Review: The Strongest Man in the World (DMC #55)
The adventures of Dexter Riley and the Medfield science lab continue! This week we watched The Strongest Man in the World, the 55th film in the Disnerd Movie Challenge. Interestingly, this sequel to The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes is actually the third movie in the series, while the second was Now You See Him, Now You Don’t. However, as of this writing, the second movie is not on Disney Plus, so we’ve skipped ahead to the third movie. After all, this challenge was created to watch everything we could on Disney Plus! As usual, our synopsis is below for any of you who need a refresher or haven’t seen this. For the rest of you, skip ahead to our review!
Synopsis
Dean Higgins is on the verge of being fired from his position at Medfield College due to years of financial mismanagement. The regent points out the cost of the science department, to which Higgins blames Professor Quigley. Higgins makes up a story claiming the college is going through a promotion process and if he is given 30 days he will turn the college’s finances around. The regent agrees to this. Quigley’s class has rented a cow named Ruthie Belle for their latest experiments of feeding her various concoctions to make her fatter and produce more milk. Dexter Riley creates a chemical mixture which Ruthie Belle doesn’t like. His friend, Richard Schuyler (who goes by his last name), suggests removing the “acid taste” to make it more appealing. Schuyler experiments with various vitamins, a single slice of pizza, and Crumply Crunch cereal to use on the cow. Higgins arrives and is angered when he discovers the cow and how much it cost to rent. He fires Quigley and threatens to have the whole class kicked out of the college if they keep it up. As he slams the door behind him, the resulting shaking causes Dexter’s chemical mixture to combine with Schuyler’s vitamin cereal, which Ruthie Bell eats. Schuyler pours the cereal back into its box and Dexter bottles what’s left of his chemical. Dexter gets a call in the middle of the night from the farmer who loaned out Ruthie Bell, claiming that she has produced 80 gallons of milk and is still going! The next morning, Dexter eats Schuyler’s cereal and is unnerved after he produces smoke and sees the cereal crackling. He later accidentally rips his shoelaces while trying to tie them. Schuyler gives Dexter’s leftover cereal to the fraternity house’s small and timid dog, Brutus. Upon eating the cereal, Brutus becomes more aggressive and even chases down a much larger dog that usually chases him. After repeated displays of unnatural strength, Dexter and his friends rush off to Higgins’s office to show him Dexter’s newfound super strength and are joined by Quigley, who was there to collect his severance pay. Impressed by the strength the cereal can convey, Higgins rehires Quigley and suggests to the professor that the super cereal is just what the college needs to bring in money (and allow Higgins to keep his job).
Higgins arranges to meet with the president of the Crumply Crunch cereal company. At the meeting, he meets the skeptical Harry and the company’s president, Aunt Harriet Crumply, before eating a bowl of the strength cereal and demonstrating a series of impressive weight-lifting exercises and acrobatics. Aunt Harriet and the board decide to advertise the formula-laced cereal by challenging a rival cereal company called Krinkle Krunch. They arrange a weight-lifting competition between State College (sponsored by Krinkle Krunch) and Medfield College (sponsored by Crumply Crunch) to see which cereal gives greater strength. Harry is revealed to be a mole and is actually working with Kirkwood Krinkle and his company. Harry hires the criminals A.J. Arno (a former businessman) and his partner, Cookie, who have just been released from prison, to steal the strength formula. Arno offers Cookie to be the leader on this particular mission. Later that night, the two arrive at the college and attempt to sneak into the science lab. Cookie’s idea to use scaffolding goes awry and Arno nearly falls. The two break into the lab and begin searching for the formula, but cannot find it. They accidentally alert the college’s nightly security guards and are almost caught, though they manage to escape. Determined to get the formula, Arno comes up with a plan to kidnap Schuyler so he can tell them the formula. Meanwhile, Schuyler is out looking for Brutus. Arno arrives with Brutus and tricks Schuyler so he can be captured by Cookie. Brutus runs back to the house and Schuyler’s friends get help from Higgins, who reports the missing Schuyler to the police. The police are unhelpful, and when Higgins demands to speak to the chief of police he is told that the chief is eating at a Chinese restaurant. Meanwhile, in the back room of that same Chinese restaurant, Arno and Cookie have taken Schuyler to their acquaintance, Ah Fong. Fong puts Schuyler into a hypnotic sleep and uses acupuncture in order to retrieve the memory of the formula from Schuyler’s mind. Schuyler spills the ingredients and Fong tells him that he will not remember any of this when he wakes up, and tells him to return home using the first means of transportation he sees. Arno and Cookie leave to give the formula to Harry so he can pass it along to Krinkle. Schuyler wanders through Chinatown and grabs the first form of transportation he sees: the police chief’s car. As he drives home in the cop car, the police give chase.
Back at the house, Dexter is on the phone with the police, asking that they search for Schuyler. Higgins arrives and takes the phone from Dexter, berating the police for not doing their job. Sirens start going off and Schuyler parks the police car outside the house. All the police who followed tackle Schuyler to the ground and take him to jail, but Higgins and Quigley bail him out. They ask if Schuyler remembers why he was in Chinatown but he can’t recall anything. Meanwhile, Mr. Krinkle has been given the formula and adds it to his own cereal. He eats it and attempts to use super strength to break his board room’s table, only to injure his hand instead. In a rage, Krinkle calls Harry and tells him the formula doesn’t work. Harry realizes that if the formula doesn’t work for Krinkle, it won’t work for Aunt Harriet or her weight-lifting team. The day of the competition arrives and Dexter believes he and his friends have it in the bag. The board of regents arrive at the competition and tell Higgins he better come up with a winner or he is fired. Krinkle has brought in super-sized bodybuilders to compete against Medfield, ensuring that Medfield doesn’t stand a chance. Each team starts off eating bowls of their team’s sponsored cereal, but Dexter instantly realizes something is not right. The cereal is missing an “acid taste” and Dexter deduces that it was actually his chemical formula that causes the super strength. He shares this with Quigley, Schuyler, and Harry, and Harry sneaks off to inform Arno. Dexter asks a distracted Higgins to borrow his vintage car so he can return to the college lab and retrieve his formula. The competition officially starts and Medfield is immediately outclassed. Back at the college, Dexter grabs the formula and is confronted by Arno and his men. He drinks the formula and easily fights off every one of Arno’s men, culminating in using Harry (who followed Dexter) to strike down Arno and his men like bowling pins. Dexter pours some of his formula into Higgins’s car to make it go faster, but this causes the car to break apart. He has only a few minutes to get back to the competition or Medfield loses. While Higgins tries to stall the competition, Dexter slams the car right into the competition room. Higgins is aghast at the destruction of his car, but Dexter pays no mind. Medfield is down by 1,110 points and Dexter needs to lift more than 1,110 pounds for the college to win. He struggles, so he slips away for a moment to drink the rest of his formula. He uses the last of his super strength to lift the 1,111 pound weight and win the competition for Medfield and Crumply Crunch. Both Higgins and Professor Quigley get to keep their jobs, and Arno and Cookie are arrested once more. Mr. Krinkle takes a bit of the wrong cereal and tries once more to break a table, only to hurt his hand again.
Thoughts Before Watching
Kevin: So the last film with Kurt Russell wasn’t too bad, if certainly dated. I wonder if this relies on any of the previous films for an overarching story, or is it self-contained? Either route is good with me, but I’m curious all the same. Let’s dive on in, shall we?
Megan: I wasn’t too big a fan of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, so I’m not getting my hopes up for this one. I’m pretty much expecting the same goofy science, maybe a bit of humor, but I don’t think this is going to blow things out of the water.
Thoughts After Watching
The comedy is the selling point
Kevin: I genuinely laughed a lot while watching this, and it’ll probably be the only thing that might make me rewatch it some day. It isn’t the funniest movie I’ve seen, but it’s funnier than I remember The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes being, if only slightly. The best moments were anything involving Dean Higgins or the semi-villainous pair A.J. Arno and Cookie. As Dean Higgins, Joe Flynn is absolutely fantastic with his acting, especially after his character eats the cereal and gains super strength. The actor looks like he’s having so much fun in that scene. Hollywood magic is pretty good at making this kind of thing look convincing, but it really sells a scene when the actors get into it as well. Also, Arno (Cesar Romero) and his right hand man, Cookie (Richard Bakalyan), are such a wonderful comedic duo! I love their attempts to break into the science lab to steal the formula, and the role reversal when Cookie becomes the leader of the operation is amazingly done! You can tell how much Arno regrets letting Cookie take the lead long before he voices his opinion, and even more so as the two try to work the scaffold to get into the lab. I could watch these two making and executing ridiculous plans more often!
Megan: These moments were definitely the most fun in the film. That said, they were also entirely predictable. The second I saw the wet cement beneath the scaffolding, I told Kevin “they’re going to fall into the wet cement.” Lo and behold, by the end of the scene, the pair are making their escape and fall face-first into the wet cement, leaving “evidence” for everyone to see the next morning. My guess is the humor was less predictable at the time this film came out, and thus probably more enjoyable, but for today’s audiences who have seen so many comedic gags play out time and time again, a few of these fell flat for me.
Harriet can’t save this movie
Megan: As excited as I was to see Harriet Crumply, a female character as president of a major company, this film had no hope of ever passing the Bechdel test because Harriet is the only female character. Sure, there’s a handful of female classmates that mill about in the background, but none of them are named or have speaking roles. Similarly, while Harriet is a woman in power, it is implied that she only has that power because she inherited the company, not because she earned it. Even her own all-male board seems to have little respect for her, since they are ready to hurry things along and start the meeting without her. Could you imagine an all-male board saying the same thing about a male president of the company? In the world of this film, I don’t think they would. The film would first need to establish that the male president in question was incompetent, but because Harriet is a woman, and the only woman in that role, it is implied that by nature of being a woman she does not deserve their respect. It’s real subtle, but like I’ve said before, the repetition of these minor slights is both a result of societal gender norms at the time the film was made and it’s a device of continued enforcement of false gender stereotypes. It’s easy to see how a generation of boys that grew up seeing women portrayed this way would grow up to perpetuate such sexist stereotypes unless exposed to other examples. Also, it must have been incredibly hard (and probably annoying) for girls to grow up with a lack of female role models in film, and seeing barriers even for those fictional women when they were portrayed in positions of power. As a woman watching this film today, I find it really hard to root for Harriet, or anyone else, which I guess ties into Kevin’s next point…
Who is the main character, exactly?
Kevin: This is another film about Dexter Riley, but Dexter is hardly in this movie. He appears in the beginning as he conducts chemistry experiments and eats the chemically altered cereal, but once he demonstrates his new-found super strength to Dean Higgins he pretty much disappears until the weight-lifting competition. The movie shifts its focus to Higgins, who strangely becomes…more likable? Higgins takes a bit of the formula laced cereal as a way to appeal to Aunt Harriet Crumply (Eve Arden) and gain sponsorship for the competition, resulting in a surprisingly fun moment with the dean. Higgins was a clear antagonist in the previous film (not in the villain sense, but just for being against characters like Dexter and Professor Quigley (William Schallert)). By bringing Higgins to the center stage at this part of the sequel, I think it gave us a bit of reason to root for him. Anyway, while we get to follow his tale, the writers don’t spend much more time on Higgins after his meeting with Aunt Harriet. Soon the movie turns its attention to A.J. Arno and Cookie after they are released from prison and subsequently hired to steal the formula. As mentioned above, their attempts are actually quite comical, and although we’re not exactly rooting for them, the two characters (and actors) are so good together that I absolutely enjoyed watching them on screen. Interestingly, all of this makes Arno, Cookie, and Higgins far more likeable than Dexter himself, who I presume is supposed to be our protagonist. But Dexter gets so much less screen time in this sequel and there are so many character plot threads that we really aren’t given a main character to follow. In a way, I almost think Higgins could be the main character, as it’s his concern over losing his job that inspires him to use the formula to win the weight-lifting competition. Still, there’s no clear protagonist. Since this is a comedy film, the stakes don’t need to be all that high, but not having a clear main character does make it a little difficult to care about the story. If I do end up watching this again, it would only be because it was just funny enough.
Does this trilogy have the same plot in each movie?
Kevin: On the one hand, I feel that I don’t need to see the previous movie in this series, Now You See Him, Now You Don’t. The Strongest Man in the World is self-contained enough, although it does make some callbacks, such as Dean Higgins mentioning that “something is always happening to [Dexter]” and A.J. Arno and Cookie implying they’ve been sent to prison multiple times. As the movie progressed I realized that its basic plot was very similar to The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Both movies start with Dexter gaining a superpower thanks to a science experiment gone wrong. This power is then exploited and sought after by a college dean and a powerful businessman. In the first movie, the businessman was Arno himself who wanted to stop Dexter from revealing his illegal gambling business. In this sequel, the businessman is no longer Arno, but instead Kirkwood Krinkle (Phil Silvers), who hires Arno to do the dirty work (talk about a 180 role change). Dexter eventually loses the superpower, but Medfield College wins the climactic competition anyway. Although I have chosen not to read up on it, I strongly suspect the plot of Now You See Him, Now You Don’t is just as similar.
On the other hand, this is also why I am curious about that movie that I may eventually watch it anyway. I wonder if it does play out the same way or if the writers at all chose to make anything different. There’s another reason I’m curious about it: towards the end of this one, Dean Higgins describes Dexter as one of the best students at Medfield College. In The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Dexter was put on academic probation. We didn’t really see much of Dexter in this one, although he’s clearly competent enough to create a chemical solution that when mixed with a vitamin compound gave him super strength. In our review for the first movie I said that academic achievement does not equal intelligence and that Dexter demonstrated a lot of smarts in spite of his low grades. Has Dexter actually become a model student? Or was Higgins just trying to play it up to his superiors? Given Higgins’s annoyance with Dexter, Professor Quigley, and pretty much everyone else in the movie, I firmly believe he was just playing for show. However, I still wonder if we see some sort of character progression for Dexter if we were to watch the entire trilogy.
Megan: I personally won’t go out of my way to watch Now You See Him, Now You Don’t, precisely because the other two films in the series have been so incredibly predictable. Watching The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes was entertaining enough since it was the first time we’d seen that formula, but repeating it with The Strongest Man in the World made for a pretty dull movie. Not only was I calling comedic gags before they happened, but I pretty much knew where this was going to go. The bad guys would try and fail to get the formula, and Dexter would manage to save the day just in the nick of time. There isn’t much nuance beyond the events of this movie’s plot because the characters are underdeveloped and lack a real arc. Dexter still hasn’t learned not to mess around in the science lab, Dean Higgins hasn’t learned how to make the college profitable (other than continuing to exploit Dexter’s mishaps in the science lab), and villains like Arno haven’t learned to stop being criminals. I’m not sure how audiences felt about this movie in the 1970s, but as a viewer in today’s world I expect a bit more complexity.
Verdict
Megan: 3
Kevin: 4
Final Score: 3.5
Ways to Watch
DVD