Wayne's World

365 Films

Entry #12

Wayne’s World (1992)

Directed by Penelope Spheeris

Believe it or not loyal reader(s?), there was a time when the prospect of a Mike Myers comedy didn’t fill audiences with a collective sense of dread.  There was a time when we used to sit on the edges of our seats, chewing our nails down to the nub with eager anticipation for whatever comedic capering Mr. Myers was cooking up his sleeve.  Wayne’s World is a perfect example of such a project.  Endlessly quotable, not afraid to take a dip into the warm springs of absurdity, and featuring a game ensemble that possesses the rare of gift of seeming to be making up the comedy as they go along, Wayne’s World stands alone.  That this also came from a recurring SNL sketch makes the accomplishment all the more remarkable.  Perhaps time has been kind to Wayne’s World in more than one way.  The most obvious being that it is genuinely funny and aside from the occasional dated reference here and there (they actually are few and far between), the humor is essentially timeless.  The second being that compared to the toxic-trash-burning-wasteland that is every other SNL sketch-to-film adaptations, it is hard to disagree with Wayne’s World being the “Citizen Kane” of SNL movies.  Sure, Coneheads had its moments (on second thought, maybe it didn’t), but Wayne’s World easily claims supremacy for its perfect distillation of the cultural moment.  At a time when the carpet bagging of the alternative/”grunge” scene had reached its saturation level in terms of mainstream domination, here comes Wayne’s World warning of the dangers of corporate usurpation of public access television.  I don’t think I’m grasping at straws here because looking at the film’s box office gross; clearly it connected with the general public.  The fact that it accomplished all this along with a throw-away reference to the movie Scanners, a generous amount of screen time devoted to Ed O’Neil’s intensely personal confessions of creepy and potentially threatening sentiments, and a police officer obsessed with full body cavity searches makes this film a treasure to be passed on from generation to generation.