Film #256 - Meet the Deedles

Once in a great while (for me anyways), a film comes along that is... unforgettable. In 1998, Walt Disney Pictures released a film entitled Meet the Deedles starring Paul Walker, Steve Van Wormer, and Frank Booth himself - Dennis Hopper.

The plot is as follows: After being expelled from their high school, twin brothers and hip Hawaiian surfers Phillip Andrew Preston Deedle III and Stuart Michael James Deedle Esq., are shipped away by their dad to a boot camp in Wyoming. Hilarity ensues as on the way from the airport to the boot camp, they are involved in a car wreck after which they escape their driver, and end up (mistakenly, I might add) as Park Rangers. As if that isn't situational comedy at its best, their mission is to foil ex-Ranger Frank Slater ("Why do there have to be people like Frank?"), his evil henchmen, their trained prairie dogs, and their plot to destroy the timeless geyser that is "Old Faithful".

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't forget this movie. Maybe it was the fact that I saw it in theaters. On opening day. First showing. Maybe it was the fact that as I was growing up, it was on cable every other day. Maybe it was the fact that every time I was at my buddy Lump's house, it would somehow magically end up in the VCR. Maybe it was the fact that brilliant lines like "Two words: No." and "Insert laugh here." were forever embedded into my regular lexicon. Who knows?

For some reasons that just cannot be explained, this film was always in the back of my mind. Any film I watched would ultimately be compared to Meet the Deedles, and not always favorably. It came to a point to where I couldn't stop thinking of it. At the record store I worked at, I would see "Fast and the Furious" come in almost 4 times a day and get depressed that I was seeing Paul Walker's obvious talent at playing a retarded surfer wasted. I ended up spending most of my time at work searching and waiting for the soundtrack and/or the DVD. Finally after years of waiting, the soundtrack came in. As with all movies of the late 90s, it was chock full of third-wave ska such as Goldfinger, Save Ferris, and The Dance Hall Crashers. But, as much as I enjoyed finally owning the soundtrack, I was longing for more. Like a heroin addict, I needed my Deedles. I just couldn't believe that in the 3 years of working at a record store in the heart of LA, I was never able to locate a DVD copy of Meet the Deedles.

But, after about 4 seconds of Googling, I discovered that the film was not available on DVD in the United States. Thankfully there was a DVD release, but only in Germany. Yeah... Germany. Apparently, it was a ginormous hit in the German market since, as you all know, we Germans love our low-brow surfer "out of water" comedies (we Germans love puns, too).

If you're so inclined, I suggest you pick up a copy from AmazonUK. It's pretty "tubular", that is, if you're able to suspend your reality for 90 minutes and be a 11 year old boy. Mahalo.