Strange Brew

April 16

7 pm
PG — 1hr 30min
1983 ‧ Comedy

Forty-two years ago, two comedians tricked a skunk-passing dog into taking a jelly donut for a bowl full of beer, and the world grew richer for it. Strange Brew — aka The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew — hit theaters in August 1983. Often overlooked and outshined by big screen Saturday Night Live spinoffs of the day, Strange Brew survives as the only feature film spinoff of another sketch show, SCTV.

It’s gloriously, unapologetically nonsensical, and — believe it or not — is kinda/sorta a reinterpretation of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Even Shakespeare’s well known penchant for using the “play-within-a-play” isn’t forgotten. Strange Brew opens with the brothers’ show from SCTV, where they premiere their new post-apocalyptic movie Mutants of 2051 A.D. We then find the brothers in a movie theater watching their own new movie which, itself, contains a new movie… starring them.

When her father dies suddenly, Pam (Griffin) is orphaned, and control of her family’s brewery threatens to fall into the hands of the conniving Brewmeister Smith (Max von Sydow). In stumble Bob and Doug, who land jobs as beer inspectors when their scheme involving a mouse in a bottle impresses the brewery brass. Hilarity ensues as the boys attempt to foil the Brewmeister’s sinister plot to take over the world. Long before Wayne and Garth or Beavis and Butt-Head, there was Bob and Doug. Canada is proud to call them our own.