Indifferent spy movie which stars River Phoenix & Sidney Poitier and still isn’t any good. Not bad, just uninspired & poorly thought out…
What’s more:
Usually when you watch old 1980’s movies you see a bunch of people you recognize. This movie is practically unique in how few familiar faces there are. After Phoenix & Poitier, Richard Jenkins is the only person you’re likely to have ever seen before. And that makes sense when you realize how little there is going on here.
It might be stretching it a bit to call any movie with Sidney Poitier & River Phoenix underpowered, but this really does feel kind of thrown together. I’m more than a little surprised that this was a project that either of them wanted to do.
At first glance, it’s very promising: kid thinks he’s leading normal life until he is told that his parents are sleeper agents for the USSR. Not bad, even if in 1988 it was right on the edge of being out of date.
The trouble is that the premise that brings them out of hiding is threadbare (spy is killing sleeper agents until the Russians give him money?) and the Poitier character’s actions seem really unusual. We get that he’s looking for this one Russian spook who killed his partner (20 years ago!) but why is he working alone and what exactly is his job? He’s sorting through Air Force Academy applications and then he’s stalking a teenaged boy and asking him to spy on his parents – to what end? It’s all a bit confusing, but it doesn’t matter because you won’t really care.
If that sounds harsh, it’s not meant to be. True, Little Nikita is not a good spy movie and in fact it’s not a very good movie at all. But it features two amazing actors (even if both are mugging furiously in this one) and was entertaining for an hour and a half and there are worse things to be.
Dangerfield fails to ruin Harold Ramis’ directorial debut, a loosely strung together collection of classic improv. Unapologetically dumb…
What’s more:
I’m not the world’s biggest Caddyshack fan. I know that’s sacrilege to many. I’m reviewing it today because the ridiculously talented Harold Ramis has just passed away and this was his directorial debut.
It’s hysterically funny and I enjoyed the hell out of it as a kid who was too young to be watching it. (I have no idea where I saw it – someone else’s house, that’s for sure.) It is unquestionably a comedic classic.
But it has a few flaws that are deal breakers for me:
It is directly responsible for the career of Rodney Dangerfield. Really I could probably stop there. He was an obscure stand-up comic who would have likely never have gotten a break into film without this movie. And would I accept this movie having never existed as a reasonable price for having never been exposed to Rodney Dangerfield? I absolutely would. I’d take that every time.
Ted Knight is unwatchable. I know he’s doing his thing and it’s his shtick; I don’t care. I hate it. It was funny on the Mary Tyler Moore show. It’s cartoonish and stupid here.
The biggest thing against the film is also actually it’s best feature: it’s really just a long series of improvised scenes. It’s not that there isn’t a plot, it’s just that no one cares about it. Think about it – who is the star of the movie? It’s Danny Noonan, the dorky caddy played by Michael O’Keefe. You forgot he was even in the movie, didn’t you?
This is exactly the movie you expect from a bunch of sketch comedy professionals. But then you’d expect National Lampoon’s Animal House to have felt even more like that for the same reason – but it didn’t because John Landis was able to rein in the comedians. Ramis let everyone go for it and the bit parts essentially became the film. So you get genius scenes like Bill Murray’s “Cinderella story” but you also end up with Dangerfield becoming a main character.
In the end, the great comedy far outweighs the lack of cohesiveness, leaving us with a classic.
Ringwald turns in her finest work in her last John Hughes Joint. Wish I saw it in the day; not quite as effective now. Duckie got jobbed…
Spoiler-free Movie Review of Pretty in Pink:
Amazingly I never saw this back in the day, so I can’t feel the same way about it that I do about some of the other John Hughes films. Written but not directed by Hughes (like a number of his films), it’s great stuff, but I kind of think you had to be there. I can’t imagine this playing for anyone who wasn’t a teenager in the 80’s.
The original story is based on archetypes so old that its classic structure feels like a Shakespearean comedy. I actually kept trying to remember which play this was based on; that’s a compliment. Romantic triangle enhanced with rich guy poor girl dynamic.
Casting is typically very good, with Molly Ringwald providing her best performance in her final Hughes film. Jon Cryer is annoyingly cute as Duckie, although I’m sure I would have loved it in 1986 – good job. Can’t imagine Anthony Michael Hall or Robert Downey Jr. in this role (both were considered). Annie Potts is funny but over the top, Andrew McCarthy is a featureless glass of milk, and James Spader made me want to climb through the screen and grab something heavy – but that was the point, I guess. I think it’s terribly appropriate that Spader’s name actually contains the name of a tool…
Ending (Spoilers): The original ending saw Andie choosing Duckie over Blane. (They had to reshoot because test audiences weren’t happy; don’t get me started on test screenings.) I don’t know if that would have been the right choice; I think so. Would have been better than going with “a major appliance”. Really I don’t think she should have ended up with either of them. Blane’s a tool and Duckie is cemented in the friend zone. Maybe she should have taken a chance with Gina Gershon’s character. Ah, who am I kidding – no one is good enough for Molly Ringwald – I love you, Molly!
A relatively straightforward film, but when Lawrence Kasdan writes, you pay attention. Only semi-serious role in Belushi’s too-short career.
What’s more:
What an incredible talent writer Lawrence Kasdan is. This may be the least ambitious premise for a movie: journalist sent for fish-out-of-water assignment falls in love with naturalist. That’s it. If it sounds familiar it’s because the same basic story has been filmed a dozen times. There should even be a genre: fish out of water. But Kasdan’s dialogue makes it something more. Not a lot more, to be honest, because it really isn’t very substantial, but there are flashes of the genius who before this wrote The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Body Heat.
It helps that the movie was made at the dawn of the 1980’s; that great time when they stopped using the boring drawn-out long shots and grittiness of the 1970’s, but before they abandoned that era’s quiet moments and love of dialogue.
They were going for a Tracy/Hepburn thing with Blair Brown and John Belushi, which was never going to work with Belushi’s extracurricular activities. That’s a shame because Brown is very engaging in this. Not sure why she didn’t become a more significant star.
Finally, Belushi. What can you say? With 1981’s other film Neighbors, this is his last film. While far from one of his signature roles, in Continental Divide he shows some of the emotional vulnerability and depth that was hinted at in his other work but never allowed to surface. Would he have been a dramatic talent and developed another dimension like his colleague Bill Murray? Hard to say. He certainly had the ability, and reportedly seemed interested in the prospect of becoming a more traditional leading man. What an incredible waste.
Not as good as you’d hoped, not as bad as you’ve been told. Not Ratner-bashing, but really would’ve been interesting to see Singer’s take…
What’s more:
Whatever your opinion of Superman Returns, it is unquestionable that it really hobbled X-Men: The Last Stand. Coming off of the critically and commercially successful X2, the third X-Men movie was poised to be a solid follow-up, with the same cast & crew. Then Bryan Singer got a better offer – reboot Superman. Sinking feeling begins…
Look, blaming Singer is plain unfair; you should never begrudge someone the chance to accept a promotion, and I don’t care what you say, X-Men is not on the same level as Superman. Yeah, I said it…He wanted to move on to what appeared to be a great opportunity. Sadly, it didn’t really work out for either franchise.
Still, this should have been a slam dunk. While Singer hadn’t planned out the storyline for the third film, the ending of X2 all but ensured we were headed into Dark Phoenix territory, so the story should have written itself. So they have the raw materials: a Claremont Classic (mixed in with a Whedon story arc), the same cast, and pots of money.
Search for a new director; directors who turned down the job included Darren Aronofsky, Joss Whedon, Alex Proyas & Zack Snyder. They hired director Matthew Vaughn, but he left the film. Sinking feeling intensifies. They replaced him with Brett Ratner. And we’re sunk. I know that is unfair to Ratner. I don’t really know why he is so reviled. He seems like a perfectly average director – nothing to write home about, sure, but not incompetent. I suppose it has more to do with the feeling that an A-list director was replaced with a utility infielder.
A further problem is that Fox was developing the Wolverine “solo” film at the same time as this movie. You can’t serve two masters successfully, and this was no exception. They didn’t want to use certain characters in this movie and not have them for Wolverine’s movie. Danger…
So, after that long introduction, how is X-Men 3? Not bad, really. At times it’s excellent.
Here’s everything good about it:
Angel – great effects lead to some great visuals
Casting Kelsey Grammer as Hank McCoy/Beast. Hold your hand up if you thought this was a good idea. That makes one. This seemed a horrible idea that I am only too happy to eat crow on and applaud. Frasier has got game…
The storyline(s): both the Dark Phoenix and the Cure arcs are great stuff and welcome.
Appearance of film version of Dr. Moira MacTaggert, making my daughter Moira smile…
Here’s everything that isn’t:
Digital de-aging, also known as “digital skin-grafting”; this technique needs to go sit in the corner until it’s ready to play with the other modern visual effects. It’s time-consuming, expensive, looks like crap, and has convinced older actors that they can continue to monopolize roles that should go to newer actors. The “success” of this technique led Brian Cox to insist that he could play Stryker in the Wolverine spin-off. C’mon, son…
Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel is an artist – he left after X2 (Singer brought him over to Superman Returns; seeing a trend here?) He is replaced by Dante Spinotti, who is certainly talented, but I think he was given confusing direction here. It doesn’t help that he himself is a replacement for Philippe Rousselot, who left during shooting. Spinotti then had to leave the project before the end of photography, so J. Michael Muro completed it. See what I mean about the confusing look of the film?
Where the hell did Rogue go? Was Anna Paquin double-parked or something? She was in this movie for seemingly seconds. Considering how much these movies obsess over “Best Actress” Berry, you’d think they’d recall that Paquin actually earned her Oscar and utilize her as much as humanly possible.
As a love interest she is replaced with Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat. That’s the third Kitty actress in three movies. Page is really not bad, I’m just including her here because the character is simply not as interesting as Rogue.
Singer took James Marsden with him, so Cyclops is relegated to a small role, barely more than a cameo. Guess they shouldn’t have cut all his scenes in X2, huh?
Rebecca Romijn had to accept a reduced role because of scheduling conflicts caused by the film being rushed into production. This happens WAY too much. Studios are so focused on certain release dates that they push the creative process past breaking. The breakneck pace likely had impact on the movie’s one-dimensional tone than any mismanagement by Ratner. I suspect he did the best he could; Vaughn admitted that one of the reasons he left the project is that there would not be time to complete the film properly. Really drives home the insight of Ben Burtt; “Films aren’t released, they escape.”
Berry managed to bully her way into nearly every scene, but thankfully was still not allowed to drive on camera – they wanted to keep casualties to a minimum…
Um, every single new mutant. Juggernaut is a dumb character, so I guess we can’t fault the fun Vinnie Jones for that. But what pop band did they raid for the rest of these people? When I see characters/actors this bad in a movie I usually assume they are rappers, even if they aren’t. Callisto, Psylocke, Arclight & Kid Omega (I had to look these up; they deservedly don’t even get named in the film) look like a multi-gendered, multi-cultural boy band; you know, during the “edgy” part of their career.
With so many decades of comic characters to choose from there are there no better choices? Maybe my opinion that Marvel has crap villains is actually true. Scary…
Also, it’s just sad that they always have to struggle with the problem of how to let Wolverine slash his way through lots of people without actually killing anyone important. In the previous movies they could always pull in nameless, faceless soldiers. But here in the forest, there’s nothing but mutants. Yet they seemingly have no powers unless looking non-descript and getting gutted without putting up a fight is some new mutation. They only gave him one guy with powers to actually fight (Spike). Why couldn’t he have killed some of the hair gel squad?
When a cure is found to treat mutations, lines are drawn amongst the X-Men, led by Professor Charles Xavier, and the Brotherhood, a band of powerful mutants organized under Xavier’s former ally, Magneto.
