Jersey and raise a family.<\/p>\n

\u00a0After a home movie montage set to Paul Simon\u2019s \u201cKodachrome\u201d, Coneheads<\/strong> picks up several zurls<\/em> (in Remulak, years) later with them trying to raise their teenage daughter Connie (Burke, Dazed and Confused) who only wants to fit in with her peers. Kind of hard to do when your head resembles an eggplant. Nobody seems to pay much notice so she\u2019s got that going for her. One of the running jokes of the sketches was that nobody made a big deal about the Coneheads\u2019 physical appearance. Anyway, things are already tense with her overprotective dad when she starts dating Ronnie (Farley, Tommy Boy), an auto mechanic with only one thing on his mind and it isn\u2019t carburetors. He doesn\u2019t take kindly to some \u201cflarndip\u201d touching his little girl\u2019s cone.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Meanwhile, Seedling resumes his investigation of the Coneheads when another promotion is held up until he closes the case. Shortly thereafter, Beldar gets word that a rescue vessel is finally being sent to take him and his family back to their home planet. Naturally, Connie doesn\u2019t want to leave; she likes it on Earth. What\u2019s a parental unit to do?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Steve Barron (Electric Dreams, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Coneheads<\/strong> is funnier than you might expect. Some have described it as a one-joke movie which I suppose is somewhat accurate, but since the joke is funny it gets a pass. In the sketches, Beldar and Prymaat did little more than stand around with their big bald pointy heads and spoke in a robotic monotone. The way they say things was funny.<\/p>\n

They were extremely literal and precise. They referred to eating as \u201cconsuming mass quantities\u201d and when upset would say \u201cMebs!\u201d which I guess is a Remulak expletive of some kind. Sex for Coneheads involves tossing rings onto each other\u2019s skulls. They do basically the same stuff in the movie which is fine since that\u2019s what the fans want. The good thing is that it\u2019s accompanied by more than a bare bones plot. The climax on their home planet where Beldar fights a monster called a \u201cGarthok\u201d is cool. The special effects are surprisingly good.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Coneheads<\/strong> is as much a gathering of SNL cast members old and new as it is a comedy. They show up in supporting roles and cameos. David Spade plays Seedling\u2019s sycophant assistant. Adam Sandler is the document forger. Jan Hooks plays a driving student hot for her driving instructor- i.e. Beldar. Julia Sweeney (aka Pat) is the school principal. Phil Hartman, Laraine Newman and Garrett Morris are fellow Coneheads. It\u2019s fun playing spot the SNL player.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Aykroyd and Curtin look like they\u2019re having fun returning to the characters that made them a hit on SNL. Burke, taking over the role played by Laraine Newman on the show, is good in her big screen debut. While Coneheads<\/strong> may not be in the same league as Blues Brothers and Wayne\u2019s World, it\u2019s still a hell of a lot better than the unfunny crapfests that followed. These characters have more of a right to the big screen treatment than Mary Katherine Gallagher, Stuart Smalley or Pat which I HATE with a passion. I wish it had done better. Connie going to college would have been interesting. I can see Beldar pulling her out of a wild frat party, can you?\"\"<\/p>\n

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Coneheads (1993)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (comic nudity, double entendres)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Steve Barron\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Tom Davis, Dan Aykroyd, Bonnie Turner and Terry Turner\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Newman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Francis Kenny\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 23, 1993 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Michelle Burke, Michael McKean, David Spade, Chris Farley, Sinbad, Michael Richards, Eddie Griffin, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Coneheads-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5163"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5167,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5163\/revisions\/5167"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}