While Hollywood studios certainly aren't known for their originality in many years, every so often, they can be unorgininal and come up with something sweet and amusing. The story of the Clampetts of the back hills of Arkansas striking oil and moving to a Bel Air mansion was a major hit on TV for nearly a decade from the mid 1960's way into the 1970's, and the movie version of that series (much better than the TV movie follow-up from 1981) is a mixture of sweet and sour as far as the film as a whole is. Certainly, in casting the Clampetts, their kin and banker Mr. Drysdale and Miss Jane Hathaway, they hit paydirt, starting with Jim Varney as far from Ernest as possible, delightfully charming as Jed Clampett.
Who better to play Granny than Cloris Leachman who has been playing eccentric characters ever since Mel Brooks put a mole on her chin and gave her a name that meant glue factory? Erika Eleniak as Ellie Mae and Diedrich Bader as Jethro are picture perfect, if not as experienced as actors as the elders, and Dabney Coleman and Lily Tomlin are a delight as Drysdale and Hathaway. They give great tributes to Raymond Bailey and Nancy Culp yet are never imitating or mocking them. Penny Fuller is adequate in playing Mrs. Drysdale in the way that she is written, but lacks the uppity bubble head that Harriett MacGibbon brought to the role.
The basic story is nothing we saw on the long-running CBS sitcom, utilizing Jed's desire to find a wife to help Ellie Mae become a lady once he is fully ensconced in Beverly Hills society. A scheming junior executive at Drysdale's bank begins to scheme with his gold-digging girlfriend to trap Jed into marriage, but Granny and Jane realize what's going on, and do their best to stop the wedding. Pairing Leachman and Tomlin to be cohorts together is comic genius, and they steal, individually and together, dominate every scene that they are in. They play on Jane's crush on the delightfully dumb but sweet Jethro, and it is obvious that Lily Tomlin is having a ball playing this part. Bader seems to be enjoying his goofy character, and doesn't hesitate in going totally over the top in drag as Jethrine. In fact, he is quite lovely! Linda Carlson is perfect as mother Pearl.
As for Leachman, I wish she had something more substantial to do than just be the of visual gags throughout the film (exposed while in an outhouse, her rocker being knocked off the Clampett truck with her on it, driving a motor bike, the exposure of her hairdo after she is given shock treatment), but Leachman makes the best of the material that she has. But it is Varney who is the heart and soul of the film, giving Jed a romantic sophistication that was absent from the original series. Buddy Ebsen is the only cast member to make a cameo, playing his later TV role of Barnaby Jones in a classic moment.
Where this fails to be funny is its efforts to spoof contemporary life in Beverly Hills and the American culture in general, although there are a few moments that stand out as funny. They include a cameo by Zsa Zsa Gabor as herself, the howdy salute that the Clampetts use to greet those verbally assailing them on the 101 Freeway, and the onslaught of gold-digging females (of all ages) who apply for the role of Jed's wife. Other attempts at parodying what they wanted to believe life in L.A. to be like fall flat and come off as condescending rather than funny.
The scenes of Drysdale's son taking Ellie Mae to high school are particularly obnoxious and are excuses to go to the refrigerator to get a snack. 90210 this is not. Those moments seem totally forced. The main story of Jed's attempting to find a wife plays off a little better with the beautiful Leann Hunley ("Days of Our Lives", "Dynasty") playing a Drysdale client who has a misunderstanding with Jed over her horse stud farm in an amusing cameo. The "Nine to Five" reunion between Coleman and Tomlin is made more complete by a cameo of Dolly Parton, singing "Happy Birthday" to Jed as herself. ("They spent a fortune on me for you....") Her singing of "If You Ain't Got Love" is another great highlight.
The build-up to the wedding is fraught with a mixture of tacky and hysterically funny comedy with one political reference creating a bellyache of chortling. When I saw this in the movie theater, that moment got the most laughs outside of Leachman and Tomlin. The good fortunately outweighs the bad here, and seeing this again nearly 30 years later, I found myself smiling in delight at most of it. One thing I wish that these film versions of sitcoms would do would be to stop taking the original theme and make them into a tacky rap song, or in this film's case, a badly written country song that has nothing whatever to do with the series or what you just saw in the movie.
