Categories: Books

Strange Brew Mixes Some Hamlet

The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew, directed by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, starred Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as the misguided McKenzie brothers with simple priorities and concerns. The comical character duo debuted as a skit on the television improvisational show, SCTV. The skit was based on two brothers who represented a comical Canadian stereotype, hosting a television show that never ran smoothly or professionally. As the popularity of the characters took off, a screenplay was drafted by Moranis, Thomas, and Steven De Jarnatt, that patterned itself after the famous play by William Shakespeare, Hamlet.

The film begins with the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM] trademark lion featured as behaving drunkenly from beer consumption, opposed to roaring the way the trademark characteristically appears.

When Bob and Doug McKenzie run out of beer and money, they attempt a scam to acquire free beer, a mouse shoved into an empty beer bottle. They are sent to the Elsinore brewery. When they present their bottled mouse to the Elsinor brewery management, they are hired as line inspectors for the brewery to prevent any further mice from appearing in beer bottles and avoid a possible lawsuit or bad public relations scandal against the brewery.

It is at this time that the McKenzie brothers meet Pam (Lynne Griffin), the daughter of the recently deceased owner of Elsinore Brewery. Pam, now 21 years old, has inherited the brewery from her father’s estate but faces increasing resistance against taking management control from her brother’s father, Uncle Claude (Paul Dooley) the interim manager, who had married her mother.

Behind the scenes, the evil Brewmeister Smith (Max von Sydow) uses Uncle Claude as a pawn in his plans for brewery control and world domination. Smith alters the beer with mind-controlling drugs and tests them on patients committed to the Royal Canadian Institute for the Mentally Insane, which is connected to the brewery through a series of secret underground passageways. Tests include a music-prompted hockey game with test subjects dressed in Stormtrooper-like armor.

With the help of Pam, Bob and Doug McKenzie thwart Brewmeister Smith’s evil plans to dominate the world by distributing contaminated beer at an Oktoberfest celebration. Pam regains control of the brewery.

References and tributes to Hamlet are prevalent throughout the film, including Uncle Claude marrying Pam’s mother in much the way that Claudius married Hamlet’s mother. Both the mother from the film and the play were given the name Gertrude. Bob and Doug McKenzie are placed in relationship to Pam, who is this story’s Hamlet, as the dimwitted friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

The film is 90 minutes of high energy fun and good-natured humor. According to the Wikipedia page on Strange Brew, the film had a production budget estimated at $4,000,000.00 and has grossed over $8,000,000.00. A classic from the 1980’s, it serves as a parade of dated hairstyles and fashions, and the timeless jokes will keep an audience laughing with the simplistic characters.

The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew can be purchased on Amazon.com, Overstock.com, Walmart.com, Tower.com, and BarnesandNoble.com.