Beldar’s ambition allows his family to move to the suburbs, where they try to cover for their unusual appearance and behavior by claiming to come from France. As such, he earns the respect of the fellow strivers he meets in New York’s Black and south Asian communities. He’s incredibly hard-working, efficient and uncomplaining. Meanwhile, Beldar Conehead presents the most empathic portrayal of the immigrant imaginable. In fact, the INS agent in the film does Trump one better by proposing an electrified fence at the southern border primed to zap anyone who tries to enter the country. (Only later does he discover that they are literal aliens.) The film’s immigration theme reflected the scriptwriters’ critique of the policies of then president Reagan, an attitude that would turn apoplectic were it to be updated to the days of Donald Trump. The movie’s plot centers on two absurdities – the Coneheads’ attempts to integrate themselves into society and the machinations of a zealous immigration agent who wants to expel them as illegal aliens. As religious digs go, that’s right up there with Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
Noticing the Bible in the drawer, Mrs Conehead starts reading, which instantly sends her into uncontrollable fits of laughter.
In an early scene, lead aliens Beldar and Prymaat Conehead (stupendously played by Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin) crash-land their space vehicle in Jersey City where they soon check into a local motel. Coneheads asked more, challenging a host of our most basic assumptions, including our notions of beauty, our approach to “otherness”, our attachment to the American dream, as well as our most common expressions of prejudice.įrom its start, the film took on big targets. Both earlier films sent up character types we all know well – the suburban stoner teenagers in Wayne and the soul-music-loving baby boomers in The Blues Brothers. True, Coneheads was a harder sell than either Wayne’s World or The Blues Brothers.
#CONEHEADS FULL MOVIE MOVIESHARE TV#
Far from a stretched-out exploitation of a TV bit, or an air-headed comedy, Coneheads had a socio-political resonance and a verbal inventiveness that, apparently, sailed right over the heads of what its title characters would call “the blunt skulls” (ie human beings). That’s a baffling response considering the depth of the film’s themes, the variety of its subtexts and, crucially, the laugh-out-loud hilarity of its script. Small wonder Coneheads lost money in the US and wasn’t even released internationally in its day. Roger Ebert went in a more alliterative direction, calling it “dismal, dreary and desperate”. The reviews compiled by Rotten Tomatoes summed up the screen version of these charming intergalactic creatures as “listless, crude and uninspired”. Things didn’t quite work out that way for the film adaptation of SNL’s pointy-headed aliens.
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