User Reviews

Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi and baby Adam Sandler play a trio of daft wannabe rockstars, frustrated by their metal band’s lack of recognition, who barge into an L.A. radio station and hold the staff hostage until their demo tape is transmitted to the masses. A long line of technical mishaps cause the ordeal to drag on, but media coverage of the event draws a crowd and, if not for the reasons they intended, the group does inevitably earn their elusive fifteen minutes of fame. It’s wild that a film so loaded with star power can also feel so flat and underachieving. In addition to the three well-known leads, Airheads includes sizable parts for Chris Farley, Michael McKean, Michael Richards and Judd Nelson, though only McKean’s character really plays to his strengths. The rest are just familiar faces jammed into a string of stiff, sterile, dressed-up supporting roles. No room to incorporate any of their characteristic charms or unique capabilities. Farley doesn’t even get the chance to work any physical comedy. What’s the point? At least McKean’s lame station manager, complete with wimpy little ponytail and slimy, unbuttoned silk shirt, gets ample opportunity to offend. Airheads can’t decide if it wants to be a mean-spirited satire (like McKean’s far preceding Spinal Tap) or an easy, one-note comedy (akin to Dumb and Dumber from the same year). Instead, it tries to do both and adequately accomplishes neither. The punchlines are too flat and rudimentary for the former, but the script’s tone is too disdainful for the latter. Apart from poor Ernie Hudson, who works a shift as the weary police officer in charge of the scene, every cast member is painted with the same brush. Too shallow, or stupid, or out-of-touch to be truly sympathetic. It’s a film that proudly boasts its contempt for all corners of society: the clueless kids trying to work a hustle, their idiotic prospective fanbase, the arrogant DJ who isn’t as big a deal as he thinks, the deceptive poseur working the back office, the insecure SWAT guy in need of anger management... the list is exhaustive. A grumpy, irritable picture that hates everything, including itself, it’s not near as much fun as it could’ve been.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Haven't seen this movie in years. Need a rewatch. I remember it being alright. The cast was interesting to see.

A decent movie. A lot better then I thought it would be. That's one way to try and get your demo played.

Airheads is one of those movies that can beat Encino Man in a boxing match. It will win.

Not all that funny. Some joke hit while most didn't. It just wasn't that memorable.

Despite it's silly, but interesting story and it's all star cast, Airheads doesn't deliver in the fun and comedic department. The acting was sub-par, none of the jokes were funny and the movie was quite boring. I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone even if you're a fan of the cast.

It **** entering your mid-late 20s. The novelty of your youth is wearing off and its likely that everybody is getting fed up of your **** You know what **** more? Entering your mid-late 20s when you have a creative mindset mixed with artistic ambitions. Most likely your artistic project isn’t getting anywhere – not because you ****, or anything, but because, like, the man has it in for you and if people would just give you a chance they would see how great your work is – and its looking increasingly likely that you are going to have to give up your artistic dream and fall back on your backup plan, choosing a boring job in a suit to risk not working your current **** job that you only have to pay the bills. You know what **** even more than that? If this creative mindset is expressed in the form of rebellion, non-conformity, and rock-n-roll, meaning not only do you have to think about a backup, but that even HAVING a backup plan and conforming is in direct conflict with your entire identity, meaning that you either have to keep being a massive **** getting nowhere to keep it real or to submit and loose your soul working a 9-5 and loose touch with ever being able to live out your dream. What **** EVEN MORE is if all this is happening in 1994; rock and roll had taken a nosedive in the mainstream thanks to the wave of new music that was blasted into the mainstream in a reaction set in motion by the opening chords of smells like teen spirit from Kurt Cobains amplifier; not only this, the rock that remained was well beyond a parody of itself at this point, and the rock that had dominated from the collapse of the 60s right up to the fall of the Berlin wall would only get more and more nitche as a fandom to the point of embarrassment. Its this desperation in the characters and setting that makes me almost sympathise with the stupidly tragic mission of the main characters, who set the plot in motion by getting themselves into a huge amount of **** for 3 measly minutes of airtime on the local rock radio. I almost want to love this move for it. Unfortunately I can’t bring myself to think of this film as anything more than average. If your movie is set almost exclusively in the butt-ugly interior of a cheap radio station, you’re going to have to sell me on the comedy. Some of the jokes here are decent - some of my favourite moments in the film are the great cameos that while short still manage to be unexpected and bring a laugh, particularly when God himself makes an appearance [RIP]). However much of the humour also falls into the just meh, if not full-on groanworthy field. In a comedy that the escalation of the situation is key to the comedy, they don’t really sell it enough – a large reason being that the characters spend too much of the film enjoying themselves, instead of comedy being generated from their suffering as they dig deeper into their own hole (which would have worked better not only comedically but also from a narrative standpoint. Also, I’m just a bit of a sadistic bastard). And don’t think that pulling Michael Richards from the set of Seinfeld and getting him to essentially play a Kramer-clone on screen through the film is going to sell me, either! Overall I’d say that if you have ever spent any of your adult years in a band – particularly a rock or metal group, and the worse you are/were the better – then you will probably find something to enjoy about this film. Audiences who aren’t fans of rock music and/or weed though might have a more tough time getting into it. Watched April 15th 2018