Funny Farm

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.

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.

Not only one of the funniest Chevy Chase films, but one of the funniest comedies of the 80s in general. I don't get all the negatives posted here--this movie is laugh-out-loud funny and very underrated. The townspeople are hilarious and the whole sequence at the end where Chevy and his wife are paying people to be on their best behavior, creating a "Norman Rockwell" portrait of small-town life so they can sell their house, is among the most inspired and funny sequences ever. The whole battle of the sexes between Chevy and wife Madolyn Smith (whatever happened to her? she's beautiful and has great comic timing) when she's successful writing a children's book, while he can't get his crime novel off the ground, is more classic material. Goodness knows Chase didn't get very many chances to shine--besides Caddyshack and the original Vacation, this is probably his best work.

Now, admittedly, I saw this during a period of my life when I believed Chevy Chase could do no wrong but even so, this is one that holds up, and was unfairly lambasted by the critics. From the ads (if you can even remember that far back!) this looked like it was just going to be a "Vacation" rip-off, sort of "The Griswolds Move To the Country." Believe me, the humor in this film is much slyer and more charming than anything in the Vacation pictures (of which the first one was solid, the next two lame). The film is about a sportswriter (Chase) who quits his job in order to move out to the country with his wife (the wonderful Madolyn Smith) and write the Great American Novel. The movie details his gradual come uppance, as he realizes that neither country living nor his talent is all that it's cracked up to be.

The film wonderfully skews the convention of the innocent country rubes moving to the big city and being overwhelmed by its meanness and craziness. Here, it's the cityfolk who move wide-eyed to the country - and are amazed to find there a roll call of crazies, misanthropes, and just plain wierdos. Does this view of country life have any basis in reality? Probably not, but then the film isn't really trying to be a satire but instead a pure lunatic comic fantasy. And it gives us a rich array of supporting characters - from the town sheriff who hasn't yet passed his driving test and so must ride around in cabs, to the owner of an antiques store whose merchandise are all personal. All these characters are priceless, and the film just keeps coming up with more and more of them - until it has created this pleasantly bizarre and warped Otherworld, of a kind that only comedy can truly provide.

Best of all is the way in which Chase and Smith react to all of this and try to make some sense of it. I very clearly say "Chase and Smith" because the film belongs equally to both of them. It had to be billed as a Chevy Chase Comedy, of course, since he's the big star here, but this is no star trip; from the very first, the wife is made an equal partner in the trials and the laughs, and it's the way the two go through their new life together that provides much of the comedy. It also helps take the edge off of the usual Chevy Chase persona: in Funny Farm he's neither glib and disinterested (as in the Fletch movies) nor over the top silly (like in the Vacation movies). He comes across instead like a normal, personable guy who just finds himself caught in insane circumstances.

Finally, the climactic sequence of the film is absolutely priceless - one of the most brilliantly sustained comic set-pieces you'll see in any movie, of any era. Funny Farm is the type of movie which gives you a great time and leaves you with a big, dopey grin on your face after it's all over. Trust me, even if you don't normally like Chevy Chase, you'll love Funny Farm.