cult film freak: RICK MORANIS & DAVE THOMAS AS BOB & DOUG IN 'STRANGE BREW'

Title: STRANGE BREW Year: 1983 Rating: **

There's a moment in THE ADVENTURES OF BOB AND DOUG MCKENZIE: STRANGE BREW where supervillain Max von Sydow... attempting to take over a Canadian brewery where the titular siblings sought replacement beer.. wields a hand-written laser contraption that literally pokes fun at (by glibly complimenting) the movie's special effects...

Providing selected moments where the Rick Moranis/Dave Thomas theatrical adaptation of their SCTV skit (basically reworked by Mike Myers and Dana Carvey in SNL's WAYNE'S WORLD, both involving goofballs on Canadian public-access) is a deliberate genre-spoof in the vein of Mel Brooks or AIRPLANE... in this case the Roger Moore-era James Bond franchise...

Rick Moranis and Lynne Griffin in STRANGE BREW

Unfortunately, the convoluted plot about poisoned beer turning hypnotized hockey players into killers (a microcosm of the world-domination/espionage trope) never seems part of anything the otherwise talented/humorous Moranis and Thomas are part of: both seeming more misplaced in someone else's story than an important part of their own...

Despite decent side-characters in cute scream-queen Lynne Griffin as the kidnapped heir of the central castle brewery, and former hockey star turned oblivious pawn Angus MacInnes, the boys are more natural in the meta frame story, presenting their own low-rent post-apocalyptic science-fiction yarn that a heckling theater audience storms out of — which is ironically more entertaining than what follows since, early on, they at least had some control.