Everyone who has been waiting for the film that would showcase the amazing talents of SCTV stars John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Joe Flaherty will have to keep waiting; Going Berserk is a major disappointment. Director David Steinberg (who co-authored the script with Dana Olsen) has given his stars a hopelessly inadequate vehicle, and the laughs – while genuine – are few. One of the joys of SCTV at its best was the way a situation would modulate gracefully into something completely unexpected: “The Merv Griffin Show” turning into Close Encounters of the Third Kind, for example. Going Berserk strains for this kind of structural fluidity, but winds up as nothing more than a slovenly written, ineptly paced mess. The film is at its funniest when it parodies other movies, such as The Defiant Ones, The Manchurian Candidate, The Blue Lagoon, Kung Fu flicks, and even “Father Knows Best.” But when Going Berserk branches out to lampoon punks, bikers, religious sects, psychiatrists, male strippers, etc., Steinberg and Olsen reveal their aimlessness and lack of imagination.
Going Berserk is dominated by Candy. Rather than give up on the material, he tries to make every scene count, and so there are several hilarious moments to his credit. However, Levy, a performer of astonishing versatility, is sadly restricted to a minor role as a sleazy filmmaker. Most shocking of all is the way Flaherty’s talents are almost completely ignored. Flaherty is certainly one of the funniest comics ever to appear on television, and yet Steinberg and Olsen use him as a mere hanger-on for Candy, his role never even reaching the level of straight man. It would be tough enough for anyone to write a script that would let Flaherty fully demonstrate his extraordinary range, but there’s no excuse for one that gives him nothing to do. With Going Berserk, Steinberg and Olsen do both their stars and their audience a disservice.
(This review first appeared in The Film Journal, November/December 1983.)
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NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 