In the early ’90s, all of your favorite comedians from Saturday Night Live were busy in the theaters making their feature film debuts to varying degrees; but, if you ask me, the more interesting movies were coming for the gang at In Living Color, with its second most popular star Damon Wayans hitting hard with The Last Boy Scout, Blankman and the mostly forgotten Mo’ Money.

Based on Wayans’ popular street-hustler catchphrase, this cinematic incarnation still finds him on the street, trying to make dollars with his real-life brother Marlon. Together, they rip off marks for televisions and other high-ticket items, usually while in now-offensive characters like a homeless man, a mentally handicapped man or a very homosexual man.

When he meets the stunning Amber (the still-stunning Stacey Dash), Wayans decides he’s going to fly right and work hard at the most important credit card firm in history; when temptation strikes and he steals a few cards, however, that’s when he’s lured into a badly envisioned criminal ring of credit conmen who use murder to solve all of their problems.

When Mo’ Money lets Wayans do his comedic thing, it’s a very funny movie. But, for some reason, with about 30 or so minutes left to go, it becomes a highly disjointed, tonally erratic action film, one that never recovers as he chases the bad guys in typical ’90s mode, sans, strangely enough, any wisecracks at their deathly expense.

Directed by Peter MacDonald, perhaps best known for the execrable Rambo III, the only thing that this flick had going for it during its original release was the platinum new jack soundtrack, featuring five hits, including the Janet Jackson/Luther Vandross smash “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” which was inescapable for a while.

A few years later, sketch-show cast members would cross paths when Wayans and Adam Sandler starred in Bulletproof, which was only funny for a can’t-repeat-here joke about Disneyland. —Louis Fowler

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Roger Corman never met a Hollywood blockbuster he couldn’t rip off (and I mean that lovingly). With Munchies, the legendary producer didn’t just ride the coattails of former employee Joe Dante’s Gremlins; he doubled down, hiring the editor of Gremlins, Tina Hirsch, to helm this quickie, and casting Dante regulars Wendy Schaal, Robert Picardo and Paul Bartel in bit parts, perhaps hoping for quality by association.

None of that made any difference. Carnosaur, this ain’t. (To composer Ernest Troost’s credit, his score doesn’t steal from Gremlins. Because it’s too busy pilfering Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.)

Anyway, in Munchies (not based on the Frito-Lay snack), archeologist Simon Watterman (Harvey Korman, Mel Brooks’ good-luck charm) returns from Peru with a gremlin ghoulie critter troll spookie hobgoblin squatty little creature that he smuggles into America via gym bag. Before a screwballian round of sex with novelty props, Simon’s loser adult son (Charlie Stratton, Summer Camp Nightmare) and his girlfriend (Nadine Van der Velde, Moving Violations) justify the title by calling the, er, thing a “munchie,” on account of its voracious, fridge-be-damned appetite, and naming it “Arnold,” because it’s 1987.

When Simon has to leave town, his slimy brother, mini-golf magnate Cecil (also Korman, but with a Bob Goulet mustache), tries to steal Arnold. Cecil’s scared stoner stepson, Dude (Jon Stafford, Full Metal Jacket), stops playing hacky sack long enough to slice Arnold into pieces, which only makes more Arnolds (à la The Gate). Ergo, Corman gets his PG-rated plural Munchies; havoc, ye shall be wreaked!

Provided it sounds fun at all, it is not as much fun as it sounds — the primary reason being this immutable fact: The munchies were designed without points of articulation, which qualifies as more stuffed animal than puppet; a sock slipped over your hand displays more action. Someone just out of frame moves the mini-monsters left and/or right and/or up in the air — whatever slapstick gag the script (by Barbarian Queen II’s Lance Smith) calls for, whether trying to shotgun an old lady or peering up young ladies’ skirts. Unrelated to their shenanigans, the comedy is desperate at best, and from Starsky & Hutch to S&H Green Stamps, the typical joke feels stale by half an acid-washed generation. —Rod Lott

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White nerds like to loudly announce that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the greatest self-contained film series in movie history, but, you know, I’ve always found Tyler Perry’s Madea-verse to be a far richer tableau of real-life heroes and villains, with plenty of Christian-based dramedy-heavy life lessons sprinkled throughout the course of these 11 films, as well as plenty of stage plays set in the same continuity.

In A Madea Family Funeral, the supposed final film, Madea (Tyler Perry) and elderly friends Aunt Bam (Cassi Davis) and Hattie Mae (Patrice Lovely), as well as pervy Uncle Joe (Perry again), in between bragging about smoking weed and whoring around, walk in on the dead body of a family friend in the middle of coitus, leading to many, many jokes about the deceased’s engorged member.

But, really, that’s only the initial premise for this relatable morality play about familial deception and brotherly jealously, alternating between lowbrow comedy and high-heavens preaching which, in Perry’s films, always works well, even if the movies have continued on with diminishing returns, at least plot-wise — I mean, have you seen Boo 2! A Madea Halloween 2?

Probably not.

For me, though, Madea is still in top comedic form here, fucking with everything in her way from racist white cops high on pulling the trigger to the stereotypical length of most black funerals; it’s a self-made formula that has commercially pleased audiences for about 15 years now, except for white nerds, of course.

To paraphrase a once-popular saying, make mine Madea! —Louis Fowler

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A couple of years ago, director Kevin Smith had a heart attack that nearly killed him. Around that same time, I had a hemorrhagic stroke that nearly killed me. Since then, we both have attempted to get healthier to varying degrees, both physically and creatively.

Even though we don’t know each other and probably never will, I’ve felt a tenuous connection, creatively at least, to the man for over 20 years now. But while my creative wins and losses were kept mostly close to the chest, Smith’s highs and lows have been judiciously celebrated and gratuitously mocked by the same fair-weather fans who grew up with him.

But, as his latest flick, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, and the subsequent roadshow tour proves, many longtime patrons still support his comedic arts and other ventures — especially the over-40 crowd, of which I am dutifully a part of — and still appreciate a thoroughly entertaining Kevin Smith film. They do exist.

As funny and fresh as the spiritual prequel, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, was back in 2001, Smith ably mocks the current trends of Hollywood while defiantly taking part in them; having grown much older and forced to face life, Reboot finds a much older Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) still hanging out in front of the Quick Stop and, even among them, it’s obvious the man-child bit is getting a bit tiresome.

While retracing the steps of Strike Back by having the duo shut down a reboot of the Bluntman and Chronic franchise, Smith throws a spanner in the works by introducing Jay’s daughter, Milly (Harley Quinn Smith, Holidays). As foul-mouthed as her dad, she and a few troubled friends tag along to California to Chronic-Con, with various pitfalls along the way, such as vengeful Uber drivers, the Ku Klux Klan and the American legal system.

Mewes carries most of the film on his back, delivering a performance that delicately teeters from pornographically hilarious to philosophically heartfelt. And I know that people like to give Smith shit for casting his own daughter, but as a proud father, it’s the same thing that any of us do if we had the capabilities and, to be honest, she not that bad as Jay’s child.

Of course, the fan-friendly film ties into a world of meta-criticism as Smith also stars as himself, jorts and all, poking fun at his persona, as well as the View Askewniverse he created and, thankfully, never forgotten about. It allows him — and me, too, honestly — a chance to look back in absolute appreciation while acknowledging the fact that sometimes we all have to grow up or die trying.  —Louis Fowler

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Record City pays tribute to a time when Americans bought recorded music — on vinyl, cassettes and eight-track tapes — from national chains with food-based names like Peaches, Coconuts and the scalp-scratching Licorice Pizza. The store in the lone film from TV director Dennis Steinmetz (he of the notorious The World of Sid & Marty Krofft at the Hollywood Bowl special), however, is simply Record City, fittingly generic.

Despite a then-all-star cast of dozens, Record City has no plot, being nothing more than a snapshot of a single day inside those poster-covered walls. As with the same year’s lamentable Skatetown U.S.A., which shares a cast member in comedy vacuum Ruth Buzzi, it abstains from story to present a loosely strung collection of low-stakes bits. Jumping from character to character with barely an arc in its way, it resembles one of those “A Mad Peek Behind the Scenes of” two-page spreads Mad magazine used to do, in which the totality of the place in question was presented in a single image from a God’s-eye view; no matter where you looked, something was happening.

Here, that includes:
• the greasy store manager (Michael Callan, 1988’s Freeway) sexually harassing employees and forcing himself on customers
• the nice-guy employee (Dennis Bowen, Van Nuys Blvd.) pining for the attention of the good-girl employee (Wendy Schaal, Munchies)
• a cop (Sorrell Booke, Boss Hogg of TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard) standing on a toilet in hopes of catching a serial shoplifter called The Chameleon (Frank Gorshin, Hollywood Vice Squad) while a hick goober named Pokey (Ed Begley Jr., Amazon Women on the Moon) plots a robbery
• F Troop second banana Larry Storch as a deaf customer and Alan Oppenheimer (1973’s Westworld) as a blind customer
• L.A. DJ Rick Dees wearing a gorilla arm while hosting a parking-lot talent contest featuring the likes of Gallagher, the Chicken Lady, Razzie Pee Willie and other Gong Show-level acts
• singer-songwriter Kinky Friedman playing himself and copping a feel
• Ted Lange, aka Your Bartender of TV’s The Love Boat, doing a robot dance
• Harold Sakata, aka Goldfinger’s Oddjob, basically playing Oddjob again, but as a homosexual

I don’t even have room to mention the skateboarders, the hookers, the Nazi engineer or Tim Thomerson’s testicular trauma. There’s a lot going on, and yet nothing going on. It’s the kind of movie whose screenplay (by Ron Friedman, Murder Can Hurt You!) ends by asking the ensemble cast to run in single file and yell, which, mood depending, is not necessarily a negative. —Rod Lott

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