Kingpin

 

              A bowling movie that I was told to watch mainly because I haven't seen it and so, what the hell I might as well sit down and watch the movie. And this was one of those movies that explains my point months ago, when I reviewed Slammin' Salmon that sometimes when you make a hit you just need to take some time off and recoup. Kingpin is a movie that at times has some good jokes mostly coming from legendary comedic talent. But then, there were times when I just became so bored and wished the movie would end.

              Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson) is a young bowler with a promising career ahead of him until a disreputable colleague, Ernie McCracken (Bill Murray), tricks him into participating in a con game that ends with Roy's bowling hand crippled for life. Years later Roy becomes a alcoholic, while discovering an Amish bowling phenom Ishmael (Randy Quaid). With the help of a Mafia girlfriend (Vanessa Angel), he plots to take Ishmael to the top of the bowling world.

               Keep in mind, I was watching this movie with an open mind. I was told that this was supposably a funny movie and granted there is, just mostly coming from Bill Murray's character and nothing else at times and there were times in the movie where I wished if Bill would ever come back and show up but no, I had to wait till the climax of the movie. There were times in some of the beginning part of the movie where I was literally disturbed, and it involves Woody doing it with a woman who, to me looked literally like a woman that's a negative ten out of ten and her facial expression disturbed me to the core to the point where I'm having flashbacks of Bradley Cooper wanting to be the Geek in Nightmare Alley. To the film's credit the film has only the one positive note which is of course Bill Murray and his greatest gift was the simplest of fact that the guy was a great improv man, and through the course of the movie he did nothing but ad-lib through the course of the filming even in the commercials to promote the movie so, every time he would read a script you would simply get a general idea of the movie and ditch the script and even Farrelly Brothers improved on that because what he said was hysterical. The film itself was released exactly two years after Dumb and Dumber was released and I will still say that Dumb and Dumber is a billion times better than Kingpin, but Kingpin was another one of those films where, when you make a great hit, you should probably take some time off and rest from comedy. For a gillion reasons comedy is a tough thing to get right in terms of what is funny and what is not funny. Moreover, you really need to take the time and see what works and what doesn't work and really this was one of those films where it's a blend of good and bad. Now the beauty of Tubi is simply great on both ends of dignity one there's some great hidden treasures and two, when you download Tubi there's no subscription charge so really when you watch a film like Kingpin, well you got a win, win deal because you didn't pay for it in terms of subscription and either way these movies are like free so Tubi is always a 50/50 split on whether or not the film was good or not.