[5]

While digging a pool, two high school losers (Sean Astin and Pauly Shore) discover a caveman frozen in ice in their own back yard. They introduce him to the twentieth century and take him to school, hoping he’ll improve their cool factor. And after that, I’m not really sure what Encino Man was about. It was probably trying to be about the caveman teaching the losers how to live life to the fullest, but this narrative thread was pretty weak. It’s almost a male bonding movie, but the three leading roles are too shallow on the page to give the actors much to work with.

Brendan Fraser, as the caveman, is easily the best thing about Encino Man. He manages to balance the whacky with a few moments of — wow, really? — drama. The movie’s too goofy to sustain much genuine human emotion, but the half-assed attempts (there are exactly two of them) were my favorite parts.

With Richard Masur and Robin Tunney.