Summer of 1993: CONEHEADS
It’s better than you remember – but not by much.
I don’t know if I was the only 14-year-old who begged his parents to take him to see Coneheads on opening night, but I know I was probably the only one in our neck of Michigan. I know this because my parents, siblings and I were the only people in the theater for a 7 p.m. showing.
I don’t know why I was so eager to see Coneheads. I was too young to be a regular SNL viewer, although I was aware of the show’s reputation. I don’t know if I’d seen Wayne’s World at that point (it was off-limits for a bit in our house), but I knew it was popular. I liked Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters and other movies. Maybe in a summer where my movie love was just forming, I wanted to see everything I could, and if that meant a PG comedy based on a TV sketch that was popular before I was born, so be it.
What I do remember is that watching Coneheads that Friday evening was akin to a trip to space. Not because it was particularly immersive or enrapturing, but rather because all the oxygen seemed to be sucked from the theater. I don’t think we laughed once. It was the first time I remember a movie completely bouncing off me. And I wasn’t alone; Coneheads, which cost $30 million to make, opened up at sixth place and ended up grossing only $21 million in its run. The only reason the film, which has a 35% on Rotten Tomatoes, isn’t remembered among the worst movies ever is because of the flood of even worse SNL movies that followed.
Thirty years on, the film’s had a slight reassessment, with some considering it an early skewering of the immigration policies that would come to dominate this decade’s politics. And there’s no mistaking that it provided several comedy stars with their first breaks. But I hadn’t revisited it since that unpleasant night in the theaters. Would I change my mind, or would I need to consume mass quantities of alcoholic-based hydration to endure?
It’s a bit more complicated than that. But not really.
What hath ‘Wayne’s World’ wrought?
Coneheads is actually the first of two films released a week apart that sought to capitalize on the smashing success of 1992’s Wayne’s World (we’ll talk about So I Married an Axe Murderer next week). Made for just $20 million, the film was a sensation, grossing $180 million and becoming one of the top 10 films of the year. A sequel, the underrated Wayne’s World 2, was rushed into production and released in 1993, and while it wasn’t nearly as big a hit as its predecessor, it still grossed a healthy $70 million.
Clearly it was a sign to producer Lorne Michaels that there was gold to be mined in translating Saturday Night Live sketches to the big screen, something that before Wayne’s World had only been attempted with The Blues Brothers in 1980 – itself a hit – and the tangentially related Bob Roberts.
On the surface, it might make little sense for Michaels to follow the hip Wayne’s World with a film based on a sketch popular 20 years earlier, fronted by comedians long past their primes. But Aykroyd and Jane Curtin weren’t has-been comedians; they were crucial parts of that legendary first SNL cast. And while The Coneheads aren’t really thought of much today, they were among the most iconic characters during the show’s early run. They had an immediately recognizable appearance and catchphrases (“we come from France,” “consume mass quantities”). During the first five seasons of Saturday Night Live, they appeared in 11 sketches.
It’s not easy to stretch a three-minute sketch into a feature film, something Michaels would learn the hard way throughout the 90s and 00s. It only works when there appears to be a way to expand the world. The Blues Brothers takes a two-minute performance and builds a full musical and car crash spectacle around it. Wayne’s World grows from the characters’ basement set into their town and also tosses in a good dose of meta humor. MacGruber reimagines its character as a spoof of over-the-top ‘80s action heroes. It’s easy to see why Coneheads might have been able to follow suit, expanding its premise to explore the characters’ strange planet and weave a sci-fi comedy alongside political humor about immigration and assimilation.
And it gets close to kind of being that. It’s just that I don’t like the Coneheads.
Aliens among us
Coneheads follows Beldar (Aykroyd) and Prymaat (Curtin), conical-headed aliens from the planet Remulak, who crash on Earth during a reconnaissance mission. The two try to make a life for themselves on the planet, moving from a small trailer into the suburbs, where they raise their teenage daughter, Connie (Michelle Burke). They try to keep one step ahead of a ruthless immigration official (Michael McKean) and his toadying assistant (David Spade), and Beldar isn’t too happy when a young man (Chris Farley) takes a shine to Connie.
There’s a very slight political angle that comes and goes that is a bit clever. McKean’s official is obsessed with prohibiting immigrants from crossing U.S. borders and, at one point, suggests devices that can make them explode if they try to enter the country illegally. There’s a hint of savageness to it that might have seemed over the top then, but today I fear some conservatives might consider aspirational. And while there’s some satire about Beldar and Prymaat assimilating to U.S. life and pursuing the American dream, the film never really engages it. And its troubling how much of that assimilation storyline traffics in stereotypes, whether it’s Beldar working for an electronics store owner (Sinbad, because 90s) who brandishes a gun or driving a cab and wearing a turban – which is a funny sight gag because of his cone, I get it, but it’s also an easy and lazy stereotype of Middle Eastern characters. The film can’t quite decide whether people are disturbed by the weird behavior of the Coneheads or if they’re completely unfazed (it’s funnier when it’s the latter), and decides in its back half just to become an overlong sitcom instead of aiming for anything higher anyway.
It might be easier to handle if The Coneheads weren’t so unpleasant. They speak in a nasally monotone, using ten-dollar words at 60 words per minute. They have hideous sharp teeth, which they reveal by opening their grotesque jaws. They eat toilet paper, cans and other household items and their mouths can also serve as vacuums. In the sketches, it didn’t bother that their personalities boiled down to high-speed, multisyllabic speaking and disgusting social etiquette. At 90 minutes, it’s grating and off-putting, and the film hits the same jokes over and over; they’re not funny at the start, and the returns diminish as the film continues. That’s not to say that Aykroyd and Curtin give bad performances. They might, in fact, be too committed, and go so far in on the characters’ bizarreness that they forget to make them appealing. Also, the movie is strangely horny, with several jokes about the Coneheads’ sexual habits, which just reminded me how different PG movies were in the 1990s.
The film hits rock bottom in its final 20 minutes, when the characters return to Remulak for a rushed ending. While leaving the suburban setting is initially a refreshing change of pace, the planet is ugly and filmed on cheap sets, and there’s nothing creative about the alien world (everything just revolves around their Easter Island-like domes). The film trudges through a climax with a battle against an (admittedly fun-looking, stop-motion) monster, and then an obligatory last-minute change of heart where Beldar decides to keep the family on their new planet.
If the movie was as totally inert as I’d remembered 30 years ago, it might be less frustrating. But the seeds of a good idea are here. If the script was just a bit sharper or the characters a little easier to like, it might have been something. Instead, it’s just a whiff.
But one difference between now and 1993? I laughed. Not a lot, mind you. But there were random chuckles.
Small pleasures
Perhaps to offset the fact that its main cast is fronted by two actors most popular two decades earlier, Lorne recruited nearly every SNL cast member – past and present – that he could. And while some of those characters are wasted – hope crept in when Phil Hartman showed up, but he’s wasted here – there are bit roles that made it a bit more bearable.
Most notable are Chris Farley and David Spade, who would, of course, go on to frontline one of the better SNL-inspired films two years later with Tommy Boy. I don’t believe the two share a scene here, but they are both standouts. Farley’s particularly funny as Connie’s boyfriend, especially when he can go to extremes as a jerk or completely earnest, both of which Farley was adept at. Spade’s even funnier as the snarky toady eager to pass off work but even more willing to take the credit; the moment at the end where he realizes he’s stuck on Remulak and just pivots into his natural survival mode got a good laugh from me. They’re small performances, but even then, Spade and Farley were dialed in to their comedic personas.
The film is a constant parade of SNL stars just starting to come into their own, and while they’re not always funny, it’s amusing to see them in these nascent stages of their careers. Adam Sandler shows up as a forger, and his comedic confidence is already apparent. John Lovitz does the most with his one amusing scene as a dentist. Drew Carey pops up in his first big-screen roll as a tax passenger. At a time when Seinfeld was just beginning to gain steam, both Michael Richards and Jason Alexander have small roles (Richards also shows up briefly in So I Married an Axe Murderer). And both Parker Posey and Joey Lauren Adams appear as Connie’s friends; the two would, of course, be seen alongside Burke two months later in the much, much better Dazed and Confused.
And the film occasionally stumbles on a funny joke. Curtin screeching at eggplants in the grocery store is funny, as is Beldar’s crackless ass. The wordy dialogue is sometimes amusing. And after seeing him play the dignified Chuck McGill for so long on Better Call Saul, it’s nice to go back and be reminded that McKean’s always been a versatile comedic actor. This might not be Spinal Tap, but McKean’s amusing playing a slimeball.
None of this is enough to keep the movie from being anything better than barely mediocre. It’s not good, and I don’t think it needs any sort of reassessment. But it’s got more going on that most of what Michaels would produce in the 1990s. I neither enjoyed nor hated it. It exists. I guess that’s a better review than I had 30 years ago.