I have never really been a fan of Saturday Night Live. Well, I’ve never really watched Saturday Night Live, either, but what I’ve seen has either been OK or unwatchable. For that reason, I’ve never really had much interest in Saturday Night Live movies (outside of the Blues Brothers, which has really become a beast of its own). Watching Wayne’s World, though, it’s easy to see how the floodgates were opened.
The “plot”, as it is, involves airheads Wayne (Mike Myers) and Garth (Dana Carvey), who run the public access show Wayne’s World out of Wayne’s basement, where they make fun of people and talk about hot celebrities in the way you’d expect stereotypical 90s metalheads to talk. Slimy executive Benjamin Kane (Rob Lowe) offers to buy them out in an attempt to completely ruin the show for his own gains.
And…that’s about it. Oh, there’s more, but really, the plot is incidental. It’s a way to get Wayne and Garth from place to place, and little more. Once they get to wherever they’re going, they cause general havoc or stupidity, and then move on. And it’s wonderful. Mike Myers and Dana Carvey are at their best here, playing complete idiots who almost seem to have shreds of intelligence. Carvey in particular plays a wide-eyed, constantly smiling character who’s so far out of it, it’s surprising he even manages to stay with the plot. Neither of the actors are particularly great on their own, but it’s like when they put them together, they got the right balance so that neither of them take over the movie.
The movie also gleefully plays with…well, just about everything. Wayne and Garth constantly talk to the camera (and scold another character when he tries to), providing a combination of exposition and extra jokes on the situation. A scene of product placement goes as far over the top as it possibly can. And the ending…if you don’t already know what it is, it can’t be spoiled. It doesn’t break the fourth wall, it shatters it, and then sees what it can do with the pieces.
The movie does date itself a little, with its culture as a whole no longer having relevance, and jokes about things that would’ve been relevant at the time, but are lost in time at this point. It still manages to be a very funny movie, showing why Mike Myers became a star in the first place, and makes his recent fall that much sadder.
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