The Wrong Guys (1988)

 

THE WRONG GUYS (1988)
By Ralph Santini - *

                Though the entire premise for the 1988 comedy “The Wrong Guys” has been derided by critics when the film came out, half of it has a good amount of potential – regardless of the film itself being a dispiriting comedy. The film’s villain is an escaped convict who wants to hide out in Mount. Whitehead where his uncle used to live, and he eventually has 7 grown-up campers mistaken for being part of the FBI.

                This likeable idea is filled with dark comic possibilities, but this film concludes it in the tradition an awful sitcom. Interesting scenes are followed by slapstick, fun-time moments becoming farce, and the movie doesn't have one bit of good-natured, witty humor. Instead, it clangs every single moment that it follows. “The Wrong Guys” rarely even seems to find out, for example, that the real subject of the film is not dark comedy but silly slapstick – the slapstick of 7 grown-ups trying to relieve their reunion after 25 to 27 years by acting like boy-scouts.

                The film opens with the grown-ups as children remembering demoting a couple of bullying members from the group and later getting their revenge on the remaining ones and causing them a lot of trouble. The others are (in their self-playing roles) Louie Anderson, the leader, Richard Lewis, who is very neurotic, Richard Belzer who is a horny womanizer, Franklyn Ajaye, the smooth talker, and surfer dude Tim Thomerson. They eventually go their own separate ways but Louie wants to reunite with them badly after 25 years and go with them the Mountains in some fictional state with no name (It’s been reported that the film was shot in Wyoming). Even the demoted bullies want to spend their vacation after rediscovering their childhood friends for those same 25 years. Meanwhile at a Pancake house, the escaped-con known as The Duke Of Earle (John Goodman), who hates pancakes himself gives its manager a piece of his mind after betraying him to prison. And that’s where the conflict begins, no more, no less. After all that in “The Wrong Guys”, I kept begging it to work because I felt that John Goodman’s character might save it. Frankly, I’ve been finding the film more and more disappointing on its stupidity; it doesn’t work honestly with any of its writing, but only uses it as tricks for tired jokes.

                If the movie has presented John Goodman’s role with unrevealed potential, the rest of it is absolutely horrendous. Consider, for example, the scene where Richard Belzer and Tim Thomerson sneaking into an all-girls spa. They seem to mistake two ugly whores (whom they seem secretly married to the childhood bullies) for very hot women, and I got tired of this boring film more and more because I find that this is a lame excuse for avoiding dark comic dialogue that would have been writing for every scene where the Grown-Ups handle John Goodman’s danger.

                I also must question John Goodman in this film hating pancakes. Why must he hate that meal after having interest of reading John Goodman’s name mentioned in the opening credits later revealing that his a dangerous ex-con? And what about his surprisingly overplaying the villain role here? After Goodman’s Duke Of Earle has been completely presented, hating Pancakes with a passion I didn’t know what to expect, except shooting a giant pancake statue with uncontrolled anger and even hitting it harder when escaping with his accomplices (one of them played by Ghostbuster himself Ernie Hudson) with his pick-up truck. That scene is desperately impossible – I know it’s normal for a person to dislike pancakes but why let The Duke Of Earle hate them so much by fulfilling his meanness?

                Well, what's worse is that, in a movie filled with boring scenes, there is no scene at all which reveals his harsh hatred for pancakes. The only good performances in this film are those by Ernie Hudson and Tim Van Patten as the two accomplices who want to calm Goodman down.The rest of the cast, even Goodman himself, seem to have been lost in a kid’s film wannabe; there is never a moment when I felt they were really experiencing the feelings in this movie. Not even the irrational scene where Goodman goes around being disdainful to pancakes.