The release of Wayne's World in 1992 marked the dawn of a new era of deliberately "dumb" comedies, and insured the production, if not the success, of a slew of other movies based on popular characters from the television show Saturday Night Live. Wayne's World was significant not only for its surprising popularity—it grossed over $180 million worldwide—but also because its witty, self-conscious script and deliberately ludicrous jargon set a new standard for comedies aimed at a youth market in the 1990s.

Wayne's World was the first skit to be expanded from Saturday Night Live into a full-length feature since the very successful cult film Blues Brothers was released in 1980, and became something of a cult film itself. Like Blues Brothers, the chemistry in Wayne's World lay in the rapport between two characters, Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar, played by...