| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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ENCINO MAN
aka
CALIFORNIA MAN
Rating: 
USA. 1992.
Director – Les Mayfield, Screenplay – Shawn Schepps, Story – Shawn Schepps & George Zaloom, Producer – George Zaloom, Photography – Robert Brinkman, Music – J. Peter Robinson, Production Design – James Allen. Production Company – Hollywood Pictures/Touchwood Pacific Partners I.
Cast:
Sean Astin (David Morgan), Brendan Fraser (Link), Pauly Shore (Stanley ‘Stoney’ Brown), Megan Ward (Robin Sweeney), Michael De Luise (Matt Wilson), Richard Masur (Larry Morgan), Robin Tunney (Ella), Mariette Hartley (Mrs Morgan)
Plot: David Morgan, a student at Encino High School in California, considers himself a loser. Determined to do something to make his prom memorable, he starts digging a pool in the backyard, planning to invite everybody back afterwards. But while doing so he accidentally uncovers a caveman frozen in a block of ice. He and his best friend Stanley ‘Stoney’ Brown see this as their ticket to school cool. Thawed out, Link, as David names him, becomes the hit of the high school social scene with his amazing abilities at mimicry, while they convince David’s parents that he is a Russian exchange student. But Link’s popularity becomes so great that David starts to become jealous.
In an attempt to tail-jump the teen niche created by the sleeper success of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), Encino Man updates the revived caveman story of films like Trog (1970) and Iceman (1984) into the same hip 1990s stoner idiom. But Encino Man is a film where the non-stop barrage of surfer argot that was quite in Bill and Ted has a desperate self-consciousness to it.
Encino Man is really excruciating film to watch – of particular note here is Pauly Shore’s inanely babbling and wholly unintelligible performance as a teenager that appears to have fallen through a 1960s time warp. (And for reasons wholly inexplicable to any rational human being with an IQ over 50, Pauly Shore subsequently went on to become a star). Scenes like the trip through a supermarket trying to group candy bars into the major food groups or drinking soda milkshake from the spigot; or in the Latino bar where several super-macho Hispanics force Shore to drink tequila straight, drag abominably and are appalling in their self-conscious attempts to create a teen party atmosphere.
Films like this are loser comeuppance fantasies – but this does the somewhat incredible job of actually making its losers become even more unlikable throughout – like Sean Astin’s happiness to dump Link as soon as the girl prefers Link to him. Brendan Fraser also gained attention here in his first starring screen role and his ungainly impersonations have their moments of appeal, although the constant witlessness of the material is hopelessly weighed against him. The film is shameless enough to even plug its own sequel.
Director Les Mayfield subsequently went onto direct various remakes for John Hughes, including Miracle on 34th Street (1994) and Flubber (1997), and other forgettable films such as Blue Streak (1999), American Outlaws (2001) and Code Name: The Cleaner (2007). Mayfield has also produced a series of remakes of Disney live-action films for tv.
Co-writer Shawn Schepps (with Mayfield producing) later directed a made-for-tv sequel Encino Woman/California Woman (1996) starring Katherine Kousi in the title role.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1992
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