What it’s about: Thomas “Tommy” Callahan III (Farley), barely graduating college after seven years, is a well-meaning, party-loving doofus who has no plans for the future, instead coasting into a job at his father’s (Dennehy) auto-parts factory just as it launches a new line of brake pads. The elder Callahan is about to get hitched to Beverly (Derek), a knockout with a surly son Paul (Lowe). But when he falls dead at his own wedding, it’s suddenly up to Tommy to save the company from being sold to Ray Zalinsky (Akroyd), the Auto Parts King. So he grabs Richard (Spade), his father’s buttoned-down “right hand man” who can’t stand Tommy’s antics, and hits the road, but Beverly and Paul have their own plans to foil his mission.

Reflections: Looking back on this one, for all the fart jokes, testicles being smashed by various things, and other general adolescent crudity at play here, there is also a certain innocence to this that’s kind of endearing. This was one of those comedies that was just in the atmosphere, growing up in the ’90s and, well before I ever saw it, I knew it: “fat guy in a little coat,” “that’s gonna leave a mark!,” the whole bit with the deer in the car, and so on. And watching it again now, those moments still make me laugh because they’re ground into the DNA of what I learned to find funny.

I say “innocence” because the film isn’t trying to do anything beyond that. “It’s funny when dudes get hit in the balls” is about the level this is pitched at; the script is full of, as Roger Ebert infamously put it, “an assembly of cliches and obligatory scenes from other movies.” There is no deeper theme or statement at work, just a loveable oaf saving the factory, villains who are never anything less than cartoonishly evil (and get their shirts sucked up pneumatic tubes), and as many pratfalls and zingers as two SNL stars with a well-honed dynamic can cram into the space in between. And there is a certain immature charm to that recipe: it’s fun to watch Farley’s outsized persona boiling up out of his body like a force of nature or Spade’s tightly-wound wise guy start to unclench, and it’s not asking for more engagement than a rowdy 13-year-old boy could give.

Which also probably means there’s limited appeal here for someone not watching it through a set of nostalgia glasses. It’s one of the lesser SNL movies, not as smartly observed as Wayne’s World or outlandishly bizarre as Coneheads. But it does capture a moment; everything–from the cheesy music swells and misogynistic streak (the pool scene stands out, but… y’know, all of it) to the weirdly-endearing “brothers gotta hug!” and the underlying assumption of worker’s rights and solidarity–all feels like a distillation of its time. If you were a teenage boy in the mid ’90s, this is what you had to work with.