February 17, 2004
Far More Than 50 Bad Jokes
As someone who isn't necessarily a fan of the broad frat boy humor of Adam Sandler's homegrown Happy Madison productions--but at least understands their lowest common denominator appeal--I had an odd reaction to 50 FIRST DATES, Sandler's reunion with his WEDDING SINGER paramour Drew Barrymore. While I was never one to really respond to his brand of crude slapstick, this time the jokes felt more flat and uninspired than usual, desperate even. From projectile-vomiting walruses to Rob Schneider's hammy turn as a heavily-accented Polynesian pal of Sandler's to Sandler's androgynous co-worker (Lusia Strus), bits that usually generate at least a faint giggle from the audience were met with dead silence. Casting Sandler as a marine biologist also reeks of desperation; after all, how better to cuddly up the abrasive actor than by surrounding him with a bunch of cute animals?
Oddly enough, though, director Peter Segal and writer George Wing needn't have bothered, for Sandler is actually (gasp!) somewhat endearing on his own here as Henry Roth, an average guy who changes his womanizing ways when he falls for nice, average girl Lucy Whitmore (Barrymore)--or, at least, she appears average, for her short-term memory was damaged, leaving it to Henry to win her affections every day. The concept seems to be cut from the same cloth as the lame line of humor, but the love story that develops around the idea actually achieves a certain level of charm. A major reason why Sandler comes off fairly well in the film is that, for the most part, he and the rest of the cast simply stay out of Barrymore's way whenever she appears; her effortlessly beguiling performance generates both smiles and genuine poignance. Alas, she's a rare beacon of light in the dreary, silly muck. There's a sweet romance fighting to reach the surface in 50 FIRST DATES, but it's ultimately a losing battle against the overpowering and sour Sandler crassness.
Sights Unseen
After a number of release date delays, New Line has decided to give Robert Harmon's road rage/revenge thriller HIGHWAYMEN an under-the-radar regional release on about a hundred screens--no doubt looking to cash in on the anticipation for star Jim Caviezel's upcoming THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST in the Bible belt areas.
A criminal (Samuel LeBihan) wants his life back after spending four years in jail, but his old cohorts have other ideas in the French gangster drama LA MENTALE (The Code).
At the Video Store
Given his many questionable (to put it mildly) career choices since his Oscar win in 1998, Cuba Gooding Jr. has been a frequent and wholly justifiable target for criticism. While his pair of releases from last fall, THE FIGHTING TEMPTATIONS (Paramount Home Entertainment) and RADIO (Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment), aren't exactly JERRY MAGUIRE-level (hell, I wouldn't even call them good )at the very least it's understandable why Gooding chose to participate in them. In the case of the former, it's a feel-good comedy from MY COUSIN VINNY director Jonathan Lynn, co-starring hot--in every sense--singer/actress Beyoncé Knowles. Unfortunately, a great soul gospel soundtrack, Knowles's sizzling presence and decent work by Gooding can't freshen up the formula, SISTER ACT 2-reminiscent (and that's one mortal wound righ there) storyline of an underdog choir entering a big competition, nor Lynn's strangely slack direction. RADIO, on the other hand, gives Gooding one of those classic awards-baiting roles as a mentally-disabled man who becomes an assistant coach/mascot/inspirational figure for a high school's sports program. The typically exuberant Gooding is admirably, surprisingly restrained as the title character, as is Ed Harris, foregoing his recent, Oscar-nominated scenery chewing as the kindly coach to takes Radio under his wing. Alas, they are perhaps the only restrained thing in Mike Tollin's big-screen TV movie "inspired by actual events," which is less about sports (as the advertising would suggest) and more about boob-tube-level sentiments about tolerance. The TEMPTATIONS DVD is a pretty slim platter, but among the few extras are extended musical numbers--a plus since the music is by far the film's biggest plus. The RADIO disc is a bit more packed, but the greater extras aren't as rewarding: standard making-of featurettes, including one focusing on the (surprisingly few) football scenes; deleted scenes; and pedestrian commentary by Tollin.
SECONDHAND LIONS (New Line Home Entertainment) was written and directed by Tim McCanlies, one of the scribes behind THE IRON GIANT (by the way, Warner Bros.--when will the much-delayed special edition DVD finally be released?), but this live-action family film likely won't find the same post-theatrical popularity as that modern classic. However, this familiar "summer that changed my life" story is buoyed by strong performances by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine as two bickering brothers whose stories of an adventurous youth inspire their young grand-nephew (Haley Joel Osment, whose voice has changed but his acting ability hasn't) during his season-long stay at their remote cabin. The Platinum Series DVD includes commentary by McCanlies, deleted and alternate scenes, making-of featurettes and DVD-ROM features.
On a purely technical level, THE LION KING 1 1/2 (Walt Disney Home Entertainment) is easily the most accomplished of the Mouse's direct-to-video cash-ins on their beloved animated properties. The artwork, coloring and animation is easily on or above the par of other studios' theatrically-released animated features (though not necessarily the studios' own). That said, this pre-/mid-quel to the 1994 blockbuster is perhaps the most grating of all these straight-to-tape releases, not to mention the laziest. As a comic reader and a soap viewer, there is nothing more irksome than when certain characters become so popular that the powers that be decide to build retroactive continuities around them, thus bolstering their "importance" in the grand scheme. And so it goes with 1 1/2, one huge retcon in which it is revealed that the supporting comic relief duo of meerkat Timon and warthog Pumbaa (once again voiced by Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella, respectively) played a much more significant role in the events depicted in the first LION KING, far pre-dating their midway entrance in the original storyline. Timon and Pumbaa were definitely good for laughs in the original film, but they were also responsible for its less effective touches, namely broad bodily function humor. With them front and center, so are the silly scatological gags--in fact, one of the most indelibly magestic images from the first film is rewritten into a cheap fart joke. Now that Disney and Pixar have officially divorced--with the Mouse retaining all rights to the visionary animation studio's characters--I shudder to think of what similar horrors will be done to the likes of Woody and Buzz Lightyear in the years to come. In a remarkable show of hubris, the DVD is a fully-loaded two-disc affair, going into far more detail into the making of this shoddy product than even animation afficionados would ever care about (after all, those really suckered into buying these things are generally casual film fan families wanting another flick for the kiddies); filling out the platters are the standard kid-targeted games and thinly-veiled, corporate synergy plugs--e.g., a "Grazing in the Grass" music video by Disney Channel starlet Raven (the now-"Symoné"-less, ex-COSBY SHOW moppet), whom the studio is obviously trying to groom into the replacement for their not-so-dearly-departed cash heifer Hilary Duff.
As with any notorious flop by an esteemed filmmaker, in the twenty-plus years since its abbreviated 1982 release Francis Ford Coppola's quasi-musical ONE FROM THE HEART (American Zoetrope/Fantoma Films) has earned an ardent cult following who herald the film as an overlooked masterpiece. Then, of course, there are those who maintain that the film is as bankrupt as Coppola's dream studio Zoetrope, which went bust after the film washed out with critics and moviegoers alike. Viewing the film far removed from the bad press and general drama that surrounded its initial theatrical run, I can see where both camps are coming from. On one hand it's a remarkable display of cinematic virtuosity; on another, all of Coppola's feverish, creative razzle-dazzle works in direct opposition to the simple story he's trying to tell: that of a working-class Las Vegas couple (Teri Garr and Frederic Forrest) who break up, frolic with fantasy lovers (Raul Julia and Nastassja Kinski), and then reunite. The title applies to the entire enterprise, but not quite in the way Coppola intended; the film is a monument to his love for the idea of Zoetrope--on whose stages the film was entirely, extravagantly shot--and not the barely-felt connection between the central couple. The DVD presentation is spectacular; the colors and sound leap from the television set (the latter all the better to appreciate the bluesy Tom Waits-penned tunes, sung by Waits and Crystal Gayle). The generous supplements on the two-disc set are also impressive. Coppola gives an informative, impassioned and refreshingly honest feature-length commentary; the making-of featurettes--particularly "The Dream Studio," which chronicles the film and Zoetrope's intertwined life and death--dig deeper than the standard EPK materials (though the one here produced for the 1982 release is a fascinating artifact); and there are various collections of photos, deleted scenes, rehearsal footage, effects tests and articles. One thing that both the film's fans and detractors should be able to agree on is the superlative quality of this DVD release.
While the controversy surrounding ONE FROM THE HEART is self-explanatory with one fresh viewing of the film, it takes a bit of historical context to understand the storm that surrounded Henri-Georges Cluzot's LE CORBEAU (The Criterion Collection/HomeVision Entertainment). Viewed from today's eyes, this 1943 drama in which the citizens of "a small town, here or elsewhere" have their dirty secrets and suspicions laid bare by a series of anonymous poison pen letters is a marvel of storytelling economy, deftly weaving a large, soap-size canvas of characters in a fast-paced, suspenseful mystery. At the time, however, the film was attacked by both the political right and the left, for reasons ranging from its talk of abortion to the fact of it being made under a German-run production house during the Nazi occupation of France. Criterion's disc provides ample background into the controversy surrounding the film on both the disc--filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier discusses Cluzot, LE CORBEAU and the historical atmosphere in a recently-shot interview; Cluzot himself gets his say in excerpts from a 1975 French TV documentary--and a 16-page booklet with an informative new essay by film scholar Alan Williams and, even more interestingly, a pair of articles about "the CORBEAU affair" from a 1947 French newspaper. But most rewarding of all, of course, is the film itself, whose tightly-wound 91 minutes feel remarkably timely, for salacious, slanderous whispers and finger-pointing, it appears, never go out of style.
ROSWELL will make for an interesting case study for television scholars in the years to come, as it tried to earnestly mix two of the zeitgeist TV genres of the time: the standard WB-issue, angsty teen drama with serious, X-FILES-style sci-fi--an admirable ambition, but one that resulted in an uneven three-season, two-network run that felt as if the two genres were battling to win out over the other. Fans and new viewers alike can now witness the series' promising beginnings with The Complete First Season DVD set (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment), in which a pair of high schoolers (Shiri Appleby and Majandra Delfino) discover that three of their classmates (Jason Behr, Brendan Fehr and Katherine Heigl) hail from "up there." Fans will notice that these aren't exactly the episodes that originally aired, as hefty music licensing fees required creator/executive producer Jason Katims and his music supervision team to replace certain songs. In addition to the altered soundtracks, select episodes feature commentary by Katims, Appleby, Delfino and/or others in the writing/directing/producing team; other supplements include deleted scenes, audition tapes and making-of featurettes.
Now that the misbegotten feature film version is now a distant memory (that is, except to Heather Graham groupies, Gary Oldman completists and masochists who get off on Matt LeBlanc's big-screen oeuvre), The Complete First Season of Irwin Allen's classic '60s family sci-fi adventure LOST IN SPACE (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment) is now available to be savored on DVD with little of that nasty, Stephen Hopkins-flavored aftertaste. The eight-disc set contains all 29 (!) episodes of the first season as well as the unaired pilot and CBS's original pitch featurette to advertisers.
Watching GILLIGAN'S ISLAND The Complete First Season (Warner Home Video), I came to the realization that a little of this show's slapstick silliness goes a long way--now, anyway; I'm stunned I was able to watch various marathons of the show during various holidays when I was a kid. But with this set of four double-sided discs containing all of the first season's 36 (!) episodes (puts these contract-mandated, 18-episode seasons of FRIENDS into perspective, no?) as well as the original unaired pilot (featuring three different cast members and a godawful calypso theme song sung by someone sporting an even worse faux-Caribbean accent)--making for 37 total episodes--it encourages piecemeal viewing. And that's all for the better, since the charm of the castaways and their far-flung antics are best taken the way the were meant to be seen, 22 minutes at a time. The unaired pilot includes commentary by creator Sherwood Schwartz, and the aired pilot features a text trivia track; other supplements include castaway profiles and an island "survival guide."
Next time...
...more reviews. As always, visit my home site, Mr. Brown's Movie Site, for takes on older releases.
E-MAIL THE AUTHOR |
ARCHIVES
