Jack Black Made A Cameo Appearance In One Of The Worst-Rated Movies Of All Time

Jason Bloom's 1996 comedy "Bio-Dome" was mocked even when it came out. It was a slacker flick starring the ultra-hot comedian Pauly Shore as Bud "Squirrel" Macintosh and a particularly loopy Stephen Baldwin as his best friend, Doyle "Stubs" Johnson. The two slackers have just been (wisely) dumped by their hippie, environmentally conscious girlfriends (played by Teresa Hill and Joey Lauren Adams) and have decided to while away their free time at a local mall. It turns out the "mall" they have spotted, though, is actually an experimental, self-contained bio-dome that is on the cusp of sealing in a team of scientists for an entire year. The bio-dome is meant to test potential long-term extraterrestrial living. So, because of the experiment, Squirrel and Stubs have to stay sealed in for a year.

Anyone who remembers "Bio-Dome" probably also recalls how awful it is. It wasn't a hit and it received pretty terrible notices. The film currently has a 4% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 27 reviews, and even the kindest reviews were qualified. John Anderson, writing for the Los Angeles Times, gave the film one-half-of-a-star, wondering at the outset of his review if cinema could still be considered art after "Bio-Dome" came out. Elsewhere, Peter Stack at the San Francisco Chronicle gave it zero stars, writing that the protagonists have no redeeming qualities (a vital component if a really, really obnoxious pair of characters is going to lead your movie).

Sadly, Squirrel and Stubs never became a classic comedy duo like Fontanne and Lunt. Heck, they didn't even match the comedic energy of the Deedles. The two clowns were just the latest in a string of "silly slacker" characters that never hit the big time like Bill & Ted, Wayne & Garth, or Beavis & Butt-Head. "Bio-Dome" is widely hated and often used as a punchline, if it's even commented on at all.

That said, "Bio-Dome" does contain a cameo appearance by a notable comedy duo. At an outdoor college protest early on in the film, one can glimpse Jack Black and Kyle Gass, better known as Tenacious D, singing a song about the importance of trees.

To continue to slag on "Bio-Dome" for a moment: The film only has a score of 4.4 (out of 10) score on the famously lenient IMDb and a 3.7 users' score on Metacritic. No one likes the movie. "Weird Al" Yankovic even name-checked "Bio-Dome" in his musical epic "Albuquerque" as the worst possible movie to be shown on an airplane. The film itself is a joke, an example of how far Hollywood had fallen.

But Jack Black and Kyle Gass were good enough to sing a song for it. Both Black and Gass had acted in several films prior to "Bio-Dome," with Black having appeared in high-profile films like "Demolition Man," "Waterworld," and "Dead Man Walking," and with Gass turning up in weirdo movies like "Brain Dead," "Jacob's Ladder," and the remake of "The Barefoot Executive." "Bio-Dome," however, marked the first time the duo appeared as Tenacious D on screen. Prior to this, the folk-metal duo only performed live. It seems that Black went to the UCLA film school with "Bio-Dome" director Jason Bloom, so they were eager to work together, even in a small capacity. Bloom would go on to direct some TV shows and smaller films, including "Overnight Delivery" with Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon.

Black and Gass are hard to miss. There is a scene early in "Bio-Dome" where hippies are singing folk songs and drinking beers at an environmental protest. Someone asks how group massages and playing hacky-sack helps the environment, and they declare that it's to "raise awareness." The "comedic hippie protester" was a weirdly common trope in 1990s media, so the audience, I think, is meant to laugh at them. Tenacious D is in the back, performing an original song called "5 Needs." That song ended up bing made available to the public as a pre-release bonus track for their 2012 album "Rize of the Fenix."