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Kingpin

1996, Movie, PG-13, 113 mins

Kingpin: Review

This gross-out comedy about bowling is brought to you by the producer/director team responsible for DUMB & DUMBER. For many of you, that may be the bad news. For the rest, we're sorry to report that Woody Harrelson is no Jim Carrey. Sure, Harrelson is convincing as alcoholic, one-handed, white trash failure Roy Munson, who coulda been a contenda but saw his dreams of professional bowling mangled by a close encounter with a ball return machine. Problem is, Woody's actually too convincing to be funny as, together with Amish innocent Ishmael (Randy Quaid) and obligatory babe Claudia (Vanessa Angel), he takes off on a road trip to Reno. What happens there? Munson must face The Man Who Ruined His Life: pro bowler Ernie McCracken (Bill Murray), a hustler so oleaginous you could grease every bodybuilder on Muscle Beach with less than one square foot of his oily epidermis. Unlike the gleefully anarchic DUMB AND DUMBER, this lowbrow romp doesn't even have the courage of its own infantile grossness. After an hour and a half of milking laughs from such sights as Harrelson drinking a bucket of bull spunk and a bikini-clad Randy Quaid dancing dirty in Stiffey's strip club, it tries to wrap things up in a warm-'n'-fuzzy moral about doing your personal best and being true to your own heart.