Beverly hills ninja movie#
Still, the movie was roundly panned by critics.Ī writer for the Washington Post said Farley was a “ real lightweight compared to such late, great predecessors John Belushi and John Candy,” adding that he made “a fat ass of himself” in the proceedings. In the course of defeating this ring – with the help of an actually competent ninja named Gobei (Robin Shou) – Haru makes friends with a Beverly Hills Hotel bellboy ( Chris Rock), finds himself a girlfriend (Nicollette Sheridan), and discovers that when he’s angry he’s actually a pretty good martial artist.īeverly Hills Ninja became the top-grossing film the weekend it was released, and managed to turn a profit – which, by some estimates, 80% of films do not do. Nevertheless, he falls into a mystery involving a counterfeiting ring in Beverly Hills. That baby, named Haru, is portrayed Farley, and he of course grows up to be a terrible ninja. They decide to raise him in their martial arts tradition. It tells the story of a ninja clan in Japan who find a white baby in a chest that has been washed ashore after a shipwreck. And yet beneath this lay a deep, wounded humanity, the vulnerability of someone who has spent a great deal of their life feeling insecure.īeverly Hills Ninja provides a perfect arena for this physicality matched with vulnerability. “I want you to make them laugh so hard that they vomit and choke on their own vomit.” That’s exactly what Farley tried to do, every time. “Try to kill the audience,” the director of Second City once told him.
It was relentlessly and almost violently physical. Watch Chris Farley’s ‘Great White Ninja’ Sceneįarley’s comedic style epitomized all of these pressures. He was well aware that his struggles in that area might cost him his life: “It is a demon that must be snuffed out,” he admitted to Rolling Stone. But Farley repeatedly tried to get clean toward the end of his life, including at least 17 trips to rehab facilities.
He was a notorious partier at SNL, getting suspended numerous times for substance abuse. He stared two movies with his best friend David Spade – Tommy Boy and Black Sheep – and then was given a starring vehicle of his own in Beverly Hills Ninja.įarley’s other way of dealing with his anxiety, as well as his increasing fame, was drugs and alcohol.
Farley made it onto SNL in 1990 and stayed until 1995, when he was released from his contract and began pursuing a film career in earnest. He started his career in Chicago, first at Improv Olympic, and then at Second City, the famed feeder company for Saturday Night Live. A devout Catholic who grew up in a small suburb of Madison, Wis., Farley was always big, and was teased for it as a kid: He actually listed some of the names he got called in a 1997 interview with Rolling Stone: “Fartley, Lard Ass, Tubby and, of course, Fatso was standard.” Although he was a good athlete, swimming and playing football in high school, Farley suffered from what he and many others termed a deep self-loathing, and eventually found two ways to deal with it. His story is as tragic as it is well known. Eleven months later, Farley would be found dead in his Chicago apartment, the victim of an accidental overdose at the age of 33. But in many ways it’s the one that best represents his career. Beverly Hills Ninja, the last Chris Farley film released before he died, may not be his best outing.
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