Wayne's World (film)
| Wayne's World | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Penelope Spheeris |
| Produced by | Hawk Koch Lorne Michaels |
| Written by | Mike Myers Bonnie Turner Terry Turner |
| Starring | Mike Myers Dana Carvey Rob Lowe Tia Carrere |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | February 14, 1992 |
| Running time | 95 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20,000,000 |
| Followed by | Wayne's World 2 |
| IMDb profile | |
Wayne's World is a 1992 comedy film starring Mike Myers as Wayne Campbell and Dana Carvey as Garth Algar, hosts of a cable access television show (called Wayne's World) from Aurora, Illinois. The movie was adapted from a popular sketch of the same name on NBC's Saturday Night Live. The film grossed US$121.6 million in its theatrical run, placing it as the eighth highest grossing film of 1992 and easily the highest grossing movie ever based on a Saturday Night Live skit. It was directed by Penelope Spheeris with Myers co-writing the script.
Wayne's World also featured Rob Lowe, Tia Carrere, and Lara Flynn Boyle. Other appearances include Brian Doyle-Murray, Robert Patrick (spoofing his role in Terminator 2: Judgment Day), Ed O'Neill, Ione Skye, Chris Farley (his first film role), Meat Loaf, and Alice Cooper.
Wayne's World received mostly positive reviews upon release and was commercially successful (unlike many Saturday Night Live-based films). It was followed by Wayne's World 2. In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Wayne's World the 41st greatest comedy film of all time. The success of the film and its sequel led a street in Draper, Utah, to be named "Wayne's World Drive." Draper is approximately 20 minutes south of Salt Lake City.
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Plot
Wayne and Garth's hobbies included playing street hockey, hanging out at Stan Mikita's doughnut shop (an in-joke on Tim Hortons, a popular Canadian fast food restaurant), avoiding Wayne's ex-girlfriend Stacy, (whom he refers to as a "psycho hose beast"), and catching hot local bands at "Gas Works", a hard rock club in Aurora. (Gas Works was also a Canadian in-joke; it was the name of a real Toronto live music nightclub in the late 1970s and early 1980s which primarily booked hard rock bands.)
The movie was filled with pop culture references and also started a few. Catch phrases like "Not!", "Party on!", Schwing, and "Excellent!" augmented the slacker language of Generation X much as Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure had done previously. The movie was also one of the most prominent films featuring a dubiously styled baby blue AMC Pacer with flames and non-matching wheels from the 1970s, which they dub the "Mirth Mobile"[1].
Wayne's World has multiple endings and antiplot (the ridicule of common plot techniques). The movie provides two "alternate" endings - a sad ending and a Scooby-Doo ending. These two endings are an alternative to the mega-happy ending.
Cultural references and trivia
- Wayne began to play Stairway to Heaven on the Stratocaster in the music store in the original theatrical release; however, the producers had not secured the rights to the song (they mistakenly believed using only the first few opening bars would be permissible) and all subsequent versions of Wayne's World have not included the beginning of the song, despite Wayne famously exclaiming "No Stairway! Denied!".
- A Wayne's World theme park attraction was built and featured at the formerly-Paramount-owned theme parks Kings Dominion and Carowinds. The Wayne's World-themed roller coaster, Hurler, remains at both parks, but the Wayne's World section of Carowinds has been rethemed Thrill Zone, and the Wayne's World section of Kings Dominion has been merged into another area of the park known as The Grove.
- The famous street hockey scene was the basis for a popular Sega handheld game. It was also referenced in the intro to the Eleven To One song "Game On." Wayne's World also had a share of video games for the existing consoles of the 16-bit era, and all versions were critically derided.
- The use of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the film propelled the song to #2 in Billboard singles charts nearly 20 years after its first release (a year earlier, it had also gone to number one in the UK for the second time after the death of Freddie Mercury). The soundtrack album reached number one in the Billboard album charts.
- The film Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle creates an Asian American parody of this sequence upon finding a tape of Wilson Phillips Hold On in the pickup they hijacked from the local miscreants, a considerably less classic rock song.
- Downtown Aurora was actually shot in downtown Covina which is in California.
- Robert Patrick appears as a cop showing Wayne a picture of a boy, asking if he's seen him, and Wayne drives away screaming. The cop then starts walking the same way Robert Patrick did as the T-1000 on Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
- The opening scenes of the film feature TV ads for Menards, the Chia Pet, The Clapper and Empire Carpets--all commonly seen on cable television in Chicagoland in the early 1990s. Also, the Victory Auto Wreckers ad ("That old car might be worth money!") is shown in Mr. Bigge's limo.
Notes
- ^ [1]Excellent! 'Wayne's World' car for sale AMC Pacer from movie, $1.2 million Shelby Mustang among items for sale by car museum. CNNMoney.com December 16, 2004 NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The 1976 AMC Pacer used in the 1992 movie "Wayne's World" is among the items to be sold by an Illinois car museum.
See also
External links
Categories
Articles with large trivia sections | American Motors | 1992 films | Buddy films | Comedy films | Cult films | American films | Fictional television | Saturday Night Live | Paramount films | English-language films