“Elly, nature made you a girl, and here lately she’s been gettin’ more and more positive about it.”

Justin’s rating: It’s like the movie version of Comic Sans

Justin’s review: Sometimes I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when I remember a movie that the entire world seems hellbent on forgetting. Take 1993’s The Beverly Hillbillies. Just about nobody ever mentions this, even in the lists of ’90s TV adaptations. And while it didn’t get the best reviews, it did make more than double its budget back, was directed by Penelope Spheeris (who just did Wayne’s World a year earlier), and starred Jim Varney (Ernest Goes to Camp), Diedrich Bader (Office Space), Erika Eleniak (Under Siege), Cloris Leachman (Young Frankenstein), and Lea Thompson (Back to the Future). Oh, and Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Rob Schneider. That’s not all easy to ignore.

But make no mistake: This movie’s disappearing from history. The Beverly Hillbillies came out on DVD and VHS, but didn’t make an appearance on any physical media since then and hasn’t been brought to streaming.* And, as I said, it’s just not remembered by anyone.

Well that ends today, for today I procured a copy of the DVD and will be declaring that Californy is the place to be. So hop onto my 1921 Oldsmobile and let’s get rollin’!

If you’re even passingly familiar with the 1962 sitcom or the Weird Al 1989 Dire Straits parody, then you’ll know the basic setup here. A back country family strikes it rich when oil is discovered on their property, after which they decide to move to Beverly Hills — oh, I just got the pun there — where they become the most fish-out-of-water fam on the block.

While some desperate bankers try to milk the family for their newfound wealth, the crew merrily causes mayhem among the richies. Elly May is taught to be refined, Jethro becomes a vice president of a bank, Jed goes wife shopping, and a whole lot of cows are brought onto property from somewhere. Maybe it’s Amazon delivery.

In a way, The Beverly Hillbillies is a little like The Brady Bunch Movie or even The Addams Family. It’s an anachronistic clan that doesn’t fit in at all with modern society, yet the family blithely and shamelessly plows through that society while doing its own thing. It’s not an original formula, but it works well, especially for ’90s adaptations like the aforementioned.

However, this movie took a far more slapsticky approach than any of its contemporaries, and that’s where it (literally) stumbles. Making this into a live-action cartoon limits its appeal, even if some of the physical gags are pretty great. But that should be restrained, because there’s only so much falling down and knocking down and crotch kicks that an audience will endure.

I have to say that I absolutely love the casting here. Jim Varney shows that he’s more than just Ernest as Jed, the family patriarch. Eleniak plays against type as the tough tomboy Elly May, Bader is perfect for the dunderhead Jethro, and what role does Cloris Leachman not knock out of the park?

It’s too bad that the writers couldn’t give this cast better material. There’s a visible struggle to figure out the right tone of this movie — is it making fun of the family? Is the family mocking the society by existing? Is this a kids’ movie or a subversive adult one? Why is Lea Thompson pretending to be a French tutor for a good chunk of the film? None of this is resolved, so it shuffles from start to finish with a few good moments of comedy, many more disappointing ones, and a plot that isn’t as madcap or clever as it really should be.

And let’s not ignore the fact that nobody really cared about this IP in the ’70s or ’80s, nevermind the ’90s. They needed to bring something to the table here other than extremely broad comedy and Benny Hill fast-forward scenes. Still, it deserves more than to be chucked into a black hole of oblivion.

*If you’re not disturbed by how FAST movies can disappear when they’re not preserved somewhere, you really should be. This is only going to get worse.

Intermission!

• Homebrew bee smoking
• Bear attack? Flip it and stomp on its junk
• Oil will geyser in huge amounts if you shoot casually into a pool
• One billion dollars seems like a fair price, yet I’m sure they’re still getting ripped off
• “They got swimming pools! And movie stars! And smog!”
• Granny getting smacked off the car by the tree branch was a beautiful moment
• So much flipping off
• “Roadkill stew sounds mighty good right about now.”
• “I’ll eat mud.”
• The family thinking a limo is a hearse
• Elly May scratching her armpit made me smile
• The amazing bucket of cooked birds
• Wouldn’t think that the animals will do well in a chlorinated pool
• That neighbor boy has the worst hats, even for 1993
• Hallway cappuchino in the high school
• Multi-ethnic woman montage, including woman with snake
• $5,000 to validate parking
• All the innuendo of the “stud farm” conversation
• Yeah, I think anyone would want to wrassle with Erika Eleniak
• The Hickory Nut Crunch
• Car fax machines and giant cell phones, welcome to technology in the early ’90s
• That’s one giant Subway… product placement
• Jethro in drag is either disturbing or alluring
• All of the hillbillies on the plane was a great gag (even the kids were spitting into cups)
• Barnaby Jones!
• “Cousin Bill” = Bill Clinton