Strange Brew

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G'day, eh! And welcome to Here Be Spoilers! Our topic today is, uh, a movie that challenges the sensibilities of the average moviegoing consumer by confronting them with outrageously overblown stereotypes about Canadians.

Nah, we're just messin' with ya. Sunday was Jake's birthday, and to celebrate, he chose Strange Brew for the guys to watch! In it, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas give the most accurate portrayals of a couple of beer-swilling, hockey-loving, toque-wearing, donut-eating Canadians ever to explode across the screen. They play Bob and Doug McKenzie, a pair of dumb brothers who use a mouse that they put in a beer bottle to get more free beer from a brewery.

Hey, Doug! They're talkin' about us, eh!

Along the way, they meet Pam Elsinore (Lynne Griffin) daughter of the brewery's recently deceased founder, and heiress to the business, unless, of course, the evil Brewmeister Smith (Max von Sydow) and Pam's uncle Claude (Paul Dooley) get their way.

Claud married Pam's mother, Gertrude (Jill Frappier), the day after her husband's funeral, in order to gain control of the brewery so that Smith can continue his experiments with mind control, which involves chemicals in the beer.

And it will still taste better than Bud Ice!

Bob and Doug, however, cause complications when, after saving Pam from electrocution, she gives them jobs, and they start poking around, completely unaware that they are doing anything wrong. They make friends with the lunatics at the nuthouse next door (most of whom work at the brewery as hockey players...This is never properly explained), including former professional hockey player Jean "Rosy" LaRose (Angus MacInnes), who immediately falls for Pan and her 80s hair the instant he sees her.

Smith and Claude formulate a plan to take Bob and Doug out of the picture by framing them for kidnapping Pam and Henry (Douglas Campbell), Pam's advisor and head of the factory. All goes well, and Bob and Doug end up going on trial and being put in the asylum, where they spend quality time together steamrolling each other (it's exactly what it sounds like) and taking turns trying out the electroshock machine.

And, as noted previously, playing hockey, Star Wars-style.

When Pam's dead father leads her and Henry to proof that Claude and Smith were responsible for his death, Bob and Doug are released from the looney bin and tasked with stopping a shipment of beer to the Oktoberfest celebration nearby.

They choose to enlist their dog, Hosehead, to save the day, sending him flying (literally) to the celebration to stop the beer from being distributed.

Their dog training techniques are...unconventional.

Will Hosehead make it in time to stop Smith and Claude's plan to rule the world--or at least that part of Ontario, Canada--with beer? Will Pam maintain control of the Elsinore Brewery? Could Max von Sydow's mouth possibly be any wider? Will Bob and Doug get free beer that is untainted not only by mind control drugs, but also urine? Will we, the viewers, ever manage to get the vision of Bob and Doug's parents having old people sex out of our brains?
You'll have to tune in to find out!

There's also a painfully long list of dead celebrities in The Lobby, a lot of movies Coming Soon, a twist on Larry's List, celebrity birthdays and deaths are the topic of Jake-ing Off, and there's a very long conversation about The X-files to celebrate the return of the show Inside My Head!

So grab some crullers, open up a two-four, put on your toque, and take off, eh!