Saturday, January 28, 2023

Kingpin (1996)

 This is that "Amish bowling movie", a very 90's comedy from the Farrelly brothers. The premise is almost inspired, Woody Harrelson plays a child bowling prodigy who loses his hand when a hustling scheme with frienime Bill Murry goes gutterball; 17 years later Harrelson sees a chance to pull himself out of that gutter when he happens upon a bowling savant played by Randy Quaid, who happens to be Amish. A cross country trip to a million dollar bowling tournament in Reno sees misadventure and the two picking up the sexy Vanessa Angel along the way.

Consistently amusing but seldom really funny the film would have benefited from less gross out humor and being shorter, it's nearly two hours long. It still has its moments and plays effectively with expectation subversion near the end. Watching this shortly after viewing 'The Hustler' and 'The Color of Money' for the first time made this funnier then it otherwise would have been, given that its story is basically a play on those films. **1/2

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