Cabin Boy is one bizarro seafaring adventure. Starring Chris Elliott as the titular Cabin Boy, the 'fancy lad', having graduated from his boarding school, leaves to return home by ship, only to accidentally wind up on a fishing boat instead. There he meets a merry band of actually not-so-merry seamen. He convinces the dimmest of the crew, beloved Conan sidekick and controller of the universe Andy Richter, to steer the ship off course so that he can get off at the port of "Hawaee". Instead the ship gets sucked into Hell's Bucket, a Bermuda Triangle analog, where all manners of the fantastical reside. And talk about fantastical! You've got a half-man/half-shark hybrid, humanoid iceberg brawlers, a Shiva/Durga mashup that Fucks Hard and even clouds with faces on them!
David Letterman is here in what appears to be one of two roles where he's NOT playing himself, the other being Butt-head's presumed Father in the Do America movie, and for the extremely brief moment he's on screen boy howdy is he chewing the scenery. Some other surprise cameos (or I guess just surprise roles, some of these are downright supporting performances) include Alfred Molina, Brian Doyle-Murray, and the always incredible always on my mind top 5 greatest character actor Brion James, who's doing what he does best.
But enough about the surrounding performances, how's Chris Elliott faring? Uhhhhhhh. He's fine. He's doing his usual schtick, the oblivious asshole type. It's like he took his character in Get A Life (by the way, how the fuck does that series even exist???), but turned up the obnoxiousness to 11. It works for the most part as a means for everyone around him to give him shit (this 'fancy lad' is a real piece of work) but man is it grating at times to watch unfold. Like I said, he's a douchebag for the sole purpose of having everyone rag on him to make me laugh with their disdain for the Cabin Boy.
I've never been a huge fan of Elliott in the first place. I've seen one episode of Schitt's Creek and, despite my love for Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara, I couldn't push on. I know people love him on there but... ehhhh. However, the few episodes of Get A Life that I have seen... what the fuck? How did a sitcom that irreverent and dark get put on TV in the '90s? And talk about a who's who behind the scenes! Adam Resnick (not to be confused with writer Adam Rifkin, the guy behind cult comedies Mousehunt, Small Soldiers and the disgusting filthworld The Dark Backward, nor fictional writer Adam RAFKIN of Action fame (edgiest TV show ever potentially???)), director of this little film here, first collaborated with Elliott on the Letterman Show, before breaking off to do Get A Life. The two lead the charge alongside soon to be Simpsons showrunner David Mirkin. Two other writers on staff, Charlie Kaufman and Bob Odenkirk, have struggled to hit it big since Get A Life stopped airing in 1992.
Anyway I'm getting severely off-topic here. Cabin Boy, you know, that movie I just watched, is pretty good to be honest. The production design, despite being confined to a couple sets, is audacious in its presentation. Equal parts vibrant, colourful, and beautifully hypnagogic, there's a genuine sense of surrealism felt throughout, and not just in the comedy. There's a sequence midway through the film where our 'fancy lad' goes out on a solo week-long raft adventure to prove his worth to the seamen. The colours in this scene as he slowly loses his mind is a visual feast. I need to swim here. This is the Tim Burton effect.
Oh yeah did I mention that Timmy B produced this thang? After catching a couple episodes of Get A Life, Burton contacted Elliott to work on something, as he craved "a return to his whimsical roots... ala Pee-wee's Big Adventure." What he got was Elliott and Resnick's Cabin Boy, which he originally wanted to direct but turned down after being offered Ed Wood. Instead, he put up a producer credit, and recommended that Resnick, who up until that point had only seen the inside of a writer's room, direct this. And for a man who had never directed a thing in his life, he did a pretty damn fine job here.
Is this box office failure with a whopping 21% of Metacritic actively worth seeking out? Yes! Yes I think it is! It's not consistently funny, but it's always worth watching a film that is fucking with producer money and shouldn't really exist. This clearly should fail on all fronts, but miraculously succeeds as a piece of borderline anti-studio filmmaking. I wouldn't say it's exactly as bold and daring as Freddy Got Fingered, but it's just unique, bizarre, and out-there enough that it deserves its cult status as a gem of the '90s alternative comedy renaissance.
Cabin Boy is one bizarro seafaring adventure. Starring Chris Elliott as the titular Cabin Boy, the 'fancy lad', having graduated from his boarding school, leaves to return home by ship, only to accidentally wind up on a fishing boat instead. There he meets a merry band of actually not-so-merry seamen. He convinces the dimmest of the crew, beloved Conan sidekick and controller of the universe Andy Richter, to steer the ship off course so that he can get off at the port of "Hawaee". Instead the ship gets sucked into Hell's Bucket, a Bermuda Triangle analog, where all manners of the fantastical reside. And talk about fantastical! You've got a half-man/half-shark hybrid, humanoid iceberg brawlers, a Shiva/Durga mashup that Fucks Hard and even clouds with faces on them!
David Letterman is here in what appears to be one of two roles where he's NOT playing himself, the other being Butt-head's presumed Father in the Do America movie, and for the extremely brief moment he's on screen boy howdy is he chewing the scenery. Some other surprise cameos (or I guess just surprise roles, some of these are downright supporting performances) include Alfred Molina, Brian Doyle-Murray, and the always incredible always on my mind top 5 greatest character actor Brion James, who's doing what he does best.
But enough about the surrounding performances, how's Chris Elliott faring? Uhhhhhhh. He's fine. He's doing his usual schtick, the oblivious asshole type. It's like he took his character in Get A Life (by the way, how the fuck does that series even exist???), but turned up the obnoxiousness to 11. It works for the most part as a means for everyone around him to give him shit (this 'fancy lad' is a real piece of work) but man is it grating at times to watch unfold. Like I said, he's a douchebag for the sole purpose of having everyone rag on him to make me laugh with their disdain for the Cabin Boy.
I've never been a huge fan of Elliott in the first place. I've seen one episode of Schitt's Creek and, despite my love for Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara, I couldn't push on. I know people love him on there but... ehhhh. However, the few episodes of Get A Life that I have seen... what the fuck? How did a sitcom that irreverent and dark get put on TV in the '90s? And talk about a who's who behind the scenes! Adam Resnick (not to be confused with writer Adam Rifkin, the guy behind cult comedies Mousehunt, Small Soldiers and the disgusting filthworld The Dark Backward, nor fictional writer Adam RAFKIN of Action fame (edgiest TV show ever potentially???)), director of this little film here, first collaborated with Elliott on the Letterman Show, before breaking off to do Get A Life. The two lead the charge alongside soon to be Simpsons showrunner David Mirkin. Two other writers on staff, Charlie Kaufman and Bob Odenkirk, have struggled to hit it big since Get A Life stopped airing in 1992.
Anyway I'm getting severely off-topic here. Cabin Boy, you know, that movie I just watched, is pretty good to be honest. The production design, despite being confined to a couple sets, is audacious in its presentation. Equal parts vibrant, colourful, and beautifully hypnagogic, there's a genuine sense of surrealism felt throughout, and not just in the comedy. There's a sequence midway through the film where our 'fancy lad' goes out on a solo week-long raft adventure to prove his worth to the seamen. The colours in this scene as he slowly loses his mind is a visual feast. I need to swim here. This is the Tim Burton effect.
Oh yeah did I mention that Timmy B produced this thang? After catching a couple episodes of Get A Life, Burton contacted Elliott to work on something, as he craved "a return to his whimsical roots... ala Pee-wee's Big Adventure." What he got was Elliott and Resnick's Cabin Boy, which he originally wanted to direct but turned down after being offered Ed Wood. Instead, he put up a producer credit, and recommended that Resnick, who up until that point had only seen the inside of a writer's room, direct this. And for a man who had never directed a thing in his life, he did a pretty damn fine job here.
Is this box office failure with a whopping 21% of Metacritic actively worth seeking out? Yes! Yes I think it is! It's not consistently funny, but it's always worth watching a film that is fucking with producer money and shouldn't really exist. This clearly should fail on all fronts, but miraculously succeeds as a piece of borderline anti-studio filmmaking. I wouldn't say it's exactly as bold and daring as Freddy Got Fingered, but it's just unique, bizarre, and out-there enough that it deserves its cult status as a gem of the '90s alternative comedy renaissance.
