The Classics According to Keith - Spies Like Us
Every Time I Die frontman Keith Buckley waxes cinematic on the more important films of our time. Sort of.
SPIES LIKE US (1985)
STARS: Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Donna Dixon
THE PLOT: When I first took this assignment, I thought it might be extremely difficult to negatively comment on or find fault with a movie that gave us the line, “I’m probing to determine muscle tone and skeletal girth,” which has stuck with me since I saw the movie at age 6. However, what I realized when I went back and watched it for the first time in more than a decade is that this film is nothing more than a showcase for Chevy Chase to make weird noises in uncomfortable situations. As was Fletch. As was Funny Farm. As was the boardroom when it was determined that his talk show was the worst in history and had to be canceled. So, what could be more uncomfortable than two civil-service flunkies being sent on a nondescript, “need-to-know basis” mission to Russia to distract the Russian government from America’s real agenda? I’ll tell you: Trying to write a review about a movie with an ending I really don’t understand in the slightest! Myyyyyyyahhhhemm!
THE POINT: Given that this was Chase’s and Aykroyd’s first movie together as SNL alumni, I can only imagine that the point of it was nothing more than to institute the tradition of shameless SNL collaboration classics that was born with this one, touched inappropriately by its grandfather with It’s Pat; tortured its first of many woodland creatures with Stuart Saves His Family; developed an ugly and uncompromising addiction to meth with A Night At The Roxbury; and eventually curled up under a bridge and died while masturbating using its own vomit as a lubricant with Don’t Mess With The Zohan. Can anyone remind my why it is we lost John Belushi and Chris Farley and yet still have Chevy Chase? Oh, I know. Because someone needed to be the voice of Cho-Cho in 2004’s The Karate Dog.
