Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Brian Orndorf February 26, 2022

Canadian sketch comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall found their way to producer Lorne Michaels in the late 1980s, with the “Saturday Night Live” honcho helping to bring the sharp talents of Scott Thompson, Mark McKinney, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, and Dave Foley to a different kind of late-night program. The Kids in the Hall offered a strange sense of humor that toyed with the surreal and the silly, making funny business that always felt like it was presented solely to entertain the performers, with audience response a happy accident. The troupe managed to bang out 102 episodes of their original show, attracting a passionate fanbase for their specialized appreciation of oddball topics and performance capabilities. The series ended in 1995, paving the way to a film production, with Michaels and Paramount Pictures hoping to bring The Kids in the Hall to the masses with 1996’s “Brain Candy.” While the creation of the endeavor didn’t go swimmingly, leaving the final cut scattered at times, “Brain Candy” remains quite entertaining, keeping The Kids in the Hall busy with multiple characters and ideas as they work to find some shape to their take on the burgeoning world of pharmaceutical corporation domination.

Don Roritor (Mark McKinney) is faced with a bleak future after learning Roritor Pharmaceuticals is starting to lose money, in need of a new drug to sell to the public. In the bowels of the city, Dr. Chris Cooper (Kevin McDonald), Alice (Bruce McCulloch), Baxter (Scott Thompson), and Simon (McKinney) are working on the “Depression Project,” hoping to find a solution to the world’s battle with sadness. Chris cracks the code with his formula for Gleemonex, a pill that allows the patient to access their happiest memory, freeing them from pain. While the drug hasn’t been fully tested, Don puts it into production anyway, bringing Gleemonex to the clinically depressed, offering a revolution in happiness, helping to boost company fortunes. Chris is caught up in the excitement, losing his scientific judgement as money and women corrupt him, only snapping to attention when it soon becomes clear that Gleemonex has a dangerous side effect, discovered just as Don pushes to make the drug available to all.

Longtime Kids in the Hall collaborator Kelly Makin is the person in charge of bringing the screenplay to life, tasked with finding order to the chaos of the material, which explores a weird world of characters. The community effort is handled by McKinney, McCulloch, Foley, Thompson, and McDonald, with the latter taking on the lead role of Dr. Chris, a meek, virginal scientist trying to better the world through the creation of a pill capable of extracting and holding onto happiness. “Brain Candy” commences with a winding display of different faces and places, establishing the performers and their many personalities, but it eventually meets up with Chris and his fellow scientists, who are incredibly excited to experience a breakthrough with Gleemonex, finding a test subject in Grandma Hurdicure (Thompson), a senior citizen who returns to a holiday memory involving her insincere son, tapping into the weird old lady pleasure of such a cruelly brief encounter.

Gleemonex works, but little is known about the side effects of the drug, or its lasting power. A plot of sorts is found with Don’s demand to mass produce the pill, depending on vicious marketing executive Cisco (McCulloch) to sell it to the masses, putting Chris in a submissive position, unable to fight the power of business demands. What follows is a standard arc of corruption, with Chris exposed to the perks of ultra-fame, sleeping with women, enjoying big money, and meeting admirers, including the controversial Cancer Boy (McCulloch), a pitch-black comedy creation that inspired Paramount to bury “Brain Candy” with a limited theatrical release. The screenplay (Foley is the only member of the troupe to not have a writing credit) looks to formula as it hunts for structure, but the hilarity of the feature remains with random ideas and small subplots, including Wally (Thompson), a domesticated father and husband using Gleemonex to come out of the closet, experiencing life as a proud gay man. Another highlight arrives with Grivo (McCulloch), a grunge rocker at The Suicide Club who typically revels in drugs and darkness, only to be transformed into a folksy singer by Gleemonex, with his hit single, “Happiness Pie,” adding some irresistible Kids in the Hall energy to “Brain Candy.”

While the buzzy popularity of Prozac inspires the marketing and chemical power of Gleemonex, it’s interesting to watch “Brain Candy” in 2022, finding the writing quite prescient when it comes to omnipresent pharmaceutical marketing efforts and relentless corporate profit hunting, with Don (McKinney offers a full-fledged Lorne Michaels impression in the part) representing the cold, predatory nature of the business. It’s all played for laughs in “Brain Candy,” but the satire is on-point here, even of the film struggles to find its footing at times.

Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The AVC encoded image (1.78:1 aspect ratio) presentation is sourced from an older master of "Brain Candy," likely dating back to the movie's DVD release. Age is apparent, offering a softer sense of detail with the wildly textured world of the film, picking up the basics in facial surfaces and makeup transformations. Decoration is also diminished but not fully eliminated, surveying domestic areas, clubs, and boardrooms. Colors are acceptable but certainly not in peak form. Heightened hues with fantasy sequences are appreciable, and the brighter blues and oranges of the drug are present. Skintones are natural. Delineation struggles briefly with solidification. Grain carries a processed look. Source is in good condition.

Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix offers a reasonably immersive listening event, with dialogue exchanges clear, managing all sorts of accents and performance choices. Music is satisfactorily defined, with crisp soundtrack selections, including musical performances with heavier grunge-y sound, and scoring cues are appreciable, adding a twangy guitar to the picture. Surrounds handle musical expanse and atmospherics comfortably, and sound effects are alert, detailing the electrical snap of Gleemonex.

Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• There is no supplementary material on this release.

Considering the wealth of behind-the-scenes stories that have surfaced over the last two decades about this troubled production, the fact that nothing is included here, including a trailer, is a real missed opportunity to give Kids in the Hall fans an exciting and candid package.

Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

"Brain Candy" didn't have an easy journey to the screen, with members of The Kids in the Hall struggling with their working relationships and overall participation in the project (Foley, star of "NewsRadio" at the time, has limited screentime). The final cut of the film isn't focused too intently on storytelling, leading to an abrupt non-ending (replacing another abrupt non-ending, but a gloomy conclusion more in line with the rest of the movie), and there's pronounced darkness to the endeavor, which doesn't match the brighter spirit of even the bleakest Kids in the Hall sketches. And yet, "Brain Candy" becomes its own thing without the crutch of known characters and established comedy beats. The boys end up in drag many times, but the feature finds its own personality, and despite a subject matter that deals with misery, the picture is very funny, with sharp visual style to support this often wild journey into the business of being unhappy.