Tommy Boy

Directed by Peter Segal, Tommy Boy follows Chris Farley’s sloppy title character as he teams up with David Spade’s uptight Richard to save his family’s business from being purchased and shut down. Filmmaker Segal, armed with Bonnie and Terry Turner’s screenplay, delivers a perpetually affable comedy that benefits substantially from the efforts of (and chemistry between) its two stars, as both Farley and Spade offer up charismatic, completely entertaining work that goes a long way towards elevating the most minor of sequences and, ultimately, ensures that the movie’s third-act lulls aren’t as problematic as one might’ve feared – with the pervasively watchable atmosphere perpetuated by a continuing emphasis on laugh-out-loud funny bits of comedic silliness. (It’s impossible, certainly, not to get a kick out of Tommy and Richard’s mid-movie encounter with a deer, for example.) It doesn’t hurt, either, that Tommy Boy boasts a series of solid periphery performances from folks like Brian Dennehy, Dan Aykroyd, and Rob Lowe, and it’s also worth noting that the picture’s undercurrent of sentimentality ultimately fares much better than expected – which, when coupled with a thoroughly satisfying finale, cements the film’s place as a minor comedy classic that is, although palpably overlong, rife with justifiably memorable moments.

*** out of ****