Loose Shoes

While most of the film could be described as mildly amusing at best, there is a piece of filmic comedy history contained within it for the "Darktown after dark" movie trailer, that makes this film a must see for anyone who appreciates truly great comedy! I guarantee* that when you hear the mock blues song that notes the bad start to the singers day, then not only will the title of this film become clear, but you will be in a state of extreme merriment for quite sometime.

*(Please note that this guarantee is not valid anywhere within the planet called Earth.)

Most collections of comic sketches are extremely uneven. "Loose Shoes" is an exception. It is CONSISTENTLY unfunny, and all the episodes are awful. Their humor is infantile, aimed strictly at kids. Murray, who stars in just one episode, is awful,too. At 74 minutes, this excruciating "comedy" doesn't even qualify as a movie. It's just a fraud. Be warned.

Other comments will give you the skits within, but know this revue movie comes from the late 70s when THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT spawned spoof imitators like THAT'S ADEQUATE! ....KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE and finally LOOSE SHOES, here to mop up the threads of the compilation genre. Most skits run too long... and I guess, loose, thus allowing the title to cover the unedited feel to most of the sorta funny and occasionally tedious skits. but.... it is worth getting to the end to discover possibly the funniest movie skit of all time: "Darktown After Dark", a parody of Negro nightclub musicals as seen available on other classic DVD titles like Killer Diller or Boardinghouse Blues. You can almost skip through the previous 75 minutes then spend another 75 minutes screaming with laughter as you play this one musical skit over and over until you collapse. Then take great delight in showing this bit to everyone you know over the age of 18. Somehow Mel Brooks missed inventing this sequence so it is here instead.

Every previous review has stated something I agree with and maybe something I DISagree with. For example, this doesn't come close in laughs to Kentucky Fried Movie which I consider the benchmark for this type of parody movie.

I do believe that some of the segments (I don't know, is SKIT really the right word?) do go on a little past where they should. Even long trailers tend to end before these and we've all see via the internet and TV skit shows that a parody trailer can be hysterically funny and remain at the usual trailer length. There's some fantastic stuff here and some that do fall a bit flat but all in all, if you are a fan, even just a bit, of the genre, this is a must see, if for not other reason, it's a history lesson of what was, back in the day. If you don't enjoy it, really, what did you lose?

I saw Loose Shoes featuring Bill Murray when it first came out (1980) and enjoyed it, but filed it under the same satiric label as Kentucky Fried Movie and Groove Tube also from that era, and forgot about it.

But I saw it recently, and suddenly realized that over a dozen modern movies (as well as TV shows) totally did RIP-OFFS of the many parody plots from this flick! The writers of this thing turned out to be total psychic geniuses when it came to future entertainment! For instance:

Does a talking pig from the farm going to the big city, like Babe sound familiar? And a bio on Howard Hughes, like Aviator? And Skateboarders From Hell, ala the recent skateboard flick Doggtown And Z Boy? Or how about a western slant to the Wizard Of Oz, like that recent Richard Dreyfus thing? And a Space Odyssey spoof, like the later Space Idiocy starring Leslie Neilsen, plus a Star Wars take-off like the later Spaceballs by Mel Brooks. Add to that a raunchy sequel to the Bad News Bears, like the recent... raunchy sequel to the Bad News Bears, starring Billy Bob Thornton. And the list goes on and on!