Tommy Boy: Holy Schnike Edition

So it's come to this: a bland, hostile, style-deficient laugher called Tommy Boy has become not only popular but beloved to the point of justifying a two-disc special edition ten years after the fact. If you ask me how this movie made the endurance grade, I'll have no recourse but to shrug. We've seen the fat-dumb-slob-makes-a-fool-of-himself angle (personified here by Chris Farley as the dim progeny of an auto parts magnate), the foul-play-threatens-small-town-industry approach (a buyout threatens the company after papa dies of a heart attack), and the odd-couple-learns-to-respect-each-other slant (Farley teams with the obnoxious David Spade to save the company). But there's no real reason why this above all other lovable slob comedies should stand the test of time. Perhaps it's the bizarre schizophrenia regarding Farley's character: the film wants you to love and feel superior to him, slapping him down with demeaning insults and then tousling his hair and saying "whatta character" as if that made everything okay. There are times you want to smack everyone involved for jumping on Farley's self-degrading bandwagon as if it were a perfectly fine way to make a living, but that still doesn't explain its success to any appreciable degree. Director Peter Segal's commentary proves him to be a bright, happy sort who revels in every creaky plot twist and reveals that Paramount head Sherry Lansing actually cried (!) at the end of the movie. Four featurettes include an insanely thorough "making of," a somewhat shorter discussion of improv and chance in shaping the jokes, the unseemly chemistry between Farley and Spade, and the semi-sociopathic youth of Farley and his brothers. Six deleted scenes, six alternate takes, 15 extended scenes, seven storyboard comparisons, an incredible 19 TV spots, a gag reel, and a photo gallery round out the package. (Paramount)