(Paul Shapiro, 1984)
My VHS of this movie is an "exclusive edited version" from a company dedicated to "strengthening traditional values through entertainment." The plot, meanwhile, seems to promise a critique of said values, with its narrative of a girl striving to play on a boy's hockey team in Parry Sound. And somewhere in there, with lots of promise and good will on evident display - not to mention the appealing players and evocative, location-specific cinematography - the whole thing degenerates into a digest reel of itself. I suspect a potty mouth removal conspiracy; what's left of Megan Follows lead performance leaves her staring off into middle distance way too much of the time. Meanwhile, Follows' great, spunky rocker buddy disappears without leaving a note. Apparently they needed extra space for their "Where's the game? Up here" catch phrase, which eventually takes over the entire dialogue track. And what ideology could have motivated editing out the climax?! You're all geared up for the big game and then suddenly they're dancing around the locker room with a trophy. Maybe someone realized too late that you can't shoot a climax in wide shot from the bleachers - the few on-ice scenes are hopelessly remote, with Maury Chaykin's fun play-by-play pitched several decibels too mild.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
High Stakes
(Larry Kent, 1986)
How about that - this vulgar, silly, stubbornly obvious movie is actually laugh-out-loud funny. For a while, in fact, it is so breathlessly energetic and so perfectly timed that it looks like it may actually bust out of its Simcom pedigree and become a lost answer film to "Crimewave". Then, sigh, the TV station antics dissolve into the dread scourge 'gangster' plot, and the narrative grows sadly saner as the second half marches on. It could be a lot worse though - the seemingly endless string of reversals and revelations at the climax isn't perfectly realized, but it does mitigate the familiarity of the Nazis-and-jewels crap. Roberta Weiss knows how to play straight lady, and Winston Rekert's lead thug has a few funny moments that could have and should have been expanded. After all, asides and nuances are bound to be lost on your audience when you're up against the manic, shticked-out teamwork of Jackson Davies and Dave Foley. In his first role, Foley has already clicked right in to his familiar, absurdist Kids in the Hall routine, and Davies makes a suitably clownish foil; in tandem with a well-attuned Larry Kent, they take a dumbfoundingly broad script and play it even broader than that - a winning tactic. Three cheers for show biz.
How about that - this vulgar, silly, stubbornly obvious movie is actually laugh-out-loud funny. For a while, in fact, it is so breathlessly energetic and so perfectly timed that it looks like it may actually bust out of its Simcom pedigree and become a lost answer film to "Crimewave". Then, sigh, the TV station antics dissolve into the dread scourge 'gangster' plot, and the narrative grows sadly saner as the second half marches on. It could be a lot worse though - the seemingly endless string of reversals and revelations at the climax isn't perfectly realized, but it does mitigate the familiarity of the Nazis-and-jewels crap. Roberta Weiss knows how to play straight lady, and Winston Rekert's lead thug has a few funny moments that could have and should have been expanded. After all, asides and nuances are bound to be lost on your audience when you're up against the manic, shticked-out teamwork of Jackson Davies and Dave Foley. In his first role, Foley has already clicked right in to his familiar, absurdist Kids in the Hall routine, and Davies makes a suitably clownish foil; in tandem with a well-attuned Larry Kent, they take a dumbfoundingly broad script and play it even broader than that - a winning tactic. Three cheers for show biz.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Higher Education
(John Sheppard, 1987)
This 80s youth comedy reminds one how John Hughes changed the game - the echoes feel almost inevitable. As with Hughes, you've got a (genuinely talented) ensemble of slightly off-kilter 'types'; you've got 80s rock piled to the ceiling; and you've got broad comedy veering into romantic melodrama in the third act. The latter was Hughes' most enduring influence - Juno? Adventureland? same shit - and, to my mind, his most pernicious. The comedy here may be a little contrived and a little sporadic, but while Sheppard's weak on the slapstick his verbal humour is often funny. However it's also transparently shallow - so what good is the angst routine? Skewed as it is toward the male point of view, the tonal shift also means that Isabelle Mejias - the funniest and most agile performer here - gets shunted into the background when she should be front and centre. Maury Chaykin's improbably witty Guido steps into the breach, which helps a bit; but while lead Kevin Hicks has a few moments, he's either miscast or poorly used - too blank, too reactive. I could have also used just a bit more Gladys and Droid, who manage their supporting-weirdo duties with honors - I love it when Gladys's pentagram stops working.
This 80s youth comedy reminds one how John Hughes changed the game - the echoes feel almost inevitable. As with Hughes, you've got a (genuinely talented) ensemble of slightly off-kilter 'types'; you've got 80s rock piled to the ceiling; and you've got broad comedy veering into romantic melodrama in the third act. The latter was Hughes' most enduring influence - Juno? Adventureland? same shit - and, to my mind, his most pernicious. The comedy here may be a little contrived and a little sporadic, but while Sheppard's weak on the slapstick his verbal humour is often funny. However it's also transparently shallow - so what good is the angst routine? Skewed as it is toward the male point of view, the tonal shift also means that Isabelle Mejias - the funniest and most agile performer here - gets shunted into the background when she should be front and centre. Maury Chaykin's improbably witty Guido steps into the breach, which helps a bit; but while lead Kevin Hicks has a few moments, he's either miscast or poorly used - too blank, too reactive. I could have also used just a bit more Gladys and Droid, who manage their supporting-weirdo duties with honors - I love it when Gladys's pentagram stops working.
The High Country
(Harvey Hart, 1981)
When I say I like this movie, I am using the word 'like' as a superlative, the way you'd apply it to your best friend if you weren't drunk. I am automatically skeptical of quirky romantic comedies, but while this hews very closely to the structural expectations of the genre, it fleshes out the details with a lot of wit. Timothy Bottoms and Linda Purl's performances are brilliantly conceived and executed - eccentric both relative to the genre and in and of themselves, they actually nudge the material toward screwball on occasion, but are so humane that they add something resembling depth to the background commentaries on crime and disability and social withdrawal. Director Hart had me from - that's right - the attempted rape scene, executed with such purpose, concision and tonal control that I had to turn it off while I absorbed how resoundingly right it was - and how funny! The rest of the movie has comparably pleasurable surprises in tone and timing. The ending is a bit too inevitable and a bit too pat, but by then you're won over anyway and it doesn't matter.
When I say I like this movie, I am using the word 'like' as a superlative, the way you'd apply it to your best friend if you weren't drunk. I am automatically skeptical of quirky romantic comedies, but while this hews very closely to the structural expectations of the genre, it fleshes out the details with a lot of wit. Timothy Bottoms and Linda Purl's performances are brilliantly conceived and executed - eccentric both relative to the genre and in and of themselves, they actually nudge the material toward screwball on occasion, but are so humane that they add something resembling depth to the background commentaries on crime and disability and social withdrawal. Director Hart had me from - that's right - the attempted rape scene, executed with such purpose, concision and tonal control that I had to turn it off while I absorbed how resoundingly right it was - and how funny! The rest of the movie has comparably pleasurable surprises in tone and timing. The ending is a bit too inevitable and a bit too pat, but by then you're won over anyway and it doesn't matter.
High-Ballin'
(Peter Carter, 1977)
If your big trucking company is going to undermine its independent competition, you do have other means at your disposal than spraying them with gunfire. And if these guys do want to go that route, they might be expected to, you know, delegate the thuggery instead of leaving it to a 50% equity partner. Having set up this scenario, the filmmakers then try to portray the ringleaders as nice guy and evil guy - that's right, a 'nice' hijacking profiteer. Hero Peter Fonda figures out they're in cahoots because the hit man leads them straight to head office after shooting up his hotel room. They call on their trucker friends to help, but aside from driving through several fences, all they do is beat up some random labourers, and have absolutely no impact on the narrative. At least they were invited to the party, unlike poor Jerry Reed, the family-man trucker whose plight is supposed to be the point of the movie except he barely shows up after the first hour, displaced by Helen Shaver who may be a tough broad but probably should at least have some sort of limp or abrasion after being thrown out of a speeding car, blah blah blah. It's a shame because the film is amiable enough on the surface; it's only the performers' fault to the extent that they knew what they were getting into. Not the desperately incoherent, flop-sweat-drenched atrocity of Carter's "Highpoint", but there's foreshadowing here for sure.
If your big trucking company is going to undermine its independent competition, you do have other means at your disposal than spraying them with gunfire. And if these guys do want to go that route, they might be expected to, you know, delegate the thuggery instead of leaving it to a 50% equity partner. Having set up this scenario, the filmmakers then try to portray the ringleaders as nice guy and evil guy - that's right, a 'nice' hijacking profiteer. Hero Peter Fonda figures out they're in cahoots because the hit man leads them straight to head office after shooting up his hotel room. They call on their trucker friends to help, but aside from driving through several fences, all they do is beat up some random labourers, and have absolutely no impact on the narrative. At least they were invited to the party, unlike poor Jerry Reed, the family-man trucker whose plight is supposed to be the point of the movie except he barely shows up after the first hour, displaced by Helen Shaver who may be a tough broad but probably should at least have some sort of limp or abrasion after being thrown out of a speeding car, blah blah blah. It's a shame because the film is amiable enough on the surface; it's only the performers' fault to the extent that they knew what they were getting into. Not the desperately incoherent, flop-sweat-drenched atrocity of Carter's "Highpoint", but there's foreshadowing here for sure.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Heavy Metal
(Gerald Potterton, 1981)
It may be 'adult' up against the squeaky-clean Disney iconography that was even more hegemonic at the time, but it's also definitively juvenile. In fact the convergence of fantasy and (male) puberty is the governing theme. Superficially there's a trend toward Conan-in-space hormonorama, not my favourite sci fi subset to say the least. But all those muscled warriors are mutations, projections or supporting players to the geeks and losers who stand in for the stoned horndogs who are watching. The strategy works: instead of merely exploiting this strange, huge audience, the filmmakers bond with them, as though they had been there themselves. The animation is fluid and texturally interesting, and there's ample detail and wit in the playing as well. And since we're dealing with hormonal geeks here, there's a built-in excuse for all those iron-bosomed nude Amazons. In fact, by making one of those Amazons into a heroic (and mute) protagonist and putting a little girl at the centre of the connecting narrative, the film attains an appropriate degree of balance - they may not be allowed to speak, but at least they get to hang around the clubhouse. I'll even extend that clemency to the limp-wristed fag king - he's kind of funny, actually.
It may be 'adult' up against the squeaky-clean Disney iconography that was even more hegemonic at the time, but it's also definitively juvenile. In fact the convergence of fantasy and (male) puberty is the governing theme. Superficially there's a trend toward Conan-in-space hormonorama, not my favourite sci fi subset to say the least. But all those muscled warriors are mutations, projections or supporting players to the geeks and losers who stand in for the stoned horndogs who are watching. The strategy works: instead of merely exploiting this strange, huge audience, the filmmakers bond with them, as though they had been there themselves. The animation is fluid and texturally interesting, and there's ample detail and wit in the playing as well. And since we're dealing with hormonal geeks here, there's a built-in excuse for all those iron-bosomed nude Amazons. In fact, by making one of those Amazons into a heroic (and mute) protagonist and putting a little girl at the centre of the connecting narrative, the film attains an appropriate degree of balance - they may not be allowed to speak, but at least they get to hang around the clubhouse. I'll even extend that clemency to the limp-wristed fag king - he's kind of funny, actually.
Heavenly Bodies
(Lawrence Dane, 1984)
The obvious problem with any film about aerobics is that there's no endgame. It's not a competitive sport, nor a visually graceful one; it's just solitary individuals bouncing up and down in a group. So of course there's an evil big gym that wants to foil the ladies' modest enterprise, and of course there's a climactic 'challenge' where the two sides bounce up and down in a group until they fall over. Some kind of contrivance was bound to get imposed on the subject matter just to keep things moving. If only it did the job. Instead, the lumpy narrative features totally alienated go-for-it plot arcs crammed into the first and second half, so that any slight chance for momentum is fully lost in the ocean of distressed bodies. They were really asking for it by invoking the holy name of Gene Kelly when the only thing resembling a production number - Cynthia Dale cavorting around the TV studio - plays like a tentative first rehearsal. Dale is too cutesy and callow to carry the film on her shoulders, and Lawrence Dane shows why he stuck to acting after this. At least the sexual innuendo in the first half can be kind of cute.
The obvious problem with any film about aerobics is that there's no endgame. It's not a competitive sport, nor a visually graceful one; it's just solitary individuals bouncing up and down in a group. So of course there's an evil big gym that wants to foil the ladies' modest enterprise, and of course there's a climactic 'challenge' where the two sides bounce up and down in a group until they fall over. Some kind of contrivance was bound to get imposed on the subject matter just to keep things moving. If only it did the job. Instead, the lumpy narrative features totally alienated go-for-it plot arcs crammed into the first and second half, so that any slight chance for momentum is fully lost in the ocean of distressed bodies. They were really asking for it by invoking the holy name of Gene Kelly when the only thing resembling a production number - Cynthia Dale cavorting around the TV studio - plays like a tentative first rehearsal. Dale is too cutesy and callow to carry the film on her shoulders, and Lawrence Dane shows why he stuck to acting after this. At least the sexual innuendo in the first half can be kind of cute.
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