Real Men

Real Men casts John Ritter as Bob Wilson, a mild-mannered insurance salesman who is forced to assist a brash government agent (Jim Belushi’s Nick Pirandello) with a dangerous mission involving visitors from another planet. Said mission turns out to be fraught with complications and detours, however, as Nick, who has elected to take the “scenic route” to an important meeting point, drags Bob to one broadly-conceived and terminally laugh-free encounter after another. (There is, for example, a sequence in which the mismatched pair are forced to fight corrupt FBI agents dressed as clowns.) It’s ultimately rather astonishing just how little within Real Men wholeheartedly works, as writer/director Dennis Feldman has infused the proceedings with an aggressively over-the-top sensibility that grates right from the word go. There’s nothing entertaining or humorous about any of this, ultimately, and it’s impossible not to wonder just what Feldman originally set out to accomplish with this incompetent mess. Ritter and Belushi are, of course, completely wasted in their respective roles, while Feldman’s patchwork, desperately unfunny screenplay ensures that Real Men grows more and more interminable as time slowly progresses – which, when coupled with an eye-rollingly stupid final few minutes, certainly confirms the movie’s place as an almost epically terrible misfire that’s deservedly been forgotten in the years since its 1987 release.

1/2* out of ****