(Les Mayfield; 1992)

Starring:
Brendan Frasier, Pauly Shore, Sean Austin and Megan Ward

California Man shows just how hilariously out of control things can get when the Stone Age meets the Rock Age head-on!

The fun kicks off when two high school buddies dig up a frozen caveman in their backyard. Once the living fossil thaws out, the friends figure he's their ticket to being cool. But the plan backfires when the newcomer turns everyday life upside down, generating pre-hysterical craziness wherever he roams

This is a must see! I love this movie. Brendan Frasier pre-Mummy puts in an impressive performance, especially considering he can't actually speak more than a couple of words for the majority of the film. Another impressive performance is that of Pauly Shore as Stoney. Again made even more impressive as he can't string more than a couple of words together without pausing.

Okay the basic story is this: Dave (Sean Austin) is a high school geek who is building a pool in his backyard, in the hopes of holding an after prom party. "I want to look back on my High School career and think I started badly but finished strong" With him is his best friend and fellow nobody a unique weasel called Stoney (Pauly Shore). From the way he acts and speaks you get the feeling his name may have some meaning to it. Stoney is a kind of modern, moped-riding, hippy. Whilst they are digging there is a small tremor which unearths a huge chunk of ice with a caveman inside. They spend the next day thawing him out. Once out though the caveman (Brendan Frasier), now having been named Link, starts to cause chaos as he obviously doesn't understand morden society at all. But the two geeks have the great idea of enrolling him in highschool (under the guise of a foreign exchange student - Linkavitch Chemofsky from Estonia) as they think he will be able to increase their popularity and Dave thinks it will make him cool enough to be able to go out with his long time love Robin (Megan Ward). Link adapts pretty quickly and soon the whole school loves him. Well, almost. The school's bully/coolest guy, Matt Wilson - complete with spikey 90210 hair - is busy uncovering the truth about Link as his jealousy grows. Needless to say it all comes to head at Prom.

The film is well directed and the cast is great. Also if you can accept the story to Weird Science then this should hold no worries as being believable. The use of incidental music is perfect and the action and cliches at the school are broken up via a trip to a Mexican bar. The film is obviously trying to be full of 90's cool - the hair, clothes, making its own slang - but actually succeeds. Plus not only is there the added bonus of seeing Sean Austin again for the first time since the Goonies but in supporting roles are Robin Tunney (Empire Records, End Of Days), a young looking Rose McGowan and Jonathan Ke Quan who was Data in the Goonies!