The long and the short of it is, I own well over 300 movies on DVD and Blu-ray (I’ll know for sure how many at the end of this project). Until June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.
Movie #9: Airheads
I’m no music historian, but in my life, in 1994, right after Kurt Cobain’s suicide (the movie was filmed before and released after), grunge had peaked and rock was coming back into vogue. Not the hair metal of the late ’80s and early ’90s, but rock with a harder, more serious, darker edge. White Zombie was on the scene, Soundgarden had matured into their Superunknown album, Stone Temple Pilots had hit their sweet spot, The Cranberries were about to crush it, The Offspring were kicking ass, and Green Day had just completely flipped the script with Basket Case. (I was 19, so take my music taste with a grain of salt.) Into this thin window of time, Airheads came out in theaters.
It was a time when Brendan Fraser (Chazz) was a heartthrob, thanks in no small part to MTV VJ-phenom Pauly Shore’s film career and most especially a flick called Encino Man. It was a time post-Reservoir Dogs, but well before Steve Buscemi (Rex) was a renowned and celebrated actor. Adam Sandler (Pip) and Chris Farley (Officer Wilson) were still young Saturday Night Live standouts, both a couple years from their breakout blockbuster films. Beavis and Butthead made a voice cameo. MTV News anchor Kurt Loder was contractually obligated to appear as himself in every single movie having to do with music. And Amy Locane (Kayla) was still the poor man’s crazy Christina Applegate.
With all these things in play, the movie itself is sort of inconsequential, really, and that’s a good thing because it’s pretty dumb. Chazz, Rex and Pip make up a band called The Lone Rangers (that it’s the plural of something that’s, by definition, solo, is a running joke that only barely works) who are having no luck getting heard by anyone in a position to make them successful, so they break into the Rebel Radio station and wind up accidentally taking everyone there hostage with toy guns filled with pepper sauce in an attempt to play their demo on the air. Like I said, it doesn’t matter. It kind of intentionally doesn’t matter, in fact, as the so-called killer song in question isn’t even heard until the closing scenes, in the background of the actual action. The movie itself is more of a conglomeration of the pop culture fads in my life that year, and as such is much more meaningful to me as an artifact of that time.
Viable Option 