This review is the result of a challenge from Brian of a movie for Benn to endure.

I rarely thought the late Chris Farley (Tommy Boy) was at all funny enough to be in anything besides TV's "Saturday Night Live." The movie "Beverly Hills Ninja" proves once again, I was right.

"Beverly Hills Ninja" is this completely thrown away high concept comedy with Farley starring as the "Great White Ninja," later named Haru ,who lands on the shores of a Japanese dojo retreat as a baby. He is raised by the dojo and its master, but for some reasons he's too inept to do anything right. He becomes fat and uncoordinated, and most times, he causes more damage than help.

At one point, this woman named Sally Jones, plated by the very pretty Nicolette Sheridan (TV's Desperate Housewives), approaches the dojo for help, suspicious her husband is into dirty dealings. Our Great White Ninja decides to help her, since he's attracted to her. Instead, he gets blamed for a series of murders Jones' husband is responsible for. Eventually, Haru is sent to Beverly Hills, CA, to find Jones and make sure she is okay. The dojo master sends his best student, the white ninja's "brother" to secretly keep an eye on him.

White ninja finds out Sally is actually Allison, the sister of the suspect's late wife. Allison suspects he killed her sister as well. Haru then helps her get the evidence she needs to put the guy away, and before long both he and she are neck deep in trouble. When I write the storyline out, this high concept comedy could have been a bit less unintelligent. However, filmmakers opted to cast Farley in the picture.

Farley's antics in this picture completely underscore the fact the man could NOT act to save his life. Being that he has made me laugh on occassion, while performing on SNL, and the fact he's dead, this is all I will say about him out of respect.

However, I WILL say director Dennis Dugan (Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy) only wanted Farley in the picture to provide a big guy who falls down a lot and gets hit in the head more than once. Farley also killed every sight gag by "telegraphing" his action. Nothing was spontaneous and every gag was killed fractions of a second before it was delivered.

Albeit the picture was total bile, Dugan has a series of shot selections which actually made me laugh. The man simply had NO movie or quality production value to work with.

This leads me to the fault of screenwriters Mark Feldberg and Mitchell Klebanoff (Disorderlies). Both men's careers ended with this picture, and rightly so. This proves they had no actual talent for the craft and absolutely NO business writing anything. When these two guys write, a whole generation under them becomes a little dumber. They wield a very dangerous sword. Luckily, "Beverly Hills Ninja," which was released in 1997, served as the nail in the coffin of their days in movie production.

Overall, the picture was about as funny as watching Grandma get mauled by a bear on her way to the store to cash in her winning lottery ticket. I caught myself laughing a couple times, but it was by accident, honestly. I think the IQ of any movie actually sitting on the rental shelf NEXT to "Beverly Hills Ninja" probably went down just in the COMPANY of this crap-fest. If you are going to see it, handle with care. Maybe you should wear gloves.

Benn - Where's the Humanity?