Cabin Boy

I recently found this DVD in the bargin bin at WalMart and couldn't have been more pleased with the discovery. I first saw it in 1995 and scenes and dialouge from the movie have been stuck in my mind ever since. This movie is absolute fun with a smart and hyperbolic humor that is far removed from the flatulence jokes of most recent Hollywood junk. The movie is intentionally what it is, the acting, the jokes and the situations, the combination of which makes it artfully hilarious. This movie is in no way intended to be the best movie ever made and so those who have commented that it is the worst movie ever made have completely missed the point. The worst movies ever made are those which ascribe to and are promoted as being on a level that they fall painfully short of, a recent example being God's and Generals. One should expect painful and unique silliness from Chris Elliot, which is what the movie delievers. I agree with those who write that this movie will be better appreciated in times to come.

When I first saw this, I didn't particularly dislike, let alone vehemently dislike it like so many others did. I thought it was humorous.

I have been thinking about Cabin Boy ( I last saw it some months ago), and in a way, Chris Elliotts brand of humour was ahead of its time. As I write this, I had the idea that this is the exact reason why the Farrelly's cast him in Something About Mary. Look at the humour that has come out the last 10 years. Much of it is about idiots. Idiots doing the stupidest things, saying the stupidest things, and reveling in it. And my generation (bitter end of Gen X, very beginning of Y) grew up being stupid. What I mean is that my friends and I joke around, but by being stupid for our own amusement. We lower ourselves. WHy so many 24+ year olds love Jackass is because so many of us were like that in late 90's early 00's..

And Elliot was one of the first. Handsome Boy modeling school (Get a Life)? Gotta love it. Spewey(also Get a Life)? This isn't high comedy. It is about an un-innocent moron. No one has any love for this guy. He is a loser. How many comedies were before this about unlikable losers? The Jerk was an innocent. Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello? Always innocents.

One of Elliot's problems is that he's a bad actor. But he was onto something. Come one, it not that bad!

I have been a loyal fan of Chris Elliott since his early appearances on

Letterman. This movie is typical of what happens when Elliott is given creative control -- wry, warped humour delivered in such a deadpan manner that you

don't know whether he is laughing at himself or if he really is a simp. This movie has given me countless hours of debate with fans and non-fans, as I have only encountered one other person who enjoyed Cabin Boy. We often lament Chris

Elliott's underrated genius and dream of the day when Cabin Boy takes its

rightful place in film history as a classic. Hard to believe its already been ten years since its release and I still crack up every time I watch it. Only thing that could top it would be a sequel -- Passion of the Cabin Boy, perhaps?

A reviewer below compared Chris Elliot to Andy Kaufman, and I don't think he knew how close that analogy really fits. Elliot is like Kaufman in alot of ways. Some people never really understood Kaufman's peculiar brand of performance, and from the looks of the reviews below, there are plenty of people who don't get Elliot. It was not always the *content* of Kaufman's performance that made you laugh, it was the fact that he was doing it in the first place. For those that saw "Man on the Moon", think about the Gatsby reading. It wasn't funny for an audience member at that Kaufman appearance to hear all of Gatsby being read, even LONG after the joke of doing it wore out. But paradoxically, if he hadn't done so it wouldn't have been as funny. What's funny is that he had the gumption to go ahead and finish the entire work, regardless of what the effect on his audience was.

Likewise, not everything that Elliot does is gut-busting hilarious. For those of us who like his work, it's the absurdity of what he did that counts. If you've seen Elliots short-lived TV series "Get a Life", than the perversely surrealistic scenery of "Cabin Boy" makes more sense. It's supposed to make the viewer feel like there is no normalcy to be found. I'm not claiming this was some great artistic acheivement, it's simply a good way to facilitate Elliot's brand of comedy. There was no comfortable, sane baseline in "Get a Life" to which characters could return, not even a basic continuity of plot between episodes (such as what characters are still alive.) Likewise, "Cabin Boy" is simply a string of absurd situations that when taken separately are not really "hilarious" in that sense. But taken as a totality, a fan of Elliot's humor appreciates the quirky nature of the film as a whole.

I say this not to convince those who don't like Elliot, only to justify the opinions of those of us who do in the face of people who simply write this film off as "horrible." In terms of quality, the TV series was Elliot's best work, but this film definitely has some appeal to some people. There really is a "cult" sort of following for this film, becuase some of us are sick of the cookie-cutter comedies that get churned out these days.

Films are so much better today than anything made more than twenty years ago, especially comedies. This is one of the funniest films ever made. Just compare this film to anything that Jack Oakie was in and I think I can prove my point. Up until Cabin Boy I would have guessed no film could have been made to beat the comedy classic Meatballs 3, but as much as I adore that film, Cabin Boy surpasses it. If you like Meatballs 3 definately see Cabin Boy. If you don't like Meatballs 3, see Cabin Boy anyway because it is a funnier film. If you haven't seen Meatballs 3, skip it and watch Cabin Boy, it's a funnier film. Fans of Cabin Boys will tend to be younger and intelligent and critics will tend to be older and dumber. David Letterman does a cameo, but it's not very funny...probably because he's old.