Summary
A proper reminder of how groundbreaking and simply funny the Kids in the Hall are, and why we need them back now.
You can divide people into who got inton Kids in the Hall and those who did not. We’re not saying that everyone who missed that Canadian cultural phenomenon deserves to have their head crushed, just 99.99999% of them.
Over thirty years after their television debut, comedians Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson — collectively known as the Kids in the Hall — have reunited for a reboot series on Amazon’s Prime Video. This documentary from filmmaker Reg Harkema precedes that revival, taking us through four decades of live performances, a television series, a misfired film, solo careers and their triumphant return.
Taking us back to the Loose Moose Theatre improv troupes from Calgary in 1981, Harkema makes excellent use of archival footage and a new roundtable interviews with the Kids to give us a potted overview of this truly unique comedy group. “We wanted to create comedy that upset and pleased people at the same time,” reflects sometimes member and writer Paul Bellini. Which is precisely what they did on stage, and later on television, breaking down barriers with skits that covered everything from Thompson’s homosexuality and AIDS to characters based on a “cavalcade of bad parenting.” As comedian Lewis Black opines, “That’s a group of odd fuckballs.”
Saturday Night Live guru Lorne Michaels and SNL alum Mike Myers gush their praise and speak of the Kids’ influence, while Michaels recounts how he hired McCulloch and McKinney for an ill-fated season of SNL. Yet it was this apparently ‘failure’ that led to their own show, a five season stand that saw them reach the heights of their comedy prowess and tap into the voice of a generation. Fred Armisen argues that they are the “only comedy group that reflected Gen X.”
Harkema and the Kids are frank enough to reflect on where it all went wrong, from the rifts that began to show in the final few seasons of the show to the critically panned film Brain Candy (1996). Following what they called the ‘Monty Python model,’ they were caught between chasing more KITH material and pursuing solo projects (including Foley headlining NewsRadio for the remainder of the decade). It was a period filled with tensions, almost irreparable rifts, and a near-death experience.
Yet here we are still talking about the Kids in the Hall over 40 years after they all first met, returning to a world almost as troubled as the one they first encountered in the 1980s and 1990s. If THE KIDS IN THE HALL: COMEDY PUNKS has a single narrative, then it’s a story of survival, and a group who works best when they are united in that fight. Or, as one of them puts it, “It’s us against the world again. What a thrill.”
2022 | USA | DIRECTOR: Reg Harkema | CINEMATOGRAPHER: Chris Romieke, Christina Ienna | EDITOR: Peter Denes, David McMahon | CAST: Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, Scott Thompson, Lorne Michaels, Mae Martin, Eddie Izzard, Jay Baruchel, Fred Armisen | DISTRIBUTOR: Amazon Prime Video, SXSW 2022 | RUNNING TIME: 95 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 11-20 March 2022 (SXSW)
