The comedic legacy of Chris Farley has been forever immortalized by films like Tommy Boy and Black Sheep. Even before he became a movie star, Farley was an undeniable talent within the improv comedy community, which led to his breakout stardom doing sketch comedy on Saturday Night Live. But even after all those achievements, there are a lot of fans who simply don’t know the breadth of Chris Farley’s work
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Case in point: in 1998, Chris Farley was looking to branch out with the kinds of film roles he was doing, and took a swing at a big-budget (for the time) genre comedy. It paired Farley with Friends star Matthew Perry (and some other big comedy stars) and was directed by cult-comedy icon Christopher Guest (Best in Show, This Is Spinal Tap). Most importantly, though, it was the last leading film role that Chris Farley ever shot, before his untimely passing in 1997.
Chris Farley’s Forgotten Western Has Become A Rare Gem Over Time
Released in 1998, Almost Heroes is a comedic Western about an odd pair of explorers (Farley and Perry) in a race against their rivals, Lewis and Clark. Both sets of explorers try to traverse the United States and reach the Pacific Ocean; only Bartholomew Hunt (Farley) and Leslie Edwards (Perry) manage to constantly detour into some sort of wild hijinks that prevent them from reaching their goal.
The film turned out to be a major flop, earning just $6.1 million at the box office, against a budget of $30 million. Even worse, it was eviscerated by critics, holding an abysmal 5% “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes. However, over the years, the viewers’ score for Almost Heroes has been slowly but surely ticking up, and currently sits at 65% on RT, indicating that viewers have been warming up to the film as the years go by. Comedic tastes have also changed a lot: Almost Heroes was ridiculed for its loose, meandering story and intensely dumb and goofy characters. By 2026, that kind of loose, improvisational comedy has become mainstream, with filmmakers like Adam McKay (Anchorman) and Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) making it their signature.
Timing and context are everything, and 28 years later, Almost Famous has gone from a lump of box-office coal to being a rare gem of a comedy whose value has only gone up, now that both Farley and Perry are dead. It also has some now-famous faces popping up in some early roles, including Bokeem Woodbine, Kevin Dunn, and Schitt’s Creek star Eugene Levy.
Comedy itself has become a much rarer find at the theater these days. The genre isn’t a part of the theatrical release strategy for most studios, which started looking at blockbuster franchise films and other genres like sci-fi and horror as reliably bankable investments. It also hasn’t helped that a divisive social climate has made the idea of people gathering together to laugh seem like a thing of the past.
But that’s even more reason to go back and give a film like Almost Heroes another look. Even the dumbest humor may feel good to laugh at now, and there’s certainly pleasure in just seeing two late greats like Farley and Perry good off together.
You can stream Almost Heroes on Tubi, Sling TV, or Roku. What’s your favorite classic comedy film? Let us know in the comments!
