This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Sidey, Dan, Reegs and Cris take on Kingpin, the Farrelly brothers’ 1996 bowling comedy starring Woody Harrelson as hook-handed washed-up pro Roy Munson, Randy Quaid as unlikely Amish bowling prodigy Ishmael Boorg, Vanessa Angel as hustling escapee Claudia, and Bill Murray delivering what Dan reckons is one of his very best performances as the magnificently awful Ernie “Big Ern” McCracken.
The dads walk through the film from the bowling-prodigy opening in Ocelot, Iowa, through Roy’s destruction at the hands of Ernie McCracken’s hustle, into seventeen years of Scranton hovel life as a hook-handed, booze-pickled bowling-supply salesman paying rent in the most gruesome ways possible to Lin Shaye’s Mrs. Dumars. From there it is on to the Amish community, the infiltration as Brother Hezekiah, the discovery that both the family farm and the Reno tournament need the same half a million dollars, and one of the most quotable road-movie trios of the nineties piling into one car and hustling their way across America.
A big chunk of the episode goes on Bill Murray. The dads lose their minds over Ernie’s comb-over, the bowling-ball rose, the “Not you” ad-lib, Room 1103, the fake philanthropy, the groping of passing fans and the sheer joy of watching one of the great comic actors play one of the great comic villains. They also give proper credit to Woody Harrelson as the perfect straight-man audience proxy, Randy Quaid’s quietly brilliant Ishmael, Vanessa Angel’s Claudia going from Stanley Osmanski’s micro-dress distraction to the moral and strategic brain of the group, and the Farrellys’ nineties willingness to point the camera at anything that will make you laugh and grimace at the same time.
The dads particularly enjoy the film’s refusal to go full underdog victory. Roy loses the final by one pin, Claudia disappears with the hustled money to protect him from Stanley’s heavies, and the real triumph is Roy pouring every bottle of Jim Beam he owns down the sink in his bedsit. Then Claudia comes back with the doubled road money, Roy produces half a million dollars from a Trojan Condoms endorsement as “The Rubber Man,” and the farm is saved, Ishmael is reunited, and the trio drives off into a very filthy, very fond sunset.
Also discussed: the Big Lebowski costume DNA, Dodgeball-adjacent sports coverage, soaking, Rumspringa, sheep-based bowling distractions, the urinal scene Cris refuses to shut up about, and the all-important question of why Randy Quaid’s nipples are getting so much screen time. The verdict is a full-strength recommend, with the dads happy to put Kingpin right at the top of the Farrelly brothers’ early run.
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