I'm Chevy Chase And You're Not (2025)

You can imagine, after years of being told, "You're funny," a comedian might eventually start believing it and forget about the importance of material and timing, energy, audience, and cultural context, and so end up acting zany - look at me, blowing raspberries! - rather than delivering hard-earned jokes, and Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase - a man as funny as he is obnoxious, as loved here as he is hated there, happy-go-lucky yet deeply ashamed - might come close to that line today; you certainly can't watch the octogenarian presented here, and can't hear about his long catalogue of laugh-free comedy film bombs, and can't hear about his childhood trials and tribulations and come away saying, simply, he's funny.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Spies Like Us (1985)

They cheat during their CIA entrance exams - in laboured, unfunny fashion - but even so two boobs are sent out into the field in Afghanistan and Russia because, unbeknownst to them, it is hoped they will distract the enemy from the actual nuclear missile mission happening elsewhere, in this comedy with punchlines that come first, longwinded setups that come second, and that has Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase at the height of their comedy movie careers in 1985 (Aykroyd fresh from 1984's Ghostbusters; Chase squeezed this in between Fletch and National Lampoon's European Vacation in 1985 and The Three Amigos in 1986), both presumably too busy to scrutinise or veto subpar projects (Aykroyd, the co-writer, should've gone over the script again) or perhaps they wanted to do any and every old thing that came along before the world tired of Chase's unchanging schtick or twigged that Aykroyd is more irritating than funny.

★☆☆☆☆     

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)

Clark Griswold is so determined to take his family on a roadtrip across America that nothing will stop him, and this hugely funny 1983 comedy throws everything at him - a pubescent and errant son Russell, a lovelorn, overeating daughter, Audrey, a long-suffering but loyal wife, Ellen, mechanical problems, a dead dog, a dead aunt, embarrassing trailer trash relatives - and through it all he drives, growing increasingly frazzled until a hilarious climactic sequence in which he becomes completely unhinged at a Disney-inspired theme park, Walley World.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Snow Day (2000)

Thematically similar to Ferris Bueller's Day Off and perhaps originally intended as a National Lampoon's vacation, this not very interesting kids' entertainment has young schoolkids conspiring to prolong a Snow Day by hijacking a snowplow and features the wasted comic talents of Chevy Chase and the less wasted comic talents of Chris Elliott.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS