One day, when people say the name Munson, they're gonna think "winner." Just like DiMaggio is to baseball or, or Unitas is to football, that's what Munson will be to bowling.

August 3, 2017

Sometimes, you just gotta admit it… stupid wins. I will refrain from using Washington DC, Fox News, and such as proof. Rather, I will stay with the topic of movies. And believe me, the fact that I am doing so is probably an exercise in self-control I have rarely been accused of…

I could spend hours talking about Airplane!, or Hot Shots. The team of Zucker, Zucker, and Abrahams struck a chord with many, just by deciding to spoof other movies and make the most ridiculously stupid jokes. They made a damn cult hero out of Leslie Nielsen, for God’s sake!

But then came the Farrelly Brothers. And stupid became the name of the game…

I liked There’s Something About Mary, a lot, actually. But when Kingpin came out, I joined the church of the Farrellys.

Woody Harrelson plays Roy Munson, a man who could have been the best bowler in the world. Until he met Ernie McCrackin, that is. McCracken (played by the genius that is Bill Murray) sees Munson’s talent on display in the Indiana State Championships, and enlists him in a little scam involving some local bowlers. They hustle the guys out of a few hundred bucks, but the bowlers catch on to Ernie’s scheme and go after them. McCracken escapes, leaving Roy to take the punishment. The angry bowlers stuff Roy’s bowling hand into the ball return chute, which… files his hand off? Rips it off? At any rate, Ernie’s gutless escape costs Roy his bowling hand.

These days, Roy is balding, he sports a prosthetic hand, or a hook, depending on the day, where his magic bowling hand once was, and he is a traveling salesman, selling bowling alley wax and fluorescent comdoms. Then, one day, he spots young Ishmael (Randy Quaid), an innocent Amish man who loves to sneak away to the local bowling alley, something his righteous family objects to. Roy convinces Ishmael to come with him on a  road trip, and to let him become Ishmael’s manager. Roy has a scheme to finally ger his revenge on Ernie McCracken, who is now the most famous bowler in the world. But the scheme involves hustling bowling alleys across the country to raise enough money to get into the Reno Invitational tournament and face down McCrackin once and for all.

Ishmael, through Roy’s tutelage, of course, learns the real world is much more fun than his strict Amish village. In short, Ish goes wild with his new-found freedom, and Roy is finally loving his life again. After an accident, though, it becomes Roy who has to take up the challenge – facing Ernie in the Reno Invitational and finally facing his demon, one frame at a time.

Don’t ask me how it ends, watch it for yourself…

This movie is ridiculous, it is rude, crude, socially unacceptable, and it is so much better for it. The Farrellys seem to direct by throwing every joke imaginable into a pot, and drawing a few out every day to film. And it works perfectly here. If you don’t laugh out loud at least ten times, you are dead inside.

One of the things I love about this movie is that it is a VERY irreverent spoof of Paul Newman’s The Color of Money. You have the manager, who is manipulating his charge to make money by using the young man’s talent. You have the road trip. You have the young charge who is basically stupid to most everything around him. You have the manipulating girlfriend, here played by the beautiful Vanessa Angel (and if that name alone doesn’t imply "manipulating beauty," nothing ever has…). You have the charge being put aside before the final tournament, and the mentor becoming the one who has to win it all. And yet, the story seems fresh and new. It’s probably because bowling has never been in the forefront of a movie like it is in this one. The Farrelly’s shoot the bowling action much like Scorsese shoots the pool table in Color of Money. Tracking shots following the ball, the pins tumbling into each other in slow motion at times, other times, it’s as it happens, we see the ball sailing down the alley, and boom, the pins fall away.

Woody Harrelson is great in this movie, something I don’t say often when talking about his early films. But he was willing to grasp the formula the Farrellys like to yous. Let the jokes do the talking, and act like you don't notice them happening. Randy Quaid is always fun to watch, before he lost his damn mind a few years back. The supporting cast features David Letterman regular Chris Elliot and Lin Shaye, as Roy's absolutely disgusting but horny landlady, among other great little parts.

But, who’s kidding who here? It’s Bill Murray who steals the show, and rightfully so. Murray is at the top of his game here, a pedestal he has not fallen off of yet. As Ernie McCracken, he is boorish, rude, sexually inappropriate, and condescending as hell, and you will love him. With his out of control comb-over hair, his incredible collection of rodeo shirts, his Lucite bowling ball with the single rose embedded in it, he is every bit the prima donna of the sports world he seems to think he lives in. In this universe, bowling is like pro football, pro baseball, and pro basketball. Teeming crowds of fans crowd the tournament
s, bowlers have groupies, there are laser shows as the bowlers enter the alleys for their intros, it’s hysterically over the top, and Bill Murray fits perfectly into the center of this universe.

I will spare you the final details, except to tell you this one trivia bit – in the final frame of the tournament, McCracken has to bowl three strikes in a row. Murray, as you might guess, bowled three strikes in a row, in character the whole time. The Farrellys simply turned on the camera, told Murray to bowl three strikes as if his world depended on it, and sat back. When the last strike is bowled, the crowd reaction is completely real. They went nuts as Murray acted out his whole scene.

When I grow up, I want to be Bill Murray…

If you need a bit of stupid to wind down from a tough week, look no further than Kingpin. It was not any sort of box-office triumph, but, when it hit home video, it became a sincere cult classic. There are bowling alleys that have "Kingpin Nights", where everyone comes dressed as the characters, with their mystical bowling balls, and they bowl while the film is shown on all the scoring monitors. That, folks, is what a great underrated movie does. It grabs people and does not let go until the last pin falls…