Suburban Commando (1991)

Credits / Details

46%
Overall Rating

Ranked #4,431
...out of 20,698 movies

Genres: Adventure Comedy Alien Film Comedy Sci-Fi Comedy Space Adventure

Shep Ramsey is an interstellar hero, righting wrongs, et cetera. His ship is damaged after a fight with an interstellar nasty, and he must hide out on Earth until it can recharge. He leaves his power suit at home, but still finds himself unable to allow wrongs to go unrighted, and so mixes it up with bad drivers, offensive paperboys, muggers and the like. Then the family, with which he's staying, finds his power suit, and the father tries it on. --IMDb

Review by Tobes
Added: March 2, 2012

As a child of the 80s, I grew up with Hulk Hogan. While I never took my vitamins or said my prayers, I always looked up to that silken-haired giant of the WWF. Lucky for me, along with his amazing wrestling career, Hulk Hogan also got to be on a handful of TV shows as well as a star of the silver screen. Babysitter...martial artist...and in the case of Suburban Commando, bounty hunter from outer space.

Shep Ramsey (Terry "Hulk Hogan" Bollea) has finally defeated some of the worst space mercenaries around when he's given his next assignment...A 6-week vacation on a non-hostile planet (Earth, obviously). After crash landing his weird pod of a spaceship, he realizes he needs to learn to adapt to Earthling life. While roaming the streets, he finds a sign for an apartment for rent, which is being rented by Charlie Wilcox (Christopher Lloyd) and family (Shelley Duvall, Michael Faustino, Laura Mooney). What CRAZYYYY situations will Shep get into while he's living on Earth? You'll just have to watch and find out.

So while I do have some complaints about the film, there's really nothing funnier than watching Hulk Hogan act. The role is pretty much Hogan playing a mercenary version of Hogan, with all of the horrible catch phrases and shitty acting. Along with that, there's so many just plain silly things that happen during the movie, that it's hard not to watch the movie and at least smile, if not burst out laughing once or twice. I watched Suburban Commando recently for the first time since probably seeing it last when it first came out (almost 20 years ago), and I STILL remembered a lot of the jokes and callbacks that happen throughout. I don't know if that makes it horrible or awesome, but I just wanted to point out how long-lasting the effects of the film are.

My first complaint/perk of the movie, is there's a SHITLOAD of blatant Star Wars ripoffs (as well as other film throwbacks) throughout the film. From the opening of the film with the legendary Star Destroyer crawl (with red and green lasers), you know that the writers of this film just wanted to copy anything popular for the time.

My second complaint is that there's just way too much simple foreshadowing to future moments of the film. In the first 30 seconds, Charlie's boss talks about the rare crystals that he has as awards, that conveniently is exactly what's needed at the end of the movie. I realize that most movies would at least have sort of foreshadowing, but it's just so overblown and ridiculous that it just feels like a little too much.

But along with the overblown and ridiculousness, I feel bad faulting the movie for that. While you watch it, there's just SO many goofy setups/callbacks throughout the movie that you really have to wonder if they did it all on purpose, or if it's just some product of the 90s. All of the actors (Hogan included) do the best they can with what they've been given, and it all comes off campy enough that's it's just a fun sci-fi movie.

Overall, there's nothing wrong with the movie. It's a great film to watch with a bunch of friends and make jokes during, and it's a nice little piece of nostalgia for us "older" wrestling fans.

6.5/10.