Saturday Night Live (TV Series) Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas/The Bus Boys (1983) User Reviews

Saturday Night Live welcomes the McKenzie Brothers

[tavm · 10/10 · 4 August 2006]

The cold opening of January 29,1983 began on a scene of Bob Hope (Dave Thomas) playing golf at his mansion. Bell rings. It's Woody Allen (Rick Moranis). After a few minutes, bell rings again. It's Frank Sinatra (Joe Piscopo). Woody asks what he has in common with Frank. "How about Mia Farrow?" asks Bob. "How'd you like sloppy seconds?" adds Frank. Woody is with Hope and Sinatra to try to get the other side ("the commies, Liberals, and faggots" says Frank) to help re-elect Reagan. "Sure, let me get my faggot phone book and I'll call them right up!" Woody sarcastically says. Moranis ends up saying, "Live from New York, It's Saturday Night!" The McKenzie Brothers appear in the monologue and show tape of their New York trip. The Whiners foil a bank robbery that ends with "To Be Continued Next Week". Next comes, "I'll Be the Judge of That", a game show hosted by Dick Cavett (Moranis) of which one of the contestants is Tyrone Green (Eddie Murphy). I especially like Murphy's exclamations of "Shut up!" to the string quartet. He then introduces The Bus Boys, a group that played in his first movie, 48 Hrs. Like Chevy Chase on Carly Simon's "Your So Vain" and John Belushi on Joe Cocker's "Feelin' Alright", Murphy performs on The Bus Boys' "The Boys Are Back in Town". On Saturday Night News, Brad Hall confirms Barbie the doll was a Nazi, Joe Piscopo predicts Dolphins win the Super Bowl, and, three years before it happened, Eddie Murphy implores Reagan to make Martin Luther King Day a holiday ("We blacks don't have any holidays, and, no, Mother's Day don't count!"). Plus, we have Walter Cronkite (Thomas) teaching Brad to say, "That's the way it is". Then there's Ed McMahon (Piscopo) making Gary Kroeger the life of the party, a WWII movie sketch that acknowledges its clichés, and The Bus Boys singing, "Brand New Shoes". Finally, a rerun of "Don't Hitch Hike", a Tim Kazurinsky short film in which a woman in just her underwear picks him up in her car and makes love to him causing a crash over a cliff (that same cliff that you'd see Toonces, the Cat Who Can Drive a Car go over in subsequent SNL eps!). If you're an SNL fan who also loves SCTV, you really shouldn't miss this one. By all means, seek this one out!