Review of Beverly Hills Ninja (1997) by Ginny L — 04 Sep 2012

It is a harmless slapstick and would have been a bomb without the talented work of Chris Farley. His physical humor gets more mileage from the dumb material and totally saves the movie. He plays a likable buffoon who is wonderfully clueless and naïve.

This is definitely a strong suit for Farley. It does take little too long to lay the ground work, set up the plot and to get the laughs rolling. In this case the plot is paper thin and less of it might have been a good thing to deemphasize it more than they already did.

I liked the how his watchful ninja brother is shadowing him and making sure he succeeds, in fact I wish they had done even more with his character. Chris Rock adds a little of his enthusiastic energy as well but he is underutilized as well.

This movie rides solely on Farley and carries the load well, but it could have been better. If the story had a higher level of writing and the other characters could have brought more to table or even just better set up Farelyâ(TM)s humor and that would have improved it.