Funny Farm follows Andy (Chase) and Elizabeth Farmer (Madolyn Smith) who have moved out of the big city in order to get a taste of country life, and hopefully get Andy's mental juices flowing for a book he was just commissioned to write.
Too bad for the Farmers, the small town of Redbud is far from the depictions of Norman Rockwell they were expecting. Instead, they have to deal with deranged mailmen, a Sheriff who doesn't have a driver's license, a dead body in their driveway and a whole slew of other quirky characters.
Just when Andy finally gets the ball rolling on his story, a quick read by Elizabeth reveals the manuscript to be far from good. To make matters worse, Elizabeth gets a letter in the mail that contains a contract for a small children's book she put together while Andy was otherwise occupied. Before the film ends, the couple will have quite a few rough spots, and even end up bribing the entire town, but the overall journey is a fun one.
The Double Feature's other film, Spies Like Us pairs Chevy Chase with Dan Aykroyd as the two end up bumbling their way into the spy business. They are supposed to be decoys for a major operation behind Russian lines, but of course, no one told them they weren't supposed to succeed.
When the pair are dropped off in the middle of central Asia, they are forced to impersonate a pair of surgeons who are a part of the relief corp... but as you can imagine, that ruse doesn't last very long, especially when they aren't able to perform a basic appendectomy.
Eventually, their superiors direct them to the Russian border with the hopes of them being captured and the heat being taken off of the real strike team. What no one expects is that these two bumbling characters might actually pull the operation off.
Overall, Spies Like Us is the better of the two films. It feels more refined, and the grouping of Chase and Aykroyd just works. Unfortunately, neither of these films come with added features and the Blu-ray transfer isn't always the best. Actually, Spies Like Us up-scaled quite a bit better than Funny Farm, but I've seen several transfers come through much crisper than either. In the end, this is a great double feature provided you don't already own either of the films. These classic comedies definitely belong in most people's collection and having them both on one disc just begs for back-to-back viewing.
