TOMMY BOY, the doofus 1995 Chris Farley frolic-turned-cult flick, was recently revisited by your tireless scribe in a virtual back-to-back with the 1975’s just plain Tommy, the rock opera foisted by The Who and Ken Russell. There are those who will shriek, shiver or soil upon my turning the royal thumbs down to the ‘iconic’ musical while bestowing blessing (if qualified) to this packet of gonzo dumb. The Outraged and the Playful will just have to duke it out in the ether, but if it came down to tropical island castaway choice I’d rather spend it with genial clowns than hideous poseurs. Yes, we realize that the 96 minutes of Tommy Boy are dopey enough to qualify for counseling but we’ve assured the nice men in the white coats that there’s nothing wrong with me that a romp in the beans with Ann-Margret couldn’t fix. But that’s for another review.

Sandusky, Ohio. When he inherits his father’s debt-ridden auto parts plant, chronic clod ‘Thomas R. Callahan III’ (Farley) hits the sales road with ‘Richard’ (David Spade), snooty brake-pad specialist. While they flounder thru the upper Midwest (briefly taking a deer hostage), Tommy’s recently acquired stepmother (Bo Derek) and her ‘son’ (Rob Lowe) plot to steal the company and sell it to ‘Ray Zelinski’ (Dan Aykroyd), the regional “auto-part’s king“. Bad jokes (and some funny ones) litter the landscape. “son of a…”

Written by Bonnie & Terry Turner, the script isn’t exactly comic rocket-science, more like tricycle instructions, but Farley’s buffoonish puppy-dog (well, Saint Bernard) persona has a touching underside and he was utterly fearless about hurling himself into slapstick gags. Though some bits are run ragged, a goodly number of the jokes get chuckles and snorts: not every humor joust requires sophistication (or whatever passes for it, and according to whom?) to put over. Tommy’s ‘sales pitches’ are gems.

Directed by Peter Segal, the cast enjoy themselves, the soundtrack is festooned with 39 songs, it all ends like it’s meant to and while critics riddled it savagely, the silliness scored satisfactorily with those up for a casual lark. Made for $20,000,000, grosses of $32,700,000 put it #54 in ’95, when it was certainly better than some of the year’s other jokers like Ace Ventura:When Nature Calls (a huge hit), Grumpier Old Men, Billy Madison, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Tank Girl, Stuart Saves His Family and To Wong Fu Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar. It went on to huge home sales in video formats, possibly as much as $100,000,000. “son of a…”

In there pitching: Brian Dennehy (Tommy’s dad, partying too hard), Julie Warner (the sweetie back home that the script calls for), Sean McCann, Zach Grenier, Maria Vacratsis (bored waitress ‘Helen’), Lorri Bagley (the beauty in the swimming pool—who became Farley’s girlfriend for a time: Holy Schnike, Chris!) “son of a…”