Almost Heroes

This genius wee comedy received its obligatory wee drubbing from the critics, whose cyberwits and paper wits haven’t an ounce of its humor.

Let us endow them with a good joke. On the advice of an Indian woman, Chris Farley is climbing a tree to obtain an eagle’s egg. A long shot shows the stunt man a hundred feet in the air amid the branches like Harold Lloyd. At the nest, Farley is attacked, and plummets. The stunt man is seen falling, and there is a POV shot. At his campsite, Farley’s stomach is rumbling, so he fries the egg. “Good God,” he says, back up at the nest. Returned with a second egg, he kills a wild beast and fries its bacon, then the egg. Feistily, he takes on the eagle one last time. The punchline will not be divulged here.

Matthew Perry has been ribbed. Many an actor eats sheep dung on television for the plum pudding you get there nowadays, and it ought not to be held against them.

Altogether a touching sight, the Indian villages along the river these dogged competitors of Lewis & Clark travel upon. It’s like F Troop.