Beverly Hills Ninja (1997)

Chris Farley as a ninja. No one can hate on that. It’s too deliciously ludicrous. And yet 1997 gave us just that, “Beverly Hills Ninja,” with the “SNL” comic whirlwind as a clumsy white guy raised in a Japanese ninja commune who visits … well, you know. Look, it’s negative IQ dumb and smells of an alcohol (or worse) induced joke come alive, but there’s a what-the-hell fun zeal to it as Farley stumbles, falls and generally acts like a buffoon. He did that well. I heartily laughed at the bits where characters fly to a transcendental hand-drawn cartoon world to chat philosophy, and at a running gag with our fearless warrior losing his shoes. Farley had an unquenchable appetite for drugs, and yet he always came off as a big kid with a kind heart, even in his worst films. A trace of sadness lingers, but I laughed. C+