Beverly Hills Ninja (1997)

Beverly Hills Ninja arrives as a relic from a period when a leading man's body could serve as the entire architecture of a joke, and the film pursues that architecture with a dedication that borders on the monastic. Chris Farley plays Haru, an American foundling raised in a Japanese dojo under a prophecy that a white outsider will become the greatest ninja of all. The premise is a cultural collision engineered for pratfalls, and the film rarely aspires to more. Asian actors populate the clan and the criminal underworld with professional competence, yet the narrative's central joke is the elevation of a clumsy Caucasian above them. The picture is not hostile so much as oblivious, which is its own kind of statement.

The comedy leans hard on Farley's weight, treating his frame as a piñata for lampposts, forklifts, and the occasional sheave. There is an underdog arc, and the underdog does triumph, but the path to victory is paved with fat jokes delivered without a trace of irony. Chris Rock's bellboy dreams of ninja glory and settles for a punchline about being the Great Black Ninja, a gag the film presents without apparent self-examination. Nicollette Sheridan's Alison runs her own investigation and pulls Haru out of captivity, though the plot still requires her to be captured so the men can resolve things. No environmental concerns intrude. No economic critique surfaces, despite a counterfeiting ring that could have invited one. Nobody lectures. The film has no designs on our conscience whatsoever.

What remains is a 1997 studio comedy doing exactly what 1997 studio comedies did, with a geniality that makes its laziness almost forgivable. It opened at number one, reviews were unkind, and Christian Bale has reportedly watched it more than once. The cultural record is richer for the trivia and poorer for the jokes. We file it accordingly, without malice.