Category Archives: Romance

The Princess Bride (1987)

Posted on November 17, 2015 | Leave a comment

princess bride 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Grandson likes bedtime story.

Based on the 1973 William Goldman novel, who also wrote the screenplay, a grandfather (Peter Falk) arrives to read to his sick grandson (Fred Savage) a fairytale. Initially the grandson is more interested in playing video games, but soon finds himself enraptured with the story despite his initial reluctance. The tale involves a country girl named Buttercup (Robin Wright) who falls in love with a farmhand named Westley (Cary Elwes). When Buttercup mistakenly thinks that Westley has been killed by some pirates she agrees to marry Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon) only to end up getting kidnapped before her wedding and saved by Westley who was never dead to begin with. The two then must fight off the evil Prince who still insists on marry Buttercup and doing away with Westley.

The film, which was directed by Rob Reiner and produced by his former ‘All in the Family’ creator Norman Lear, is engaging from beginning to end and filled with endlessly funny dialogue and exciting adventures that remain pleasantly amusing throughout. My favorite moment is seeing a completely unrecognizable Billy Crystal hamming it up as an old man magician who tries to revive Westley while sounding like a comedian from vaudeville.

The special effects are impressive especially the shot showing Buttercup’s three kidnappers climbing a rope up a steep mountain while being followed close behind by Westley. To me though the best part is when Westley gets attacked by what appears to be a giant rodent that, with the exception of his fake looking fur, looks amazingly real and not like a stuntman in a body suit or a computerized image.

The performers are well cast with my favorite being former wrestler Andre the Giant who steals it despite having no acting experience and at times difficulty enunciating his words. The only negative is Christopher Guest as a six fingered man who supposedly attacked the Mandy Patinkin character when he was a child, but now that Patinkin has grown he faces Guest again even though Guest looks to be practically his same age and not someone who should be significantly older.

The story is basic and lacks the grandiose and dark quality that many of the classic Grimm fairytales possess. The banter between the grandson and Grandfather is fun and I wished it had cut back-and-forth between the two and the story more often than it does. The context is simple and straight forward and its ‘message’ of teaching kids to learn to enjoy reading is a bit too obvious, but overall as non-think escapism it scores a bullseye and through the years has managed to acquire a strong cult following.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 25, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 38Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Rob Reiner

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube

 

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Comedy, Cult, Movies Based on Novels, Movies for the Whole Family, Romance, Surreal/Fantasy

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License to Drive (1988)

Posted on November 9, 2015 | Leave a comment

license to drive

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Driving without a license.

Les Anderson (Corey Haim) is in a jam. He has flunked the written portion of his driving exam and therefore has his license denied, but a really hot girl by the name of Mercedes Lane (Heather Graham) wants to go out with him and he needs some wheels to get there. So, after his parents (Richard Masur, Carol Kane) have fallen asleep he decides to ‘borrow’ his grandfather’s car and chaos results, which forces him to return home with the vehicle in less than pristine condition.

This film was quite controversial when it was first released as it contains a scene involving an intoxicated man (Henry Allan Miller) getting behind the wheel of Les’s car and driving it, which critics felt was ‘promoting’ drunk driving, or at the very least making light of it. To me the biggest problem with the segment is the fact that the driver gets into the car with the keys somehow in the ignition even though Les and his friends are in the back of the car using those very same keys to open up the trunk, so unless they had two sets of keys, which is never stated, it then flunks the logic test. I also thought the scene where Les tries to jump from one speeding car to another while out on the freeway was just as dangerous and more hair raising than funny.

Haim in my opinion is the best thing about the film. I know he got the reputation of being a Hollywood ‘bad boy’, but the kid does have a certain appeal. This was his second pairing with Corey Feldman, who I didn’t like as much as he came off more as a crude ‘80s teen caricature. This also marks Heather Graham’s official film debut since her uncredited appearance in Mrs. Soffel four years earlier did not have any speaking lines and here she is terrific. I also found Masur and Kane to be quite appealing as the parents who resemble real human beings and not like the grown-ups in some ‘80’s teen movies where they are portrayed as being oppressive, overbearing, out-of-touch jerks.

The humor though is only mildly amusing and how the Les character could’ve missed the answers on the test is hard to imagine as they relied on basic common sense that just about anyone could’ve answered. The film also fails to have the same whimsical quality as Adventures in Babysitting which came out around the same time and had the same adventurous night-on-the-town concept.

If you’re looking for an amiable time filler for a slow evening than this may do the trick, but overall it’s just an innocuous ‘80’s teen programmer at best.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: July 6, 1988

Runtime: 1Hour 29Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Greg Beeman

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Comedy, Romance

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The Secret of My Success (1987)

Posted on November 5, 2015 | Leave a comment

secret of my success

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: He has lofty ambitions.

Brantley Foster (Michael J. Fox) has just graduated from high school and wants to take a stab at the big city. He has a nice job lined up, but when he gets there he finds that they’ve become victims of a hostile corporate takeover and his position is no longer available. His mother (Elizabeth Franz) tells him about his rich Uncle Howard Prescott (Richard Jordan) who is a CEO of a major firm. Brantley meets with him and manages to get a job in the mailroom, but then comes up with a scheme where he masquerades as a company executive while romancing an attractive boss (Helen Slater) and even his uncle’s wife (Margaret Whitton).

Fox is terrific in the lead and his engaging and likable presence makes up to some degree for the film’s other numerous shortcomings. There are a few funny scenes including the one where Brantley pretends to be an orchestra conductor by using the sound of a couple making love in the next apartment as his ‘music’. The bird’s eye shot of a group of executives jogging around a track that is situated on a roof of a Manhattan skyscraper is fantastic and my favorite moment of the whole film. Brantley’s scheme though is ridiculously over-the-top with no chance of ever successfully occurring in the real world, which makes the story less entertaining since the believability factor gets thrown out to the point that it becomes a completely inane farce by the end.

The humor is also too broad and would’ve worked better had it tried instead to be more subtle. A good example of this is where Brantley gives a limo ride to Howard’s wife Vera. Initially Vera is quite cold and bitchy towards him, but then he throws her a line of how he’d feel like ‘the luckiest man in the world if he awoke each morning with a beautiful woman like her lying next to him’, which is enough to ‘melt’ her cold exterior and have her invite him back to her place where she shamelessly comes onto him and even goes skinny dipping with him in her backyard pool. Yet I’d imagine an attractive, rich woman such as herself would get lines like that thrown at her all the time by other men and how would she know that Brantley, whom she had just met, wasn’t any different than the rest of them and simply looking for a way to get her between the sheets or at her money. There is no way a woman of that age and social pedigree would foolishly let down her guard that quickly and easily especially for a line that is rather unimaginative and corny.

I realize this is supposed to be a wish-fulfillment fantasy, but it goes overboard and too much of a good thing is never good. The so-called ‘American Dream’ is all about persevering and overcoming hardships and obstacles not like it is here where we have some wet-behind-the-ears kid who magically has all the answers while essentially cheating his way to the top in record time without even breaking a sweat and making everyone else who actually works for a living look like complete fools in the process.

A little grit and realism would’ve helped and at least given it some much needed balance, but instead it’s completely lacking, which ultimately makes it shallow, superficial and silly and not worth the time.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: April 10, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 51Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Herbert Ross

Studio: Universal

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray (Region B/2), Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Farce, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Romance

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Deadly Friend (1986)

Posted on October 20, 2015 | 1 comment

deadly friend 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: He resurrects his girlfriend.

Paul (Matthew Labyorteaux) is a teen with a genius I.Q. who teaches classes on robotics at a local university. His next-door neighbor is Samantha (Kristy Swanson) a beautiful teen girl who is tormented and abused by her alcoholic father (Richard Marcus). When she becomes brain dead after falling down the stairs during one of her father’s rages Paul tries to bring her back to life by implementing the microchip from his robot’s brain into hers. However, instead of the pretty, sweet girl that she once was she is now a killing machine getting back at anyone who ever wronged her and Paul becomes unable to stop her.

The film suffers severely as a result of the studio having a different idea on the direction they wanted to take it versus what director Wes Craven or its screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin had. Craven and Rubin wanted an offbeat love story while the producers pushed for the conventional ‘80s horror. The result is a mishmash of different genres that throws in everything from blood and gore to silly robots that do cutesy things and look better suited for a kid-friendly Disney movie.

The plot has a logic loophole as well as the reincarnated Samantha somehow gains super human strength, which makes no sense. She may have the robot’s brain, but it’s still her same body, so whatever strength the robot had would not transition to her since he was made from mechanical parts. The part where she lifts a biker dude over her head would probably have broken her back and I wasn’t sure what the dark circles around her eyes was so supposed to mean. Was this to represent that she was slowly dying and decaying? If so then her skin should be rotting and peeling off and not just looking like someone who went a little overboard with the eye shadow.

The misguided nightmare segments are another issue. The scene where Samantha dreams that she stabs her father in the stomach with a broken glass vase that causes blood to rush out of him appears more like an erect penis pissing out blood. The moment where Paul sees Samantha’s dead and burned father’s head popping out of his bed is too reminiscent of A Nightmare on Elm Street and comes off looking like Craven was going to the same well too often.

The characters are dull and poorly fleshed out. Paul is too clean cut and the fact that he is super smart at everything becomes annoying. Samantha seems overly passive and sheltered and her loathsome father becomes nothing more than a walking, talking cliché trucked straight in from Redneckville.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending is by far the worst part as it features Paul coming into the morgue after Samantha has been killed and then having her inexplicable and without explanation turn into a robot. Whether this was simply a dream or a misguided attempt to turn the plotline into some sort of sequel is unclear, but it helps cement this as a complete catastrophe despite its good production values and a perfect testament to what happens when the producer and director are not on the same page.

End of Spoiler Alert!

deadly friend 2

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: October 10, 1986

Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes

Rated R

Director: Wes Craven

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube 

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Romance, Sci-Fi, Slasher/Gore

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Promise Her Anything (1966)

Posted on October 1, 2015 | 3 comments

promise her anything

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Bachelor becomes a babysitter.

Harley (Warren Beatty) is a struggling filmmaker living alone in a rundown Greenwich Village apartment where he makes low-grade blue movies to pay the rent. Michele (Leslie Caron) moves into the apartment next door. She is a recently widowed mother who has Harley babysit her 2-year-old (Michael Bradley) while she romances the child psychologist (Robert Cummings) that she works for whom she feels will also make for a good father. The problem is that Harley falls for Michele and soon makes a play for her affections as well.

After recently reviewing other bachelor themed films from the ‘60s I felt this was a definite upgrade. Instead of portraying young single men living in plush pads and having cushy jobs this one shows a more realistic side with a character that struggles to make ends meet while also harboring a beatnik philosophy that young men of that time were starting to embrace. Arthur Hiller’s direction has shades of the offbeat and irreverent while Tom Jones’ singing gives it hipness.

I also enjoyed Beatty’s presence and felt this was one of his better comedies as the scenario takes full advantage of his detached, glib manner while also tapping into his notorious lady’s man image. The scenes where he talks about enjoying  the benefits of marriage, but without being married or expounding on the virtues of socialized medicine made the character seem downright ahead-of-his-time.

Cummings, in one of his last film appearances, is also fun and his stuffy, uptight ways makes for a great contrast to Beatty. Why someone who hates kids would ever decide to become a child psychologist makes little sense, but it’s still funny as is his banter with his more modern thinking mother (Cathleen Nesbitt).

Caron seemed miscast as she was already in her mid-30s at the time and an actress who was in her 20s and more Beatty’s age would’ve been a better fit. I also didn’t care for the character’s dated, old-school ways of thinking including the idea of marrying a man simply for the security that he could offer even if she didn’t love him or that children must have a father figure in their life or they will turn out ‘psychologically abnormal’ if raised only by a single parent. Her attempts at hiding the fact that she had a child until after the Cummings character had proposed to her and she’d securely ‘snared’ him is equally offensive.

The plot is paper thin and I’ll admit I watched this on my Amazon fire tablet and halfway in I accidently kicked the table it was sitting on and in my attempt to catch the tablet before it dropped to the ground I inadvertently jumped the film ahead by 20 minutes, but had no idea I had done so until it had ended. When I went back to review what I had missed I realized it hadn’t been much.

The undernourished script by William Peter Blatty has a few amusing bits, but nothing that’s laugh-out-loud funny. The climactic sequence in which Beatty tries to heroically save the child who’s trapped on a moving crane might’ve been more exciting had it not been so obviously done in front of blue screen.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: February 22, 1966

Runtime: 1Hour 38Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Arthur Hiller

Studio: Paramount

Available: VHS, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube

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Posted in 60's Movies, Comedy, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Romance

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The Next Man (1976)

Posted on September 30, 2015 | 1 comment

next man

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Hit lady at work.

Khalil (Sean Connery) is an Arab diplomat looking to form a bridge between the Arab and Jewish states and even allow Israel to become a member of OPEC. Naturally this creates controversy. Diplomats from around the world suddenly turn up dead. Khalil manages to avoid the attempts on his life, but realizes he can’t stay on the run forever. He forms a relationship with the beautiful Nicole (Cornelia Sharpe) unaware that she is a paid hit lady with an agenda.

The film starts out well with varied scenes shot around the world in interesting locations. The scene where a husband and wife diplomats get thrown off the balcony of their ritzy hotel by assassins disguised as room service is pretty good, but the story and pace are choppy. I could never get quite into it or even understand all the time what was going on.

Much of this can be attributed to the extremely poor transfer of the 2006 Trinity Enterprises DVD issue, which cuts the original 108 minute runtime down to only 90 minutes. Clearly several integral scenes are missing making for a muddled viewing experience and unfortunately this is the only available source of the film at this time. I was also highly unimpressed with the faded color and grainy picture quality making it seem like the whole thing had been copied directly off of a VHS tape with no attempts at restoration.

The casting of Sharpe in the lead was a mistake. She may be beautiful, but her acting is only adequate. She was wisely given only limited lines of dialogue, but in the process it makes her character one-dimensional and uninteresting.

Connery is equally miscast and shows little of his trademark charisma. He doesn’t appear until about 10 minutes in and his attempts to come off as an Arab national is unconvincing. His romance with Sharpe happens too quickly and although I liked the surprise ending it barely registered since so much of the rest of the story is boring and pointless.

Alternate Title: The Arab Conspiracy

My Rating: 4 out of 10

November 5, 1976

Runtime: 1Hour 48 Minutes (Original Release) 1Hour 31Minutes (DVD release)

Rated R

Director: Richard C. Sarafian

Studio: Allied Artists Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Romance, Spy/Espionage

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Splash (1984)

Posted on September 28, 2015 | 1 comment

splash 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Man falls for mermaid.

Allen (Tom Hanks) is stuck in a hapless job and a string of loveless relationships. After his last live-in girlfriend leaves him he becomes convinced that he will never find true love. Then on a whim he takes a trip to Cape Cod and goes out into the harbor in a small boat despite not being able to swim. When the engine conks out and he attempts to restart it he gets knocked into the water and his saved by a mysterious mermaid (Daryl Hannah). He returns to his New York home and mundane life only to find that the mermaid has sprouted legs and followed him. Allen doesn’t recognize the woman as the one who saved him, but he’s immediately smitten by her beauty nonetheless. They start up an awkward relationship, but when Allen proposes marriage she tells him she can’t as she has a dark secret, which is the fact that when she gets wet her legs turn into fins.

This was Ron Howard’s third foray behind the camera on a theatrical film and for the most part it’s a success. I enjoyed the mix of fantasy and surrealism and a love story that is cute, but not too cute. I loved the big city ambience including a scene involving classical street musicians and a visit to an outdoor ice skating rink. The climatic car chase through the downtown is funny especially when a group of soldiers manually overturn a taxi cab that is in their way.

Unfortunately the script, which is credited to four different writers, is full of major loopholes that to me ended up getting in the way of my enjoyment. I realize as a budding/struggling screenwriter that it is difficult to write a plot that is completely logical in every way and every story even the really good ones will usually have a few minor implausibility’s that one can overlook and forgive, but this one goes way beyond that.

For one thing I thought it was absurd that this mermaid who knew nothing of the English language when she came could somehow learn the language in one day simply by watching television. Yes, she may be able to pick up on some words, but to be able to learn their meanings and context is another story that just wouldn’t be possible for anyone to realistically grasp in such a short period of time. Besides I thought it was more interesting when she didn’t speak and it could’ve worked on that level alone. And while we’re at it who ended up paying for all those televisions in the department store that she destroys while in front of the sales staff when she states her name in such a high pitch that it explodes all of the screens?

I was also confused how the Eugene Levy character was able to track down the Hannah character and able to stalk her in his attempt to get her wet and expose her as a mermaid. He initially spots her under the ocean, but then later reads about her in a newspaper, but the article did not mention her name or whereabouts because at the time she hadn’t reconnected with Allen, so how would he know where to find her especially in the big, congested metropolis of New York?

I also had trouble with the scene where John Candy, who plays Allen’s brother, helps the Levy and Allen sneak the mermaid out of a science lab, but then ends up staying to take the blame while the others leave. The Candy character had no invested interest in the mermaid and came along only to help out, so why should he be the fall guy, or even agree to it?

Spoiler Alert!

There is also a scene where the mermaid buys Allen a giant water fountain and has it placed in his bedroom, which makes no sense because the doorway was clearly not big enough to get any of it through it. My biggest beef though is with the ending where the viewer learns that as long as Allen is with the mermaid he will be able to breathe underwater without any apparatus, which defies all laws of physics and seems thrown in to appease the hopelessly romantic masses who will buy into any contrived ‘happy ending’ no matter how utterly illogical. In some ways the idea that he couldn’t go with her and she would come back to visit him on occasion would’ve worked better because then they wouldn’t have to be with each other 24/7, which usually ends up being the cause of most break-ups anyways.

End of Spoiler Alert!

There is also the issue of how the mermaid manages to sprout human legs. Apparently there is a scene in the special edition DVD showing an old sea hag casting a spell on the mermaid, which allows her to have legs, but only for a short time. This scene was cut from the original release, which was a mistake as it was necessary to help explain the rest of the plot.

The movie does have its share of good points especially the casting of Hannah who seems born to play this role, but the truly great films do not require the viewer to overlook so many logic loopholes and unanswered questions in order to enjoy it.

splash 1

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: March 9, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 51Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Ron Howard

Studio: Buena Vista

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Romance, Surreal/Fantasy

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Lovin’ Molly (1974)

Posted on September 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

lovin molly

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Two men one woman.

Molly (Blythe Danner) is a free-spirited woman living in a small Texas town during the 1920’s. Gid (Anthony Perkins) and Johnny (Beau Bridges) are best friends who also both like her. Molly likes them as well, but can’t seem to decide which of the two she loves better, so to solve things she gets married to Eddie (Conard Fowkes). This doesn’t go over well with the other two, but as time goes by she continues to see them and even has children from both of them, which causes a stir in her small community. Not only does she become the product of the local gossip, but virtually ostracized as well. However, Molly is undeterred about what everyone else thinks and sticks to her independent ways.

Based on the Larry McMurtry novel the film was directed by the legendary Sidney Lumet, but you would hardly know it. The production looks cheap and rushed and lacks atmosphere or period detail. The scenes are flatly shot with very little visual design or imagination. The whole thing comes off as something that did not get any major studio backing and was forced to look to private investors for funding, which unfortunately was just not enough.

Filming it on location in Bastrop, Texas which is also the setting of the story helps a little as the town has many historical buildings, which heightens to some extent the period atmosphere, but I would’ve liked to have seen more of it. The dry Texas landscape is also nicely captured and makes the viewer feel like they are living in the state themselves with each and every shot. The one thing though that really impressed me was how realistically the characters aged as the story, which spans 40 years, progresses. In most films the actors are forced to wear a ton of makeup, which gets overdone, but here very little of it was used and it looked far better.

Danner, who these days is best known as the mother of Gwyneth Paltrow, is excellent in a rare turn as a leading lady and even appears fully nude from the front and back. Perkins is solid in support and I enjoyed seeing Bridges with a bowl haircut. The star though that really steals it is Edward Binns as Perkins’ father whose caustic and to-the-point remarks are gems.

Fred Hellerman’s flavorful bluegrass score is pleasing, but the film itself fails to elicit much emotion. The only times that it does become mildly interesting is when the characters do a voice-over narration by reading off of passages lifted directly from its source material making me believe that this should never have been filmed in the first place and left simply in its novel format.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: April 14, 1974

Runtime: 1Hour 38Minutes

Rated R

Director: Sidney Lumet

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD (Region 2), Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in Texas, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Romance

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Hello Again (1987)

Posted on September 21, 2015 | Leave a comment

hello again 4

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Her life after death.

Lucy (Shelley Long) is married to Jason (Corbin Bernsen) a well-off plastic surgeon, but finds that she doesn’t fit in with his snobby clientele and feels out-of-place whenever she tries to hang out with them at dinner parties. She turns to her wacky friend Zelda (Judith Ivey) who dabbles in the occult, but her spells and magic do little until Lucy chokes on a chicken ball and Zelda is able to magically bring her back to life one year later. Now Lucy finds a new lease on things. Jason has gotten remarried to her former friend Kim (Sela Ward) and she uses this news to find a new love of her own and she’ll have to do it quickly because if she doesn’t find true love by the next full moon she’ll go right back to being dead again.

This is the second collaboration between director Frank Perry and writer Susan Isaacs and while their first effort Compromising Positions was just barely passable this one doesn’t even make it to that level. The script is unable to settle on any type of genre as it dabbles in drama, romance, comedy, social satire and fantasy, but ends up being only shallow nonsense in the end. A few of the tangents that it takes has potential to be interesting, but then it doesn’t go far enough with it. The comedy is light and inconsistent with the funniest moment being the one that was shown in its trailer where Lucy comes back to life and finds her shocked husband and friend in bed together and after that there’s very little else that’s even mildly amusing.

The fantasy elements are poorly thought out and leave a lot of unanswered questions. The climactic showdown between Lucy and Kim is flat and the caricatures of the rich and snobby crowd are clichéd to the extreme. I also didn’t find the scene where she chokes on a chicken ball to be a laughing matter as according to government statistics over 3,000 people in this country choke to death each year and if they really wanted to create some sort of goofy death it should’ve been something much more over-the-top.

Long isn’t leading lady material. Her image is so ingrained with the uppity and prim Diane Chambers persona from ‘Cheers’ that having her portray someone who is kind and humble comes off as insincere and phony and her attempts at being a comical klutz is annoying and completely unfunny.

This was Perry’s final directorial effort. He burst onto the film scene in the ‘60s and showed flashes of brilliance and new age vision, but his career declined markedly once he divorced from his screenwriter wife Eleanor and the stuff he did afterwards was barely even worth a look. He eventually was diagnosed with cancer and spent the last years of his life battling the disease and in 1995 even made a documentary about his fight called On the Bridge, which was far more compelling than this tripe.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: November 6, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 36Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Frank Perry

Studio: Buena Vista Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with a Hospital setting, Romance, Surreal/Fantasy

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Creator (1985)

Posted on September 7, 2015 | Leave a comment

creator

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cloning his dead wife.

Harry Wolper (Peter O’Toole) is an eccentric college professor obsessed with the idea of cloning his dead wife. With the help of an undergraduate assistant named Boris (Vincent Spano) he sets up a makeshift shed in his backyard and uses the university equipment for his experiments. He employs the services of Meli (Mariel Hemingway) a 19-year-old in desperate need of funds whose egg he uses as part of the cloning process. After a while she starts to fall in love with him and as the fetus of his dead wife takes shape she becomes jealous and feeling that he should be more concerned with the living than the dead.

O’Toole is engaging as ever in the type of role that most suits his talents. Had the film stayed centered on him it would have been a joy to watch, but unfortunately it enters in the generic Spano who looks like he was pulled straight off of the cover of a men’s modeling magazine. I presume this was because the studio felt a movie centered on a man over 50 wouldn’t attract the all-important 16-30 year-old demographic, but despite being an obvious chick-magnet he adds little and there was period in the middle where he isn’t seen for a long time to the point where I forgot about him and didn’t miss him at all.

Hemingway adds quirky energy as the free-spirit and her kooky romance with O’Toole adds genuine spark, but the film regresses by spending too more time focusing on Spano’s relationship with fellow coed Barbara (Virginia Madsen). This romance is very formulaic and makes the film seem like two movies in one while sucking all of its offbeat potential right out. If anything Spano should’ve fallen for his robot that is by far funniest thing in the movie.

Spoiler Alert!

David Ogden Stiers makes for a good antagonist and John Dehner, in his last theatrical film appearance, is solid as O’Toole’s loyal colleague, but the film’s biggest problem is when it shift gears and destroys the whole cloning angle completely. It then centers on a mysterious illness that befalls the Barbara character that like in Love Story never gets explained and comes out of nowhere. She goes into an immediate coma and is put on life support where her parents (Rance Howard, Ellen Geer) agrees much too quickly and without bothering to even get a second opinion to take her off of it and allow her to die. This then forces Spano to talk to her endlessly until just as the she is about to be disconnected she ‘miraculously’ comes back to life, which is too implausible, too contrived and too cute for even the most hopeless of romantics and helps ruin the engaging performances of its two lead stars, which is the only good thing about it.

End of Spoiler Alert!

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: September 20, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 47Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ivan Passer

Studio: Universal

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, College Life, Comedy/Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Romance, Sci-Fi

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