Coneheads: A Critique

Coneheads. What a fuck-up of a film. What begins on Saturday Night Live in 1977 should most definitely stay on Saturday Night Live in 1977. It would seem Steve Barron, like his diabolical protagonists, suffered catastrophic miscommunication no more than sixteen years later. I'm hoping over those sixteen years a plethora of movie-makers forebodingly prophesied to him the fact that the movie shouldn't be made. And yet here I am, ensuring it dies another death.

From the pioneer that brought us the visionary 'Billie Jean' music video masterpiece and A-ha's 'Take On Me' alike, came the prepubescent 1990's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and three years later something so bizarrely witless, it would give something for E.T. to phone home about. The plot is this: aliens stranded on Earth attempt to immerse in human life, contribute to society, and return to Remulak through rescue. The tragedy ensues in the fact it features wonderful actor Dan Aykroyd of Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters and Chaplin fame, nigh-on decapitates his career. The 87 minutes of excretion just cannot justify the horrendously limp box office revenue of $21.3 million.

Cone-head. Noun. Cordoned off -and- evidence of the mentally unhinged, like this filmic apocalypse.

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