Wayne’s World *** (1992, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Rob Lowe) – Classic Movie Review 2415

Mike Myers and Dana Carvey star as the legendary Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar in director Penelope Spheeris’s harmless, juvenile 1992 smart-Alec youth comedy based on a Saturday Night Live TV sketch.

Sadly, they are a pair of 35-year-old teenagers, slacker buddies who host and try to promote their heavy-metal late-night public-access cable TV show from Wayne’s parents’ basement in Aurora, Illinois.

Rob Lowe plays a smooth TV producer called Benjamin Oliver who wants to exploit them, and along their way to fame they get to meet veteran rockers Meat Loaf and Alice Cooper.

The two stars seem to have amusing acts of fairly restricted range, though stand-up comedian Myers, making his feature film debut here back in 1992, looks like a developing talent. Lowe, in a star support role, fails to raise laughs by sending up his Eighties sexy image as a greasy entrepreneur out to hijack the Wayne’s World TV show.

The script is amiable enough but gleefully amateurish and where are the big laughs? Yet it took $33.5 million in its first 10 days in America and grossed $121.6 million on its cinema run, making it the tenth highest-grossing film of 1992 and the highest grossing of the 11 films based on Saturday Night Live sketches.

Shot in 34 days, the film also features Tia Carrere (Cassandra), Lara Flynn Boyle, Brian Doyle-Murray, Chris Farley, Ed O’Neill (Ben), Ione Skye and Colleen Camp. Robert Patrick spoofs his role in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

The TV sketches and film started catchphrases such as ‘Schwing!’ and ‘Schyea’, as well as popularising ‘That’s what she said’, ‘Party on!’ and the use of ‘…Not!’ after apparently affirmative sentences.

Wayne, Garth, Cassandra, Glen, and Ben sometimes speak directly to the audience and even the cameraman, but no one else seems aware that they are in a film.. Parts of the story are carried by Wayne’s narration to the camera, in which he offers his thoughts on what’s happening in the film.

Spheeris also directed The Boys Next Door and The Decline of Western Civilisation, as well as The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), Little Rascals (1994) and Black Sheep (1996).

Sequel: Wayne’s World 2 (1993).

Cooper’s manager Shep Gordon convinced Myers to use his new Feed My Frankenstein instead of his classic School’s Out. They formed a friendship and Myers directed a documentary about him in 2014 called Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon.

Using Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody propelled the song to number two in the Billboard singles charts nearly 20 years after its first release.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2415

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