My Thoughts After Re-Watching Encino Man (1992)

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I hadn't intended on watching Encino Man (or any other movie for that matter) yesterday morning because I had quite a few things I needed to do. However, I came across the film and, after a couple minutes, was hooked enough to re-watch it for the first time in several years.

Here are some of my thoughts from that re-visit of this 1990s classic.


First, this movie is a great reminder of just how Brendan Fraser became a star. He has few lines and has to rely solely on physical comedy and body language yet pulls it off perfectly. Link is funny, likeable and unpredictable, a great combination for a film like this.

There is something seriously wrong when a character named Stoney (Pauly Shore) is the voice of reason in a friend duo. I'm not even completely sure what Dave's (Sean Astin) plan was because even if Link became popular, it wasn't something that was going to necessarily make him popular too by extension. If anything, having his "exchange student friend" fight his battles for him just made him look worse.

Were 90s school districts really that stupid? Dave was able to register a brand-new student without any form of identification, without a parent/guardian and using his dog's vaccine records and the school bully, Matt (Michael DeLuise) might have been the smartest person at that school just for noticing the very clear red flags.

Oh, and about that name. Is he really the "missing link" when he's clearly human?

The stolen driver's ed car scene was funny but also drawn out. First of all, does a car really need to be on two wheels for that long? It kind of feels as though the movie could have added a bit more variety to Link's first time behind the wheel.

Robyn's (Megan Ward) prom rejection was just cold. Dave used his one phone call from jail to ask her (raising a question about how he managed to get bailed out in time for prom in the first place) only to have her bluntly tell him no and then have the audacity to ask him to ask Link out for her. I thought we were supposed to like her.

What was Matt's plan, exactly? OK, so he found evidence exposing Link as a caveman, but was he really expecting that to elicit a negative response from the student body? Was it his first day as a teenager? 

How did Robyn and Link get to prom? Specifically, who drove? He obviously shouldn't be behind the wheel, and she was shown as still being in driver's ed the day before but based on Dave's "drive safe" comment when she arrived to pick Link up, they also weren't walking.

Dave gets the girl in the end, but it doesn't feel earned. He doesn't knock out the bully or do anything particularly noble to win Robyn's heart. In fact, it almost feels as though he only ends up with her because she learned Link was a caveman and she picked Dave over Stoney (and even then, I'm not so certain that was the right choice).

Dave couldn't go to prom but was able to have a pool party? He was supposedly grounded after his arrest (though that apparently didn't apply to the caveman who was driving the car), something he used as his excuse for not going with them. Yet somehow his parents were just fine with him hosting the after party. Something about that doesn't make sense.

Speaking of the pool, when did they finish it? It's a bit hard to tell just how much time passes in the movie but it certainly didn't seem like enough to go from a barely dug hole to a completed swimming area in time for prom. Did I miss a montage or something?

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Here are some of my thoughts from other movies:

My Thoughts after Re-Watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

My Thoughts After Re-watching Scary Movie (2000)

My Thoughts After Re-watching Wrong Turn (2003)

My Thoughts from Re-watching Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)

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