Metacritic reviews

Farley reminds us just how liberating an agile, uninhibited, out-sized comedian can be in these times of caloric restraint...Tommy Boy is a good belly laugh of a movie.

Tommy Boy is one of those films that you can watch over and over again. It seems to be on every "Buddy Movie" list and it's always out at Blockbuster.

If this pairing sounds like movie magic to you, we're sure you'll love the picture.

Chris Farley's first star turn is loaded with fat jokes, excrement gags and other banality, but also offers more goofy charm than most of its recent brethren -- which is to say, not much.

Just when you thought you’d erased the memory of Adam Sandler in Billy Madison playing a slobbo idiot who must prove he’s worthy of taking over his father’s business, along comes Chris Farley playing a slobbo ; idiot who must prove he’s worthy of taking over his father’s business. Yet this movie, unlike Sandler’s fiasco, does at least have a few scuzzy laughs.

Against the odds of a feeble script and uninspired direction the duo do, in fact, grow on you, and there are a smattering of silly laughs, most notably a sequence involving a large road kill stashed in the back seat.

Some of it is funny -- particularly the physical comedy. Most of it is not.

Their best moments are some throwaway routines; they weep in the car as they sing along to the Carpenters' "Superstar." More often, the movie goes for stale, obvious sight gags like Tommy's slow destruction of Richard's precious car. As mismatched-buddy teams go, Felix and Oscar have nothing to worry about here.

Farley is the physical pratfaller, a clumsy oaf with the brawn of a bison and a brain to match; Spade the slimline sidekick with a long line in snide. It's some indication of the wit involved that Farley is reduced to cracking fat jokes at his own expense.

The movie is an assembly of clichés and obligatory scenes from dozens of other movies, all are better. It has only one original idea, and that's a bad one: The inspiration of making the hero's sidekick into, simultaneously, his buddy, his critic and his rival.