Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker

Big Business

Two sets of identical twins, separated at birth and reared in drastically different environments, are reunited in the big city of Manhattan, for a series of comedic mishaps.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG
Release Date: 13-JAN-2004
Media Type: DVD

Kentucky Fried Movie

Irreverent satire on movies, television and contemporary society.
No Track Information Available
Media Type: DVD
Artist: BIXBY/ZUCKER/ABRAHAM/SUTHERLAN
Title: KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE
Street Release Date: 09/07/2004
Domestic
Genre: COMEDY VIDEO

Twenty years before the Farrelly Brothers turned raunch into acceptable film comedy, the team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker exploited it first. The college threesome made it big with Airplane! in 1980, but this 1977 cinematic version of their live theater show is ground zero for their talents. Like The Groove Tube, Kentucky Fried Movie is a mishmash of sketches, fake commercials, and parodies with no central theme--except their crudeness and laugh-out-loud humor. Highlights include a commercial for "Scot Free," a board game based on the Kennedy assassination conspiracy, "The Wonderful World of Sex," in which a couple goes through foreplay with a self- help narrator instructing them step by step, and a 20-minute spoof of Bruce Lee films entitled "A Fistful of Yen." Brazen to a fault, the movie will reach for any punch line, no matter how crude (and those who flocked to the film's initial release looking for R-rated sex will remember the final sketch and the infamous trailer for "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble.") Directed by then-unknown John Landis on a shoestring budget, the film has aged. But crassness, when it's this funny, is forever. --Doug Thomas

Top Secret!

An American rock star teams up with a scientist's daughter to rescue her father before the enemy can force him to make a devasting weapon.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG
Release Date: 1-MAR-2004
Media Type: DVD

In between the disaster movie satire Airplane! in 1980 and the hardboiled cop show parody The Naked Gun in 1988, the comedy crew of Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker put together a picture that's almost as funny as their better-known hits. Top Secret! sends up spy movies and cheesy teen rock & roll musicals. Val Kilmer stars as swivel-hipped American rocker Nick Rivers, a sort of blonde Elvis whose secret weapon is Little Richard's tune "Tutti Fruitti." On tour behind the Iron Curtain, Nick strikes blows for democracy overtly and covertly, with his music as well as his espionage skills. In short, this is a very, very silly motion picture. Some great gags, including a subtitled scene in a Swedish book shop, and an inspired bit with a Ford Pinto that not everybody may get anymore. (The Pinto, you may or may not recall, was notoriously prone to gas tank explosions when rear-ended.) --Jim Emerson

Superhero Movie (Extended Edition)

Adolescent fantasy meets sophomoric humor in the latest cuisinart comedy, Superhero Movie. The story of how frustrated loser Rick Riker (Drake Bell of Drake & Josh) becomes the superpowered Dragonfly is largely poking fun at Spider-Man, but there are a handful of digs at X-Men, Fantastic Four, and other Marvel Comics superhuman flicks. What's disappointing is how few of the jokes are specific to the genre--the abundance of gags about urine, feces, horniness, and especially flatulence (long, drawn-out gags about flatulence) could have been shoehorned into a parody of pretty much anything. The strong point of Superhero Movie is the above-average cast; while there are the obligatory cameos by the likes of Pamela Anderson, the cast is mostly filled out with actual actors like Marion Ross (Happy Days), Christopher McDonald (Thelma & Louise), Brent Spiner (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development), and Leslie Nielsen, who trots out his trademark deadpan one more time. As Dragonfly's love interest, Sara Paxton (Aquamarine) does a flawless and subtle imitation of Kirsten Dunst's sultry vocal mannerisms. And for fans of Airplane! (the movie that started the whole everything-but-the-kitchen-sink genre of comedy), there's an appropriate cameo by Robert Hays as Rick Riker's father. Superhero is a step above such recent tripe as Date Movie and Meet the Spartans... but sadly, that's not saying much. --Bret Fetzer

The team behind Scary Movie takes on the comic book genre in this tale of Rick Riker (Drake Bell) a nerdy teen bitten by a radioactive dragonfly. Imbued with superpowers Riker assumes a new identity as the Dragonfly. And because every hero needs a nemesis enter Lou Landers (Christopher McDonald) who leads a double life as the villainously goofy Hourglass. Spoof veteran Leslie Nielsen and Marion Ross co-star as Drake's doting uncle and aunt.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/PARODY & SPOOF UPC: 796019813396 Manufacturer No: 81339

Ruthless People

A milestone comedy of the 1980s, Ruthless People delighted critics and audiences alike and set the tone of Hollywood comedies for years to come. Along with that other popular farce about wealthy Californians, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, this ingenious romp revived Bette Midler's career and launched Disney (by way of its subsidiary, Touchstone Pictures) into the lucrative production of R-rated comedies; it also ensured the star power of then-TV star Danny DeVito. Dale Launer became Hollywood's hot screenwriter du jour by cleverly reworking O. Henry's Ransom of Red Chief into a wicked tale of marital malice heightened by a bungled kidnapping. Midler is sublime as the victim of low-rent abductors ("I've been kidnapped by Kmart!"), and DeVito's the gleeful philanderer who refuses to pay ransom for his wife's unwanted return. With Anita Morris, Judge Reinhold, Helen Slater, and Bill Pullman among the plot-twisting schemers, the movie's so much fun that an eventual remake seems almost inevitable. --Jeff Shannon

In this fiendishly funny comedy from the creators of AIRPLANE!, loathesome millionaire Sam Stone (Danny DeVito) is ruthless. How ruthless? When his shrill wife Barbara (Bette Midler) is nabbed by inept kidnappers (Judge Reinhold, Helen Slater), Sam cries tears of joy ... and refuses to pay the ransom. And when the abductors threaten to kill the abrasive heiress, Sam takes immediate action -- he celebrates! RUTHLESS PEOPLE. Raucous ... outlandish ... one of the top box office hits of the year!

Rat Race (Special Collector's Edition)

An all-star comedy cast brings laughs from start to finish when a casino tycoon gives six money-crazed contestants the chance to win $2 million in a race from Las Vegas to New Mexico. Who will win this dash for the cash is anybody's guess but one thing is for sure - it's going to be a hilarious ride.System Requirements:Starring: Rowan Atkinson John Cleese Whoopi Goldberg Cuba Gooding Jr. Seth Green John Lovitz Breckin Meyer Kathy Najimy Amy Smart. Directed By: Jerry Zucker. Running Time: 112 Min. Color. This film is presented in "Widescreen" format. Copyright 2002 Paramount Pictures.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG-13 UPC: 097363368441 Manufacturer No: 336844

Modeled after 1963's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Jerry Zucker's Rat Race lacks the irreverence of Zucker's 1980 hit Airplane! but has enough chuckles to make it an agreeable time-killer. Like Mad, Mad, Mad..., it employs a huge ensemble of comedy stalwarts, assembled by an eccentric hotelier (pearly-toothed John Cleese) to race from Las Vegas to New Mexico for a $2 million jackpot. With a backstage gambling subplot, Rowan Atkinson's Italian-geek lunacy, Seth Green's slacker antics, and some nicely understated work from SCTV alumnus Dave Thomas, the movie has almost as many highlights as clunkers, and Zucker's embrace of easy gags and traditional slapstick will tickle anyone's old-fashioned funny bone. Other ingredients are hopelessly stale: Whoopi Goldberg's frantic mugging, Cuba Gooding's latter-day Stepin Fetchit, "mature" humor that compromises the movie's broad appeal, and the assumption that crashing vehicles are inherently hilarious. Lamentable decisions, perhaps, but Rat Race maintains a pleasantly altruistic spirit. --Jeff Shannon

Scary Movie 3 (Widescreen Edition)

In a spoof of recent popular horror movies, reporter Cindy investigates the recent appearance of crop circles, a killer video tape, and a possible alien invasion.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 7-SEP-2004
Media Type: DVD

This freewheeling parody tosses horror movies, Eminem, The Matrix, and much more into a cinematic blender. Scary Movie 3 centers around Cindy (Anna Faris, Lost in Translation), a bubble-headed young newscaster who believes that a deadly videotape has some mysterious connection to the aliens who've been making crop circles in the cornfield of a local farmer (Charlie Sheen, Young Guns), whose brother (Simon Rex) hopes to win a local rap contest. Along for the ride are Queen Latifah, George Carlin, Anthony Anderson, Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, Jeremy Piven, Camryn Manheim, Ja Rule, dozens of rap stars, and Leslie Nielsen as the President of the U.S. No need to have seen the first two Scary Movie flicks--though a few of the characters recur, the movie leapfrogs from gag to goofy gag, plundering The Ring, Signs, and The Others as needed. Silly and slapdash, but with a decent dose of laughs. --Bret Fetzer

Superhero Movie

Adolescent fantasy meets sophomoric humor in the latest cuisinart comedy, Superhero Movie. The story of how frustrated loser Rick Riker (Drake Bell of Drake & Josh) becomes the superpowered Dragonfly is largely poking fun at Spider-Man, but there are a handful of digs at X-Men, Fantastic Four, and other Marvel Comics superhuman flicks. What's disappointing is how few of the jokes are specific to the genre--the abundance of gags about urine, feces, horniness, and especially flatulence (long, drawn-out gags about flatulence) could have been shoehorned into a parody of pretty much anything. The strong point of Superhero Movie is the above-average cast; while there are the obligatory cameos by the likes of Pamela Anderson, the cast is mostly filled out with actual actors like Marion Ross (Happy Days), Christopher McDonald (Thelma & Louise), Brent Spiner (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development), and Leslie Nielsen, who trots out his trademark deadpan one more time. As Dragonfly's love interest, Sara Paxton (Aquamarine) does a flawless and subtle imitation of Kirsten Dunst's sultry vocal mannerisms. And for fans of Airplane! (the movie that started the whole everything-but-the-kitchen-sink genre of comedy), there's an appropriate cameo by Robert Hays as Rick Riker's father. Superhero is a step above such recent tripe as Date Movie and Meet the Spartans... but sadly, that's not saying much. --Bret Fetzer

The team behind Scary Movie takes on the comic book genre in this tale of Rick Riker (Drake Bell) a nerdy teen bitten by a radioactive dragonfly. Imbued with superpowers Riker assumes a new identity as the Dragonfly. And because every hero needs a nemesis enter Lou Landers (Christopher McDonald) who leads a double life as the villainously goofy Hourglass. Spoof veteran Leslie Nielsen and Marion Ross co-star as Drake's doting uncle and aunt.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/PARODY & SPOOF UPC: 796019813402 Manufacturer No: 81340

Mafia!

This hapless comedy may actually work a lot better on video than it did in theaters. A parody of contemporary mob movies (with a few sidebars skewering such hits as Forrest Gump and The English Patient), Mafia! most closely resembles the first two Godfather films in its generational saga of a gangster family. Lloyd Bridges plays Don Cortino, a native Sicilian who presides over a crime syndicate, and Jay Mohr plays his Michael Corleone-like son. The film is by Jim Abrahams, formerly of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker directing team (Airplane!, The Naked Gun), single- handedly trotting out the old dumb-joke aesthetic that worked wonderfully a lifetime ago but looks a little creaky in the era of There's Something About Mary. Silly allusions to every crime film (GoodFellas, Casino) produced in the last three decades and featuring at least one wise guy or made man find their way into Mafia!'s gags, but most are arbitrary and shrugged off. The film tanked in theaters for good reason; on the other hand, Mafia! might have a lot more to offer if you're slumped on your own couch at the end of a long day, ready for brain-dead entertainment and absolutely apathetic about comic integrity. Even a film this instantly stale on the big screen might have its place in video posterity. -- Tom Keogh

Rock 'N' Roll High School

"Do your parents know you're Ramones?" With those withering words, Miss Togar (Mary Woronov), the uptight neofascist principal of Vince Lombardi High School, addresses the four mop-haired, leather-jacketed members of America's first and most famous punk band. And you know it won't be long before the Ramones's jackhammer riffs are blaring through the public address system at maximum volume, the kids are running--not walking--wild in the hallways (without passes!), and Miss Togar's gulag is re-christened "Rock 'n' Roll High School." Then, in keeping with the outrageously nihilistic animus of punk, the high school students and the Ramones just blow the place to smithereens. It's a crowd- pleasing, fantasy-fulfillment climax that combines the apocalyptic finale of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point with the explosive conclusion of Alice Cooper's "School's Out." Rock 'n' Roll High School is a blast, a goofy and liberating salute to the rebel spirit behind the teen rock & roll movies of the 1950s, which always pitted the kids' insatiable appetite for fun against the adults' fear-based authoritarianism. The film is emblematic of the disarmingly silly, tongue-in-cheek humor of the youth-oriented B-pictures cranked out in the '50s and '60s by renowned low-budget exploitation mogul Roger Corman (who gave many a hungry young filmmaker, including the creators of this film, their start in the biz), and of the noisy, anarchic energy of '70s punk rock, as personified by the inimitable Ramones. In the words of the maestros' beach-blanket-buzz-saw title anthem, this movie is "Fun, fun, oh baby, fun, fun..." --Jim Emerson