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| Bill Murray, John Belushi, Brian Doyle-Murray, Harold Ramis. |
This follow-up to the hit National Lampoon’s Lemmings brought John Belushi back to the New York stage, but the rest of the cast was new: Bill Murray, his brother, Brian Doyle-Murray, Gilda Radner, and Harold Ramis. Not too shabby a cast of goofballs. All were on the brink of stardom on TV’s "SNL." The sketches satirized such things as TV personality Tom Snyder interviewing Chile’s President Allende; a women’s lib panel discussion; contemporary Black drama; Patty Hearst making a plea for contributions to the Symbionese Liberation Army; a TV interview with Carlos Castaneda and Don Juan; New York living; a prospective rape victim interviewing her would-be rapists about their qualifications; and so o
Much of the humor was deliberately aimed at offending the audience, a lot of it was very raw, parts bordered on the sadistic and not all of it worked. “Too often the entertainment merely indulges itself in a stand-up cabaret equivalent of name-dropping,” groused Mel Gussow.
The reviewers laughed at much of the show, but, on the whole, found it inferior to its predecessor. Edith Oliver called it “clever, brutal, very dirty, and occasionally very funny.” John Simon chuckled at its “youthful drive, sporadic fulminations of humor, and spontaneous bad taste.” He also slapped it for being “a bit diffuse, hit-or-miss, amateurish, and . . . remarkably apolitical.”
