Strange Brew 40th Anniversary Retro Review
STRANGE BREW RETRO REVIEW SCORE
Forty years ago this month, two comedians tricked a skunk-passing dog into taking a jelly donut for a bowl full of beer, and the world grew richer for it. Strange Brew — aka The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew — hit theaters in August 1983.
Often overlooked and outshined by big screen Saturday Night Live spinoffs of the day, Strange Brew survives as the only feature film spinoff of another sketch show, SCTV. It’s gloriously, unapologetically nonsensical, and — believe it or not — is kinda/sorta a reinterpretation of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
After a surreal intro that breaks not only the fourth wall but a few more to boot, the dimwit alcoholic brothers Bob (Rick Moranis) and Doug McKenzie (Dave Thomas), find themselves in a predicament: they need to replace their father’s beer, but Bob gave away the money for it. Doug, always the schemer, comes up with a plan to con his way into a free case of Elsinore beer with an empty bottle and a baby mouse.
Moranis and Thomas created the McKenzies as a laugh, and as a bit of a middle finger to the Canadian government.
Strange Brew soon finds the brothers hitting the jackpot: instead of just a free beer, the brothers are given quality assurance jobs at the Elsinore brewery to make sure no more vermin wind up in the beer. Rather than just a case of brew, the pair return home with over a dozen cases.
But their temporary good luck comes from a bizarre series of events including murder, mind control, and a plot to conquer the globe. Before Strange Brew‘s heroes showed up, the unnaturally strong Brewmeister Smith (Max von Sydow) conspired to murder Elsinore owner John Elsinore (Eric House) and make his death appear to be an accident. Now Smith and John’s duplicitous brother Claude (Paul Dooley) are in the middle of defrauding John’s daughter Pam (Lynne Griffin) out of her inheritance — control of the brewery.
Why are the villains of Strange Brew so intent on owning the brewery? To… well… to control the world. No, really. Brewmeister Smith has concocted a drug that he mixes into Elsinore beer and anyone who imbibes is subject to mind control via music.
We see this when patients from the nearby mental hospital are used as guinea pigs and made to attack each other in a fake hockey game. Play one set of notes, the test subjects attack the opposite team’s goalie. Play another, and they all throw down their hockey sticks and brawl.
For most of Strange Brew, Bob and Doug are completely oblivious to everything. In spite of using his electronic skills to help reveal Pam’s dead father’s ghostly messages to his daughter, Doug is just as clueless as his smaller brother.
When the pair are not only allowed — but ordered — to pause their work in order to join a hockey game with the mental patients, the only thing strange about it to them is that no one on either team is following official league rules.
Luckily for the McKenzie bros, they’ve got a genuine Star Wars hero on their side. Playing the retired hockey player Rosie is Angus McInnes, who played the doomed but heroic Gold Leader in 1977’s Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope and whose voice can be heard in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It seems likely this wasn’t lost on Thomas when he referenced Lucas’ iconic trilogy in the hockey scene.
Smith manages to get the Strange Brew heroes out of the way by framing them for his own crimes. Still, even while the brothers are in court being tried — and later when they’re committed to the same mental institution from which the Brewmeister gets his test subjects — they don’t really seem to know they’re in trouble.
Being fingerprinted gives the McKenzies a chance to smear each other with ink, and being trapped in straitjackets lets Doug “steamroller” his smaller brother on the floor of their padded room.
It’s gloriously, unapologetically nonsensical, and — believe it or not — is kinda/sorta a reinterpretation of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
If you know your Shakespeare then you may ee the parallels with Hamlet. The brewery name, Elsinore, is taken from the castle in the tragic play. Like Claudius of Hamlet, Claude murders his brother and marries his former sister-in-law. The Mckenzie brothers become more redemptive and even more brainless versions of Hamlet’s college friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Even Shakespeare’s well known penchant for using the “play-within-a-play” isn’t forgotten. Strange Brew opens with the brothers’ show from SCTV, where they premiere their new post-apocalyptic movie Mutants of 2051 A.D. We then find the brothers in a movie theater watching their own new movie which, itself, contains a new movie… starring them.
If you’ve got nothing better to do, take off with these moronic hosers for an hour and a half, and laugh your guts out.
If you’re not from the Great White North, you may think the heroes of Strange Brew are meant to represent some kind of extreme Canadian stereotypes, but then you’re not fully getting the joke. Most of the supposedly regional phrases Moranis and Thomas use as the McKenzies are no more accurate to Canadians than the stick figures and detached heads of their South Park counterparts.
Moranis and Thomas created the McKenzies as a laugh, and as a bit of a middle finger to the Canadian government. When SCTV began broadcasting on Canada’s CBC network, the show was asked to fall in line with Canadian broadcast regulations by filling two minutes with content that was specifically Canadian. Thinking this was absurd, Moranis and Thomas came up with two minute segments as Bob and Doug McKenzie, mostly improvising their skits and just making up supposedly “Canadian” content.
Regardless of how much of the brothers’ dialogue was actually scripted in the film, Moranis and Thomas carry that improvised feel into Strange Brew. It lends the comedy its irresistible charm, and as long as you don’t ask too many serious questions about the plot, it will deliver a laugh-filled hour and a half. It constantly feels like two boneheads wandered into a more serious (though not very well written) movie and are goofing off until someone makes them leave.
Sadly, according to JustWatch, Strange Brew isn’t streaming on any subscription services, though it is available to rent digitally from multiple vendors. If you’ve got nothing better to do, take off with these moronic hosers for an hour and a half, and laugh your guts out.
