Nothing But Trouble

Dan Aykroyd – 1991 – USA

Anyone who cares knows the rap on this movie already, (and I don’t disagree with it), so I won’t waste a lot of time repeating what you’ll hear anywhere else.  For me, this is the worst kind of comedy because it’s fueled by arrogance more than any desire to tell a story or to delight an audience.  I can forgive a film that has its heart in the right place but may simply stumble here and there.  But here, the mindset going in seems to be that Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd and John Candy making faces and dressing up in heavy make-up should automatically be hilarious, and therefore nobody has to worry about actually writing anything good.  As the driving force behind this mess, Aykroyd – (writing and directing his one and only feature) – deserves pretty much all of the blame.  Granted, a thousand hack directors could have made the film just as awful, but if Aykroyd had had any sense, he might’ve realized that there would have been some potential for hope if he’d agreed to let a good director take charge.