National Lampoon’s BAGBOY(2007)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

While Phil (Paul Campbell) is traveling across the country with Marty (Dennis Farina), getting grocery bagging tournament victories under his belt (and ultimately qualifying for the National Championships), they make a stop in Orlando to check out the Grocery Baggers Hall of Fame. While there, Marty discovers that its owner is Dave Weiner (Richard Kind), who used to tour the professional circuit with him years ago. They go out to a bar with Phil to drink and chat, and Dave soon brings up that a local billionaire, Stanley Ormanski (Rob Moran), is going to be holding a private bagging competition at his mansion today, so if Marty and Phil enter it and win, they could stand to collect a big paycheck. They decide to participate, and shortly after they arrive at Stanley’s residence, Stanley matches Phil against his servant, Julio (Carlos Lacamara). However, Julio asks Phil to take pity on him, then tells him all about how he is a slave to Stanley and that Stanley has his family locked up, and they will only get their freedom if he wins (and he even shows Phil his leg irons as proof that what he is telling him is true). All of this messes with Phil’s concentration and causes him to lose. Afterward, Marty chews Phil out for letting a bogus story like that ruin his focus (even though we do see Julio and his family fleeing from a rifle-wielding Stanley). After telling him that he doesn’t think that he has what it takes to be a champion, he abandons him. Phil later calls Bambi (Marika Dominczyk) and tells her about his recent defeat as well as how Marty walked away from him because he thought he screwed up.

Marty meets back up with Dave, and they go and get drunk together at the bar that they were previously at. However, Dave ruins the mood when he first calls Phil a loser who doesn’t have what it takes to go the distance, then makes a wild suggestion to Marty that they fly out to Osaka to find a prospective grocery bagger to train, believing that the only good prospects left are from places like that or close to them, and this will give them a chance to forge new and better reputations for themselves since they soiled them in this country. Marty doesn’t like this idea one bit and tells Dave as much, and after Dave insults him for refusing to go along with it, he leaves the bar and returns to his hotel room.

Later on, Marty is paid a surprise visit from Bambi, and she berates him for abandoning Phil before telling him that Phil is a winner and he needs his guidance. When he returns fire verbally, she reveals to him that she is his long-lost daughter. Through them putting their parts of the whole story together, we learn that he had a fling with her mother, Ramona, at a victory party for a bagging contest he won back in 1984, and Bambi was conceived that same night. Marty and Ramona mutually agreed to name her after Babe Ruth since he was a legendary grocery bagger before he pursued his career in baseball (her name is derived from Ruth’s nickname, “The Great Bambino”). They subsequently spent the next two weeks together, and he fell for her pretty hard and promised to come back to her once he finished the National Grocery Bagging Championships. Unfortunately, he never did, thanks to her father; he called him a bum (likely because of his hard-partying ways back then) and warned him that, if he ever came near his house again, he would have him thrown in jail. Ramona waited every day for a year for Marty to defy her father and come for her, but he never did. Bambi applied for her job at Marty’s grocery store shortly after Ramona had passed away. Bambi tells Marty that she doesn’t like him one bit, but she thinks she loves Phil, and he needs his help.

Suddenly, Marty apparently suffers a heart attack. After Phil appears seconds later, he and Bambi get Marty to the hospital, with Bambi – off-screen – filling Phil in on all of the details regarding her and Marty. While waiting in the waiting room for news on Marty’s condition, Phil notices that Bambi is trying to keep her emotions bottled up, so he encourages her just to let them out. She, therefore, tells him that she thinks that Marty is an alcoholic bum and she hates the fact that her mother is dead, but she admits to Phil that she loves him, and they share a kiss. Marty then appears and informs the two of them that all he suffered was a panic attack brought on by finding out about his relation to Bambi and the fact that the National Grocery Bagging Championships is just two days away. The trio returns home, and Phil spends the next two days training aggressively for the competition.

On the day of the tournament, when Phil is dropped off at the tournament site by his parents, his father tells him that he is proud of him no matter what, which gives him a boost of confidence because his father has rarely expressed any affection for him or his mother since his failed professional football career. Shortly before the contest begins, Marty crosses paths with his nemesis Pike (Larry Miller) – who runs a more successful grocery store – in the men’s restroom. They decide to make a wager: If Phil wins, Pike will have to pay Marty $20,000 (which is what he gambled and lost on Marty at the National Championships all those years ago), but if Pike’s star grocery bagger Clyde (Robert Hoffman) emerges victorious, then Pike will gain ownership of Marty’s store.

Phil and Clyde end up becoming two of the six finalists, and Phil manages to defeat Clyde and all of the others to become champion. However, while he is being congratulated by his friends and loved ones, Clyde picks up a large sausage and makes ready to strike him with it. Fortunately, Alonzo (Wesley Jonathan) sees what Clyde is about to do and kicks him in the balls to stop him. Police officers then approach them, and Clyde screams that Alonzo attacked him. Realizing that he has a chance to develop a bad boy image for his fledgling hip-hop career by being arrested, Alonzo tells the cops that what Clyde just said is true, so the cops seize him and take him away. Marty punches Clyde in the face for hurting Bambi emotionally when they used to date. As Alonzo is being put into a police cruiser, Dr. Feel It (Markus T. Boddie) – the hip-hop mogul who earlier rejected Alonzo because of his lack of street cred – takes notice of this and tells one of his men to find Alonzo’s CD again.

Phil and Bambi kiss, and then Marty has a dance with Bambi to cap off how wonderful this day has been for him.