Almost Heroes is the bitter pill that was Farley's posthumous follow-up to Beverly Hills Ninja, which incidentally is one of the saddest sentences ever constructed. In it, Farley stars as Bartholomew Hunt, an oafish expedition leader struggling to beat Lewis and Clark to the Pacific Ocean but making plenty of stops along the way to punch eagles, set fire to straw sex dolls and fall down every incline on the American frontier for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Matthew Perry contributes to the hilarity as Hunt's partner, Leslie, who minces around making bug-eyed silent movie faces and flapping his meth-toothed underjaw like a Muppet in the throes of heroin withdrawal. Rounding out the supporting cast is Eugene Levy, who plays a Frenchman, and Kevin Dunn, who plays a Spanish conquistador. For some reason, both actors are using the exact same accent, which is somewhere between Pepe Le Pew and a pirate on his deathbed.
Bafflingly, Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities, is credited as one of the screenwriters on Almost Heroes, and the movie was directed by Christopher Guest, one of the people responsible for This Is Spinal Tap, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind, among other things. Wolfe is considered one of the greatest writers of the modern era, and Guest is ostensibly a man who knows the difference between solid improvisational comedy and rambling anti-humor, so I assume attaching their names to this carnival of jokeless shouting was part of some ransom task imposed on them by the Jigsaw killer, and that Farley agreed to star in it under similar circumstances. Either way, there is a finite number of times an audience can watch a fat man fall bellowing onto his face before they reward it with cold, implacable silence, and Almost Heroes discovered that number.
"We did it, everyone!"
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