Meatballs 4 (1992) / Notes

 After Part II had an alien and Paul Reubens as a very disgruntled bus driver and Part 3 had Patrick Dempsey receiving sex help from a paranormal porn star played by Sally Kellerman, I'm not sure why any producer would wish to greenlight yet another sequel to "Meatballs" (1979). I've noticed plenty of conversation regarding how the horror genre was dying coming out of the 80s. Well, entering the early 90s, comedy wasn't exactly doing well, either. Meatballs 4 (1992) seemed to be a holdover of the 80s, as if a last gasp of a decade many considered a high watermark. That sentiment is changing quite a bit, and as culturally more and more generations hold the past contemptible and shame it as detestable, I think comedies like "Revenge of the Nerds" and something like Meatballs 4 will be banished to the dungeon of pop culture quarantine. I'll be amazed if these films do get any streaming or cable/satellite service in the future. I scan Letterboxd and IMDb user comments to sort of read the tea leaves and feel the pulse. "Bachelor Party" is such an example. Comedy is changing. Some forms of humor are considered archaic, a relic of another time. I have no idea what "Woke humor" will be, but I assume what you see on Late Night TV is now the norm. I'm not even sure how much Harold and Kumar, Seth Rogan and James Franco could get away with anymore.

There is a moment at the end of Meatballs 4, when the credits refuse to roll and Feldman is kissy-face with Deborah Tucker. He tells us to hit the Stop button and leave. Eventually Tucker is like, Some movie star you are. Feldman looks at us and says he was in "The Goonies". It was 1992 and Feldman's star power could whip up a third sequel to a film from 1979 and he made sure to remind us of his hit films as a kid. Feldman was treated as a star in this sequel and even his stunt double performs quite a ski trick to win the camp mortgage for Nance. Nance, one year after "Twin Peaks", is bulging his eyes and acting all wild-eyed for Meatballs 4. He badly wants to keep the camp for granddaughter, Tucker.

I was looking over my user comments from 2010. I was a bit harsh, quite a jerk towards the film, but I had to admit that this film was just unnecessary. Not only that, it has no fresh content to offer. Yes, beautiful women who posed in Playboy and starred in this sequel for the film credit are plentiful. There are showers, shirts and bikini tops coming off. I believe it was only six minutes in, and a Playboy model popped a top. I was like, "They aren't wasting any time." In the user comments below, March of 2010, I just wasn't feeling it. I must have been grumpy and not having it because I re-read this and I thought I was mean.

I think if anything, Meatballs 4 proves that there shouldn't have been three sequels. This rather limp summer camp comedy tries to coast by on Cory Feldman's deteriorating star power. It concerns Camp Lakeview's competition with a more successful affluent Camp Twin Oaks. Bug-eyed Jack Nance stars as Neil Peterson, Lakeview's owner who is facing a mortgage crisis, approached by Twin Oaks' Monica Shavetts(Sarah Douglas)to sell his camp so she can turn it into a golf course. He hires Ricky Wade(Feldman)to help turn things around as the annual water ski meet is on the horizon between Lakeview and Twin Oaks. This fourth film in the tired Meatballs series doesn't have an inspired joke in it's arsenal, and only has hot girls and naked breasts to atone for the lackluster material. Lots of water sports stunts, with Feldman pulling another Michael Jackson dance session that was as cumbersome as the dying summer camp comedy whose heyday had long passed after the 80's was over. The cast, to their credit, gives it their best shot, but the screenplay doesn't do them any favors. It is, after all, about the laughs and when I found myself dozing off periodically, having not even giggled out loud once, I knew that Meatballs 4 was officially the final nail in the coffin of a franchise that never should've existed to begin with. There is a clumsy large fellow whose size and easy-going nature is the butt of jokes,allowed to save the day for our heroes and gets the chick at the end, so maybe this tells you all you need to know about the movie. Of course, Shavetts is an underhanded wealthy woman determined to see she attains the rights to Lakeview(..and Ricky)so she'll use every sneaky technique possible, including her two hired goons who wreak havoc on the summer campers, in turn causing those perturbed to leave for home. Nance looks as if he'd been sniffing glue, during his many scenes with Feldman. Feldman is having relationship problems with Nance's granddaughter after leaving for a momentary stint to Twin Oaks. Feldman hopes to save the camp so that she can be in charge of it when Nance passes on. Feldman, of course, is a talented water skier who hopes to accomplish a historic triple flip in order to win the stunt competition. Thanks to Shavetts, they will have to overcome chicanery and cheating in order to do so.

I absolutely love the first film. It is an essential summer return for me almost every year or two. Murray was flexing his star potential already in '79. All the arrivals at the camp in this 1992 film look as if they are college graduates, but we are supposed to accept them as teenagers. The 1979 film just felt right. I went to a summer camp in 1990 and the '79 film was on my mind back then. 

This sequel has a feud for Tucker between returning Feldman and Mitchum, who felt slighted by Nance for not being selected as recreation manager. And you have hunky jerks Christopher and Edmond picking on Grunberg, so often dumping water on Cristy Thom, who never had a problem with nudity. Thom will take off her shirt any given scene just for the hell of it...no need for it whatsoever. Again, this is a film from a dying sex comedy era Hollywood and the film industry eventually will not only denounce but wish to see fade into oblivion.