Consume mass quantities of America

CONEHEADS (1993)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I only faintly recall the SNL sketch with Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman as extraterrestrials from the planet Remulak who crash land on Earth and are accepted into society. Their most distinguishing characteristic is that their heads are shaped like cones, and Earthlings could care less. That concept carries over in the movie version of the Coneheads, a slight but very agreeable, pleasant diversion that at least shows a decent movie can be made out of a SNL skit.

Beldar (Aykroyd) and Prymaat (Curtin) are the Coneheads who matriculate into society, with the hope of eventually returning to their home planet. Beldar works at fixing electronics, drives a cab with a turban around his cone, becomes a driving instructor, and eventually buys a nice middle-class rancher house. Prymaat vacuums the house and sucks the dust and debris into her mouth. She eventually gets pregnant and let's say that the Coneheads' mating style is not even close to how humans mate. Naturally, they have a daughter (Michelle Burke, replacing Newman) who has the temerity to get a tattoo on her conehead and date a boisterous auto mechanic (Chris Farley, not as boisterous as he would become). The plot, a thin one at best, involves the INS agent Mr. Seedling (Michael McKean) who wants to capture the Coneheads since they are literally illegal aliens. David Spade plays another INS agent who is forced to take calls for Seedling; he is more of an errand boy than an agent. Some of Seedling's hopes for eliminating illegal aliens crossing into the U.S. border will strike some as all too timely nowadays in our Donald Trump climate.

"Coneheads" is more sweet and upbeat than consistently funny. More scenes of the Coneheads' neighbors, especially Jason Alexander with a toupee and a lawnmower malfunction, could have lent a form of social satire to the proceedings. I still give the movie a pass because I like the Conehead family and their eventual clinging to the American Dream ideal. They are accepted as the mainstream nuclear family unit they are. It is a shame that the writers, including Aykroyd, didn't delve deeper into the irony of it all. The Coneheads consume mass quantities of everything (toilet paper, waffles, not necessarily in that order) and America is all about consumption of materialistic things. They fit right in.