Strange Brew

Take Off, Eh?

It's now been long enough that "Second City TV" has passsed from collective memory. While perusing a video emporioum with a friend for something short and funny, I stumbled on Strange Brew. Looking at the cover, my friend commented that he couldn't believe two characters in a beer commercial were enough to make a movie out of. Yikes! Admittedly, I didn't really know Bob & Doug McKenzie from SCTV as much as I knew them from their Great White North album, with its delightful jokes about the metric system and Beer Hunter. When I saw Strange Brew the first time, I finally got to see what I'd been hearing, and it was great. Oddly, I know which one is hoser and which one is hosehead, but I don't remember which one is Bob and which one is Doug.

3B

Strange Brew starts much like the SCTV segment would, on the set of Great White North. We're told that the movie is filmed in "3B", three beers and it starts to look pretty good. Unfortunatetly, I watched sober this time, and without a particularly rowdy crowd. A lot of the jokes were still pretty funny, but not gutbusters like I expected. I will award major points for creativity, including a great way to survive being trapped underwater in a van.

Bardy?

Strange Brew is supposed to be loosely arranged around Hamlet. The names were the most obvious connection, but since the protagonists more closely resemble Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, I had trouble seeing further similarities. After Pam-as-Hamlet and her uncle marrying her recently- widowed mother, what else was I supposed to get? Should I go back and find a decent Hamlet, or is that really it?