Out of all the ‘90s teen movies that deserve to be forgotten by history, Encino Man ranks pretty high on the list. It’s mindless, low-effort, and filled with tropes that were tired by 1992, let alone watching in 2022. The plot is, of course, simple: uncool “nice guy” Dave (Sean Astin) desperately wants to be popular and get the girl, and he learns a little about friendship along the way. Even Dave and his goofy and free-spirited best friend Stoney (Pauly Shore, playing the same character he always plays) digging up a caveman frozen in ice they name Link (Brendan Fraser) and deciding he’s the ticket to popularity isn’t enough to make the film stand out amongst others of the era. However, as Encino Man’s 30th anniversary passed this year, another, more interesting layer of the film became apparent, albeit half-baked and struggling to emerge from the abundance of teen movie clichés that fill its runtime (one-dimensional bullies! Clueless parents! A choreographed dance at prom!). For a decidedly lowbrow movie, Encino Man offers a fledgling, but surprisingly compelling commentary on toxic masculinity.
Dave is a standard teen movie protagonist. He believes popularity is the only thing that matters, and that he deserves to date Robyn (Megan Ward), a girl he has a crush on, just because he used to be friends with her. He’s stuck in trope world, dutifully following the rules that movies like Encino Man have set out for him. But Stoney and Link break free of the conventions of both teen movies and masculinity. Even if Stoney, like Dave, wants to be popular, he and Link know there’s more to life than high school, and that they don’t need to fight to be real men. Dave wants to capitalize off of Link, but Stoney just wants to be his friend. The film suggests that Link and Stoney are the ones to be emulated, not typical teen movie protagonists like Dave. Besides this element, however, most of Encino Man is so predictable it doesn’t say anything new at all.
Mainly, the film’s female characters serve no purpose except being looked at and lusted after. Sexual harassment is played for laughs, and Robyn is nothing more than a prop used to teach Dave about life. For all the freedom Encino Man gives Dave to be himself and stop worrying about being cool, he and the film continue to uphold the status quo with the girls in his life. Dave gets to be with Robyn by the end of the movie, but why? He barely changes, yet writers George Zaloom and Shawn Schepps seem to think he deserves to have her just by virtue of being a man who wants something. Encino Man has interesting things to say, but regarding female characters, the writers resort to painting by the numbers.
On the other hand, a caveman is a deft foil for modern guys. Unlike Dave and Matt (Michael DeLuise), Robyn’s jock boyfriend who bullies Dave and Stoney, Link has never learned to care what other people think. He doesn’t need to conform to society’s expectations for how a man should act, whereas Dave and Matt fight each other for Robyn’s affection instead of expressing their feelings. Link doesn’t know how to follow the status quo of high school and finds friendship in every school clique, whether with hip-hop dancers or the popular kids. He dances just to dance and lives just to live, something Dave would never do. Robyn even askes Link to prom, as she recognizes how different he is from modern guys. Link comes across as a role model, showing Dave a more positive, pacifist way to live. Even though Matt is the antagonist, he and Dave are eerily alike. They’re obsessed with appearing cool and tough and winning Robyn. They’re following in the path of so many misogynist film protagonists, because that’s all they know, and that’s all the film knows.
In a vital scene, Dave and Matt get into a fight, before Matt punches Link. Dave goads Link to hit him back, but Link walks away. Dave and Matt don’t know any other way of dealing with the situation, as they’re both under the thumb of centuries of stereotypes and expectations. But Link doesn’t know any other way of dealing with it either. He’s a pacifist, and as Stoney eloquently explains, “[Cavemen] fought for food and survival. They did not fight for popularity.” Link is trying to show them a way out of conformity, but Dave and Matt never quite get there.
In fact, much of Encino Man involves Dave and Matt’s attempts to assimilate Link into the conventions of masculinity they inhabit. After Link refuses to fight Matt, Dave, along with Stoney, tries to teach him about fighting by watching pro wrestling videos. The scene is a literal representation of the societal conditioning regarding gender roles and masculinity everyone experiences. Media and society taught them how to be men, and now they’re passing that knowledge onto Link.
Matt takes a different approach: he thinks that Link should be punished and ostracized for not following the status quo. After Dave and Stoney enroll Link at their high school, Matt tries to uncover the truth about who Link really is. He steals his file from the school office and breaks into Dave’s house, where he finds photographs of Link frozen in ice. This plot culminates at the school prom, where Matt reveals to their classmates that Link is a caveman. If this were a different film, where Matt was the protagonist, he’d be the hero for revealing the truth. But in Encino Man, no one cares that Link is a caveman. They like him because he’s free. He’s not constrained by the macho posturing Dave and Matt partake in.
Link and Stoney are the real kindred spirits of the film, because Stoney can recognize this freedom. Although Stoney may want to be popular, he knows that high school popularity is ultimately meaningless, and he’s comfortable being his own wacky self. Dave says Stoney doesn’t care about anything except for “nugs, chilling, and grindage,” but Stoney is a much more empathetic friend to both Dave and Link. After Link has a breakdown at an ancient history museum, Stoney comforts him and tells him they’re family. When Dave tries to abandon Link, jealous that Robyn and Link are going to prom together, Stoney is the one who reasons with him because he can see what Dave can’t: that Link represents a blueprint for a better, more peaceful way of life.
By the end of the film, no one has changed that much. But by positioning Link as a role model, someone who is free of the expectations populating the world of Encino Man, the film does suggest a possible future. A future for both these characters, and for cinema, where films are more than just a carefully followed collection of tropes, where everyone can exist without worries of being cool or popular, where women have autonomy, and where men don’t need to follow conventions of masculinity. Encino Man is often nothing more than an unrefined, forgettable, and sexist comedy that follows the rules too closely. However, with 30 years of hindsight, the film’s explorations of pacifism and toxic masculinity are certainly intriguing. Encino Man doesn’t always succeed, but it is the attempt alone that makes it an interesting and entertaining watch.
