29. RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB: An antagonist is only as good as his implements.

Directed by Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and written by Bernie Kukoff, Jeff Harris (Kukoff and Harris created Diff’rent Strokes), Harry Colomby and Norman Steinberg, this felt like a movie I watched on cable so many times as a pre-teen and yet feels lost today. Maybe it’s because we live in a world where 1930s gangster movies being spoofed isn’t interesting. Maybe we’d like to forget that Joe Piscopo was actually a big deal at one point. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I still love it.

Johnny Kelly (Michael Keaton) is a newsboy in New York City, trying to help his mother (Maureen Stapleton) pay for one of her many operations. His father was a crook and got executed, so she tries to keep him from a life of crime. It worked with his brother Tommy (Griffin Dunne), who becomes a cop, but crime boss Jocko Dundee (Peter Boyle) is so impressed by a street fight that Johnny has with Danny Vermin (Piscopo) that he hires him to rob the nightclub of Roman Troy Moronie (Richard Dimitri). When Jocko asks what his name is, Johnny takes the last name Dangerously.

Ma and Tommy never know that Johnny is supporting their lives through crime, while he attempts to get along with Vermin, who has joined the gang. Johnny even gets the two warring gangs to make a treaty and works to get his brother a job with the D.A. (Danny DeVito). Yet Vermin learns that Johnny’s brother is a cop and sets up our hero, killing Burr and getting the evidence to his brother.

Man, there’s so much I’m missing, like Johnny being in love with showgirl Lil Sheridan (Marilu Henner), Joe Flaherty being a death row inmate, Alan Hale Jr. as a cop, Johnny showing his brother a VD film that’s a movie within the movie and the whole story inside teh story that has Johnny retired — maybe not — and running a pet shop.

But the best part of this movie, and the line that I always think of, is when Vermin pulls out his .88 Magnum and says, “It shoots through schools.”

Don’t let Johnny Dangerously be forgotten. It’s way smarter than it should be and just nonstop fun.