Movie characters who learn to stop sucking and save the day
It’s a treat to see useless comic relief characters get their act together and start being useful for a change. These guys all took the Mighty Ducks route and stopped pratfalling long enough to behave heroically:
• Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci) from My Cousin Vinny (1992): Faced with saving two innocent kids from the gas chamber this amateur attorney begins proceedings with the shakiest of shaky starts. He dresses inappropriately uses foul language in court gets his car stuck in the mud describes the defendants as “youts” and gets locked up repeatedly for contempt of court. The case looks utterly hopeless but once Vinny finds his groove there’s no stopping him. Witness after witness concedes to holes in their testimony as the squeaky-voiced runt calls them all on their BS.
• Guy (Sam Rockwell) from Galaxy Quest (1999): Actors from the cult sci-fi TV show Galaxy Quest (a thinly disguised parody of Star Trek ) get mistaken for genuine heroes (à la Three Amigos and Tropic Thunder ) and get whisked away on an actual alien craft to do battle with a genocidal reptilian warlord. Guy played a “red shirt” in one episode — an expendable crew member who died immediately after beaming down on an alien planet. As a result he’s much more aware of imminent danger than his crew mates and behaves with extravagant cowardice actually crying out “Mommy!” more than once. Landing on a genuine alien world Guy freaks out when the team casually opens the door and peeks out. “ Hey! Don’t open that! It’s an alien planet! Is there air? You don’t know!”
After spending much of the voyage in a state of panic Guy eventually resigns himself to his role as doomed shipmate and becomes quite brave even offering to sacrifice himself in a battle against superior numbers. He doesn’t even seem to be aware that he’s started to adopt the classic “hero” posture leaning on one hip with his jacket slightly unzipped one-handedly holding a laser rifle at a 45 degree angle.
• Derek (Peter Jackson) from Bad Taste (1987): When carnivorous aliens invade a small town in New Zealand a ridiculous four-man team of bumbling paramilitary types takes action. Derek is the most unlikely hero of the bunch. He can barely get his Uzi out of his blue plastic satchel in time to face the alien horde and when he does his macho posturing is spoiled when he slips on a bit of manure. With his nerdy glasses and gigantic Doctor Who-style scarf he looks quite weedy (despite running up a decent alien body count with his Uzi) and when he falls off a cliff we’re pretty sure we’ve seen the end of him. But no — Derek’s made of tougher stuff than that. Ignoring his massive head wound Derek dons a stovepipe hat in order to keep his brain from falling out of his head (again) gets a chainsaw out of his car trunk and resumes the battle. For the whole film Derek keeps alternating between ridiculous clown and total badass. In the end as he rockets towards the alien’s home planet cradling his chainsaw and cackling “I’m coming to get you bastards!” over the communicator we don’t envy that doomed alien civilization one bit.
• Sheriff Burnett (Frank Wolff) from The Great Silence (1968): The sheriff in this remarkable spaghetti western starts off as a stereotypically ineffectual comic relief character. Sent to bring law and order to the blizzard-ravaged town of Snow Hill he gets waylaid en route by a starving band of outlaws who steal his horse in order to eat it (!).
As the film progresses we start to perceive this comical blowhard in a different light. The sheriff comes to realize (as we do) that the horse-stealing outlaws in the mountains only commit crimes because they’re starving to death — hapless victims of temporary blizzard-imposed poverty. Meanwhile the real villains are bounty hunters like Loco (Klaus Kinski); men who never go to the trouble of taking their targets in alive and who cheerfully stack corpses on carriages like so much firewood. The sheriff stands up to Loco and takes the inspired step of leaving bundles of provisions on the outskirts of town for the outlaws to keep them well-fed and out of trouble until a forthcoming amnesty can allow them to return to their homes and to the workforce. Even though he’s not the film’s main character we start to think of Sheriff Burnett as the town’s best hope for a bright future. (Tragically the bounty hunters have other plans….)
