{"id":8174,"date":"2024-11-12T00:04:29","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T05:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8174"},"modified":"2024-11-12T00:04:29","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T05:04:29","slug":"the-jerky-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/12\/the-jerky-boys\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jerky Boys"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Jerky Boys <\/strong>(1995)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Touchstone\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 82 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (pervasive language and vulgarities, some violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: James Melkonian\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: James Melkonian, Rich Wilkes, Johnny Brennan and Kamal Ahmed\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Ira Newborn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ueli Steiger\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 3, 1995 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Johnny Brennan, Kamal Ahmed, Alan Arkin, William Hickey, Brad Sullivan, Alan North, James Lorinz, Suzanne Shepherd, Vincent Pastore, Brian Tarantina, Peter Appel.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $7.5M (US)<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0It\u2019s time to test your 90s pop culture trivia knowledge. What do the following names have in common- Sol Rosenberg, Frank Rizzo, Jack Tors, Frank Kissel and Tarbash, the Egyptian Magician? They\u2019re all characters created by The Jerky Boys, a comedy duo from Queens, NY whose act consisted of making prank telephone calls to unsuspecting victims. They were briefly popular in the mid-90s with a few top-selling albums (I owned the first two myself). It was only a matter of time before they tried out their act on the big screen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Unfortunately, by the time The Jerky Boys<\/strong> movie reached theaters, their success had waned. It played for about a week or two before leaving multiplexes. The few that saw it commented that their act didn\u2019t translate to the big screen. Always one to dissent, I liked it. Yes, it\u2019s mindless and idiotic, but I\u2019ve always found prank calls funny. As a teen, I pulled off a few myself. My favorite was calling KFC and asking, \u201cHow big are your breasts?\u201d (it only worked if a woman answered). Nowadays, thanks to caller ID, you can\u2019t get away with making such calls which makes The Jerky Boys <\/strong>dated. Even Bart Simpson had to stop doing it which I\u2019m sure makes Moe the bartender very glad.<\/p>\n

\u00a0We first meet the Jerky Boys- Johnny B. and Kamal (playing themselves)- as a couple of kids that like to screw around on the phone. Posing as \u201cthe super across the way\u201d, they get the nice kid across the street (Brett Weir for the uninitiated) in trouble with his mother. Johnny\u2019s mother (Shepherd, Goodfellas) smacks them and tells them to knock it off. It doesn\u2019t work because they\u2019re still doing the same thing twenty years later.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A couple of unemployed slackers, they still live at home and have been fired from every job they\u2019ve ever had for their antics. Mrs. B demands they get jobs and an opportunity presents itself when their old pal Brett (Lorinz, Frankenhooker) brags about having connections to the Mafia. Johnny prank calls the Mob, claiming to be connected to a fictional crime boss from Chicago named Frank Rizzo. He doesn\u2019t exactly endear himself to local Mob boss Ernie Lazarro (Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine) by referring to him as \u201cliver lips\u201d, \u201csizzle chest\u201d and \u201cfruity ass\u201d. Long story short, the boys quickly get in over their heads and find themselves running for their lives from pissed-off gangsters and corrupt cops.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Jerky Boys<\/strong> isn\u2019t a great movie, not by any stretch of the imagination. But it is good silly fun in the right frame of mind. And by that, I mean with your brain in the OFF mode. These guys are a couple of idiots who do silly voices. They\u2019re quite good at it too. There are a few hilarious moments mostly involving the boys doing their shtick. One of my favorite bits from the first album is \u201cSol\u2019s Glasses\u201d and they manage to work some of it into the movie. In fact, they manage to work quite a bit of the album material into the movie. The fans at the pre-release screening I attended seemed to love that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I suppose the best way to describe The Jerky Boys<\/strong> is lowbrow. It\u2019s kind of in the same vein as Dumb and Dumber and Billy Madison. Director James Melkonian (The Stoned Age) aims low and hits the mark each time. Johnny and Kamal make a decent on-screen duo; they\u2019re like a 90s version of Cheech & Chong minus the drugs. I guess I\u2019m not surprised this gig turned out to be a one-shot deal for them. They do have a limited appeal.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m really surprised to see high-caliber actors like Arkin (he won an Oscar a decade later) and William Hickey (Prizzi\u2019s Honor) here. How did Melkonian manage to pull that off? There are cameos by Tom Jones, Ozzy Osbourne, Paul Bartel (Eating Raoul) and the hardcore rock band Helmet. Also, look for Jorja Fox (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) who shows up briefly as Arkin\u2019s girlfriend.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sure, The Jerky Boys<\/strong> is tasteless and moronic; some might even say it\u2019s offensive. I just think it\u2019s funny as hell. It works best if you watch with low expectations. This one is a true guilty pleasure, jerky!\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Jerky Boys (1995)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Touchstone\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 82 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (pervasive language and vulgarities, some violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: James Melkonian\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: James Melkonian, Rich Wilkes, Johnny Brennan and Kamal Ahmed\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Ira Newborn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ueli Steiger\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 3, 1995 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Johnny Brennan, Kamal Ahmed, Alan Arkin, William Hickey, Brad Sullivan, Alan North, James […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8372,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/The-Jerky-Boys-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\/8174","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=8174"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8374,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8174\/revisions\/8374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}