Customer Reviews

Encino Man [VHS]

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Long before The Mummy...long before The Lord of the Rings...Brendan Fraser and Sean Astin appeared in a silly movie called Encino Man -- along with crazy perpetual teenager Pauly Shore.

And long before I grew up and got married and worried about my career, this was one of my favorite movies.

And, as I recently discovered, it still is.

Astin and Shore play Dave and Stoney, two high school kids who dig up a frozen caveman (Fraser) while trying to dig a pool in Dave's back yard (in an attempt to graduate from high school as two popular guys...guys who the girls find irresistible...guys who somehow convinced their parents that it was okay to dig a big hole behind their expensive California home). The caveman thaws, and Dave and Stoney turn him into a buff California high school student -- who, as far as anyone knows, is Linkavich (Link, short for Missing Link), an exchange student from Estonia. The plan, as Dave sees it, is to use their caveman to pick up chicks -- especially Robin, the girl of his dreams. But it all backfires when the girls start falling for Link instead...

Okay, I'll admit that this movie is unrealistic and totally ridiculous. But that's exactly why I love it. After watching it again -- for the first time in years -- I still laughed so hard that I almost fell off my chair. And I was reminded that many of the silly quotes that I still recite repeatedly originally came from this movie (and, believe me, there are plenty of great lines to choose from). Despite the fact that I've grown up (or at least grown older), I still like it as much as I did eleven years ago -- and I'm proud to say that it's the newest DVD in my collection.

it is an fantastic concept for a movie plot. just how much trouble can a frozen man from the past get in? this man is even less refined than tarzan but has a better sense of humour. if your feeling down and want a pick me up this is a must see.

This is the best movie. I'm a little partial to Pauly being from his home town, but this movie would be a favorite of mine even I wasn't. You will ROLL on the floor, whether you love him or hate him, he and Brendan Fraser and Sean Austin make a great team!

I don't need to review this movie in detail, it's a classic for me, I love it, grew up with it, etc etc. I just thought I should mention a flaw I noticed with the DVD release and that is that an entire line/joke from the movie seems to have been cut out from the DVD.

In the scene when Pauly Shore and Sean Astin are taching Link to defend himself, wrestle, karate, etc. Link picks Pauly Shore up over his shoulders, spins him around a few times and drops him hard on the floor. When this happens Pauly Shore is SUPPOSED to go "owww, my pancreas." When this movie came out and was popular that was one of the really funny and memorable lines in the movie that people would go around repeating. It helped make Pauly Shore a big star in the 90's with his Weasil Lingo. However, it seems that in the DVD the "owww, my pancreas" was just taken out of the film entirely, not dubbed over or anything, just gone, and I can't imagine why because it wasn't vulgar or inappropriate in any way. It was just funny, and in a comedy movie those things are kind of important.

I'd be curious to know from anyone else who knows the movie well and has a copy of the DVD if that line is missing from their copy as well.

It might not seem like THAT big of a deal, but trust me, it sucks the humor right out of the scene. That line was the big pay-off of that scene, and was funny and popular enough to turn into sort of a catch phrase in the early 90's. So watching the movie and noticing that is kind of a disappointment, which is why I have to take a couple of stars away from the DVD. There is a short making-of kind of featurette from 1991 with a few of the big cast members in it, which for a fan, still makes owning the DVD worth it at a low price, along with having it in Widescreen, but if I'm being honest, when viewing the movie itself, I tend to just watch my old VHS copy, because it's 100% complete, no missing material.

Thought that people who really love this movie should know. If you're just a casual viewer, you probably won't mind this little flaw.

The idea is counterfactual, of course. No surprise. But such ideas are allowed, and this one is full of possibilities, both comic and dramatic. None of those possibilities were explored in this film.

Instead, this is a garden-variety teen flick. It pushes all the teen buttons. The caveman morphs into a California hip teen in less than two minutes, and that's the end of the caveman as such. The three boys do rock dancing, ride the roller coaster, do rock dancing, play arcade games, do rock dancing, roller coaster, rock dancing, arcade games, roller coaster, rock dancing, etc. ad nauseum. To top it off, the caveman is a pacifist who wouldn't hurt a flea, not even to defend himself. Yeah, right.

The social commentary, the psychological insights that could have been evoked by a clever development of this idea! The truly comic situations that the caveman could have gotten into! It's time someone made a grownup movie starting from this idea.

The people who made this film clearly didn't know what to do with this splendid idea. Or, to use a word they would likely understand, they were clueless.

Dave and Stoney, two high school geeks, dig up a cave man in Dave's back yard. Played by Brendan Frazier, 'Link', as they call him goes to school and does normal '90's stuff. Eventually, the truth is revealed about him, and people like him even more! A classic movie, with classic quotes, and two hilarious scenes in a row. The scene at the Food Mart, followed by the scene at Magic Mountain.

I find it hard to put a movie down that gives you some real good laughs and this movie does have it's moments. It's so unfathomable in it's plot, but that's what makes it a good escapism movie. The three leads (ASTIN, SHORE AND FRASER) are all aptly cast in their roles. Fraser plays the caveman (a little too convincingly), Shore is always good as the [silly] side-kick (but man is he good at that) and Astin..well he is so [darn] cutein this movie, who cares about his acting. ;)
If you are looking for an intelligant and profound movie watching experience, don't rent/buy this. Stick to the classics. If you want 88 minutes of silliness and nonsense, you're in the right place.

This movie was funny as hell especially when he described the basic food groups to the caveman... And you've got to love the crazy arab clerks.

This is one of my favorite movies. It stars Pauly Shore and Brendan Fraser, and what a pair they make. It all starts with David, a geek who strives throughout the school year to be that coveted thing all teenagers desire: cool. When he and his best friend Stoney (Shore) find a caveman (Fraser) covered in ice in David's backyard, they decide to thaw him out and bring him into the nineties (remember those? ;) But neither of them could predict how the caveman, named Link by the two, would react to the twentieth century. It is, in my opinion, both Shore's and Fraser's best movie. If you haven't seen it yet, by all means, go out and find it...buuuud-dy.

When we told the kids we were going to watch Encino Man, they all went "What?!" We watched it one night and they LOVED it now they all go around saying "No wheezing the juice!" Even my 6 yr old thinks it was awsome. Now my kids' friends say "Whats Encino Man?" and I tell them to ask their parents! A new generation to enjoy some of the comedy of our time!