Awesomely Horrible Netflix Instant Films: Coneheads

There is no denying that one of the funniest eras in Saturday Night Live's 38 years of mostly unfunny years was from 1976-1979. That's when the likes of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Bill Murray created a bevy of memorable characters. One of the first breakout SNL characters were the Coneheads. Basically, they were aliens plays by Aykroyd and Jane Curtin with...well...cone shaped heads. The sketches were very popular in the seventies but for some reason Lorne Michaels thought it would be a good idea to dust off the old Conehead prosthesis in the 90's and make a Conehead movie. The result was kind of a mess.

The movie begins by telling the origin story of the Coneheads. Beldar and Primat Conehead are coming to subjugate the Earth from the planet Remulak when they crash their spaceship near Paramus, NJ. Stranded on Earth they have to try and blend in with everyone else. Beldar takes a job as a driving instructor and Primat works as a homemaker. They have a daughter named Connie who just wants to be, like, a regular teen. Things get complicated when emissaries from Remulak come to bring the Coneheads back home to answer why they didn't take over the Earth. It's then that they realize that Paramus is their real home and they want to go back. That's the most unbelievable part of the movie.

What's odd is that of all the possible SNL movie franchises that Lorne Michaels could have chosen, he went back twenty years to find one. Surely, a more contemporary sketch could have resulted in a better movie. Then again, he tried that with The Ladies Man and see how that turned out. Still, the movie has a few funny moments and cameos by Phil Hartman, Chris Farley, and Dave Thomas. It's worth a watch for the arena fight scene below.