The trusty physical media distributor that is bringing all our favorite classics to crisp ultra-high-def has set its sights on the Farrelly brothers comedy.
The Farrelly brothers’ sophomore effort, Kingpin, will be getting a newly restored 4K Blu-ray release from the label Kino Lorber. Blu-ray.com has reported that the bowling comedy, which stars Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid, Vanessa Angel, Bill Murray, and Chris Elliott, will be hitting retailers sometime later this year. At this time, there currently isn’t a list of special features that have been announced for this new physical media release.
The description reads,
“Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson) is a young bowler with a promising career ahead of him until a disreputable colleague, Ernie McCracken (Bill Murray), tricks him into participating in a con game that ends with Roy’s bowling hand crippled for life. Years later, Roy ekes out a hardscrabble existence until he discovers Amish bowling phenom Ishmael (Randy Quaid). With the help of a gangser’s girlfriend (Vanessa Angel), he plots to take Ishmael to the top of the bowling world.”
In the mid-nineties, Peter and Bobby Farrelly were riding high off the success of Dumb & Dumber. Although having been released at the peak of Jim Carrey’s first wave of stardom, there was the thought that it might have been a fluke. Thus, for their follow-up, Kingpin, the Farrelly brothers opted for more unconventional comedy casting. In the lead, the cast Woody Harrelson who, despite being no stranger to comedy after a long run on “Cheers”, at the time was coming off of a starring role in Natural Born Killers, and not the guy you’d choose to lead a PG-13 studio comedy. Ditto Randy Quaid, who was a last-minute replacement for a more conventional choice, Chris Farley.
Despite good reviews and excellent test screening results, Kingpin landed with a thud when it opened at the box office in the summer of 1996, a victim perhaps of ill timing as it came out the same weekend the Atlanta Olympics bombing happened. It grossed a tepid $25 million domestically and did negligible business overseas, only to eventually turn a profit when it became a cult hit on home video.
Peter Farrelly cited Siskel and Ebert’s review as one of his most important feedbacks ever, “The one thing that kept us going was on that Sunday morning, Siskel and Ebert came on and they gave that movie the best review of any movie, ever. And I mean to the point where they looked into the camera and said, ‘Okay, guys, we’re talkin’ to the filmmakers now: thank you. Because you have no idea how many times we go to these comedies and never laugh. And here we just howled and we’re grateful. Thank you for giving us this movie.’ And I’m telling you the truth, that thing, that review, I held onto that review for the next six months. It was like, ‘Okay, maybe I’m not a hundred percent wrong.”
