Black Sheep, the second film starring both Chris Farley and David Spade, joins Tommy Boy in making its arrival on 4K Ultra HD.

The 4K UHD disc features a brand new HDR/Dolby Vision Master from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. Similarly, the Blu-ray utilizes a brand new HD master from the same scan.

Mike Donnelly (Chris Farley) is the brother of Washington State gubernatorial candidate Al Donnelly (Tim Matheson). It’s not surprising that he wants to help his brother defeat eight-year incumbent governor Evelyn Tracy (Christine Ebersole). There’s just one problem–whenever Mike is around, accidents are bound to happen. Hell, he can’t even vote for Al without causing the voting booth to collapse on other voters!

Al’s campaign manager, Roger Kovary (Timothy Carhart), would prefer that Mike having nothing to do with the campaign. Al disagrees and lets campaign aide Steve Dodds (David Spade) look after him. In classic comedic fashion, Steve crashes into Vietnam War veteran Sgt. Drake Sabitch (Gary Busey). It’s a very Busey role for the actor. But again, anything bad that will happen is going to happen. It’s just a question of if it’s bad enough to derail Al’s campaign for governor.

Many comedies have happy endings and Black Sheep is no exception. It just takes a while to get there in the 86-minute film. Things start taking a turn when Mike realizes that Gov. Tracy only won her campaign because of voter fraud. It soon becomes a race of exposing the fraud for all to see–1,882 votes in Garfield County rather than the 1,502 register voters. While this is happening, Al decides to fire Kovary after Kovary made him choose between his brother or his career.

I love a good political comedy. Unfortunately, Black Sheep is only the latter. There’s a better film to be made but that’s what happens when screenwriter Fred Wolf was forced to finish a script before Paramount’s two-picture deal with Farley expired. Even then, Farley wasn’t particularly sold on doing the film. Spade had to talk him into it.

One gets the sense that Black Sheep was forced into production so that Paramount could take advantage of his popularity during his two-picture deal. There’s a universe where Farley is starring in a not-so-dark version of The Cable Guy rather than Jim Carrey. He lost out on the opportunity because Paramount decided they wanted him teaming up again with Spade. Carrey was pretty popular at the time and Farley didn’t stand a chance against him. He lost out on the role of Ishmael in Kingpin. Of course, we’ll never know what could have been–he died a few years prior to Shrek‘s 2001 release but recorded lines prior to his passing.

Much like Tommy Boy, Black Sheep is not a great film–but even worse, it is not remotely close to being a good film. Chris Farley is doing the typical Farley antics that one would expect in Black Sheep while David Spade looks on. It’s just that the two of them are doing it to a lesser extent while being directed by Wayne’s World director Penelope Spheeris. Kino Lorber Studio Classics is handling the 4K release as opposed to Paramount Home Entertainment.

Bonus Features

• NEW Audio Commentary by Director Penelope Spheeris, Moderated by Film Critic and Author Simon Abrams
• Theatrical Trailer

DIRECTOR: Penelope Spheeris
SCREENWRITER: Fred Wolf
CAST: Chris Farley, David Spade, Tim Matheson, Christine Ebersole, Grant Heslov, Timothy Carhart, Bruce McGill, Boyd Banks, Michael Patrick Carter, and Gary Busey

Paramount Pictures released Black Sheep in theaters on February 2, 1996. Grade: 2/5

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