COMEDY DVDS
A CHRISTMAS STORY
Warner Home Video
Movie: 3.5; Disc 3.0It is amazing to see a modern classic film unfold before your eyes. In 1983, one year before we were married, Susan and I saw A Christmas Story in the theaters and simply were enthralled by its honesty and ability to recapture nostalgic early 1940s Midwest America. We were surprised that some of the critics were not so kind, and the film seemed to come and go just like all the other mediocre movies that play town for a few weeks and disappear. Somehow, A Christmas Story resonated and stuck, like comfort food, to the ribs.
Director, co-writer Bob Clark was the former Benjamin Clark who directed the low-budget Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things and Black Christmas , two superior (and clever) independent productions, but what was Clark doing re- creating an homage to Christmases of the past? Was the man getting soft, or simply selling out? The answer was neither, for A Christmas Story , for better or worse, will be the film that Clark will be remembered for, and without doubt, it has all the markings of a classic.
Baby boomers grew up as children in the late 1940s through the 1950s, and the film's apple-pie slice of nostalgia recreates the perfect world that all of us boomers either remember or wished we could remember. The Yuletide holidays are very special to everyone who celebrates them and such reflections reverberate throughout our memories for a lifetime. What It's A Wonderful Life recreated for people living during the 1940s , A Christmas Story does for baby boomers.
Speaking personally, I can remember being terrified by the image of Santa Claus, with his gigantic puffy face bellowing "Ho, Ho, Ho!" Never once did I sit on Santa's lap in our downtown department stores, even after much pleading from my parents, for Mr. Claus became a terrifying giant that caused shivers to run down my spine. And Clark captures that feeling of absolute terror, reinforced by maniacal Santa-helping elves. I can remember being bundled up in heavy winter coats with ear muffs, mittens and caps where I couldn't move my arms or stand up if I fell over. I too awaited surprises in the mail...not decoder rings, but rubber monster masks, Castle Films and movie posters. I can remember electrical sockets jam-filled with electrical cords and fuses blowing left and right, causing that pungent smell to permeate throughout the household. I can remember bullies on school yards threatening the innocent and the defenseless. I can remember those Saturday Evening Post -style snow storms that covered trees, rooftops, electric wires and pavements. I can remember those afternoon suppers that began promptly as soon as my father got home from work, my housewife mother preparing hot meals every evening. I can remember the ritual of purchasing our fresh Christmas tree every year and the problems which resulted from getting the tree to stand straight, tying it securely to the wall with green string. I can remember the Christmas day turkey dinner and all the preparation it involved. I can remember getting the Christmas catalog from Montgomery Ward's every fall and circling all the goodies I wished to have, making sure my mother knew exactly what I craved. Thank God I do not remember being forced to wear bunny outfits!
No other movie reminds me of all these reflections from the days of my youth that were so magical and important and still burn so strongly. When I want to remember the Christmases of my youth, I need only watch A Christmas Story to recapture the past, my past.
Amazingly, in the almost 20 years since its release, A Christmas Story has become the perennial holiday movie on one cable TV channel that runs it continuously for 24 hours beginning Christmas Eve. It is a movie that has become a heavy hitter on home video, and the catch-phrase "You'll shoot your eye out" has become part of the national lexicon. More so than any other modern movie, A Christmas Story has evolved from being another neglected movie flavor of the week to becoming a beloved holiday classic...and rightfully so.
Unfortunately, the Warner Bros. DVD only offers the pan-and-scan version and the print is fairly soft, appearing as if the company used the same master it used for its VHS release. If any film is worthy of a major restoration and widescreen special edition with commentary by Bob Clark and perhaps major cast members, this film is long overdue. For now the print is good enough, but hopefully, the future will bring new holiday joy with state-of-the-art presentation of this baby boomer Christmas classic. Criterion, are you listening?
ARE YOU BEING SERVED? THE MOVIE
Anchor Bay
Movie: 2.5; Disc: 3.0When it comes to British television of the past 25 years, comedy reigns supreme. Absolutely Fabulous, Fawlty Towers, Mr. Bean and other shows set new standards for TV sitcoms that dared to push the envelope to quirky, irreverent ends. One of the better but least-discussed British comedy shows is Are You Being Served? concerning a cast of lovable odd-balls who work at Grace Brothers department store. However, whenever one takes a 30-odd minute series and expands it to 96 minutes, well, the interactions and intensity of humor sometimes dissipates and are seldom as effective. Also, even with American series, whenever the sitcom family "goes on vacation" to some exotic vacation paradise, I know that series is in trouble. Vacation episodes almost always spend too much time investigating the exotic locale and too often forget the basics that made the show so enjoyable in the first place. Are You Being Served: The Movie is no different. The movie is best during its initial third when the cast (John Inman, Mollie Sugden, Frank Thornton, Trevor Bannister, Wendy Richard, Arthur Brough, etc.) interacts at the familiar Grace Brothers showing the salespeople and bosses doing what they do best... getting in one another's way. For instance, a woman is having difficulty deciding upon what hat to buy, so another intervening worker advises the perplexed woman's salesperson that we have to sell the customer what looks best, to be forceful. However, this busy-body second salesperson unknowingly advises the woman that the hat she already owns is the best hat for her, so no sale occurs, angering the original salesperson. Since the store is being remodeled, the group vacation quickly materializes.
Fortunately, the exotic locale is mostly set-based with our lovable cast being set up in tents within a luxury hotel since all the rooms have been overbooked. The hotel manager is played by Andrew Sachs who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers and he is again deftly lowkey but imperative to all the comic shenanigans. Using the separate tents as comic opportunity for romance and potential office affairs, of course people switch tents and rendezvous are confused for full comic intent. Sexually charged come-on letters are misdelivered or misinterpreted, leading to the wrong people believing that this or that person is romantically interested in them. Pretty soon our hapless souls become the victims of a massive rebel insurrection as the bullets fly.
Ultimately, all this comic confusion and mistaken identities gets dragged out to extremes, and while the movie is mildly entertaining with a few hilarious sequences, overall, too much filler hurts the pacing and momentum so essential for the success of such feature-length comic entertainment. Anchor Bay has done a wonderful job mastering the movie, widescreen, enchanced for 16:9 TVs, and the theatrical trailer is included as the only extra. For fans of wild British comedy, Are You Being Served? The Movie is an interesting diversion.
THE CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION
Dreamworks Home Video
Movie: 3.0; Disc: 3.0Comedian Woody Allen has never lost his sense of comic timing and his self-depreciating persona that fueled so many comic masterpieces during the last 40 years. However, Woody Allen the writer/director has taken the stance that many in the world of music have taken, those talents who survive initial popularity and resolve to remain for the long haul, rather than worrying that each album must be superior to the one before. After Woody Allen created classics such as Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Zelig, Manhattan , etc., he decided to survive artistically, resigning himself to make one moderately budgeted film after another, at least one new movie every other year, and accept the fact that some of them will be good and others forgettable. Working under his own rules and values, Woody Allen sometimes simply directs, and other times stars and directs; no matter how good or bad the latest production, Allen always manages to attract some of the best acting talent in Hollywood to his films, and oftentimes elicits superb performances out of personalities not generally known for acting ability. Last year, Allen's current film was The Curse of the Jade Scorpion , another film that snuck into theaters and left quietly within the month, a few critics alluding to its brilliance and cleverness, others simply passing it off as mediocre Allen product, no better or worse than the previous year's Allen picture.
The problem is, once in a while a genuine artistic winner is allowed to materialize, but because we have been lulled into practically ignoring Woody Allen as of late, people don't bother to separate the good from the mediocre, the brilliant from the pretentious. And The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is one of the finest movies Woody Allen wrote, directed and starred in for a long, long time. Not to say the film is not flawed (after so many years of producing black-and-white productions whether the movie called for black-and-white photography or not, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion , occurring in 1940 as an homage to the 1940's mystery genre/detective genre [not really film noir as many critics noted], truly cries out for black-and-white photography). Also, Woody Allen, who paid homage to his idol Humphrey Bogart in Play It Again, Sam early on in his career, now seems too long in the tooth to be playing the trench-coated insurance detective who becomes romantically and physically involved with the likes of Charlize Theron and Helen Hunt.
But while the movie lovingly recreates the world of 1940s Hollywood with all the interesting stereotypes, as well as spoofing all the 1940s icons, Jade Scorpion achieves its greatness by transcending the genre it lovingly pays tribute to by creating something emotionally profound. The basic plot involves David Ogden Stiers as a nightclub hypnotist putting Allen and Helen Hunt under his mesmeric power (the first 30 minutes of the film establish just how much the duo hate each other), causing them to become romantically attracted to one another. Then both are awakened, after being given a post-hypnotic suggestion, a special word which will put either party back into a deep trance, and each returns to hating the other. Stiers, later using the special word, causes Allen to rob expensive jewelry from his company's own clients, and he also involves Hunt in the crime. However, both are unaware of their actions, but while under the hypnotic suggestions, that person remains sexually attracted to the other But as everyone knows, people under hypnosis cannot be forced to do anything that they wouldn't do if conscious and awake, so the idea is suggested that Allen and Hunt actually do have feelings for one another. And Allen's relationship to all women becomes the focus of the movie, not the interesting mystery-caper-detective plot shenanigans. Besides Hunt, Allen has a casual relationship with office secretary Elizabeth Berkley, who proudly declares that any man who "rubs her chest down with Vick's... betta have a ring!" (the sexy lady stating she wants to climb into bed to take care of her cold, with Allen volunteering to rub down her ample chest). And Charlize Theron, who plays the Veronica Lake clone, the sexy rich man's daughter who uses her sexuality like a gangster uses his gun, is outraged and her self-concept deflated when she completely undresses and climbs into bed, mentions wanting to show off her thigh tattoo, starts to talk sexy, and Allen (unknown to her, now under a hypnotic suggestion) politely apologizes that he forgot he had another appointment and must ask her to leave (although she may take a dish of peanuts as a snack on her way to the cab).
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is not fast-paced, but like the movies it lovingly remembers, A and B productions alike, it takes its time developing both plot and relationships. The script is clever and peppered throughout with hilarious comic lines, most of which produce a resonating smile and rarely an out-loud laugh, but when one of the punch-lines involves "and Boris Karloff," well, as Sue noted, it is apparent that this movie was made by a man who loves classic movies (and in this case, American ones, not just foreign ones). For me The Curse of the Jade Scorpion produced a pleasant glow from beginning to end, and it only reminds us that talents such Woody Allen must never be taken for granted.
The Dreamworks DVD features a beautiful-looking widescreen print, but the film, perhaps as a tribute to 1940s cinema, only features a mono soundtrack, not a Dolby 5.1 soundtrack (so why the color??????). Extras include a trailer, some production notes, a cast and credit bio and that's about all. But who needs extras when the movie is this good!
GHOST WORLD
MGM
Movie: 3.5; Disc: 3.5There are two types of teen movies: those made for teens specifically to appeal to the teen movie audience, and those about the teenage experience; the latter not being of particular interest to teens because of biting satire often directed against them and by simply telling the truth that teens are often self-obsessed, cruel and confused. Teenagers like to think they are hip, above it all and smarter than their adult counterparts. Terry Zwigoff, director of the documentary Crumb , does a fantastic job of capturing the millennium-style teen (I know, because I teach them high school English every day). Based upon the comic strip featuring two teen girls discovering the world around them, Ghost World stars Thora Birch as Enid and Scarlett Johansson as Rebecca, two life-long buds whose cynical view of humanity tries to disguise their longing to connect with that rare one percent of the population they still have faith in... but how to find them, how to make the connection!!! Thus, the girls, once they graduate from high school (and they are just as cruel to the teen idiots they socialize with every day as they are to the adults surrounding their lives), decide to blow off college because everybody else is doing it, and instead desire to get their own apartments and jobs and explore humanity. Exploring humanity entails following people, making up elaborate stories about them (one couple in a restaurant is labeled "Satanists"...the girls believing these odd-looking biker-types to be involved in sacrificing virgins and stuff, something they admit they're not so they feel safe) and making fun of them (one poor pathetic slob, believing he had a "moment" with a blonde girl that he saw for merely seconds, places a personal ad to find out who she is and for her to contact him... Enid immediately decides to pretend to be that girl and to make a bogus phone call to arrange a rendezvous that will never take place).
So far these bright and intelligent loners (actually Rebecca is the more popular one, less eccentric, better able to fit in and accept the social expectations such as holding a job) have earned our disdain, for they are cold, ruthless, manipulative and seemingly uncaring. But by movie's end, the focus character Enid, brilliantly executed by Thora Birch ( American Beauty ), reveals a multi-faceted personality of longing to be accepted. She slowly opens up, and like an onion, reveals many layers of humanity underneath. As many have stated, Birch's performance is of Academy Award nomination caliber, and the depth to her character--with its many changing fashion statements, hair color changes, head and face gear accouterments, glasses--makes the audience look twice at the character we think she is vs. the person she turns out to be. True, she's still obnoxious and self-centered, but we see a person with real empathy for humankind slowly emerge. Enid is flawed, but she is also vulnerable, demonstrating the promise of becoming an interesting adult.
In a major supporting role, Steve Buscemi shines as Seymour, a geeky and lonely record collector, a role distinctly opposite to his earlier creepy outlaw persona. Here Buscemi, with help from a script that is spot on, captures the anal retentiveness and obsessive quality of every dedicated collector, be it a collector of movie posters, comic books, records, baseball cards, etc. In one of the movie's best sequences, the kindly Seymour invites Enid to one of his "parties," one consisting of aging male outcasts who speak about their collectibles or about the virtues of CD sound vs. vinyl record sound. When Enid innocently asks why he is allowing all his rare collectibles to be out in the open and able to be touched by everyone, Seymour gets excited, states that only the junk is exposed, and blurts out his record room is off limits to everyone, but he shyly invites Enid inside to see it, and she is truly impressed to see his posters and Americana on the walls, among shelves and shelves of old 78s and albums. In this sequence Enid drops all pretense and allows the inquisitive young woman inside to emerge and make a real connection with Seymour. As she sets out on her campaign to get Seymour a woman, we can tell she is slightly hurt that he doesn't hit on her (although the age difference must weigh heavily on Seymour's mind). But to Enid people her own age are children so she gravitates toward young adults to find companionship.
The DVD contains a 16:9 enchanced letterboxed print, with 5.1 Dolby Surround, and features a theatrical trailer, a music video, a making-of featurette and deleted and alternate scenes, which are always fun to behold. While Sue was quick to point out that Ghost World is this generation's remake of the Peter Sellers movie The World of Henry Orient , Ghost World is still quirky, insightful, warm and satiric... and Thora Birch creates a character of complexity and interest, warts, flaws and all.
only the junk is exposed, and blurts out his record room is off limits to everyone, but he shyly invites Enid inside to see it, and she is truly impressed to see his posters and Americana on the walls, among shelves and shelves of old 78s and albums. In this sequence Enid drops all pretense and allows the inquisitive young woman inside to emerge and make a real connection with Seymour. As she sets out on her campaign to get Seymour a woman, we can tell she is slightly hurt that he doesn't hit on her (although the age difference must weigh heavily on Seymour's mind). But to Enid people her own age are children so she gravitates toward young adults to find companionship.
The DVD contains a 16:9 enchanced letterboxed print, with 5.1 Dolby Surround, and features a theatrical trailer, a music video, a making-of featurette and deleted and alternate scenes, which are always fun to behold. While Sue was quick to point out that Ghost World is this generation's remake of the Peter Sellers movie The World of Henry Orient , Ghost World is still quirky, insightful, warm and satiric... and Thora Birch creates a character of complexity and interest, warts, flaws and all.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
The Criterion Collection
Movie 3.0; Disc: 3.5The Criterion Collection is being very clever in releasing Anthony Asquith's 1952 British production of Oscar Wilde's pivotal play, The Importance of Being Earnest , at the same time a new movie version is being released theatrically. The pristine, Technicolor full-frame release (1:33:1) opens as the theatrical audience watches individuals in the audience react as the band director bangs his baton, and the action, supposedly, occurs behind the lush red velvet curtains that lift slowly to open the story. At movie's end, upon a few clever lines of dialogue, the story comes to a crashing end as the red velvet curtain falls down upon the action (in reality, the curtain is matted in over the onscreen action). In other words, this cast of primarily British stage actors (Margaret Rutherford, Michael Redgrave and Hammer standby Miles Malleson being most recognizable to movie audiences) are presented within a very stagebound movie, one whose locations and set design is limited, making the movie appear very theatrical. And the gorgeous Technicolor red curtain only reinforces this deliberate effect.
For those who were expecting a massive stylish cinematic overhaul of the stage play, forget it. The success of the movie lies primarily upon the strength of Wilde's witty comedy of errors, confused identities and characters who pretend to be people they are not. Wilde's dialogue is crisp and intelligent and the major characters are all formal Brits whose characters to modern audiences may seem almost stereotypical, but there's larceny and playfulness beneath gruff exteriors. Michael Redgrave's repartee with lifelong friend (and soon to be discovered brother) Michael Denison ignites the dramatic conflict which catapults the story into motion. Redgrave portrays a country-dweller, Jack, who escapes to wild London under the pretense of attending to a younger brother Earnest (who does not exist). Denison, playing Jack's younger friend Algernon, discovers the deception, and when he further learns that Jack has a beautiful young ward under his care, Cecily (Dorothy Tutin), he journeys to Jack's country home and pretends to be younger brother Earnest. And this is just the first layer of the complex onion plot, as things unravel and grow more complex minute by minute. Finally, by the movie's end, after both men find their perfect soulmates, only then is it revealed that Jack and Algernon are in fact brothers and that Jack's real name is Earnest.
This Criterion DVD contains a trailer, production notes, cast and crew bios and a still gallery. But Criterion's rich Technicolor print is the major calling card here.
IRMA LA DOUCE
MGM Home Video
Movie 3.0; Disc: 3.0The dynamic team of director Billy Wilder and co-writer I.A.L. Diamond were on a roll in 1963, still creatively invigorated by their most recent successes: Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960). However, even though the duo's Irma La Douce is more thumbs up than thumbs down, the film as a whole fails to soar like the two predecessors.
Irma La Douce , filmed in gorgeous Panavision and Technicolor, is here presented in a superb 2:35:1 widescreen print (enhanced for 16:9 televisions). The only extra included is a theatrical trailer, but as is the norm with most of the MGM Vintage Classics Collection, the list price is only $15.00 so the movie buff gets maximum bang for his buck.
Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond appear to be digging up the biggest bones from their prior cinematic glories to invest Irma La Douce with those qualities that worked so effectively in the past. And even when they work here, it's deja-vu whereby the audience is reminded of similar ideas that worked much better in the past.
First of all, having talented Jack Lemmon back for all three productions is a strong plus, for his comic genius is still underestimated to this day, even in the wake of his recent death. The sequence where the dead-tired Nestor (Lemmon) sneaks out of the apartment he shares with Irma (Shirley MacLaine) to work for extra money in a meat-packing house nights, and in the morning sneaks back in trying not to wake the unsuspecting girlfriend, shows just how great a mime Lemmon can be. The way he slouches, yawns, responds in a startled quick-jerk reaction, what he says with his eyes, how he moves reminds me of all the comic greats from Charlie Chaplin to Stan Laurel.
Shirley MacLaine, who co-starred with Lemmon in The Apartment , performing as a prim-and-proper but misguided sweet young girl, is here transformed into an empowered female prostitute who is not afraid to dance a sexy shimmy on a bar tabletop celebrating the discovery of a high-paying customer. Their chemistry worked wonderfully before, and here it ignites once again. But it is Lemmon's dual role as both Nestor and Professor X (done in the too-too proper formal Brit stereotype tradition, the performance obviously based upon British comic Terry-Thomas) who steals the show (much like Tony Curtis' dual performance imitating Cary Grant worked so well in Some Like it Hot ). Just like Curtis' character in the earlier production, Professor X pretends to be impotent so Shirley MacLaine can seduce her in-disguise lover.
One of the film's finest moments occurs when Jack Lemmon, attracted to the street-savvy Irma, sees her mistreated by her pimp and decides to play the knight in shining armor. After hitting the giant over the head with a pool cue, breaking the stick in half, the slightly annoyed pimp complains about having his hat messed up, and quickly proceeds to beat the living stuffings out of Lemmon. In a succession of one powerful punch or kick followed by another, Lemmon becomes doubled over in pain or sprawled out over a pool table. Only after Lemmon is able to use the heavy metal lights (which swing round and round) above the pool table to knock the Goliath unconscious, does he win the heart of MacLaine, who takes him home to her apartment and one bed (there is no furniture), telling the excited Lennon that she sleeps in the nude (with the exception of wearing a blindfold) and that he will not be cold at night... she promises gleefully.
Irma La Douce is a good film while the two earlier ones were great movies. Irma La Douce smacks of revisiting the well one time too often (even the sudden surprise ending and final gag line smacks of the ending of Some Like It Hot ). Also, at two hours and 23 minutes, the movie is at least half an hour too long and could benefit from more "tough love" editing. Lou Jacobi as Moustache is marvelous in a major supporting role as the owner of the bar and friend to both Irma and Nestor. However, seeing Jack Lemmon at the top of his form is always a treat and Irma La Douce deserves to be seen in this incredible DVD format often.
IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD
MGM Home Video
Movie: 3.5; Disc: 4.0When I was only 13 years old back in 1963, during summer vacation my family and I journeyed to New York City to see the sights, and one of them was the Cinerama Roadshow premiere release of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World . It was a movie that was dazzling to behold in a huge New York theater, and it was funny as hell. I never quite forgot that cinematic adventure.
In the years since 1963, critics have been mixed in their praises and knocks about the film. An all-star cast comedy extravaganza with such a freewheeling plot and structure is bound, running originally at just over three hours long, to have some lags and sputters. But with the idea of featuring a dominant cast of Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, augmented with cameos and supporting performances featuring Joe E. Brown, Jim Backus, Buster Keaton, The Three Stooges, Don Knotts, etc., the movie would be special for its casting alone. Fortunately, the basic plot premise--Jimmy Durante crashes his car, and before he dies, confesses to the assembled motorists who stopped to help, that a treasure is buried in a park underneath a giant "W"--allows all the greedy motorists to each have subplots showing how they get waylaid and detained in their efforts to secure the buried loot. Whenever the individual groups interact, the best mayhem occurs.
The movie is jam-packed with sequences that become comedy masterstrokes: Jonathan Winters single-handedly destroying the service station manned by Arnold Stang; Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett attempting to land a plane after drunken pilot Jim Backus is knocked unconscious; Sid Caesar and wife trapped inside the locked hardware store attempting to break out using explosives; the numerous sequences that end with screaming Ethel Merman upside down, her legs kicking skyward; the chase for Spencer Tracy and the money leading the fanatic crew to the crane that is flipping and flopping out of control hovering over the main street of the city, etc.
For me, the movie is exceptional and funny, funny, funny! The characters created by the comic stars showcase the special talents and personalities of each, but it's in the inter-relationships that the genius of the production emerges.The film never sags and the on-the-road antics keep changing constantly, introducing new locations and people that drive the film along for two hours, 41 minutes.
Unlike the laserdisc that reassembled the 30-odd minutes cut from the movie after its Roadshow release within the print itself, here the extra cut footage appears separately in a supplemental section, along with the "Something a Little Less Serious" Documentary and trailers. The Ultra Panavision and Technicolor print is absolutely gorgeous and quite sharp. The Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is full-bodied and punctuates the comic antics. The MGM presentation just could not have been better!
So in the aftermath of the Twin Towers tragedy, Sue and I turned to this classic Stanley Kramer production and laughed ourselves silly. It made people roar in hysterics 40 years ago, and guess what, it hasn't lost any of its power today. Truly, this is one of the classic comedies for all ages.
JUNO
Fox Home Video
Movie: 3.0; Disc: 3.5Along with heavyweights MICHAEL CLAYTON, THERE WILL BE BLOOD and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, the over-achieving independent sensation JUNO was the dark horse Best Motion Picture entry at this year's Academy Awards. And thank heavens JUNO lost to far superior movies.
JUNO has heart, style and a freshness that makes a strong impression. Ellen Page's (as Juno) breakout performance, augmented by strong support from Jennifer Garner (as Vanessa) and Jason Bateman (as Mark) as the quirky and sometimes off-putting Yuppie couple, booster a fine film. Less known actors such as Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons, as Juno's parents, really shine. The screenplay by hot-lick Diablo Cody has strengths and weaknesses and illustrates the flaws of independent productions of late.
Most indie films depend more on the screenplay and the acting, trying to create real-life three-dimensional characters, and this is certainly a boon. However with JUNO the screenplay plays more as a fictionalized documentary than as a three-act drama (or dramedy). Perhaps the indie spirit attempts to feature a slice-of-life rather than traditional drama, but for me this becomes sometimes tedious. I live real life but I want my movies to be tightly constructed in three acts following the rules of good story-telling.
Ellen Page and most of her peers nail typical high school students, with warts and flaws impeding their hopes and dreams. Page's Juno becomes the slightly left-of-center quirky 16 year old who sometimes acts as though she has the wisdom of an adult 20 years her senior. Now, I can accept her maturity. Most 16-year-old girls would not be so non-chalant and philosophic when it comes to telling parents of her pregnancy. By the time she breaks the news (after drinking a gallon of Sunny D and doing three pregnancy tests in one day) she already has a plan in place to give up her child for adoption (to a very wealthy couple who placed an ad in the The Penny Saver ). Juno sometimes seems wise beyond her years. Even the gimmick of having her suck on an unlit pipe gives her a wizened charm. Juno, living in a working class community, has a totally cool and loving Dad, and Juno even bonds with her equally loving stepmother. Everything is just too perfect.
And that's the problem. The major conflict this script offers is whether or not the child will be a boy or a girl, because everything that might be developed as character conflict has already been wrapped up into a tidy package from the get-go.
The almost too perfect young couple, Vanessa and Mark, who live in the huge, beautiful Yuppie community, tease us with their quirks that promise to bloom into perversity, but alas, that is not to be. Vanessa, who is unable to have children, declares that she was born to be a mother, and her second-by-second concern for Juno and her unborn child establish this woman as slightly whacko. "Just how sure are you [about giving up the child]... 80%, 90%?" Mark, her husband, has a little nook hidden away in the house that contains his small recording studio, for he secretly harbors aspirations of being a rock star (though he makes his living by writing commercial jingles). Juno and Mark bond instantly, she declaring her favorite groups to be The Stooges, Patti Smith and Joan Jett, while he is into early 1990s grunge/punk. Juno comes to visit Mark, often times when Vanessa is away, and we keep expecting the always slightly smiling husband to make a physical play for Juno. But alas, this is never to be (again, perhaps such "conflicts" are too traditional and pat for indie-land). At best we have Mark's proclamation that Vanessa and he are no longer in love and that he intends to leave her and move into a loff in the city, to further his musical career. What JUNO does extremely well is juxtapose Juno against Mark, showing Mark to be the true child living in the adult's body. Juno, of course, is much more mature than Mark and is truly the adult in the relationship, but she is only 16 years old. For me this is the aspect of the screenplay that works best.
Even the teen who knocked Juno up is just a normal teen whose quiet calm and indecision make him very sympathetic. When Juno, who seduced him and not the other way away, declares her love to Mark, Mark comes through with just the right amount of compassion (winning his track meet before he runs to the hospital, just having the gut feeling that Juno is ready to deliver). Their love is best captured by the duo sitting on their house steps and playing guitar and singing together. Very apparently, this is young love and not for the ages. But for those two young people, that's all that's needed at the moment. Of course, even after Mark and Vanessa split, Juno realizes the baby belongs spiritually to Vanessa and Juno gives it up to her willingly. Again no conflict.
Everything is pat and easy. Even the folksy animation titles and catchy/cute songs by Kimya Dawson add to the mood, and for me those adolescent Velvet Underground-style pop songs become the heart and soul of the movie. They compliment the visuals beautifully.
My attention was drifting by the middle act because everyone could guess from the first reel how the movie would play out. Slice of life, yes, but compelling drama, no. Not that we wanted Mark to hit on Juno, Vanessa to become a serial-killing psycho mom or Juno's Dad to kill Bleecker, the inoffensive boy who impregnated Juno. But we needed more drama and conflict of some type... a few surprises, or a couple of twists. In real life we fart and it means nothing, but in literature (or cinema) a fart takes on meaning because the artist decided to include it purposely. Too many independent movies undermine the art of drama by presenting slices of life that are little more than expelled gas.
Ultimately, JUNO becomes a warm and fuzzy movie with a cutting-edge performance by Ellen Page. It is solid entertainment creatively assembled, but as far as being a great film, no, I don't think so. But sometimes being good is good enough.
THE LADY EVE
The Criterion Collection
Movie: 3.0; Disc: 3.5Preston Sturges is being rediscovered on Criterion Collection DVDs as of late, commencing with Sullivan's Travels , made the same year as The Lady Eve , 1941, and starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake in a movie that encompasses screwball comedy, social commentary and drama. For me it remains the superior movie by nature of its intelligent script that segues from one mood (a serial-inspired fight atop a speeding freight train, a comedic runaway trailer sequence, a solemn chain-gang marching slowly into an African-American church to watch movies, etc.) to another, reinventing itself as a stark drama after starting out as a well-scripted laugh riot. Sullivan's Travels also features Veronica Lake not as the hard-as-steel femme fatale noir heroine, but as a warm and cooing sexpot who follows movie director Sullivan, the man of her dreams, from Hollywood to the soup kitchen as he tries to learn about actual human suffering and misery. Sullivan's Travels is the far richer and less conventional movie and for me remains one of the premiere movie discoveries of recent times.
The Lady Eve is more a classic screwball comedy, combining romance and farce in this adult relationship movie focusing upon the themes of deception and misconstrued identities. Barbara Stanwyck (Jean) is marvelous as the daughter of cardshark Charles Coburn (Colonel Harrington); she's a sarcastic, street-savvy woman who uses people to further her own fortunes. In this case she has her eye on Henry Fonda (Charles), an heir to a brewery fortune. Positioning herself to watch other women around the room try to seduce the naive Charles, she marvels, in voice-over dialogue how pathetic and tiresome their antics become, while she subtly hangs back and gingerly sticks out her leg, tripping the pathetic victim. In these early scenes she is revealed to be a person who can size up people immediately and manipulate situations to her own advantage. Unfortunately, she falls in love with Fonda, even interfering with scams used by her father to chisel him out of $32,000. Pretending to wrinkle and tear up Fonda's check in front of all participants, in reality her father is storing it away for a rainy day.
Fortunately, Fonda's protector is Muggsy (William Demarest), who catches on to the scam and acquires photos identifying Harrington and Jean as the lowdown grifters they are, and the romance is doomed as Fonda takes to moping around with hound-dog eyes, drinking Scotch much too early in the morning.
Employing fellow con artist Eric Blore (Sir Alfred) who has made an impression in the fashionable Connecticut society scene (the area where Fonda and father Eugene Pallette make their home), Stanwyck reinvents herself as the British Lady Eve who decides to crash a societal party to get revenge on Fonda for having dumped her, or is she plotting to win him back? Because she sports a British accent, slightly lighter hair and a new hairdo, the dumbfounded Fonda does not recognize Stanwyck's Jean at first, while William Demarest keeps driving home the point that both ladies are in actuality only one lady. Here is where Sturges' clever plot begs for a massive suspension of disbelief, for not even the naive Fonda can be this stupid and the plot seems a tad too inconceivable and strains credibility.
However, The Lady Eve does feature a magnificent Barbara Stanwyck at the top of her form, and while Joel McCrea would have been better suited for the Henry Fonda role (who keeps tripping over human legs, furniture and just about anything else all in the attempt to create a stereotype as the doddering scientist who is too easily manipulated), Fonda does all right, although supporting players Charles Coburn, William Demarest and Eugene Pallette steal the show from him. The cozy, tight family world of the con artist, becoming sympathetic and likable amongst the world of the utterly filthy rich, is a recurrent theme here. Almost as if Sturges were condemning the world of the filthy rich for being too naive, self-serving and stuck-up to deserve to hold on to its wealth.
The DVD, as usual with Criterion discs, carries a wealth of supplementals including a pristine 35mm print, audio commentary, video introduction by Peter Bogdanovich, The Lux Radio Theater adaptation (performed by Stanwyck and Ray Milland), a scrapbook of publicity material and production photos, theatrical trailer, etc.
The Lady Eve is more a movie to study and think about than laugh about, its romance more manipulative than kismet, its script sometimes too clever for its own good. However, the movie is finally a thinking person's screwball comedy and has plenty to offer, even among a few missteps.
LADY FOR A DAY
Image Entertainment
Movie: 3.0; Disc: 3.0In 1933, Frank Capra was one year away from winning the Academy Award for Best Picture for It Happened One Night . And Lady for a Day was remade, in color with a major cast of stars including Bette Davis and James Garner, as Pocketful of Miracles decades later in 1961, becoming Capra's final film. Thus, the film that helped to launch Capra's career must have been near and dear to his heart, for it was the only one of his films he personally remade.
The Image print featured here is both a blessing and a curse. For 1933 the gorgeous black-and-white print and pristine soundtrack are to be commended. The contrast is beautiful and the film seems to defy its age. However, as the film progresses, first a long hair finds itself into the negative and becomes annoyingly noticeable, top of the image, center of the frame, for almost one minute or so. But near the end of the film, annoying "butterfly" scratches flutter by for minutes on end near the right-hand edge of the image. Digitally, these problems could have been cleaned up, and for a DVD release, fans expect no less. Thus, what is overall an extraordinary quality print is compromised with visual flaws. The on-screen visual introduction by Frank Capra, Jr. is wonderful, and his audio commentary is the only extra included on the DVD.
Arriving in theaters upon the tail-end of America's Depression, Lady for a Day is the perfect Capra-esque American fairy tale for the times, a film that transcends troublesome economics and recasts street beggars, gangsters, nightclub entertainers and policemen into softer, fantasized versions of their realistic, harder selves. The film works so well because of Capra's enthusiasm for both the American Dream and the innate goodness of human- kind.
The film concerns an old bag lady, Apple Annie (May Robson), who survives the New York City streets by selling fresh apples from a basket. Annie is cantankerous and beloved, but she writes her daughter, who now lives in Europe, that she is a high-society matron and enjoys the good life that only wealth and position can provide. She uses an upscale hotel as her home address, and one of the bell-hops retrieves the responses from the daughter to maintain the facade. However, things go sour when the bell-hop is caught and fired and Annie's daughter, now engaged to be married to a foreign aristocrat, announces that she, her fiancé and her fiancé's father plan to visit New York and want to hook up with dear old Mum! The news literally causes Annie to faint dead-away on the streets, wishing she could write that she has died to avoid extreme embarrassment. However, since the old girl is so beloved, gangster Dave the Dude (Warren William), who gains luck from buying her apples regularly, takes it upon himself to train his mobster flunkies to be high society "gentlemen" and to sponsor a party to which Annie's daughter and future in-laws can be invited. Of course the police become immediately suspicious and the plans are spoiled; however, by film's end, a society party is hosted for Annie featuring both the city's mayor and state's governor.
Such foolishness is very unrealistic, but in Frank Capra's universe, the kindness of people, both great and small, shines through to right any wrong and to straighten out any mess. The characterizations are fabulous, especially May Robson's transformation from street-savvy Apple Annie to high- society grand dame. Warren William as Dave the Dude is hardboiled but is a softy underneath, and his comic timing is outstanding. However, supporting player Ned Sparks steals the show as Dave's accomplice, and Sparks' droll, underplayed delivery of sparkling comic dialogue is memorable.
What America craved in 1933 was not a cold dose of reality but something soothing and light-hearted, something that spoke of the inherent kindness in humanity, a movie that would tickle the funnybone and yet produce poignancy and emotion. Lady for a Day delivers the goods, and even with a little more attention needed for restoration, the film's DVD release is nonetheless a cause to celebrate.
M*A*S*H
Fox Home Video, Five Star Collection
Movie: 3.0; Disc: 3.5
M*A*S*H is the first classic movie directed by Robert Altman, way back in 1970, and on this Fox Five Star Collection double-disk set, we get all the bells and whistles rendered quite impeccably. We have THX mastering, director's commentary by Altman, several documentaries, a still gallery, trailers, anamorphic widescreen restored print, 30th year cast reunion (with several cast members conspicuous by their absence), etc.But the movie demands you enjoy the Altman style of featuring an ensemble cast that is more character-oriented than plot-directed. For Altman, character becomes plot, but sometimes the plot fails to go somewhere. Cleverly, even though M*A*S*H occurs during the Korean War, Altman kept things nebulous enough to suggest the carnage then occurring in Vietnam. For that time, the juxtaposing of humor and casual conversations, amidst bloodied victims being administered to by medical teams that seem oblivious to the carnage occurring around them every day, was very darkly comedic, very cutting-edge. Today, over 30 years later, the unsubtle satire appears more hammered home than artistically rendered. The movie ends where it began, with nothing changed, nothing resolved and without any real ending. Of course such could be said of the Vietnam War in 1970, but is this politics or entertainment? However, I expect a plot to build toward some climax, some point of heightened tension. For me, this film is presented as a "slice of life" without any true rising action. Whether accepted as satire, comedy or drama, we need the sense of characters interacting, learning, growing and changing. Instead the essence, the whole of the movie seems to be making just one anti-war point with lots of irreverent humor.
From the viewpoint of the ensemble cast, the performances are always first rate, and the cross-cutting between multiple strands of plot is captivating and interesting. Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould shine as ordinary human beings caught up in circumstances beyond their control, and the humanity and humor they bring to the situation seem very honest and real. Supporting players such as the youthful Tom Skerritt, Robert Duvall, Sally Kellerman (nicknamed Hot Lips only after her amorous sexual affairs are caught on microphone as she moans about hot lips) are always excellent and keep us interested. However, the film's plot seems to climax with a very humorous football game rivalry which is simply hilarious without message or meaning, and too often the film seems bogged down in its thesis philosophy. But while M*A*S*H is cutting-edge and totally original for its time, for me, it seems to be a film that hasn't aged well. It's more a classic of its time rather than a classic film for all time.
Interestingly, during the 30 year reunion documentary, the assembled cast and crew reveal that Robert Altman's son wrote the lyrics for the theme song, Suicide is Painless, and that over the ensuing years his son made more money for the song lyrics than his old man made for directing the movie. Elliott Gould calls M*A*S*H the crowning achievement of his movie career and everyone seems very proud to be associated with the film. All in all, the film is a special one and has never looked nor sounded better. With all the extras, affordably priced to boot, this DVD is a bargain well worth revisiting if not checking out for the first time.
NOW, VOYAGER
Warner Home Video
Movie: 3.5; Disc: 3.5After watching the Criterion Collection DVD of Notorious , I felt the ultimate in black-and-white DVD reproduction had been achieved, but one look at this Warner Bros. DVD release of the classic Now, Voyager makes me think I was watching another Criterion DVD. The photography by Sol Polito is absolutely gripping and beautiful to behold, with true blacks, deep shadows and stunning contrast illuminating fine-tuned sets with subtlety missing from inferior video presentations of the past.
Now, Voyager , too long maligned as a "weeper" or "chick flick," can now be appreciated as the multi-layered drama and character study it was obviously intended to be. Bette Davis in 1942 was a rising star, and many people, having known only her later work, assumed her stardom was based upon personality and Hollywood stereotyping, not acting ability. But Now, Voyager clearly presents the full acting talents of Davis in a character-driven role of nuance. At the movie's start Davis is presented as a fat-ankled, drearily dressed Boston spinster, a young woman old before her time. With plain-Jane hairdo, glasses and thick, heavy eyebrows, Davis is a young woman almost mute who sneaks cigarettes into her fortress bedroom. But after a month-long session with psychiatrist Claude Rains (who has never seemed so warm and nurturing), Davis materializes into an independent woman who is ready to break out of her stately family mansion and live life on her own. However, her final challenge remains her domineering mother, Gladys Cooper, in another stellar supporting performance, who tries to force Davis into the role of servant and caretaker, while her older brothers and sisters are free to live on their own without any interference from the grand dame. The manner in which Davis at first buckles under the maternal pressure than asserts herself, slowly, under the direct guidance of Rains, is powerful acting.
Once momentarily free of mother, taking a solo sea cruise, the still-tentative young woman, now dressing the role of young and single modern lady, is still reclusive and considered annoying by other cruise passengers when she causes unnecessary delays. However, after she meets the love of her life, Paul Henreid (also traveling alone), married with two daughters, she allows herself to fall in love with this (unhappily) married man, and he falls in love with her. Unable to consummate their love, their inhibited carnal desires are symbolized by Henreid's constantly asking Davis if she wishes a smoke, and then, quite ritualistically, he always lights up two cigarettes in his mouth, passing one to Davis. It is a pattern to be repeated throughout the movie. By the cruise's end, Davis has become passionate and liberated and has the courage to face life on its own terms. That is, until she returns home, a new woman, now thin and stylishly dressed, much to mother's dissatisfaction. But this time, Davis asserts her identify and stands up to mother, who slowly begins to accept this daughter reborn.
Later, seeking refuge at Claude Rains' sanitarium after her mother's death, Davis befriends the daughter of Henreid who, like Davis, feels unwanted by her mother, making the daughter a parallel character to Davis. Being unable to live with the man of her dreams (Henreid), Davis, with Henreid's permission, is allowed to become the caretaker of the daughter and to raise the child in her Boston home. While Davis and Henreid occasionally see one another and mention is made of Henreid's wife being in failing health, the movie ends on a sad yet hopeful note, as the couple looks up and dreams on the stars in the sky, the beautiful Max Steiner score swelling and building in passion and intensity.
Always underappreciated, Now, Voyager contains one of the finest performances essayed by Bette Davis, and the movie's strength is derived from creating so many complex character interactions: Bette Davis and her mother, Bette Davis and her forbidden lover, Bette Davis and her lover's daughter, Bette Davis and her psychiatrist. Being both romantically and psychologically driven, Now, Voyager is compelling drama featuring stunning performances, breathtaking photography, an involving script and subtle direction by Irving Rapper. For those who always considered Now, Voyager overblown melodrama, now is the time to revisit this film classic and see and hear it as it was meant to be seen and heard. Supplementals include Scoring Session Music Cues, career bios and a theatrical trailer.
O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?
Touchstone Home Video
Movie: 3.5; Disc 4.0Ethan and Joel Coen produce the most uncharacterically Hollywood movies of any mainstream Hollywood director (perhaps along with David Lynch). Some of their movies are classics and manage to merge humor and drama in ways never before attempted-- Fargo, Hudsucker Proxy, Raising Arizona . Some of their greatest films are period pieces or revamped genre movies--their gangster classic Miller's Crossing or their film noir take, Blood Simple . Sometimes their films misfire but are always interesting-- Barton Fink and The Big Lebowski . But whenever seeing a Coen Brothers movie, the movie buff understands that the Coens themselves are students and fans of cinema past and most often these maverick filmmakers assume that their viewing audience will bring along a knowledge of movie history to better appreciate and understand their current film.
The Coens used to be critics' darlings, their films being considered too hip and cutting edge for mainstream audiences, so critics lavished praise on most of their past movies. 2001's Coen epic, O Brother, Where Art Thou? became the first Coen movie ignored by the general public (par for the course) but also forsaken by the critics overall. In spite of this, the movie's musical soundtrack, supervised by T-Bone Burnett, became number one on the country music charts for three months and made a greater artistic impression than the movie itself.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? takes its title from the Preston Sturges classic Sullivan's Travels of 1941, where the suddenly turning-pretentious director John L. Sullivan forsakes his forte for comedy classics to produce a symbolic artistic film highlighting the plight of America's Depression-era poor. This epic drama is to be called O Brother, Where Art Thou?, but it's a film Sullivan never makes because by the end of the movie he learns to appreciate that the comedy movies he has long directed are what the people really want and need.
In the hands of the Coens, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a masterfully executed movie, its cinematography alone beaming with style and visual audacity. Add to these stylized visuals (sometimes presenting intense color and at other times showcasing a muted, almost sepia-toned look) wonderful performances by George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman and the wonderful Charles Durning. And frame all of this within a marvelous evocative Depression-era musical score and superior script by the Coens, and for me we have one of the best and most original movies of 2001.
The DVD itself is filled to the gill with extras: the choice of either Dolby 5.1 surround or DTS 5.1 surround, music videos, theatrical trailer, beautiful widescreen print, a comparison of script to storyboard, a featurette and "Painting with Pixels," another featurette about the post-production special effects work.
Loosely based on Homer's The Odyssey , just as Hudsucker Proxy reminded the viewer of Hollywood movies of the 1940s, O Brother, Where Art Thou? reminds us of the Hollywood movies of the 1930s, fueled by George Clooney's rapid-fire vocal delivery carved out of the Clark Gable mold. He is all bluster and intelligence, obsessing about his Dapper Dan hair grease and hair net. His cronies, Turturro and Nelson, are dumb as dirt yet there is something quite innocent and pure in their performances that make them childlike. Durning, as Pappy, the far too savvy Southern politico, dances his way into our hearts by all the outrageous stunts he is willing to undergo to assure his re-election as governor. For the film buff the movie contains a twisted spoof of The Wizard of Oz occurring during a Ku Klux Klan rally that is both clever and satisfying.
O Brother, Where Are Thou? is both a comedy classic and a reflection upon what made old Hollywood movies so intelligent and satisfying. Probably the Coens will have to materialize another Fargo out of their hats to placate the Hollywood machine and keep on producing the types of movies they have always produced...quirky slices of Americana that do not compromise their visions for anyone, not the audience, not the Hollywood studios, not the "shirts." The fact that they continue to produce superb movies today in America is simply as shocking as it is refreshing.
OCEAN'S ELEVEN
Warner Home Video
Movie: 3.5; Disc: 3.5Director Steven Soderbergh has been busy and plenty hot these past few years ( Traffic and Erin Brockovich ), with many critics complaining that his remake/remodel of the old Frank Sinatra Rat Pack chestnut Ocean's Eleven was simply a job of slumming. But to be honest, nothing could be further from the truth.
Ocean's Eleven does not have the political agenda of Erin Brockovich nor does it have the deep social drama of Traffic , but like the best films of the 1940s such as The Maltese Falcon , The Big Sleep and Sullivan's Travels , it features breeziness, wit and intelligence framed within the context of a tightly written script. In fact, it is the script by Ted Griffin (who also wrote Ravenous in 1999) that snaps, crackles and pops with memorable line after memorable line. This might be eye candy for adults, but my god, it features some of the most quotable dialogue since the heyday of the intelligent 1940s where adult scripting was the norm, not the exception, as it is today where every mainstream movie seems to be dumbed down.
Plus we have the modern equivalent of the Rat Pack, some of the dynamos of today's cinema: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. With a supporting cast including Carl Reiner (giving the best performance of his career), Bernie Mac, Elliott Gould (in a superb over-the-top performance), acting is always featured first and foremost. George Clooney, who became the modern Clark Gable in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and sizzled as the eccentric hero in Three Kings , again proves he has the movie star charisma that should catapult him into the ranks of great cinema stars before his career is over. Clooney has that uncanny ability to play a character flippantly hip yet sensitive and caring at the same time.
To be quite honest, the entire Julia Roberts subplot never really works, with the mega-star reduced to fashion-model-oriented sequences as she slowly descends casino steps or simply walks solemnly past the slot machines. However, her trivial characterization is needed to fuel the hatred and battle of wits between Andy Gracia and Clooney, so her inconsequential appearance leads to real consequence, as far as the plot is concerned.
As assembled by Soderbergh, the film spends a great deal of time establishing the characters, interestingly detailed one at a time. Then when the heist/caper is introduced, Soderbergh allows the audience to think we know all the tricks, when in fact almost all the tricks are not revealed to us. So when we watch the heist unfold, thinking we know everything that's going to happen, we, like the participants in the movie, are startled, surprised and fooled. And that's mostly why the film is so much fun... we think of ourselves as the hip, cool plotters and identify with George Clooney and the rest of the scoundrels, but in fact, we are Andy Gracia who too thinks he has it all figured out, only to be out-smarted at every stop.
Intelligent and fun...with a brilliant dialogue, a clever script and interesting ensemble performances. Adults haven't had this good a popcorn movie in a long, long time. Watch out, the DVD is available in two separate packages: pan and scan and widescreen. The wide-screen version, the one I watched, is wonderfully letterboxed featuring a dazzling print with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround. The DVD features documentaries on the making of the movie, trailers, two separate audio commentary tracks (one with the director and screenwriter, the other with some of the cast). Thus, the extras are extra special, but the film itself is reason enough to run out and buy Ocean's Eleven , a film that holds up well upon repeated screenings.
RAT RACE
Paramount Home Video
Movie: 3.5; Disc: 3.5The classic comedy genre has always been a favorite of film fans since the silent movie days, with artists such as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, The Three Stooges standing amid the forefront. However, the comedy movie genre has fallen upon harsh times, perhaps even worse than the horror movie. If the classic horror movie genre has morphed into the erotic thriller, the serial killer thriller and the Gothic supernatural chiller, well, the comedy genre has "evolved" into such teenage drek as American Pie , Adam Sandler and numerous veterans of later-day Saturday Night Live . Today, movies such as Ghost World and America's Sweethearts are listed on video rental lists as comedies, but the slapstick, reciprocal destruction mindless prat-fall style movie comedy is dead and has been dead for too long a time. If Freddie Got Fingered is the best that comedy can offer today, well, who needs it.
Almost 40 years ago Stanley Kramer produced, in Cinerama no less, the ultimate tribute to the classic comedies of the past, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World , starring all the surviving comics of the Golden Age of Comedy, from the 1930s through 1963 when the film was released. Recently released on DVD, the movie still holds up as capturing both an era and a style that has since vanished from the silver screen. And all of us are worse off because of the disintegration of classic movie comedy.
However, this past year produced one of the stellar comedy movies of this generation, and almost without notice. The movie snuck into and out of theaters, receiving mostly negative response from critics. A few sources gave this movie, Rat Race , warm, critical response, but such reviews were in the minority.
Now released on DVD, Rat Race can be seen for the comic gem it is...in many ways a tribute to the Silver Age of Comedy, another "road" formula comedy, a treasure hunt for money locked in a safety deposit box, that stars an all-star cast of the best of today's comedians. We have comics such as Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr. Bean), John Cleese, Whoopi Goldberg, Cuba Gooding, Jr. (yes, he's very funny) and Jon Lovitz, along with fresh talents such as Seth Green, Breckin Meyer and Amy Smart. The film, directed by one of the masters of the modern comedy Jerry Zucker, is laugh-out-loud hilarious with one comic situation segueing directly onto another. And the comic personalities of the ensemble cast shine, each comic allowing the other room to develop full-blown comic performances. For instance, Rowan Atkinson does not retread the British Mr. Bean, instead he creates an Italian stereotype whose funniest sequence is checking a baby's diaper to find a lost key, with the surrounding adults getting the wrong idea when the bug-eyed comic shouts, "I feel it, I feel it!"
We have one classic comic sequence after another, including the bus load of Lucy look-alikes heading to an I Love Lucy convention, with Cuba Gooding, Jr. trying to survive as their bogus bus driver (who was left in his underwear and barefoot in the middle of the Nevada desert by a taxi-driving enemy); the maniacal Amy Smart commandeering a helicopter to visit her boyfriend who is in the middle of the backyard swimming pool with another woman, causing the spurned woman to employ the copter for disastrous, and comical, results; Jon Lovitz' bit as the hen-pecked husband who suddenly changes into the vision of Adolf Hitler, who appears at the podium at a convention of World War II veterans, unable to clearly speak, but sounding like Hitler at the peak of his impassioned frenzy. And these are only a few of the stunts which fuel this movie into overdrive.
The DVD is packed with extras, including a beautiful wide-screen print enhanced for 16:9 sets, with a gorgeous 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround soundtrack, interviews with the director and writer, a documentary on the making of the film, telephone conversations with Jerry Zucker phoning the actors letting them know they got the part, a gag reel, outtakes and deleted scenes (the deleted scenes are just as funny as the rest of the movie). Critics unfairly maligned the movie and audiences woefully shunned it. But now on DVD everyone who loved It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or classic comedies of the past should run to the store to pick up a copy of Rat Race , by far the best comedy movie of the last few years.
SCROOGE
Image Entertainment
Movie: 2.5; Disc: 3.0Generally, for classic film fans, only two versions of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol exist: the 1938 Reginald Owen version and the 1951 Alastair Sim version, for these two versions are the most widely watched and most critically lauded. However, Image Entertainment has scored a coup by releasing the often-truncated but now complete 1935 version starring Sir Seymour Hicks (who also co-scripted). Interestingly enough, the production supervisor is future director John Brahm and his Gothic presence is everywhere. Maurice Evans, most known to mainstream movie fans for his portrayal of wizened orangutan in the original Planet of the Apes , here plays Scro-oge's poor but spirited nephew.
Unfortunately, although the print quality is overall excellent, some sections (especially the opening minutes) appear to be dupey replacement footage, perhaps even from a long-protected 16mm print. Thus, the quality does vary, but since the print has not been seen in its complete version for many, many years, such a restoration is the best we shall ever have, and there's something to be said about complete.
Director Henry Edwards plays close attention to recreating 1843 London, and with John Brahm's participation, this version of the Dickens' classic at times seems more like a reworking of Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (with its German Expressionistic shadows and doom and gloom atmosphere) than A Christmas Carol , but for horror buffs, the look of the film is marvelously dank and haunted.
Too bad the script has been truncated and lacks the subtlety and depth of exposition of the classic 1951 British version, that simply includes far more of the story. Here, in the Hicks version, we do not see how youthful Scrooge and Marley, starting as enthusiastic businessmen, become corrupted and cruel. We have no plot detailing Scrooge's relationship with his sister who dies and thus hardens him against the world. In fact we have no youthful profile of the young Scrooge in this 1935 version at all. Disappointingly as well, the ghost of Marley is invisible and we only hear his voice (and see his visage on the front door knob) but do not see his tortured expressions, let alone his dragging the shackles of his life behind him. Clocking in at 78 minutes, the story seems rushed with all needed subtlety missing.
But what of Hicks' performance as Scrooge, the centerpiece of all versions of A Christmas Carol ? Bottom line, I enjoy Sim and Owen much, much more, but Hicks does possess a musty exterior and creaky nastiness that makes him quite effective as Scrooge. It seems he never experiences enough motivation to change from Christmas-hater and formerly lost soul who is now filled with the joyful spirits of the season. But, he does do a more than adequate job. Perhaps he is too restrained and lowkey for his own good, allowing his mole-like appearance and messy unkempt hair to submit far too much of the performance. But bottom line, the Dickens story is classic and it is quite difficult to ruin a masterwork. Unfortunately, the 1935 Scrooge is simply adequate existing in a sea of superior and even classic interpretations. But Image deserves credit for unearthing another semi-lost version.
SOME LIKE IT HOT (SPECIAL EDITION)
MGM Home Entertainment
Movie: 3.5; Disc 4.0Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot is considered one of the classics of comedy cinema, and while it is not quite laugh out loud hilarious to the extent of the best features of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello or The Marx Brothers, it is adult comedy of the most subtle variety, with some howlingly funny sequences.
First of all, the main performances are classic in execution, perhaps the best work Tony Curtis ever achieved in film. While in the supplemental interview Curtis admits he had a difficult time getting his feminine voice just right, he was able to create the look, the tone of femininity that he could turn on and off. However, its his bespectacled Cary Grant impersonation that deserves highest praise here. His attempts to fool Monroe into thinking he's the erectile-dysfunctional playboy as the hot and sensuous Marilyn Monroe steams up his glasses, is classic in its execution. However, Jack Lemmon's performance, always at high energy be it in male or female clothing, is a showcase of comic perfection. Add to the mix the inspired supporting performances by Joe E. Brown, George Raft, Pat O'Brien, etc. and we have a strong character-driven comic classic.
Billy Wilder did not depend upon episodic, improvised gags to achieve comedy; instead, the well-crafted script co-written by Wilder and collaborator I.A.L. Diamond deserves chief credit for the classic status accorded Some Like It Hot . From the film's oddly off-kiltered punch-line inspired last line of dialogue to the manner in which specific lines throughout are delivered, Some Like It Hot 's brilliance was first achieved on paper even before it was transformed to the screen.
The film's pacing is another laudable aspect, its effortless ability to segue from the garage on St. Valentine's Day evening to the train ride and female band party (with Jack Lemmon sharing an upper berth with Sugar/Marilyn Monroe who warms up his feet and every part north) to the romance on the yacht to the beach volleyball sequence to the hotel mob meeting, everything is well-paced, well-timed and develops just enough to know when it's time to move on. Nothing in the movie is indulgent nor excessive.
Blending visual humor, verbal humor and performance-based humor, Some Like It Hot does it all well, making it a classic that will stand the test of time.
This Special Edition DVD features a pristine widescreen (1:66:1) print, an exceptional interview with Tony Curtis conducted by insightful Leonard Maltin, a featurette on the Sweet Sues, the all-girl band, rare archival photos of the stars, photos of the original pressbook, original trailer and trailers from other Wilder productions and a remastered Dolby 5.1 soundtrack. For even the casual fan of Some Like It Hot , this DVD contains the best- looking print possible with all the extras.
SPY KIDS
Dimension/Disney
Movie: 3.5; Disc: 3.0Writer/Director Robert Rodriguez, most popular for his kinetic horror/adventure movies such as From Dusk Till Dawn , Desperado , El Mariachi, which accentuate male machismo and violence, concocted this hybrid of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and A Nightmare Before Christmas, which is simply delightful, one of the few gems of the last few years. Juxtaposing James Bond spy antics alongside a TV kiddie show host who wants to take over the world, Spy Kids features the added plus of two unknown child actors (Alexa Vega as Carmen and Daryl Sabara as Juni) who act like real, normal kids, and their individual performances anchor the production.
First of all, the parents, former spies now retired to raise their family, are wonderfully conceived. Antonio Banderas is perhaps at his best when he takes his son Juni to school, a dorky kid who covers his fingers in Bandaids to cure his warts and who carries his fantasy action figures as his security blanket, and the nurturing father finds his son immediately harassed by the other kids. Although he strains not to interfere, suddenly the parent of one of the most nasty kids threatens Banderas, who momentarily imagines coming to his son's rescue in the most heroic of ways, but when abruptly catapulted back to reality, he simply walks away, not daring to draw any attention to himself. Mom Carla Gugino, hankering to return to the world of espionage for just one more adventure, tucks the kids in bed and tells them the bedtime story of her own marriage to Banderas, its reality sounding very much like a children's fairy tale. Of course when the parents are recruited for that final job, they are forced to become klutzes that make every type of conceivable mistake, getting captured immediately, so that their children can rise to the occasion to save them.
The addition of villain Fegan Floop, the TV kiddie show host played in the best Pee-wee Herman manner by chameleon Alan Cumming who is wonderfully effective, adds a touch of the bizarre. Aided by greedy accomplice Tony Shalhoub who wants to take over the operation and is protected by the thumb-thumb robots (yes, their heads are thumbs), Floop is creating an army of children robots who will do his bidding to take over the world, only they are missing a brain so he must acquire the Third Brain to give intelligence to his creations. And we all know that Banderas and wife possess the Third Brain. The world of Floop is very Willy Wonka-esque with a taste of Tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas , especially with the addition of a Danny Elfman composed song sung by Cumming in the best Nightmare Before Christmas/Willie Wonka tradition. The world of Floop is surreal and edgy and the movie's visual style is used to full advantage here.
The movie, which blends comedy, action and fantasy, has as its major heart-warming theme the idea that the mundane adventures of raising a family are more harrowing and fearsome than living out the ultimate James Bond fantasies, and that the mission to keep one's family together is the toughest mission of them all. The DVD presentation here contains a sharp letterboxed print (1:85:1, enhanced for 16:9 monitors) with a dynamic 5.1 Dolby digital soundtrack. Other extras include teaser and theatrical trailers. I can smell a special edition in the future!
Robert Rodriguez has written one of his most entertaining scripts ever, and as edited and directed by himself, combines frenetic action pacing and effects with human interaction that connects and seems real. And the fact that formerly R-rated Rodriguez is able to do all this with a PG rating that never compromises theme nor character nor visuals, well, this is shocking. Movies tailor-made for children are often impossible to sit through for adults, but Spy Kids is the best of both worlds, a film that will appeal to adults as well as children and thoroughly entertain both.
SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS
The Criterion Collection
Movie 3.5; Disc: 4.0Movies which are quirky and constantly change mood from irreverent satire to hilarious slapstick to emotional drama are most likely to be modern movies created with the hip, cutting-edge indie audience in mind.
Surprisingly, Sullivan's Travels , a film written and directed by Preston Sturges in 1941, also fits that description, and it is one of the most intelligent, funny and poignant movies ever made. I am ashamed that I never caught up to the film until I saw the recent Criterion Collection release, but count me among the eagerly converted.
The DVD disc is gorgeous in every sense--the quality black-and- white print is pristine; supplementals include an audio commentary, a 76-minute documentary on Preston Sturges, a terrific interview with Sturges' widow Sandy, a radio interview with Sturges conducted by Hedda Hopper, archival audio recordings of Sturges performing a song he wrote and a poem he recites, storyboards and blueprints, production stills, scrapbook of publicity material and the original theatrical trailer. When it comes to including the kitchen sink, look to Criterion.
But all this would prove superfluous if Sullivan's Travels did not warrant such lengthy attention. The movie starts demonstrating serial pacing with a huffing and puffing runaway train barreling down the tracks, two lugs duking it out atop one of the cars, one brutally shot by the other, both falling off the train into the icy waters below. Suddenly "the end" appears on the screen, and the viewer is aware we are watching a movie, not the reality of the movie we think we are watching. Director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) is making a pitch to his studio heads that movies with this social class symbolism are what really excites him, that he is tired of directing silly comedies such as Ants in the Plants . The staccato delivery of this pithy dialogue could have been sputtered out in any of today's movies, spoofing the indie-pretentiousness method of moviemaking. It indeed seems weird and rare to be hearing this in 1941 in a movie that actually comments about the industry of moviemaking. However, without missing a beat, the two studio heads ask Sullivan what does he know about suffering and hard times (knowing full well that Sullivan comes from a background of private boarding schools and a college education). Sullivan decides to pretend to be a hobo and live among the Depression-era poor to learn the reality of the needy. Along the way Sullivan encounters both hilarity and stark drama, the tone of the movie changing from one to the other effortlessly.
Veronica Lake, known as one of the definitive blonde femme fatales from film noir, an actress remembered more for her looks and attitude than acting ability, demonstrates here in Sullivan's Travels just how gifted an actress she really was. Transforming from the beautiful, sexy woman into the not-quite-dirty-enough hobo provides the forum to illustrate the acting range of Lake, who is constantly witty, affectionate and vulnerable. This performance is one of her best.
Perhaps the movie's best sequence is when Sullivan, a victim of a severe, disorienting beating, is arrested and sentenced to several years in a hard-labor prison, and becomes a member of the chain gang presided over by a cruel prison guard who allows the prisoners to attend a makeshift black church movie theater. As the minister prepares his congregation for the arrival of the prisoners, and the entire assembled church-goers break into hymn, the lethargic, chain-chunking prisoners arrive at the church and silently enter the pews. Watching a cartoon, all the prisoners break into hilarious laughter, including the resistant Sullivan, who at this moment learns the reason he makes movies is to entertain the suffering masses. From here on out, he no longer wishes to direct the socially conscious O Brother, Where Art Thou? and realizes that comedy and making people laugh is the greatest cinematic challenge of all.
Sullivan's Travels is incredibly satisfying and only proves to me that so many classic movies yet exist that many people haven't seen and this Criterion DVD serves this most useful purpose of rediscovery.
TOPPER RETURNS
Hal Roach/Image
Movie: 3.0; Disc: 3.4Topper Returns belongs to the breed of wonderful old dark house comedic thrillers that flourished during the 1940s. In other words, it appeals to fans of comedy, horror and mystery and thus guarantees an ever-increasing circle of box-office. The Topper series ended with Topper Returns , and fortunately, the series went out with a bang. Roland Young again deadpans and presents his low-key interpretation of Topper, but this time two beautiful women, Joan Blondell and Carole Landis, go along for the ride, and Topper's wife, Billie Burke, ain't bad either. On the spooky front we have the always eye-shifting George Zucco as the family doctor, the most blatantly red of all the red-herrings. On the comic front we have Eddie "Rochester" Anderson as Topper's household servant who earns some of the best laughs by falling down secret passages into the murky river below the ghostly mansion and having to confront a frisky seal. In other words, in this 1941 Roy Del Ruth-directed crowd-pleaser, the audience chuckles aloud, jumps out of its seat and constantly guesses whodunit! It's a superior B production with a marvelously decorated haunted mansion photographed to imbue every frame with shadows and fog.
Basically, the plot involves the reunion of a 21-year-old Carole Landis (if she survives one more day, that is!) with her long-lost father; Landis inherits everything on her 21st birthday. Of course, within the first few minutes of the movie, a mysterious black-cloaked fiend shoots out the tire of her cab, forcing the car to stop inches away from the edge of the road; and after switching bedrooms in the mansion with friend Joan Blondell, Blondell is mistakenly murdered before sunrise (of course in the Topper universe, she immediately returns to transparent existence to help Topper catch her murderer by the last reel). Soon the entire household seems to be in cahoots, and poor Carole Landis and Roland Young (Topper) have to solve the mystery with only the help of Eddie Anderson, who is not much help at all.
Topper Returns moves along at a brisk clip featuring energetic performances, genuinely spooky cinematography and a creaky plot that keeps us guessing (even though everyone knows that when the house servant is ready to tell the police the identity of the murderer with all assembled in the living room, that when the lights go out, so will her life). What adds to the enjoyment of the movie is a pristine, absolutely unspeckled, minimal grain, dense black-and-white print with superb soundtrack. For 1941 and Hal Roach, the print is miraculous. The only extra is a theatrical trailer, but the print offered here by Hal Roach and Image is worth the price of admission. For 89 minutes of fluff and solid entertainment, Topper Returns cannot be beat!