I'm rather fond of early '90s comedy, if I'm completely honest. Bio-Dome, Wayne's World, The Mask, Dumb & Dumber, Clerks, Ace Ventura...hell, most of those are even made in the same year as Airheads. Yet to me, Airheads stands out. Not because of the brilliant story or Oscar-worthy acting. No, it's because of all these comedies, it seems that Airheads is the one that's most underrated, if not the most forgotten of the bunch. While the others are considered classics to some extent, no one ever speaks a word about the rock band that takes a radio station hostage just to get some airplay.
That last sentence is the entire premise of Airheads. Three rockers, played by Brendan Fraser, Adam Sandler, and Steve Buscemi, are tired of the world that is the corporate music industry and decide to take matters into their own hands.
Inspired by the success another local band had after getting some airplay, the three Lone Rangers (the name of the band) head over to the local radio station to have the DJ play their demo on the air. Of course, they make their way into the station by breaking and entering and everything goes downhill from there on out, basically ending with the band holding the employees of the station hostage with plastic water-pistols that look like real guns.
The station gets surrounded and the police tries to end everything on a good note, while more and more metalheads gather at the radio station to be a part of something that's already gone down in rock 'n roll history.
The cast is pretty much an all-star one, with Fraser, Sandler and Buscemi leading the pack. Supporting them are several noteworthy names such as Judd Nelson (The Breakfast Club), Chris Farley (of SNL fame), Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters), Harold Ramis (also Ghostbusters), Joe Mantegna (Criminal Minds), Michael Richards (Seinfeld), David Arquette (Scream), and Michael McKean (This Is Spinal Tap), which makes for one of the most complete comedy casts of the '90s, if I may say so myself.
But it's not necessarily the huge cast that does the trick. The thing that does it for me is that it's a film in which all three of the leads weren't really that well known yet. This was before they got type-casted. Before they played the same role over and over again. Of course, this doesn't really go for Buscemi, but Fraser and Sandler haven't really done anything different since they got their big breaks. In Airheads, there's none of that. They don't act like they way we're used to nowadays, they act their parts. Granted, there's already a bit of things to come shining through, but back then, they didn't do it because the director expected them to do it.
That's what makes Airheads one of my all-time favourites. The story is, to the day, still a fairly original one and we get to see a bunch of actors the way we're meant to see actors: playing a part that wasn't necessarily written specifically for their way of acting. Add to that a soundtrack filled with great rock 'n roll and an impassable supporting cast, well...it just works.
