Funny Farm

This movie is funny. I don't know why it has such low ratings. I like the sarcasm involved in having a married couple from the city moving out to a farm. This is a movie that I recommend to anyone who wishes to have a few laughs watching Chevy Chase and his superb timing for acting in comedies such as this one.

Chevy Chase is normally associated with the Caddyshack, Fletch and Vacation series meaning that his one-shot movies mostly fall by the wayside. Films like Spies Like Us, Nothing But Trouble and Funny Farm have went largely unseen since the advent of DVD in 1997. Neither of these movies have received widescreen releases and have been out of print for years. I was beginning to wonder what Warner had against giving them definitive releases until I discovered an HD master of Funny Farm on the PlayStation Network.

I saw it only once, when I was about 9, and remembered very little. If you're a fan of Clark Griswold then Andy Farmer isn't too far removed. Andy is a sports journalist who retires from the big city to the Redbud, Vermont hoping to enjoy and idyllic, peaceful life and finally write the great, American novel (The Big Heist). When he gets there he and his wife discover that almost everyone and everything is weirder than the last. There are giant snakes in their pond, a dead body buried in their garden, a Sheriff who can't drive, a crazy mailman and a town who basically hate them. And top of all this Andy has severe writer's block while his wife manages to churn out a successful children's novel without really trying.

With careful, measured direction from George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy, The Sting) Funny Farm, based on a novel by Jay Cronley, manages to be a little classier than Chase's usual fare. This makes the lack of a home video version even more puzzling. It has never been released on DVD in the UK, and the 1989 VHS is long gone. If you have access to the PlayStation Network then go for it. I have a funny feeling that Funny Farm and Spies Like Us will probably be released as a Warner Blu Ray Double Feature in the near future, but nothing has been announced so far.

Don't let the mistreatment of this film put you off, it lives up to it's title and is the perfect vehicle for Chevy Chase and his goofy humour.

This film has some pretty negative and ho-hum comments. I won't say it's his best, but this is still a great film for fans of Chevy Chase. There are a number of good laughs, even if the comedy isn't nonstop like today's ADHD movie-goers demand. Every so often, someone in my family will say "Cue the deer," and we still have a good chuckle every time. Just one of the all-time classic lines in a classic comedy sequence that is really the lasting mark of this film. The telephone operator scene, and all the dog scenes are just great for laughs, too. Really, this film falls into that "Saturday afternoon on USA" sort of category, like PCU and Used Cars. You wouldn't go rent it perhaps, but if it came on TV some afternoon, it's always worth a watch.

I think this is a great film that Chevy Chase did. If anyone has ever lived in a small town they can relate. The writing is great, the comedy is great, and Chevy is great. I recommend this flick to anyone that is an avid Chevy film watcher.

While watching this movie, I realized that on several levels we live in a small town not much different from the Vermont one depicted. Our tourist town is located on a Channel Island in the Pacific, but the characters couldn't be more identical to those Chevy and wife deals with in the rural town they move to for serenity and quiet. Everyone tests their resolve to live in that community, and in failing to measure up to their standards, they are treated as outsiders. Once they understand the neighborhood peculiarities, everyone becomes acquainted, then accustomed to one another. While finding a common bond and learning to fit in, there is one silly misadventure after another. There are a lot of laughs in this movie that allow a person to stand back and realize that this is how small communities conduct themselves everywhere, and is a study in human behavior. Chevy's characters rarely make anything easy, which combined with a seemingly conservative personality has become his calling card.