Entertaining, at moments very funny movie with some serious flaws

Rating: 6/10 (22 September 2006)

Kingpin isn't a bad movie. In fact, it's pretty entertaining for a, if i can put it like that, standard comedy built around a certain theme (bowling). I'm not getting into the story, since so many others have done that before me already. Let's get to the characters. I'll immediately say that I liked Bill Murray the most. He was awesome, close to being g@y but gallantly maintaining manliness through the entire movie. With his character, the movie kind of insults the viewer though. For instance, how can we expect the audience to actually like him? Don't get me wrong, he's a great character, but he's supposed to be the bad guy and he doesn't have what it takes to come over as the lovable kind. That's all good, but during the bowling matches it's just not right that the audience seems to like him. His arrogance and cockiness are spread throughout and should be a reason for the crowd to despise him, not like him. I understand that for the sake of the underdog argument, he's supposed to be liked by the masses, but it would have made the movie so much better in my eyes had he been just been despised by the crowd. Harrelson is under-doggy enough already, we don't need to have that emphasized any more. That said, Bill Murray's still a great watch.
Randy Quaid, as the "naive" Amish, is great but slips up miserably at some points. The idea of having a naive Amish is lovely, it's just that at some moments, he's portrayed as plain stupid - in sharp contrast to just "naive". For instance, there's a point where Harrelson says something like "Holy sh!t" and Quaid goes something like "Where do you see sh!t?" I don't recall the exact situation anymore, but such things happen in this movie while they shouldn't.
The love triangle was kind of excessive to me. Please explain to me this: evil lover is abandoned by chick -> lover meets chick again and although it is flat out OBVIOUS that the chick didn't like him, the evil guy still falls for her again after a few cheesy lines of 'let's get back together and make things good for the both of us, I never really wanted to leave you'.
The 'evil lover' was underwhelming also, the 'good guys' were afraid of him but they never really had a reason to. It would have been so much, so much cooler had the evil lover type had a bunch of mean looking gangster types with guns around him. Over the top, of course, but so much more awesome.
There is a problem with the lady also. The first few times we get to meet her, she seems like a hard-a$$ chick who can handle herself. Then at some point, when she says something to insult the evil lover guy, the tone of the scene shifts incomprehensibly to a situation where she gets abused by her evil friend. It just made no sense to me. She shows no depth in her acting either. In the scene where she and Harrelson visit Harrelson's hometown, Harrelson holds up very well but she just lacks what it takes to make the scene really work. To be honest, the lady just slowed the movie down, while not putting anything meaningful to the table.
Harrelson was great, I liked his character and he put down his role pretty well. Some jokes with his fake hand were well done, sometimes fooling the viewer in a good way but also failing the gimmick once (I only saw it go wrong once, might have been more often).
All in all, this movie is pretty fun but with a few adjustments, it could have been so much better.