My Review of "Encino Man"

Encino Man was a pretty big comedy back in 1992. I remembered the time when it first came out. It was probably the movie that catapulted Pauly Shore and Brandon Frasier's careers. Oddly enough I totally forgot that Sean Astin was the lead character in this movie. It was a movie that I liked hwne I was a kid and after seeing this movie again I can kind of tell why.

The movie starts off in prehistoric times. There's a caveman and cavewoman struggling to survive in the ice age. All of a sudden there's some earthquake that results in them being buried in ice. Thousands of years later we wake up to our main hero Dave.

Dave is a mild mannered teenage boy in his last year of high school. He has a buddy named Stoney and the two have entirely different goals for their final year. Dave wants to be popular and date his childhood friend, meanwhile Stoney is trying to live the best life he can in the moment.

One of Dave's many schemes to become popular is to build his own backyard pool. While digging into the ground he accidentally comes across a frozen caveman. He thinks this is his one way ticket to popularity.

Little does he know, this caveman who they later named link will be incredibly difficult to manage. It's basically a classic fish out of water tale but with a side story of a boy chasing after a girl.

The plot is quite simple and incredibly far fetched. You have to throw logic out the window watching this movie. It's weird because I remember loving this movie because it was so wacky. Now I really see how wacky it really is.

I definitely see how it is geared towards kids. The caveman character Link is a very comical character as he has to learn the ways of the modern 1990s. You can see all of the fun little scenarios they came about. They always hint at how violent they expect him to be but he never becomes very violent. He's just a happy go lucky person throughout the movie.

We also have the usual straight and wacky comedic comedy duo with Dave and Stoney. Watching this movie there isn't much to like about the Dave character so a lot of the audience will veer towards Stoney throughout the movie.

There's a lot of weird vernacular throughout the movie that wasn't even popular in the 90's. They have these phrases that I can understand what they're getting at but really throw you off a bit throughout the movie. As a young kid it could seem pretty cool but watching it as an adult will give you chills down your spine.

Some would actually comment on the fashion sense of this movie. It's a little bit forward for their time. You can see a lot of people sort of imitating this look nowadays. I even saw a catch phrase in this movie that's being used in the WWE with a character named Chad Gable. That was quite shocking but eye opening at the same time.

Overall this movie didn't quite last the test of time like I thought it would. The nostalgia factor didn't even help this movie keep my attention. I get it though. It was geared towards younger kids probably in their preteens. That's probably why I really liked it at the time. As it stands now I would say that this is a very hard pass. I have to give this movie a 4 out of 10. I'm really sad to say that I will probably put this memory in the vault because I don't want to see it again.