Top 100 Movies Of The 1990's: #27 Kingpin
Box Office: $25.0 Million
Oscar Nominations: None
Oscar Wins: None
MovieRankings.Net: 71/100
Available To Stream: Max, Amazon Prime
Bill Murray is the funniest man of my lifetime. Take the 1979-80 Saturday Night Live season. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd left the show to focus on movies. Chevy Chase was long gone. Murray and Garrett Morris were the only full-time guys in the cast. Can you imagine an SNL cast with only two men? Murray was in nearly every single sketch and was hysterical in each one. It's one of the greatest seasons by anyone in television history.
Take that season and all of his movies and the thing that makes me laugh the most is Bill Murray as Big Ern in Kingpin. It's not his best movie but you could make a strong case that it's his funniest. Him screaming with what's left of his hair flying all over the place is one of my favorite things of all-time.
This movie would easily crack the Top 100 with just Big Ern. When you add in Woody Harrelson as Roy Munson and you have a pretty incredible movie. If there wasn't a comedy bias with the Oscars, you could make a real case both should have gotten Oscar nominations. At times in a very goofy movie, you have Harrleson doing some very good acting. He's mixing having the soul of someone with lost dreams with the humor of playing a total loser.
The comedy in Kingpin is pretty wildly inconsistent. Some of the Amish stuff with Randy Quaid works really well. It also loses its luster quickly. But unlike most comedies, the third act of this movie is the best. The bowling tournament is one of the best competitions in movie history. Aside from it being hysterical, it's really well shot, the music is great and it's legitimately hysterical.
I'm so glad they didn't make a sequel to this. It was a box office failure when it came out for The Farrelly Brothers who were just coming off Dumb and Dumber. Kingpin opened during the Atlanta Summer Olympics which I'm sure didn't help. It also opened in 5th place behind A Time To Kill, Independence Day, Phenomenon and Courage Under Fire. It was out of the Top 10 in four weeks.
It found more success in video rentals and on cable. I feel like for a lot of people now, it may not be held in the same standard as Dumb and Dumber and There's Something Mary but right there in the next tier. There is also something timeless about Kingpin. I don't know if it's because bowling and the Amish don't change much or if it's just because the performances are that good. Whatever it is, I've been getting a laugh of Kingpin for almost 30 years now.
Long live Big Ern. He's the greatest! He's above the law!
27. Kingpin
28. Donnie Brasco
29. Heat
30. Terminator 2: Judgement Day
31. Rounders
32. Unforgiven
33. Trainspotting
34. The Game
35. Out Of Sight
36. Carlito's Way
37. Seven
38. L.A. Confidential
39. Speed
40. Gattaca
41. Misery
42. Tombstone
43. Ransom
44. Wayne's World
45. The Insider
46. Back To The Future Part III
47. A Bronx Tale
48. The People Vs. Larry Flynt
49. Eyes Wide Shut
50. The Sandlot
51. Happy Gilmore
52. Contact
53. The Green Mile
54. Man On The Moon
55. Boyz N The Hood
56. Grosse Pointe Blank
57. Independence Day
58. The Rainmaker
59. Go
60. The Firm
61. Magnolia
62. The Talented Mr. Ripley
63. Tommy Boy
64. The Usual Suspects
65. In The Line Of Fire
66. My Cousin Vinny
67. Awakenings
68. JFK
69. Toy Story
70. Home Alone
71. Jerry Maguire
72. Titanic
73. Billy Madison
74. Apollo 13
75. Braveheart
76. Edward Scissorhands
77. Cape Fear
78. The River Wild
79. What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
80. 12 Monkeys
81. Stir Of Echoes
82. Mission: Impossible
83. Total Recall
84. Quiz Show
85. For Love Of The Game
86. Being John Malkovich
87. Men In Black
88. Scream
89. Alive
90. Three Kings
91. Glengarry Glen Ross
92. Die Hard With A Vengeance
93. The Blair Witch Project
94. Twister
95. Dirty Work
96. Election
97. Tremors
98. Any Given Sunday
99. The Wedding Singer
100. Clerks