BLANKMAN Is Basically the Handi-Man Movie We Never Got

Comments · 133

• CA

  @CaptNRetro · 3 weeks ago · pinned

  I saw Blankman when I was younger, and my memory of it for the last thirty years has basically been, &quot;Yeah, that was pretty dumb.&quot; Well, after watching it again in 2026, I owe Blankman an apology.<br><br>It is incredibly dumb. I was right about that part. I was just wrong about that being a bad thing.<br><br>Tara had never seen it, which is surprising because she LOVES In Living Color, and Handi-Man is one of the Damon Wayans characters she remembers most fondly. About five minutes into Blankman, it becomes almost impossible not to make that connection. Darryl Walker is this incredibly innocent, socially awkward, childlike inventor who never stopped believing in superheroes. When the real world gives him a reason to become one, he doesn&apos;t suddenly turn into Batman. He puts on red long underwear, a cape, his grandmother&apos;s housecoat and whatever garbage he can turn into crime-fighting equipment and just goes for it. And Damon Wayans commits to this ridiculous character so completely that eventually you either get on board or you&apos;re watching the wrong movie.<br><br>Here&apos;s the crazy part: Damon agrees with us about Handi-Man. In a recent interview, Wayans said Blankman remains special to him and revealed that he made it for his kids — Damon Wayans Jr. and Michael Wayans actually appear as the brothers when they&apos;re young. But looking back, Damon said he thinks he should have made essentially the same movie about Handi-Man. His theory is that audiences knew him as this edgy In Living Color comedian and weren&apos;t prepared to accept him playing such an innocent nerd. He believes a Handi-Man version would have been a much bigger hit.<br><br>Director Mike Binder has separately said that Handi-Man actually was part of the movie&apos;s genesis, but they couldn&apos;t get the rights to the character, so Blankman became its own thing. Binder also remembers the studio believing they had a hit because the movie tested extremely well with audiences — and then it came out and basically died.<br><br>And die it did. Blankman opened August 19, 1994 and made only about $7.9 million domestically. Critics weren&apos;t particularly kind either; it currently sits at just 12% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Thirty-plus years later, though, Damon himself calls it a cult classic, and I finally understand why.<br><br>Because this movie is fucking funny.<br><br>Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier already had years of chemistry from In Living Color, and that relationship is the entire movie. David Alan Grier&apos;s Kevin is basically the audience. He&apos;s looking at his brother thinking, &quot;What the hell are you doing?&quot; right up until he gets sucked into the insanity and becomes the greatest superhero sidekick name in cinematic history: Other Guy. Robin Givens plays the news anchor caught between the two brothers, Jon Polito gets to be an appropriately ridiculous gangster, and then Jason Alexander wanders in for what amounts to a bizarre extended cameo as Darryl&apos;s boss. This was right in the middle of Seinfeld, too. George Costanza apparently took a day off from the Yankees to sexually harass Blankman at an appliance repair shop.<br><br>But what surprised me most this time is that underneath all the stupidity, Blankman is actually pretty damn sincere. This isn&apos;t a cynical superhero parody. It makes fun of superheroes while simultaneously loving superheroes. Darryl doesn&apos;t become a hero because he&apos;s powerful. He has no powers. He&apos;s not particularly strong, smooth, intimidating or even competent. He&apos;s an inventor with an almost pathological belief that somebody ought to stand up and help people, so eventually he decides that somebody might as well be him. That&apos;s a pretty sweet idea hiding underneath a movie filled with bulletproof underwear.<br><br>And watching it now, before superhero movies completely swallowed Hollywood, gives the satire another layer it couldn&apos;t possibly have had in 1994. Blankman arrived years before X-Men, Spider-Man and the MCU turned superheroes into the dominant form of blockbuster entertainment. The movie is already joking about superhero branding, costumes, secret identities, merchandising, sidekicks, media obsession and the public desperately wanting a costumed hero to believe in. It&apos;s making fun of a cultural phenomenon that was going to become exponentially bigger over the next thirty years.<br><br>Now, is it a good movie? That&apos;s a slightly different question.<br><br>At only about 92 minutes, it somehow still feels slow in places. There are stretches where the energy just disappears, and I kept getting the feeling that somewhere during the writing, shooting or editing process there was an even funnier version of this movie that never quite made it to the screen. The individual jokes can be hysterical, but the movie connecting those jokes together isn&apos;t always nearly as strong. There&apos;s a looseness to it that sometimes works in its favor and sometimes makes you wonder how something this completely insane can temporarily become boring.<br><br>But then Damon Wayans shrieks, David Alan Grier looks at him like he&apos;s lost his fucking mind, J-5 does something ridiculous, somebody mentions Other Guy, or Blankman unveils another invention held together with household garbage, and we were right back to laughing our asses off.<br><br>And we laughed a LOT. There were stretches where it felt like every five seconds one of us was losing it over something. Tara absolutely loved the stupidity of it, and the In Living Color connection made it even better for her. By the end, I realized that the movie I&apos;d dismissed for thirty years as &quot;that dumb Damon Wayans superhero movie&quot; is actually exactly that — except now I mean it as a compliment.<br><br>Blankman is weird. It&apos;s campy. It&apos;s uneven. It&apos;s stupid. It&apos;s strangely sweet. It&apos;s occasionally way too slow.<br><br>And Damon Wayans goes for it with absolutely everything he&apos;s got.<br><br>I was right in 1994: Blankman is incredibly dumb.<br><br>It just took me thirty years to realize it&apos;s perfectly dumb.

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• JD

  @JDthreee · 3 weeks ago

  One of the most underrated comedies of all time. Y’all were lyao 😂

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• VI

  @Vizziion · 3 weeks ago

  11 yr old me looooved this movie when it came out.

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• MO

  @Modern_forms · 3 weeks ago

  Very underrated movie, it&apos;s got the Wayans family humor, but it also has heart.

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• KR

  @krdragon6950 · 3 weeks ago

  Today is Damon Wayans’s 66th &nbsp;birthday. Born September 4, 1960

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• BI

  @bigb2494 · 3 weeks ago

  Damon was born with a club foot, so the elevated shoe was a reference to that. You guys should check out Meteor Man with Robert Towsend.

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• JA

  @jaysquestion · 3 weeks ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykdLSRK2yHA&amp;t=723">12:03</a> &nbsp;&quot;I warned you Susan&quot; <br>&quot;Ahhh&quot;<br>Someone should help that lady&quot; <br>😂

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• ER

  @ermagerd8306 · 3 weeks ago

  I would’ve loved a HandiMan movie, but this was pretty great as well. &nbsp;👍

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• AN

  @anthonysoley7121 · 3 weeks ago

  Someone should help that lady😂😂

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• RO

  @ronniedeen3651 · 3 weeks ago

  David Allen Grier is a massively underrated comedian.<br>That man makes me belly laugh like very few can.

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• ER

  @ermagerd8306 · 3 weeks ago

  I still use “Silly Billy Gumdrops” to this day. &nbsp;🤣

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• AA

  @aaronnowlin7484 · 3 weeks ago (edited)

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykdLSRK2yHA&amp;t=570">9:30</a> That GIF then Daman dipping his underwear in that chemical❤ PERFECT TIMING! 😂😂😂

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