Customer Reviews

National Lampoon's Gold Diggers (Unrated Edition)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

In my experience, seeing the words "National Lampoon" in any film title is a bad omen, indicating tastelessness and a dearth of actual comedy up ahead. National Lampoon's Gold Diggers manages to take the series to an all-time low - which, sadly, is no mean feat. Will Friedle and Chris Owen act as if they are auditioning for a future installment of Dumb and Dumber, and the plot suffers from a definite "ick" factor - and, sadly, those are actually the movie's strengths.

Calvin (Friedle) and Leonard (Owen) grew up together in an orphanage and are now trying to make their mark on the world as young adults. They certainly don't want to have to work for a living, so they take up a life of petty crime. They are pitiful failures at this and wind up in jail. Then, two old ladies they accosted on the street bail them out and invite them for a visit in their impressive home. The guys (by which I mean Calvin, as he's the only one really capable of actual human thought) think their hosts are rich, and so it is that they devise a plan to marry them, wait for their imminent deaths, and then live large on their inheritances. Doris (Louise Lasser) and Betty Mundt (Renee Taylor) may be heirs to the Mundt prophylactics fortune, but they are in fact cash poor (thanks to their insane uncle, who is in charge of the Mundt estate). They make their own plans to marry the two young men, purchase sizable insurance policies on them, and then kill them. The double wedding takes place, the marriages are consummated (do I hear a Yuck!?), and about a month passes. Calvin finds that married life with buxom, not-dead-yet Doris is driving him insane, so he and Leonard begin setting "accidental" traps for their wives; naturally, the women are finalizing their own murder plans at the same time. Mr. and Mrs. Smith, this ain't - but that goes without saying.

I won't lie and say I didn't laugh or smile a time or two because I did, but National Lampoon's Gold Diggers aims low - really low - and cannot begin to escape the black hole of stupidity upon which it is built. And I think I speak for the vast majority of human beings when I say that we just don't want to see senior citizen women prancing around onscreen like Victoria's Secret models. There's crude and then there's National Lampoon's crude, and Gold Diggers is as crude as it gets. This film should by all rights be a career killer for anyone involved with it - although Nikki Ziering may emerge relatively unscathed given the fact that her screen time is severely limited.

This could have been a good movie. The premise was ripe for exploitation and nobody exploits the stupidity of people in general and young people in particular better than National Lampoon. They are the acknowleged masters of the exploitation genere: movies with absolutely no redeeming social value that still leave you laghing. In this case, however, they exploited only their reputation.

The premise is of a couple of young idiots looking for an easy life without work. Hey...it's worked for years. They fail at just about everything including purse snatching and armed robbery. Finally they hit upon a scheme to marry a couple of rich spinsters and wait to collect the inheritance. There is a problem, though, in that the spinsters are hard up for cash as well and conceive of a plot to marry the dumb kids who tried to mug them, insure them heavily and then kill them for the payout. It had so much potential for comedy and it falls flat.

There are a few moments of brief humor but they are far too few and far between. Most of my time was spent agonizing "surely, it will get better". It didn't.

I almost gave this one a single star. What kept me from doing so is that there are a few movies out there that are even worse. Unfortunately, I have seen some of them.

Buy this one if you MUST complete your National Lampoon Collection or if you want something to distract you from the pain of a root canal. Otherwise, don't bother. Even renting is a stretch.

Sorry I couldn't come up with a better punchline, but this movie doesn't deserve any original thought or ideas. Maybe its because there aren't any original ideas in this movie event. National Lampoon used to mean funny, now its french for crapola. Avoid this one at all costs!!! Watch Caddyshack II, Airplane II, yes even Xanadu three times each before you pick this booger one.

This movie is VERY funny - I love it! I did get the unrated version, and wish I had gotten the rated version instead (the flashes of the gal unclothed are a little too much). I understand that some may not like it, but if you liked Dumb and Dumber, you WILL like this movie! Watch this movie with the expectation of ridiculous situational comedy and unbelievable human behavior, and you will like it!

I just purchased this film and viewed it. It is the BIGGEST WASTE OF MONEY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Buyer beware !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I Love National Lampoon, but this was not a hit.

That's all you need to know. It is terrible. Bad. Boring. I could hardly finish it.

I thought that this movie sounded pretty good from the editorial review, so I purchased it.

However, I was disappointed. Not because of the movie itself, but this movie states that it is "closed captioned" with the CC printed on the back cover. However, it is not closed captioned at all, yet all the other extras were included.

This is not the first time that this particular DVD company has done this. If they are going to remember to include all the other extras, they could at least remember the captions.

I do not think that I will be buying movies made by this DVD company again as this has happened more than once now.

National Lampoon's Animal House, the first Van Wilder movie and the first 3 Vacation flick will always be my faviorts, and at the top of the list. But this along with others National Lampoons flick belong at the bottom of the garbage bin. I rented this about 3 years, and I don't know what I was thinking. I thought it was going to be a funny flick, but it was a campy flick. What made it so campy was that They had Will Friedle dressed up as a baby during a sex scean along with that crapy lollypop song that I can't get out of my head. What other National Lampoons movies can take a turn for the worst. The one thing I owe it to is Actor J.J cole, the black guy who plays the minster, and give the best advice at the end, and that is don't watch the ending because it gets creepy. Well thank you J.J Cole for your advice

i tot this would be a good or atleast decent movie and would have a few hotties lyk the one in the front of the dvd but she wasnt even shown that much & the story line and plot wasnt good at all! I do not recommend purchasing this movie at all. waste of ur money i gave it a 2star cuz of the gurl

Obviously I knew going in that this movie wasn't going to offer anything more than light low-brow entertainment, but it falls below average for it's niche. Even low-brow humour requires some degree of subtlety and context to work, and those things seem mostly absent in this movie. It's also disappointingly uneventful, so much of the movie is set in the one house where not much progresses. I was hoping the guys' schemes would involve some detours to introduce additional environments and characters, but it never happened. The movie is generally pretty dark too, drawing a lot of it's gags from murder attempts. I guess it's a black comedy, but it's not marketed as such. I think it's inconsistent about what it wants to be. Trust the 7 out of 9 negative reviews on this site and don't waste your time with this movie, unless you enjoyed Big Momma's House.