The first feature film starring vehicle for 'Saturday Night Live' cast member Dana Carvey casts him as Eddie Farrell. Eddie is a Chicago con artist, who along with his partner Lou (Todd Graff, "The Abyss") has run afoul of powerful mobster Sal Nichols (James Tolkan, the "Back to the Future" series). Hiding out at a posh suburban home into which he's broken, Eddie is mistaken for the house-sitter by amiable Milt (Robert Loggia, "Big") and his wife Mona (Doris Belack, "Tootsie"). From there he is able to con his way into a plum job, working for bathroom fixture tycoon Milt. Milt conveniently has a gorgeous daughter, Annie (Julia Campbell, "Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion"),a hard-working young doctor with whom Eddie naturally falls in love.

"Opportunity Knocks" may be really no ball of fire, but it certainly delivers a decent amount of laughs, and remains pretty pleasant throughout. Ultimately, the story is quite formulaic and predictable, with Eddie developing a conscience and feeling that he can't keep on lying to Milt and his family. Still, there's a certain satisfaction as the character uses all of his skills to rope Sal into an untenable situation and thereby get his revenge. This being rated PG-13, the violence never gets overly serious, with the mobster characters managing to be intimidating without being as thoroughly nasty as they could have been had the movie been rated R.

As a vehicle for Carvey, "Opportunity Knocks" consistently does its job, offering him the opportunity to do some real acting while also indulging in some un-P. C. dialect shtick (and even his "impression" of then-U. S. president George H. W. Bush). Most priceless is when Carvey belts out a rendition of "Born to be Wild" at a karaoke bar, and does some truly goofy dancing at a bar mitzvah. But the whole cast is engaging; look also for improv comedy legend Del Close (the "Blob" remake) in a bit role. Ever-delightful Milo O'Shea ("Barbarella") has a nice supporting role as Max, Eddies' mentor in the art of the con.

Good fun in general, and one of the more entertaining movies from this era to showcase an SNL talent.

Seven out of 10.

Opportunity Knocks has Dana Carvey and Todd Graff as a pair of small time grifters who steal a car from loan shark James Tolkan and strip it and junk it. Trouble is that neither of these two lunkheads bothered to look in the trunk where $60,000.00 of Tolkan's collection money is. Needless to say that's got Tolkan upset and he's after these two.

Who take place in a house that looks closed up. But by checking the answering machine find out that the owner has gone to India for three months and the fellow who is supposed to house sit has gotten a sudden job offer and he's blown town. What a perfect hideout.

But then parents Robert Loggia and Sally Belack show up of the owner and Carvey who is alone pretends he's the housesitter and they invite him to lunch at their club. Where Carvey meets Julie Campbell who is their daughter and a doctor. It's the dream of every red blooded American to meet and marry a man/woman of medicine.

The reformed conman is a plot device that's been done quite a lot in film, in one case set to music in The Music Man. But Opportunity Knocks goes way over the top here. Carvey and Graff should have taken their losses and run with a little bit of getaway cash they have courtesy of Loggia. What happens after Carvey gets that out of Loggia is too too absurd.

Donald Petrie has directed plenty of movies you may know, even if you don't know him. Mystic Pizza, Grumpy Old Men, Richie Rich, My Favorite Martian, Miss Congeniality, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days...he's made some memorable films. This effort is from the time when Dana Carvey was a star on Saturday Night Live, but before Wayne's World made him a bigger star.

Carvey plays con man Eddie Farrell, who is working a scam with his friend Lou Pesquino. They sneak into an empty house and discover that the owner is out of the country and the house sitter can't make it. After a gang of thugs get sent by mobster Sal Nichols (Detective Hugh Lubic from Masters of the Universe and Strickland from Back to the Future),the two split up and Eddie takes on the identity of the home's real owner, Jonathan Albertson.

Soon, Eddie is growing close to businessman Milt Malkin (Robert Loggia) and his wife Mona, as well as their daughter Annie (Julia Campbell, the mean girl from Romy and Michele's High School Reunion). It all starts as a con, but soon Eddie is falling for her.

This is a movie packed with actors that you rush to IMDB to look up, like Milo O'Shea as Eddie's uncle Max (he was Durand-Durand in Barbarella),the first acting role of jazz musician John M. Watson Sr. (he's the bartender in Groundhog Day) and Del Close, who was one of the most influential people in the history of American improv. He's also Reverend Meeker in the vastly underrated 1988 remake of The Blob.

I really need to get to a Robert Loggia week on this site, even if nobody but me wants to talk about how great he is in movies like the Independence Day movies (actually, he's the only good part of the sequel other than the fact that it mercifully ended),Lost Highway, Big (one could argue that he's playing the same exact role from that film in Opportunity Knocks) and The Believers.

You may be surprised - certainly, many people watching this and reviewing it on Letterboxd are - that in 1990, we didn't have the cultural sensitivities toward stereotypical accents. Just keep that in mind and understand that this is a goofy comedy that just wants to entertain you.