Black Sheep

Spoilers = Red 

Black Sheep is a 1996 comedy starring Chris Farley and David Spade. Chris Farley is the bumbling brother of the Washington Governor’s race and David Spade is given the task of keeping him out of the public eye until the election is over. It doesn’t quite work out that way, of course. Or we wouldn’t have a movie, now, would we? Black Sheep isn’t all that funny. It tries to rely on Farley’s physical comedy skills in a movie that shouldn’t have any physical comedy in it. And the dialogue is really lacking just in general. Overall, it’s just a poor script that’s poorly done and that can only lead to one thing… A poor product…

What’s it about? Mike Donnelly is driving a campaign truck with his brother’s face on it through town, blaring the message to vote for Al Donnelly with a parade of dogs following him for some reason. He ends up crashing the truck into a movie theater directly in front of the campaign speech that his brother Al is giving. Al’s campaign manager, Roger Kovary, tells him to hide Mike from the public for the sake of his campaign. Instead, Al decides to have Steve Dodds keep Mike busy for a while and help him campaign to keep him out of trouble. On his way to meet Mike, Steve hits Vietnam veteran Drake Sabitch who winds up stealing his rental car after a brief interaction. Later, Mike is photographed giving a speech to underage kids about drinking and doing drugs, but it looks like he’s partying with them, and it gets him fired from the rec center that he so dearly loves. As he’s leaving the rec center, a pair of thugs that work for the current Governor, Evelyn Tracy, set fire to it, and the same photographer that caught him giving the speech to the kids catches him again, and makes it look like he set fire to the rec center. The first cop to arrive at the scene is a friend of Mike’s, Robbie Mieghem, and allows Mike to leave before any other cops show up so he doesn’t get caught. Roger tells Steve to take Mike to a cabin in the woods and hide out for a while until the heat dies down. Later, as Steve is looking for a place to make a phone call, he stumbles on a a campsite that belongs to Drake Sabitch and quickly runs away. He climbs up on a huge boulder, trying to make the call, loosening the boulder. Then, as the guys are playing checkers, the boulder falls down the mountain, crashing into the cabin, almost destroying it. The next day, Mike uses Steve’s cell phone to try to call Al, but Roger refuses to let Mike talk to him and lies to Mike about how Al talks about him. This causes Mike to go to Seattle to go to MTV’s Rock the Vote event. He impersonates security to get into the event and gets stoned with a Rastafarian band before being taken on stage and mistaken for his brother Al. He gives a rousing speech, getting the crowd really behind the cause until he yells “kill whitey!!” and is followed by utter silence. Because of this, Al decides to no longer let Mike help him with the campaign. The next day, Mike takes Steve to Drake’s home to watch the debate between Al and Governor Tracy on Drake’s tv. While going to bathroom outside, Steve is attacked by Drake. When he goes to save him, Mike beats Drake in an unarmed fight, earning Drake’s respect. Later at a party, Governor Tracy buys the incriminating photos of Mike from the photographer and wins the race for Governor. While watching the results, Mike notices she has more votes than there are people in Garfield County and Mike and Steve go to the records office to look at the results for the election. They discover that half of the people that voted for Governor Tracy are dead, and she has committed voter fraud. Mike takes Steve captive with a pistol to get everyone’s attention and makes his way to the podium for Governor Tracy’s victory speech to alert everyone of her fraud when the police begin to make their way towards Mike. As they do, Drake shows up with an RPG and points it at the crowd, demanding Mike be allowed to speak, telling everyone about Governor Tracy’s crimes.  

What’s good? Honestly, it’s not that good of a movie. As much as I love Chris Farley, and I want to see him do well, it’s just not a good film. He’s a funny physical comedian. One of the best. But he’s only really good in short doses. A full-length feature film kind of overdoes it. 

What’s bad? It’s uninspired. It’s boring. It’s slapstick in a movie that isn’t trying to be slapstick. It’s poor writing on top of that. It’s everything that’s done wrong, is almost done wrong-er… 

The acting? They’re not great actors. They do their lines. The acting gets done. It’s a Hollywood movie. But Hollywood makes lots of movies, you know? They all do their lines too… 

The effects? You can practically tell that’s a model boulder rolling down a hill. You can almost tell that’s a model cabin that it’s hitting. The effects aren’t great. I know it’s 1996. But, come on. They were doing better than that in 1996… 

Why did the head keep spinning? Why did Al’s head keep spinning as Mike was driving the truck? Like it was on some sort of perpetual motion machine? It had to have a motor running it to spin that many times. 

Why were the dogs following him in the first place? Where did all those dogs come from in the first place? They never gave an explanation for those dogs. It just started with all those dogs following that truck.  

His brother seems awfully forgiving. His brother really seems to not care about him screwing up his campaign for Governor like that. I mean, even in the least. He was just like “don’t worry about it… Not a problem…” 

Is Steve just gonna leave his car in the middle of the street? Does Steve just leave his car in the middle of the street? He doesn’t really get his car stolen. He abandons it. It really is his fault. It’s not like he got jacked or anything. He just up and left.  

You would think that hood would have cut his thumbs off. You would think slamming a car hood down on your thumbs like that would cut your thumbs off. But apparently not. He seemed to take it like a G. 

He promised to stay in the car five seconds ago. He literally promised to stay in the car no less than five seconds ago and he immediately got up and went over to those kids.  

The tree looked completely full. That tree was almost completely full. Why would it fall in the first place? No less fall in a certain direction? She was practically chopping at a completely healthy tree. I don’t know who she thought she was.  

Why did they have to burn the rec center down? He was already fired for drinking with those kids. And he’s a bumbling idiot. Wouldn’t it be better to just let him stay there? Why burn the place down? 

It’s clearly a bat. I mean, I know what a bat looks like. I’ve seen a bat before. They’ve never seen a bat before? He even makes an Ozzy joke about it. He clearly knows what it is. How can you make a joke about it at one point and not know what it is 30 seconds beforehand? That doesn’t make any sense.  

Why would he think standing on the edge would help? Why did he think standing on the edge of the boulder would help him get better reception? That’s not a good idea. That, in fact, seems like a really bad idea. 

Where did he find that rope swing? Where did that rope swing come from? And then, they don’t even mention it afterwards. He just jumps into the water, and that’s the end of the scene. Nothing about the rope swing. No dialogue, no nothing. Moving on… 

You would think a rock that big would do more damage. It seems a boulder that big would do a whole lot more damage to a small wooden shack like that. The boulder was almost half the size of the shack. That shack seemed to stand up pretty well to a rolling pile of rock with a whole lot of momentum, coming down a mountain.  

Where did he find those playboys? Where did those playboys come from, anyways? Was he hoarding porn with him? Does Steve just carry porn magazines around with him? That seems kind of weird. 

Did he just leave Steve in that cabin? Mike had no compunction about leaving Steve alone in the cabin as he left for Seattle. The destroyed cabin with no roof on it. Mike didn’t really seem to care at all as he took the only means of transportation and left him there. 

What’s the point of asking Mike to promise anything? Why ask Mike to promise anything? He always immediately does the opposite of whatever you ask him.  

Governor Tracy putting her staff up to it doesn’t clear them. Governor Tracy putting her staff up to election fraud doesn’t clear her staff of doing it. They’re still legally responsible for election fraud. It’s still a federal crime. I don’t know what he’s laughing about. They’re all going to jail. Maybe it’s just funny that she is too? I don’t know. 

So, no. I wouldn’t waste my time on this one. I know I usually say “yeah” just to say you’ve seen it. But it’s not even worth seeing just for that. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…