Directed by Penelope Spheeris | Starring Jim Varney, Cloris Leachman, Erika Eleniak, and Diedrich Bader’s hair
If you’ve ever thought, “What this world really needs is a big-screen adaptation of a 1960s sitcom about rural yokels hitting the oil jackpot,” then congratulations—you are the exact person this movie was made for. The rest of us? We were just innocent bystanders, pelted with possum jokes and banjo twangs like we wandered into a moonshine tasting hosted by Satan.
The Beverly Hillbillies (1993) is a film that asks the deeply philosophical question: What if we took a one-joke premise, stretched it over 90 minutes, and had Jim Varney mug into the camera like a man possessed by a ghost with a head injury?
The Plot: A Dumber Version of the Already Dumb Original
The story is exactly what you think: Jed Clampett (Jim Varney) strikes oil while shooting at varmints and becomes an instant billionaire. His solution? Move to Beverly Hills and take his inbred Brady Bunch along for the ride.
Cue 90 minutes of fish-out-of-water gags, culture clash clichés, and about six thousand jokes involving “them fancy city folk.” Jed’s daughter Elly May (Erika Eleniak) likes critters. Granny (Cloris Leachman) likes moonshine. Cousin Jethro (Diedrich Bader) likes being dumb. That’s it. That’s your plot.
Oh, and there’s a subplot involving scheming city slickers trying to steal the Clampetts’ money. Because of course there is. Even Scooby-Doo villains have more subtlety.
Jim Varney: A Face Made for Mugging
Jim Varney, best known for playing Ernest (“Hey Vern!”), gives it his all here. Too much, in fact. He mugs, he squints, he talks like his tongue is made of cornbread. His Jed Clampett is less a character and more a cartoon drawn by someone who’s only ever seen a human once, and that was at a wax museum.
And sure, Varney was a talented physical comedian. But here, he’s stuck in a role that has no actual jokes—just drawls and dumbfounded reactions. He’s the kind of rich guy who doesn’t understand elevators, sushi, or basic indoor plumbing. By the end, you’re rooting for a bear attack.
Jethro: Diedrich Bader, Now With Extra Dumb
Diedrich Bader plays both Jethro and Jethrine, his own twin sister. It’s not funny. It’s not clever. It’s not even camp. It’s just… painful. Bader leans hard into the “idiot savant” routine—except without the savant part. His Jethro thinks with his fists and eats like someone trying to win a dare.
Imagine if Beavis and Butthead merged into one giant overgrown adolescent with a bowl cut. Then imagine that character being given unlimited money and no adult supervision. That’s Jethro. And he’s still one of the less annoying characters in this movie.
Granny: Cloris Leachman Deserves a Medal
Cloris Leachman as Granny looks like she wandered in from another film—possibly a better one where she wasn’t forced to make jokes about squirrel stew and enemas. She tries. God help her, she tries. But you can see it in her eyes: the dead, hollow stare of a veteran actress questioning every life choice that led to being strapped to a rocking chair on a fake Beverly Hills porch, yelling about “city-slicker devils.”
Granny’s entire schtick is that she’s old, violent, and has the culinary sophistication of a raccoon. In one scene, she tries to cure someone’s ailment with a possum poultice. In another, she threatens to shoot a banker. Charming.
Elly May: Erika Eleniak Is Here for the Cleavage
Elly May Clampett is supposed to be a tomboy. In this version, she’s a Baywatch extra with a pet chimpanzee and a shelf full of push-up bras. Erika Eleniak plays the role like she’s perpetually surprised by whatever animal has been glued to her shoulder. She’s mostly there to look good in tank tops and swing her blonde hair around.
She looks great though.
Tone: Cornpone Nightmare
This movie doesn’t have tone. It has a twang. It opens with bluegrass, ends with square dancing, and feels like a fever dream you’d have after eating expired grits.
It tries to walk a line between satire and homage, but instead trips over its own coonskin cap and faceplants into a pile of laugh tracks that don’t exist. You can feel the director, Penelope Spheeris (Wayne’s World), trying to inject some punky irreverence. But the script gives her nothing but outhouse jokes and third-grade-level hillbilly insults.
Villains: As Subtle as a Cow Pie in a Ballroom
The con artists trying to swindle the Clampetts are played by Dabney Coleman (a man who deserves better) and Lea Thompson (also slumming it hard). They twirl metaphorical mustaches and drop sexual innuendos like anvils from the top of a barn. One of them even tries to marry Jed for his money. It’s like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, except dirtier and definitely not funny.
Watching them try to outwit characters who don’t understand what a telephone is feels less like a con and more like elder abuse.
Production Design: Everything’s Bigger, Including the Suffering
The mansion is gaudy. The wardrobe is Walmart Halloween aisle. The humor is shot with wide angles and slapstick timing that would make The Three Stooges wince in embarrassment. You keep waiting for the movie to break the fourth wall and wink. It never does. It just stares, blankly, like a taxidermied squirrel in a tuxedo.
Final Thoughts: Clamp It Shut
The 1993 Beverly Hillbillies is a big-screen remake nobody asked for, delivered with the comedic sophistication of a clogged banjo. It’s a film so committed to playing dumb, it forgets to be funny. A nostalgia cash grab dressed in overalls and bad puns, it drags the original show’s one-note premise through a modern lens and somehow makes it dumber.
There are a few chuckles. Mostly from disbelief. The rest is a cringe parade of dated stereotypes, lazy gags, and talented actors stuck in career quicksand.
Rating: 3/10 — Someone shoot the cement pond and put it out of its misery.
