Meet the Deedles

[StevePulaski]

Meet the Deedles (1998)
Directed by: Steve Boyum

Steve Van Wormer and Paul Walker are the brothers Deedle.

Rating: ★

NOTE: For the sake of utilizing the abundance of slang words and incomprehensibly stupid jargon I learned from the Disney film Meet the Deedles, I am prepared to review the film in a more informal way than I'm used to.

Like, how come every time Disney tries to make one of those live action films it turns out to be totally bogus? From George of the Jungle to Max Keeble's Big Move to The Country Bears to now the totally uncool Meet the Deedles that tries too hard to be hip and in touch with the youth of today. To quote Phil Deedle, "it's so diculous it's ridiculous."

The oh-so stupid plot revolves around Stu and Phil Deedle (Steve Van Wormer and Paul Walker), two California surf bums who are sent to a camp by their totally loaded father who believes he has given them way too much in life and they must give him something back. The camp is located in the bogus state that is Wyoming (and when their plane lands is looks like one of those flight simulator computer games), but when the Deedles land there they realize that the camp had been shut down and the owner is a psycho-dude. They wind up becoming park rangers at the wicked Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming because of mistaken identities and now must find a way to solve the park's prairie dog (p-dog) problem. But would you believe these dudes discover this big park conspiracy involving a geyser that hasn't gone off in years?

This all could've been pretty radical, but the approach to the film is just so uncool and lame. Meet the Deedles plays like a dude who has lived in his house for far too many years, rarely leaving his confines, trying to write and illustrate a film about teenagers when he hasn't spoken to one in years. The film feels like somebody's image of traditional teenagers rather than actual teenagers. This is the kind of film that makes people hate teens and give them a poor view. And if you're gonna hate them, at least hate them for what they really do and not what you think they do.

I always complain about the bogus films aimed at the demographic of kids and Meet the Deedles fits right in that demographic. The kind of film that is so lame and stupid it does nobody any good, unless you find shortened attention spans and a hunger for more simplistic films a good thing. This film exercises its right to be stupid and idiotic with no conceivable reward. It reminds me of that "no" phase tykes go into around age four or five, where they say "no" to everything and feel like rebelling for the sake of rebelling. The Deedles seem to have never escaped that phase. Society seemed to want their sentences structured and their thoughts to make sense, but they just weren't gonna listen.

The film was directed by ex-stuntdude Steve Boyum and written by that same guy Jim Herzfeld, who wrote Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers. I don't know what to tell this guy but stop introducing us to totally lame people.

Meet the Deedles was made during that totally lame time in Disney's history when they thought every kid in America was into surfing, so they made, like, a ton of stupid movies centered around surfing. Boys got this travesty along with the Disney Channel movie Johnny Tsunami and girls got the network's original movie Rip Girls. I question the relevance and the purpose of the latter films' existence, but I hold optimism for them if I ever seek them out solely because they seem to be in English.

Movies are supposed to be enjoyed. Meet the Deedles is a movie to be endured. And that's just not gnarly, man. An apology to the surfer community and the filmmakers of Bill and Ted is in order.

Starring: Steve Van Wormer, Paul Walker, Robert Englund, Dennis Hopper, A. J. Langer, John Ashton, and M.C. Gainey. Directed by: Steve Boyum.