Remembering Strange Brew

REMEMBERING STRANGE BREW
Reviewed by Cartoonist Jeff Swenson

Strange Brew is part of my personal DVD collection and is one of those movies I watch at least once a year to put myself in a good mood.

If you've read other articles on SwensonFunnies you'll notice that I don't write straightforward movie reviews or hype the next big thing that Hollywood is gushing over. I write about movies that I like and that often have some personal meaning to my life. Strange Brew is just one of those great eighties screwball comedies that I'm sentimental about and would like to introduce to anyone who hasn't seen it. It is not great film art, it is what it is--the movie wants you love the stupidity of the characters and make you laugh.

I rented Strange Brew way back in Junior High when my best friend Spencer came over and stayed the night. We had a take-and-bake pizza and Strange Brew wasn't the only film that had us snorting out our soda; we also watched for the first time such classics as Monty Python's Holy Grail and Blazing Saddles. It doesn't get any better than that.

If you want to know the history of the characters in Strange Brew you can visit the Wiki on them from their evolution from SCTV to the big screen. Suffice to say they are borderline alcoholics, though alcoholism doesn't really enter into the picture. I guess it's better, and more humorous, to say the McKenzie Brothers are Beer-lovin' Canadian Slacker Stereotypes. Everything in their life revolves around Beer and the entire plot of Strange Brew is geared around a brewery--one where the brew is strange (achem, thus the title).

I was still a good kid in Junior High and my friend Spencer was from a devout Mormon family so beer had never touched our lips. My Dad also never drank beer, only wine on occasion (which he did let me sip). And oddly enough I never had the desire to taste beer. Maybe I was hanging out with the wrong crowd. That didn't stop me from enjoying the McKenzie Brothers. When you're raised on Looney Tunes where drinking is regularly used as slapstick then you're already primed for the oncoming jokes. Besides, as I recall in the movie, no one really gets drunk. Beer is more of a love for the taste rather than something to drown yourself in until you can't function. The McKenzie Brothers didn't need alcohol to act like idiots. That was something two Junior-Highers could easily understand.

Bob McKenzie played by Rick Moranis and Doug McKenzie played by Dave Thomas are devoted brothers still living with their parents, one of which is voiced by Mel Blanc of all people, in a house that looks like it has one bedroom, a kitchen and resembles a cheap apartment that hasn't been cleaned up in awhile. They end up drinking the last of the beer before their Dad gets his regular allotment--which he is not happy about--so they cook up a plan to get free beer. That is, put a mouse in an empty beer bottle and complain to the brewery until they cough up a free case to avoid a lawsuit. Yes, a very lame plan but it does get them into the brewery where they are offered jobs by the new owner who has recently taken over after her Father was mysteriously killed.

The villain of the brewery is Brewmeister Smith played beautifully by Max Von Sydow who is using tainted beer to control residents of a nearby insane asylum who suit up as hockey players and act out violently according to certain musical notes. It sounds like it doesn't make sense but really it is a masterful plan for world domination. If Smith hadn't been thwarted in his efforts I seriously think we would all be under the will of a Canadian Evil Genius.

Bob and Doug are of course clueless throughout the film as they inadvertently save the day. Plenty of immature humor abounds but I like to think of it as very much the kind of humor you would expect from two brothers still dependent on their parents. There is a very exaggerated and funny urination gag that should be written more about in film books about the high art of lowbrow comedy.

So I do have to wonder if I'm sentimental over this film simply because I watched it as a Junior High kid who hated school and felt dependent on my own parents? Will someone who is 13 now be able to enjoy the movie? Or just think it's dated and stupid. I mean beer is universal. And beer humor almost always is corny.

I think the real sticking point though is the brother-to-brother bond. I never had that kind of close bond but I think that's one of the reasons I've always liked the film. I think we all envy the idea of a best friend through thick and thin and if that best friend is also family then so much the better. Theres a sense of security in family relationships and even being dependent on your parents--though you do need your ass kicked if you're going on 30 and still haven't forged out on your own. As we grow older, as our jobs don't go the way we wished or our relationships tank, we kind of reach back for that sense of security when we lived at home and gave our siblings wet williies and called each other names. There was food in the fridge, a cozy couch in front of the TV and plenty of dreams not yet shattered by the realities of the day-to-day grind. Being a McKenzie Brother and pursuing beer and hockey doesn't sound all that bad compared to being tied down to a computer and deadlines. Sigh.

So here's to you Bob and Doug. I hold in my hand a microbrew. If we could timewarp your characters to the future you would be amazed by how beer has diversified into hundreds of different flavors. And seeing how busy and complex the world has become, even with more beer available, you might want to retreat back to the eighties and continue in your slacker ways.

RETURN TO MAIN MENU

Untitled Document