YMMV / Tommy Boy

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Tommy and Richard start out struggling to sell break pads thanks in large part to Tommy's inexperience, which is exacerbated by Richard's insults after each failed meeting. But once Richard offers Tommy genuine sales advice rather than snide insults, their working relationship improves considerably and they become an excellent partnership. So, the lesson here may be that students finding it difficult to learn often respond better to positive reinforcement than negative reinforcement.
  • Richard's Deadpan Snarker attitude may be kind of justified toward Tommy, but his lack of people skills and smug behavior toward almost everyone he meets prevents him from being a good salesman or having any friends despite his technical intelligence. Tommy may not be intellectually gifted, but his friendly persona, charm, and eventual craftiness ultimately keep Callahan Auto from falling apart. Hard work doesn't matter if you act like a smug Jerkass who puts other people down to the point of alienating them.
  • Businessmen like Zalinsky are glorified con men and their PR campaigns should always be taken with a grain of salt.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Younger viewers may be surprised to find that Herbie Hancock is a very real public figure (namely a jazz musician) and Tommy simply got two people with the same last name mixed up.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Roger Ebert put it on his Most Hated Films list, claiming no one in the film was funny and the script had no memorable lines. The film went on to be a modest hit (and would have done better had Paramount not botched the marketing and distribution) with an overwhelmingly positive audience reception, became one of the best selling video/DVD comedies of all time, and had several lines ("Holy schnikes!", "Fat guy in a little coat", etc.) become popular memes.
• Awesome Moments: Once Tommy starts feeling at ease with his job, he becomes a far better salesman, culminating in his convincing Ray Zalinsky into buying half a million brake pads on live TV, using his own slogan against him. When Zelinsky learns that he'd been snookered on the sale of the company, he compliments Tommy for his shrewdness.
• Critical Dissonance: This movie made Roger Ebert's "Most Hated Films" list, but it was a box-office hit that also sold well on home video. Rotten Tomatoes gives a 42% score among critics, but a 90% score among audiences.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Richard taking the passengers on a plane through the standard flight attendant stuff includes mentioning that there's a better chance of them hitting a mountain than a lake.
• First Installment Wins: There's no continuity between them, but this is held to be the best of Chris Farley's star vehicles, striking a good balance between juvenile and clever humor, not relying too much on Farley's character being The Klutz (Tommy's dopiness and childish tendencies are presented as obstacles for him to overcome, not the core concept of the movie), and having the most well-written plot — the story's basic setup could easily support a straight-faced, character-driven drama.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The sudden death of Big Tom is a lot worse now, as Brian Dennehy passed away from his own cardiac arrest on April 15, 2020.
  • It can be very painful to watch Tommy's drug use during a party and passing out, knowing that Chris Farley partied heavily and died just two years later at the exact same age (33) and in a very similar manner as his idol John Belushi.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the film, Richard mentions that he never had a father and that Big Tom Callahan served as a mentor figure to himself. A few years later, Brian Dennehy would play the father of David Spade's character on the sitcom Just Shoot Me!.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Fat guy in a little coat!"
  • This movie may have been responsible for many people misquoting a famous line in The Empire Strikes Back as "Luke, I Am Your Father".
  • "Holy schnikes!". The special edition DVD was even called the "Holy Schnike Edition".
  • Even today, you'll still hear the occasional wiseacre refer to someone's signature as a "Herbie Hancock".
  • "Oh my God! We're burning alive!"
  • "You know, lots of people go to college for seven years." "Yeah, I know. They're called doctors."
• Moment of Awesome: Michelle's shouted threat at the cruel children at the lake.
  Michelle: Listen up, you little spazoids! I know where you live and I've seen where you sleep! I swear to everything holy that your mothers will CRY when they see what I've done to you!!
• Most Wonderful Sound: "Oh my God!" as Tommy does the medic is priceless to listen to.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The effect of the moths coming through the motel window was achieved by blowing pieces of paper with a fan, and it shows.
  • David Spade is clearly wearing a bald cap during the bit where Richard is revealed to have been wearing a toupee the entire time.
• Spiritual Successor: It's pretty much a wackier version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
• Squick:
  • "Look, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it 'guaranteed,' I will. I've got spare time."
  • And "She was kissing him." "So?" "With his tongue." "Ew! He's doing his mommy?" "She's not his mom; they're married!"
• Tear Jerker:
  • Tom's death, and Tommy's reaction. Say what you want about Chris Farley, but the expression of loneliness he conveys afterward is quite heartbreaking. It's much more tragic after Farley's own death a couple years later.
  • An in-universe example: The Carpenters' song "Superstar" causes Tommy and Richard to sing along with it while sobbing (after each one of them initially pretends to think the song is lame).
• Values Dissonance:
  • Nice Guy Tommy calls himself "retarded" after getting weird looks from everyone when he makes a fool of himself on the factory floor. Back in the '90s, the word wasn't considered as offensive as it is now.
  • Richard masturbating while watching a skinny dipper is arguably much more creepy now than it was then.
  • Tommy's fake bomb threat is something that would not be nearly as funny post-9/11.
• Values Resonance:
  • The overarching plot of the film is Tommy's Ohio hometown seeing its industry being shut down and outsourced, and him trying to stop a tycoon from downsizing his own company's factory. With America's deindustrialization getting worse with each passing year, many people in the Rust Belt can relate to this film.
  • The film's semi-antagonist, Zalinsky, is a corporate magnate who uses a PR campaign to present himself as a friend of the working man while selfishly downsizing people for his own gain, something he admits to Tommy. Nowadays, with numerous incidents of corporate abuse, such PR campaigns have come under greater scrutiny.
• Vindicated by History: The film was slammed by critics upon release, but these days it's remembered fondly as a classic buddy comedy film that showcases the great comedic chemistry between Chris Farley and David Spade, and is considered the best of Farley's star vehicles during his too-brief movie career.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: This is supposedly a silly buddy comedy starring Chris Farley and David Spade...that explores the serious issues of deindustrialization and corporate downsizing.
• The Woobie: Tommy following Big Tom's death.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Richard.

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