While many people look to 1990’s Home Alone as the height of John Hughes’ Hollywood power, I look to the next year, filled with unsung flicks like Only the Lonely, Dutch and, at the top of my list, Career Opportunities, directed by TV’s Bryan Gordon; don’t worry, I haven’t heard of him, either.

The ultimate hipster by today’s standards, Jim Dodge (Frank Whaley) is the ultimate loser: Although over 21 years of age, he lives as home, is the town liar and, worse, starts a job at Target as the overnight janitor. As expected in these studies of arrested development, he goofs off at work, mostly by roller-skating in his boxers while wearing a wedding veil.

This all changes when he meets the alarmingly beautiful Josie (the alarmingly beautiful Jennifer Connelly), an emotionally impoverished rich girl who, apparently, fell asleep in the dressing rooms. Against all rhyme and reason, they fall in love. (Hey, it was the ’90s.)

The movie kind of falls apart in the third act when we’re introduced to two redneck crooks who are there to rob (?) the Target. As annoying as that might be for those who missed the pristine Hughes of the ’80s, it’s easy to forget the coasting Hughes of the ’90s, when comical crooks were a must.

Regardless, I’ve always loved this movie; even though it proved to be a Home Alone for the Gen X crowd that, obviously, had no time for it. Still, much of it worked, mostly due to the likable presence of Connelly and the sheer hope that, if I worked at Target, too, maybe I’d meet a girl like her.

Sadly, I worked at the local library instead, missing my chance. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

As Snowy Peaks Lodge celebrates 40 years in business, greedy real estate maven Maris (Martin Mull, Clue), in full acquire-and-develop mode, does everything he can to ensure it won’t see a 41st. With the lodge’s lease agreement due, Maris schemes to plant a few violations in order to shut ‘er down. Cue the sabotaged snowmobile to crash through a women’s restroom!

So goes the plot of this slob comedy from Police Academy producer Paul Maslansky, clearly hoping for another franchise. That connection was literally Ski Patrol’s selling point.

Oh, yes: Snowy Peaks has a ski patrol, whose members band together to save the lodge and its owner, Pops (Ray Walston, Fast Times at Ridgemont High). Roger Rose (Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives) has the Steve Guttenberg role as the charming yet immature group leader, pining after a shapely ski instructor (Doctor Mordrid’s Yvette Nipar — or is that Whitesnake’s David Coverdale?) who happens to be Pops’ niece.

T.K. Carter (Doctor Detroit) is the Michael Winslow-esque Black guy with funny voices. Sean Sullivan (Wayne’s World) is the frazzled weirdo, à la Bobcat Goldthwait. Not large but in charge, the appeal-eluding Leslie Jordan (Barbie & Kendra Save the Tiger King) is the hard-assed G.W. Bailey of the bunch. And so on and so on. Most notable among the cast, however, is future A-list comedy director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) as a nerdy virgin with major dance game.

What begins with Airplane!-style parodic humor quickly becomes a mix of stand-up bits and low-bar slapstick gags, many involving a farting, belching bulldog named Dumpster. One running joke sees a couple knocked over and sliding down the slopes in positions from the Kama Sutra — fully clothed, of course, because Ski Patrol is PG-rated, with women in Day-Glo bikinis coming the closest to screen skin. In other words, if Hot Dog … the Movie were a hot dog, Ski Patrol is a Vienna sausage Mom sliced into teeny-tiny pieces so Baby doesn’t choke.

An avalanche of idiocy, the movie is packed with montages fueled by the combined energy of the era’s advertisements for wine coolers and chewing gum. If you think all this ends with Feig in Tina Turner drag to compete for $1,000 in a local bar’s talent show, followed by Mull stuck in a runaway wiener and shenanigans involving a giant rubber band, you’re correct, but please don’t write a sequel. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Even though I am not a pot smoker and more than likely never will be, I have to admit I find marijuana comedies pretty dang funny.

Growing up on the starter drug of Cheech and Chong movies when I was a toddler, I have found the predicaments and solutions by cinematic stoners and their kind bud to usually be one of the seven rings of true comedy, with 1997’s Half Baked fitting in there nicely, a truly stupid film packed with truly stupid laughs.

Thurgood Jenkins (Dave Chappelle) is the quintessential weed enthusiast with a janitorial job and a circle of bros who practically stay stoned. When one of his crew gets arrested for accidentally killing a police horse, they decide to become drug dealers themselves, thanks to a special strain of sativa they get from Thurgood’s job at a laboratory.

Becoming the hottest dope dealers in the New York City area, they soon gain the unwanted attention of notorious criminal Samson Simpson (Clarence Williams III), leading to an absolutely minor gang war — the kind that’s probably expected in a movie like this, i.e., the pot-influenced equivalent of a Three Stooges pie fight.

Produced by Robert Simonds (the money man behind SNL-related classics like Billy Madison, Joe Dirt, and, uh, Corky Romano), Half Baked is definitely a product of the illegal times. With legalization only blocks from my house now, it seems almost quaint; still, the scenarios, some 20 or so years later, bring the laughs.

Although, I imagine if I did smoke weed, I’d probably be one of the pot archetypes in the movie, finding all of this stupid — and not in a good way. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Allan Arkush is most known as the director of the late-’70s cult hit Rock ’n’ Roll High School, one of my favorite films of all time. But, in 1983, he made an even cultier flick, one that barely got released, despite a great cast and an even greater soundtrack: Get Crazy, also one of my favorite films of all time, if not more so.

Some have called this a sequel, but while it’s not a literal continuation, it’s definitely a spiritual one, featuring a group of regular shmoes who chaotically run the historic Saturn Theater as they go up against the ruling class of moneymen who wish to not only destroy the Saturn, but own the world with their dollar bills. Think Ms. Togar on a sleazier scale.

While the story of stage manager Neil (Daniel Stern) and his crazy crew taking on the slimy Colin Beverly (Ed Begley Jr.) might seem like a routine one, the comedy is very much in the same vein of Rock ’n’ Roll High School, filled with plenty of sight gags; here, even the drama is played for silly laughs, an artform that seems to be lost.

The music undeniably makes the movie so good, featuring (mostly) famous singers in faux roles, such as King Blues (Bill Henderson), Nada (featuring Fear’s Lee Ving) and the surprisingly hilarious Lou Reed as the reclusive Auden, who scores big with a transcendently gorgeous tune that plays as the credits roll. Best of all is the incomparable Malcolm McDowell as the Jagger-like prick Reggie Wanker, a veteran rocker so wrapped up in his self-importance that, when he’s accidentally dosed by the shadowy drug dealer roaming the theater, his most prized possession becomes his turgid conscience, showing him the error of ways — complete with a British accent.

While Arkush is still a director (mostly for television), it truly is a shame he never became as big as contemporaries like Spielberg and so on. As you watch Get Crazy, though, you realize it’s probably because his eye for truly bizarre and outlandish comedy was so far ahead of its time, they had no idea what do with him and, honestly, probably still don’t. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Sean Chase is dead. As played by Suicide Squad stuntman Zion Forrest Lee, the “beloved party animal and jackass womanizing pro hockey fuckboy” is laid to rest in the beginning minutes of Ankle Biters. How he got to his grave takes up the remainder and majority of this utterly wicked Canadian comedy.

Five months earlier, retired from the ice after a broken neck, Sean uncharacteristically wants to settle down with his gorgeous girlfriend, a young widow named Laura (a winning Marianthi Evans, Max Payne). In fact, he plans to propose to her at a romantic weekend at his lake house. The only obstacle is Laura’s four tag-along daughters (real-life Reid sisters Lily Gail, Rosalee, Violet and Dahlia): Try as Sean might, they hate him.

When they mistake Mom’s moans and bruises — both the result of sexual pleasure — for domestic abuse, their dislike of Sean festers to all-out war. His resulting tête-à-tête with the tots is like Problem Child times four (except funny) and infinitely more cynical. The girls are adorable, but don’t be fooled as every character is, Laura included; they’re devious monsters — juvenile delinquents with juice boxes.

A comedy as dark as its home country’s flag is red and white, Ankle Biters (aka Cherrypicker, which means zip out of context) marks the first feature for Bennet De Brabandere, who wrote the script from a story by leading man Lee (who, fun fact, is the son of Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe creator Damian Lee). Because their movie doesn’t have to cater to a family audience — or any audience, really — they relish the freedom to be savage.

I was with them almost all the way. You may not like where it goes, but as it crosses the line of good taste — once, twice, three times, who’s counting? — you certainly can’t accuse it of wussing out. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.