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So, after finishing school in the amount of time it takes most people to get a PhD, Tommy is free to return home and help run his father's (Brian Dennehy) successful auto parts business. Things start out well. Tommy gets his own office, and a personal assistant in the form of Richard (Spade), an old high school frenemy and his father’s right hand man. On top of that, Tommy discovers that his father is engaged to Bo Derek, and Rob Lowe is his new half brother. Business is booming, old relationships are rekindled, and Tommy makes a really soft landing for a guy who can point to a D+ as the pinnacle of his academic achievement.

So of course, Tommy’s father drops dead at his wedding. I guess if I woke up tomorrow and found out that Bo Derek was my wife and Rob Lowe was my son, I could die happy too. Unfortunately I’ll never be as lucky as the elder Callahan, whose sudden passing leaves his business in dire straits. A huge business deal is left up in the air, and the future of the company - and the small town that depends on it - is in jeopardy. Naturally, it’s up to Tommy (whose IQ is only slightly higher than his inseam) and Richard (who’s super intelligent but less pleasant than a bull terrier in a room full of bees) to make the big sale and save the day.

Meanwhile, Tommy’s his devious new half brother is busy looking for a payday.

Basically, this is a road trip movie about Chris Farley learning to reel in the spaz and use his natural abilities for good, and David Spade learning to let go of all that bitterness and learn to trust again. They’re both perfectly cast - or more accurately, they’re both an ideal fit for roles that were specifically written for them. The same goes for Lowe, who frequently popped up in screwball comedies as a generic '90s pretty boy villain - which cheekbones so sharp you could cut cheese with them.

Damn that beautiful man.

And there you have it, pretty much. Two schlubs take off on a road trip to save the company, they fight, they bond, they hit a deer, things get peed on, a few fires break out, and eventually they learn a valuable lesson about friendship and teamwork. The humor is entirely pedestrian, relying on the comic ability of the actors to sell it - and for the most part, they do. If someone had asked me to write a paint by numbers buddy comedy for a pair of SNL alumni, this is the movie I would write, and I would make sure to throw Dan Aykroyd a bone for good measure. The problem here is the same one that plagues most SNL based films. That means this is NOT a film so much as it is a series of puerile sight gags and half baked one liners that only Lorne Michaels thought were funny.

I suppose I’d rate Tommy Boy a solid six out of 10 on a comedy scale where 10 is Airplane and zero is anything starring Tom Green. It’s the kind of movie you could watch out of nostalgia, or if you were confined to a hospital bed or stuck on a two hour layover and it was the only thing you had on your iPad - and not feel guilty. It is NOT the kind of life affirming comedy that makes you appreciate a blooming rose (Ghostbusters) or rethink your decision to fling yourself from the Empire State Building (that would be The Blues Brothers). However, I will say that Spade and Farley aren’t the ones who should have gone on to make Black Sheep (no one should have the power to do something like that). For the short time he’s onscreen, Brian Dennehy just kills it as Farley’s dad. The longer I watched them mug together the more I wondered if they really weren’t related. I’d have paid real money to see a prequel.

Alas, that can never be. But sometimes a moderately funny flick is all the boost you need, even if it is only six laughs out of 10. Then again, the new TV that was supposed to make me feel better immediately showed me an ad for a larger, better TV when I turned it on. It created an irony vortex so powerful that it almost imploded my house like the end of Poltergeist. But for a little while, as the tail end of one of my worst years in recent memory, it was enough. It was enough to convince me that maybe - MAYBE everything will be okay.

Unless Bono was right, which he’s not, because screw Bono.

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