Airheads (1994)
Directed by Michael Lehmann
The Lone Rangers have heavy-metal dreams and a single demo tape they can't get anyone to play. The solution: Hijack an FM rock radio station and hold the deejays hostage until they agree to broadcast the band's tape.
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What critics compared Airheads to
At worst, it suggests a 21st-century reboot of the justifiably forgotten 1994 comedy Airheads, which took a similar premise in a much less satirical direction.
2 1/2 Stars (out of 4) Tweet It Was Really Nothing By Jeffrey M. Anderson Taking a cue from Airheads (1994), wherein a heavy metal band forcibly occupied a radio station in order to get their music played, Shoplifters of the World, set in 1987, does something similar for The Smiths.
Yes, this is basically 1994 radio-station-held-hostage comedy Airheads redux, without acknowledgement, or Adam Sandler, or any sense of humor, really.
Remember when everyone wondered why on earth Universal would let Chazz from Airheads front a remake of a horror classic, and we ended up with Brendan Fraser's wild-ride take on The Mummy?
1994 saw the release of two other Jim Carrey films ("The Mask" and "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective") and "Airheads," so the doofus leading and scatter brained comedy formula was obviously a hot commodity back then and occasionally still successful now.
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Like "Dog Day Afternoon," "Airheads" tells the story of hostage-takers, their captives and the crowd that cavorts outside the crime scene.
An amalgam of “This is Spinal Tap” and “Dog Day Afternoon,” 1994’s comedy about an aspiring rock band is about as PG-13 as it gets.
For there to be future installments of XXX, the movie needed to distinguish itself, and Cohen’s blandness hardly assists the asinine script by Rich Wilkes (Airheads!).
Director Rob Cohen (Miami Vice, Daylight, The Fast and the Furious) and screenwriter Rich Wilkes (The Jerky Boys, Beer Money, Airheads) know their target audience and just how to target them.
But whenever the stunts stop and the story kicks in, "XXX" nose-dives into the land of lobotomized screenwriting (by "Airheads" scribe Rich Wilkes) and the movie's facade of adrenaline-cool falls to pieces.
Dumb fun, sure - and in the hands of "Airheads" writer Rich Wilkes, this is dumber than usual - but fun nonetheless.
It's too bad that the actor doesn't have a better script - from screenwriter Rich Wilkes ("The Jerky Boys," "Airheads") - or better work from Cohen ("Daylight," "Dragonheart") behind the camera.
The Dirt was directed by Jeff Tremaine (Bad Grandpa, Jackass: The Movie) and written by Tom Kapinos (Lucifer) and Amanda Adelson (Mid90s), with a screenplay by Rich Wilkes (xXx, Airheads).
Even Airheads, the 1994 comedy that spoofed Sunset Strip hard-rock culture, had a more gripping storyline and emotional arc (and certainly more laughs) than this tale of a real band that helped define that scene.
Rich Wilkes, who also penned the low-brow '90s comedies The Jerky Boys and Airheads , took a stab at the screenplay.
Lehmann made his debut with "Heathers," one of the most wickedly incisive teen-angst films of all time, and "Airheads" could have used one or two of his Heathers.
In part this is due to the delicate touch of director Michael Lehmann ("Heathers"), who never allows the film to slip into a silly mode.