Which Movie Should I Watch Tonight? Enjoy ‘SNL50’ with the Underappreciated ‘Coneheads’

Saturday Night Live has been celebrating its fiftieth anniversary throughout the season, culminating in a lavish Sunday-night special. One cannot talk about the show’s legacy without acknowledging its impact on film comedy. While the show may not directly lead to as many movies these days, numerous movie stars such as Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, and others emerged from SNL, creating classic comedies like Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, and Mean Girls which are considered spiritually linked to the long-standing NBC program. Additionally, there have been a limited number of films based on SNL characters, with notable successes like The Blues Brothers, MacGruber, and the Wayne’s World movies.

The unexpected success of Wayne’s World in 1992 led producer Lorne Michaels and Paramount Pictures to delve further into the potential for SNL-based movies. The follow-up, Wayne’s World 2, was quickly produced, and another successful spin-off was Coneheads, featuring Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin reprising their roles as alien couple Beldar and Prymaat. The film humorously portrays their encounters with earthlings while maintaining the distinctive Aykroyd-style dialogue and behaviors that fans of the sketches came to love.

Coneheads sticks to its roots with a plot that mirrors the sketch’s straightforward style and the trademark Aykroyd humor. Despite being critiqued as a simple one-joke movie upon its initial release in 1993, the film can now be seen as a heartwarming ode to the immigrant experience. Beldar and Prymaat illustrate a balance between their native culture and life in New Jersey, showcasing their efforts to adapt while embracing their unique quirks. Their daughter, Connie, adds another layer to the story as she navigates assimilation and young love, reflecting a universal theme of acceptance and belonging in a comedic setting.

Farley isn’t the only then-next-gen SNL cast member to appear. In fact, until Grown Ups 2 inched past it decades later, Coneheads held a record for the most SNL alumni to appear in a narrative feature film. Small roles are filled out by Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Michael McKean, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman (though too old to play teenage Connie, she does appear as another Conehead on Remulak), Julia Sweeney, Tim Meadows, Kevin Nealon, and Jon Lovitz. In other words, about half the cast of the show’s just-completed 18th season, plus several major alumni and, in the case of McKean, one future cast member. Today, there’s a particularly bittersweet twinge to seeing the departed Farley, Hooks, and Hartman all in a single film.

There’s also a certain poignancy when you realize that as a toddler, Connie is played by one of Aykroyd’s daughters; the movie, in its loopy way, becomes his tribute to the ways some parents try their best to normalize their deeply strange behavior in order to create a better life for their children. (Though he speaks with technical-manual precision, Beldar is also kind of a classic dad: tinkering with electronics, fixated on snacks.) This feels particularly resonant considering Aykroyd ranks among SNL’s foremost weirdos. Of course adult audiences were largely baffled or annoyed by Coneheads in 1993; a sketch-comedy series once known for its envelope-pushing had birthed a family-friendly comedy (with occasional beheadings on a far-off planet, of course), and an accompanying merchandising campaign. It may be the perfect emblem of how embedded SNL had become in the mainstream, something that probably rankles or surprises less in Season 50 than it did in Season 18.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.