Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain

You may be unfamiliar with Please Don't Destroy, a comedy trio best known for their work in and within Saturday Night Live. Since 2021 they've contributed pre-recorded elements to the show. The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain therefore joins a long and august tradition of cast members making films. For every Wayne's World, Blues Brothers and without alliteration Ghostbusters, there's A Night At The Roxbury or a Coneheads. The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain is far more of the latter than the former, and it's vanishingly unlikely that anyone not already familiar with Please Don't Destroy will be minded to become so, especially after having seen it.

Saturday Night Live's influence on American comedy is as pernicious and pervasive as that of Cambridge Footlights on British humour. There are further connections with The National Lampoon growing out of Harvard, though their sophomoric tendencies were most visible in Animal House. There's also a strong through line with Chicago's Second City theatre and its satellites, especially the one in Canada.

Please Don't Destroy didn't follow those routes. Martin Herlihy is son of Tim Herlihy, co-writer of six Adam Sandler films including The Waterboy and Big Daddy. John Higgins' father is a former SNL producer/writer and announces for the Jimmy Fallon Show (another SNL alumnus). Ben Marshall had the good fortune to meet the other two at New York University. If this seems a large amount of biographic detail in lieu of talking about the film then understand that it's because I've got little else nice to say. That line about if that's the case "come sit by me" is often attributed to Dorothy Parker, but it was presidential daughter Alice Roosevelt (Theodore, not Franklin Delano) Longworth (Ohio, R, Speaker Of The House Of Representatives).

Parker was her married name, of course, for at least one of the three. She was born a Rothschild, but not those ones. She'd spoken about acquiring a "nice, clean surname" though that probably had more to do with prevailing antisemitism than avoiding accusations of nepotism. In an ideal world and a fair market anything's possible, but Hollywood takes its name from a real estate scheme and the business they call show is all about who you know.

Among them Conan O'Brien (Harvard, Saturday Night Live) and Judd Apatow (various, including former flatmate of Adam Sandler). Apatow's big break was producing Anchorman which starred Will Ferrell (Saturday Night Live) before he started on the writing/directing aspect with The 40 Year Old Virgin. That's Steve Carell of Second City which led to him joining The Dana Carvey Show (Saturday Night Live again) before he was cast in Anchorman himself. Apatow's influence on film comedy over the last 20 odd years isn't limited to the things he's been directly involved in, and there have been plenty. The process of improvisational comedy might have been refined to the point that this film has a credit for "on set script transcriber" but there are plenty of processes that are well worked that can still fail.

I did laugh a few times, but there were points where I thought "South Park did it" though that was among dozens of moments that might make one chuckle with recognition if one were minded to do so. Garlic bread does not a feast make, however, and most of this is less buttery and wholesome than greasy and stale. Like bottomless mozzarella sticks what might start brightly becomes an exercise in diminishing returns. There's minimal plot, much of it and the exposition provided by 13-time Saturday Night Live host John Goodman. His seems not to be the only voice added post-facto, there are some scenes where I believe that on-set script transcriber was called upon to provide the words for alternate dialogue recording.

Other bits of film technology make an appearance. There's a hawk that lacks the charisma of Caddyshack's gopher. I'm sure a couple of the jokes are meant to be predicated upon recognising musical cues. Crank That (Soulja Boy) at 16, going on 17 years old might be more mature than this film's target audience. DeAndrew Way's closest brush with SNL was being played by Chris Redd in a bit on Weekend Update. The soundtrack elsewhere makes use of Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You", and while that might be a joke based on its overuse in an endless filmic cavalcade including Starship Troopers, it does seem dangerous territory in this context to make light of familiarity.

Other than the faces, there's little here you won't have seen before. Even then there are a handful of cameos that rely upon you having done so. Among them Gaten Matarazzo of Stranger Things appears as himself. Megan Stalter and X Mayo, who both have improv comedy history in Chicago, and New York play Park Rangers who pursue the boys pursuing the titular treasure and they're among the few high points. John Goodman tells you in his voiceover that it's him, John Goodman, just in case you didn't recognise him. That's far from the only time the film tells you where the joke is, and I can't decide which way round is worse if it doesn't trust its audience to recognise that.

Though showing in some cinemas, potentially as part of a distribution deal or contractual obligation, it is for NBC streaming service Peacock. That's NBC whose offices at 30 Rockefeller Place play host to Saturday Night Live. This is not director Paul Briganti's first feature, among numerous bits of television (no prizes for guessing SNL's among them) a 2014 work that went from filming to finished in 1475 minutes, that day and change working out at fourteen minutes behind the camera for every one in front. Having done that arithmetic I do find myself wondering if The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain had that same level of consideration.

A joke about an exposed penis doesn't go on too long, but I don't think it's meant to raise questions about tailoring. Product placement for the Hard Seltzer (American for alcopop) "Truly" would make Garth sad, and while technology has advanced past Chromakey every once in a while you've got to admit you're in Delaware. The Treasure Of Foggy Mountain isn't worth leaving home for, and to be honest I'm not sure it's worth any time on your sofa either. There are perhaps ironies in escaping a cult led by a Saturday Night Live cast member (Bowen Yang) and defying the expectations of your wealthy father (played by Conan O'Brien) and saving the day with the help of a CGI hawk but patience is a finite resource and there's little done here to save it. There's possibly even less done to justify digging for it.