Black Sheep (1996)

Made simply because 'Tommy Boy' was an unexpected success, clearly somewhat rushed and not fully thought through. I have read that Paramount just wanted to team Spade and Farley together again asap, so we have this blunt comedy.

The idea isn't too bad, its all about a political campaign battle between the brother of Farley's character and the wholesome all American 'Evelyn Tracy' played by Christine Ebersole. As you can guess Farley's character is a clumsy embarrassment to his brother (played by Tim Matheson) and inadvertently causes all manner of horrendous goofs whilst in the public eye. This of course puts his brothers campaign in jeopardy of which his rival tries to take full advantage of.

Same old Farley I'm afraid which isn't too bad if you like the guy. I have said before and I'll say again I do like his antics, he is a funny fella and his films are nice feel good films where you can forget about any troubles you have. I also like how he tends to play the everyday man, regular Joe's, makes you connect with him that bit more.

Despite liking Farley this film does feel very forced with very little to show. The laughs are few and far between and what we do get is light at best. There are whole segments in the film where nothing really happens, the sequence where the pair find a bat in their wood cabin and spend almost ten minutes of the film dealing with it. There is a lot of lame filler which really has nothing to do with the plot, its just there to try and gain a laugh whilst padding out the film, or so it seems.

Even as a Farley fan I found it hard to enjoy this, there really doesn't seem to be any point to Farley and Spade being together here and half of what happens is irrelevant. I can't complain too much because this is obviously a dumb comedy, its not suppose to be anything else, but even so it feels very cheap and half hearted. In the end it really does feel like the two leads were simply thrown together for a fast money spinner off the back of a much better earlier comedy.



5/10