Laura Bombier
MOVIE REVIEW
Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks (2022)
At first glance you might not realize how revolutionary they were. The Kids in the Hall were five young white middle-class Canadian men from the suburbs, who came together at improvisational comedy clubs in Toronto in the late ’80s and discovered a collective comic genius for depicting the tribulations of aggravating, ridiculous ordinary life. One of the five, Scott Thompson, was gay – loudly so; the other four (Dave Foley, Mark McKinney, Kevin McDonald and Bruce McCulloch) couldn’t have cared less about that, and at the time that was new, strange and startling. Over the years the group has come together and come apart, dined out on the success of their TV show which ran from 1989 to 1995, made one movie (1996’s “Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy”) and managed (mostly) to stay a coherent, functioning group. This is due to their strong punk ethos – that is, for nonconformity, antiauthoritarianism and being true to oneself.