The Free-to-Stream ’90s Screwball Comedy You Can’t Believe Is Real

Chairman of the Board is your typical slacker comedy, and it’s “propped up” by the visual gags that you’d typically see in Carrot Top’s standup act. 

Carrot Top plays a struggling surfer and inventor named Edison who’s way behind on his rent payments. After helping a wealthy businessman named Armand McMillan fix his car through the use of his elaborate yet ridiculous contraptions, the two become fast friends.

Shortly after this fateful meetup, McMillan passes away and leaves Edison 45% of his struggling invention company, Macmillan Industries.

We know what you’re thinking … “What kind of hi-jinks could a prop comic like Carrot Top get into when the character he portrays inherits an invention company on the brink of collapse?”

We’re here to tell you that the sky’s the limit. For 95 minutes, you’ll be visually assaulted with pun-based prop-gags and so much toilet humor that you’ll be glad Tubi has commercial breaks so you can take some time to regroup. 

Carrot Top’s Edison quickly gets to work, and his newfound entrepreneurial spirit turns the company around as he develops several increasingly ridiculous but lucrative inventions.

Some of the more notable product developments include a brain-freeze-preventing Slurpee heater, a wearable lie detector known as the “bull-shirt,” a portable bathroom suit designed with long drives in mind, and the product that single-handedly saves the company: a portable TV dinner that’s also a fully functional television. 

Though it all seems like fun and games for Carrot Top, there is an antagonist in Chairman of the Board. Bitter that he didn’t inherit the company after McMillan’s passing, his nephew, Bradford, tries to sabotage Edison every step of the way.

After viewing Edison’s invention journal, he uses his “glow goo” concept to fabricate a news story that suggests the TV dinner causes radiation poisoning, quickly putting the company on a path to financial ruin. 

From this point forward, Carrot Top has to save the company’s reputation before McMillan Industries goes into the red and the company reverts back to Bradford, who intends to sell the company for his own personal gain.

If this scenario plays out as Bradford intends, then there’s absolutely no way Edison can pay the rent! And once you get a look at his foul-mouthed landlord, Ms. Krubavitch (Estelle Harris), you’ll truly know what’s at stake. 

Chairman of the Board was not a commercial success but rather a monolithic failure by the likes of which we’ve never seen before. In fact, it pulled in an abysmal $306,000 at the box office against its reported budget of $7 million.

To add insult to injury, this ill-fated Carrot Top-starring comedic romp was originally supposed to be one of three movies, as the comedian signed onto a three-picture deal with Trimark Pictures. 

But the film performed so poorly that follow-up films never materialized.

Critically speaking, Chairman of the Board garnered an 11 percent critical score against a 20 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The biggest criticism that Carrot Top received for his performance was that he didn’t branch out from his usual shtick, and the movie too closely mirrored his stand-up act.

What’s more, Chairman of the Board single-handedly proved that certain types of short-form comedy simply don’t translate well into a feature-length film.

But die-hard Carrot Top fans will defend Chairman of the Board with their lives and for good reason.

Despite its quirks, idiosyncrasies, and borderline nonsensical plot, it’s still a fun way to burn through an afternoon if you like over-the-top slapstick comedy that’s as unrelenting as it is cringe-worthy. And if you truly think it’s awful, you’ll probably still get a few cheap laughs while watching it anyway.