powermandan
This is a weird analogy comparing two Canadian stereotypes to a 500-year-old play. Well, it's true. I thought it was coincidence, but I checked it out and it was deliberate.SCTV was the Canadian version of Saturday Night Live, minus famous celebrity guests and famous musical acts. Actually, SCTV was better than SNL during its run. That's right, from 1976- 1983 SCTV was the better product. SCTV was cancelled was cancelled because they wanted to be on for just a few years. SCTV was cancelled around the time of SNL's dark days. What really outs SCTV on the map was Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas playing Bob and Doug Mackenzie hosting "The Great White North." The whole idea came up as an accident (says Thomas): he claims that they needed an extra segment for time purposes and that he heard people talking about having a more Canadian-based segment and he sarcastically said "What? Do you want guys wearing toques, drinking beer and saying 'eh?'?" Rick Moranis was the new guy and Dave Thomas came up with the concept, and the greatest characters to grace Canada were born. Before Wayne's World and Trailer Park Boys, there was Bob and Doug.Bob and Doug exploded into worldwide fame, so it was only natural that they would get their own movie. This is one of the few little segments that transitioned well to the big screen. I loved this movie, but I noticed just lukewarm reviews on different sites. Those people just don't understand Canadian humour. I'm not just saying this because I am Canadian, it's just like anybody that doesn't get British humour. Bob and Doug are clean, so that plays a huge factor. People love profanity and violence--things Bob and Doug have almost none of.The movie starts out with Bob and Doug attending the premiere event of their new movie. Pandemonium erupts with angry fans because of how bad the movie is. Bob gives some money to an angry family before taking off, not knowing it was beer money. In this first bit, we get vintage Bob and Doug as well as how they are outside of the SCTV studio. They live with their parents in a normal-sized house in suburban-Toronto. The plot then furthers by them trying to get free beer by saying they got ripped off by having a mouse in a bottle. Anybody that knows Bob and Doug know their segment on the show when they talk about getting a mouse into a bottle to get free beer. Taking a segment out of the show and into the big screen was genius. Even though it was brief. They present it to the Elsinore Brewery where they are unintentionally hired and get lots of beer. Here is where the Hamlet plot ties in: Claude Elsinore (Paul Dooley) kills his brother and marries his sister-in-law to inherit the brewery and tries to get the legal heir (Lynne Griffin) out of the picture so he can do evil plans to it with his assistant (Max Von Sydow). The MacKenzie brothers find themselves in the middle of the conspiracy where they become the primary targets. Their stereotypical Canadian...everything, can be fun to all. The writing is fantastic and the humour is awesome. Adding Hamlet to the mix may sound weird, but it totally works here. I highly recommend this to anybody that gets Shakespeare and Canadian humour.
gavin6942
Canada's most famous hosers, Bob and Doug McKenzie, get jobs at the Elsinore Brewery, only to learn that something is rotten with the state of it.My biggest problem with this film is the overdoing of the Canadian voice (with the "eh", "hoser" and "take off"). I know that is the joke, the exaggeration of the stereotypes, throwing in the Molson beer and the hockey (and the doughnuts are probably from Tim Horton). But it is just too much.This film's saving grace is Max von Sydow. Such a classy guy and a great villain, I could watch anything he does in English or any other language. In fact, without him, I think this film would be forgettable rather than the cult classic it has become. It is not a bad film, but it is not much more than a good film, either.
Electrified_Voltage
Canadian actors Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas made their two alter egos, Bob & Doug McKenzie (two stereotypical, dimwitted Canadian brothers) very popular in "The Great White North", a part of the sketch comedy series, "SCTV". In 1983, after Moranis and Thomas had left "SCTV", audiences got to see the characters in a different format. By this point, Moranis and Thomas had played the McKenzie brothers in comedy sketches, and had made an album, but this time, they brought the two icons to a movie. This was three years before I was born, but I first saw it late in 2004 (I think a couple times), and from what I remember, I loved it! That wasn't quite the case when I watched it again a couple nights ago, but it still definitely wasn't bad.Bob and Doug Mackenzie fail to impress a movie-going crowd with their sci-fi flick (which they weren't totally successful making), so they find themselves having to run from an angry mob! After returning home to their parents, the unemployed brothers are told by their father to go out and get beer the next day, but unfortunately, they are out of money to buy it, so they try to scam free beer by going to the beer store with an Elsinore bottle containing a mouse they put in there, claiming they found it in there. They are told that they will have to take it up at the Elsinore Brewery, so they go there and soon end up with jobs inspecting the beers. So, they have finally found employment and manage to bring lots of beer back home with them, but don't realize that trouble is arising at this brewery! The evil Brewmeister Smith plans to take over the world by putting a drug in Elsinore beer! The McKenzie brothers are both headed for an adventure because of this, and so is Pam Elsinore, the daughter of the recently-deceased founder of the Elsinore Brewery! "The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew" starts out very well with the brothers' ridiculous sci-fi movie. In fact, this part of the movie is often hilarious, with Bob's opening narration, the "fleshy-headed mutant in the Forbidden Zone" played by Doug, etc. If this were a real movie, and meant to be serious sci-fi effort, I'm sure it would be IMDb bottom 100 material, but it's a movie in a movie, and in reality, it's for laughs. For those like me who tend to like extreme silliness, I would say it works! More extreme silliness follows in the film, but it's not as consistent as you might hope. I found some of the scenes that don't involve the two main characters a tad awkward, especially early in the film. They sometimes don't quite fit in with the scenes that do involve Bob and Doug, and sometimes drag the film along (this isn't always the case, and it doesn't rely ENTIRELY on the main characters for the laughs, though I would say it almost does). Fortunately, this certainly didn't totally ruin the film for me, as I still laughed a lot, sometimes hard (when I wasn't laughing, I was usually probably still smiling), usually due to the brothers, with their stupidity and some bizarre things they do on their adventure towards the end! While they may not be consistently hilarious whenever they're on screen, when they're not hilarious, they're at least mildly amusing most of the time, if not always. The lawyer fighting the press is also a humorous highlight.Bob & Doug McKenzie are the same in this movie as they are in "SCTV" and on their "Great White North" album, meaning they're still incredibly stupid, but funny to many people. If you can't stand the characters, there's obviously no point in trying to endure watching them in the movie format. If you're a fan of they're "Great White North" sketches and/or their album, you may or may not be disappointed by "Strange Brew". Clearly, some have been blown away by this movie, like I once was, while others, some of them McKenzie brothers fans, haven't been so impressed. I'm sure some people prefer Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas' alter egos in smaller doses, so an entire movie with them as the main characters might be too much for you if you're one of those people. Nonetheless, while it is rather polarizing, this 1983 Canadian comedy has appeal, that's for sure. It's obviously too silly/stupid for some people, no doubt about that, but in my opinion, it's a reasonable dose of comedic lunacy for those who want it. It's also interesting how legendary voice actor Mel Blanc, known as the voice of so many cartoon characters, provided the voice of the brothers' father!
