Chevy Chase

Spies Like Us

  • Title: Spies Like Us
  • IMDb: link

Released 40 years ago, Spies Like Us stars Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd as a pair of governmental screw-ups turned would-be spies. Needing decoys for a top secret project, the Defense Intelligence Agency rush the pair through training and thrown into the field with the belief that they will take focus off the real team deployed into the Soviet Union (with the mission to fire a ICBM at the United States). Of course the running gag of the movie is that the pair manage to somehow keep getting out of trouble and by the end the fate of the entire world will rest in their hands.

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Fletch

  • Title: Fletch
  • IMDb: link

Fletch

Flashback Friday takes us back to the 1980s and an investigative reporter who stumbles upon corruption and murder. Fletch may be the quintessential Chevy Chase movie. One could certainly argue for National Lampoon’s Vacation or Caddyshack, although the latter is more of an ensemble piece. With Fletch, Chase carries the film from beginning to end through a variety of ad-libs, jokes, gags, and sarcastic remarks while breaking not one but two big stories in less than a week. When you think of Chase’s style of humor, it’s hard not to think of Fletch.

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Zoom

  • Title: Zoom
  • IMDb: link

ZoomThrowback Tuesday takes us back to the box office and critical failure of 2006’s super-hero comedy Zoom. The film stars Tim Allen as a former teen super-hero brought back to the secret government program 30 years later to help train a new generation of heroes (Michael Cassidy, Kate Mara, Spencer Breslin, and Ryan Whitney). As with most of these team hero tales, about half of the powers turn out to be useful while the rest are used mainly for comic relief (although rarely for big laughs).

The supporting cast is made up of over-the-top characters in charge of the program played by the likes of Courteney Cox, Chevy Chase, and Rip Torn. Unaware of the looming threat (which turns out to be his long lost brother, played by Kevin Zegers, driven insane by government testing), and resenting being drafted into service against his will, Allen is stuck is schmuck mode for the first-half of the film.

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Three Amigos

  • Title: Three Amigos
  • IMDb: link

Three Amigos DVD reviewToday’s Throwback Thursday post takes us back to the 1986 comedy which united Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Martin Short as a trio of silent B-movie stars mistaken for the western gunfighters they portray on film. In many ways the film proved to be a precursor to Galaxy Quest (or, as I like to call it, the best Star Trek movie ever made) which took the same premise of Hollywood stars and threw them into a world they had only pretended to live in. While Three Amigos is no Galaxy Quest, the zany comedy still holds up relatively well three decades later with the trio’s amusing antics, the accidental death of the Invisible Horseman, and a trio of original songs from Randy Newman.

Borrowing the basic set-up from Seven Samurai, a woman from a small Mexican village (Patrice Martinez) seeks the help of gunfighters to defend her home against the bandit El Guapo (Alfonso Arau) and his outlaws. Watching part of a film starring the western heroes, and believing them to be gunfighters, Carmen enlists the help of the Amigos who mistakenly believe they are being offered a role in a prestigious film with an in-famous co-star. Hilarity ensues.

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Community – Geothermal Escapism

  • Title: Community – Geothermal Escapism
  • wiki: link

“Troy and Abed in a bubble.”

Community - Geothermal Escapism

And then there were five. In a fitting farewell to Donald Glover (who is leaving the show to concentrate on his his stand-up comedy), Abed (Danny Pudi) gets the entire Greendale community to sign-on for a game of Hot Lava where no student or faculty member is allowed to touch the floor until only a single survivor remains. As expected, Greendale devolves into a bizarre dystopian future in only a couple hours as the entire populace becomes obsessed with winning the game (and the $50,000 Abed puts up for a grand prize), and the various members of the Study Group each find their way to say goodbye to their friend and wish him well on his worldwide adventure.

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