Category Archives: Satire

Movers & Shakers (1985)

Posted on March 17, 2024 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: No ideas for script.

Joe (Walter Matthau) is a head of a large movie studio who makes a promise to a dying friend (Vincent Gardenia) that he’ll make every effort to get his concept, which is to make a movie around the title ‘Love and Sex’, made. Joe then hires struggling actor Herb (Charles Grodin) to write the script, but Herb has no idea of where to begin and seems more concerned with mending his troubled marriage with his wife (Tyne Daly). Joe then hires wacky director Sid (Bill Macy) to helm the project, but he too is devoid of any ideas and more preoccupied with his getting his young wife (Gild Radner) to go back to him.

The behind-the-scenes history of how this movie even came about is far funnier than anything you’ll actually see on the screen. It all started when Paramount Studios paid a large of sum of money for the right’s to the sex manual ‘The Joy of Sex’ because they felt the title would have a large commercial appeal. They then hired Grodin to write the script telling him it could be about anything just as long as the title of it was ‘Joy of Sex’. Grodin, like the character he plays in the movie, was at a loss of ideas, so he finally decided to base the script around his real life situation about an actor hired to write a screenplay based solely around a sexy title. When he submitted the completed script to the studio they decided to pass on it and gave the duties of writing the script around the Joy of Sex title to someone else, which later got made into a movie directed by Martha Coolidge. Meanwhile Grodin became determined to get his script made even though he could no longer used the same title since Paramount retained the rights to that. He spent 7 long years peddling the script around to all the major Hollywood studios and even a few independent ones until he finally decided to use his own money to fund it and get his actor friends to agree to be in it for as small of a pay scale as they could with Grodin himself accepting only $5,000 for his work despite being both the star and producer.

While the concept sounds funny and even novel the final product isn’t. A lot of the problem is that outside of the inciting incident nothing much happens. Everyone just sits around complaining about a lack of ideas, which soon gets quite boring and redundant. The marital spats that occur in-between, both with Grodin and his wife, but also with Macy and Radner, and even Steve Martin and Penny Marshall, who appear briefly in a cameo, is neither lively, or clever and just helps to make any already dull movie even duller. Satirizing the Hollywood studio heads isn’t exactly ground-breaking either.

I also had a hard time understanding why a big studio mogul like Matthau would want to put up a giant statue of a dinosaur in the middle of the studio backlot since it was from a movie that didn’t do well at the box office. Supposedly it was due to his friendship with the director, but to me that just didn’t jive. If the movie had done well then yes a statue was in order, but to be reminded of a flop that cost the studio money seemed very hard to imagine and too stupid to be comical. If the character’s motivations don’t make sense then it’s hard to get into the story, which is where this thing really falters.

For his part Grodin himself is quite amusing. Nobody does deadpan comedy the way he does, so his scenes still work, and there are a few humorous comments made here and there, especially by the character played by Earl Boen, but everything else just dies. The voice-over narration by Grodin, which got added later in an effort to make the movie ‘funnier’ after the responses by the initial test audiences were quite negative, doesn’t help things at all. A good movie should not have to rely on narration as everything should be conveyed by either dialogue, or action, or through other forms of visuals. Once you need narration to ‘improve it’ you already know it’s a mess.

Turning the thing into an ill-advised romance at the very end, which even includes a sappy love song, between Grodin getting back together with his wife just sinks it even further. Their fights weren’t too interesting to begin with and neither person was well-defined enough for the viewer to care what happened to them.

Grodin would later write in his autobiography of how bitter he was that the studio didn’t market the film better and the poor treatment Hollywood elites gave it, but it really is a bad movie and I think his ego got the better of him with this one. I’m a fan of his comic style and even the offbeat talk show he had during the late 90’s, which didn’t go over well with everyone and didn’t last long, but I draw the line with this. It just doesn’t work at all and can’t blame anyone for disliking it in fact I’d be very surprised if there was anyone other there, outside of Grodin of course, that did like it.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: May 3, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 20 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: William Asher

Studio: MGM/UA

Available: DVD-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Obscure Movies, Satire

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Cold Turkey (1971)

Posted on December 20, 2023 | Leave a comment

coldturkey

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Small town quits smoking.

To commemorate the passing of Norman Lear last week at the ripe old age of 101 we decided to review the one film that he directed and was shelved for two years by the studio who didn’t think it would be a hit with any audience and only decided to eventually release it once Lear had success with the classic ‘All in the Family’ sitcom. The story revolves around a small town in Iowa named Eagle Rock. The Reverend Clayton Moore would like a bigger congregation in a more prestigious area as he feels trapped in what he considers a ‘dying’ town with limited employment opportunities. He then hears about a contest that a giant tobacco company is sponsoring where they try to see if there’s a town in America that will make a pledge to agree to quit smoking for 30-days and if they succeed will be awarded $25 million. Merwin Wren (Bob Newhart), who works for a tobacco company, bets that there isn’t a place that would be able to make this pledge, but Clayton, figuring this may be his ticket out and onto greater things, pushes the citizens to sign the pledge, which will then put Eagle Rock on the map.

The location of the film shoot was Greenfield, Iowa, which I traveled to in 2009 and was amazed how similar it still looked after 40 years. The opening sequence showing the town from the south end still had many of the same buildings and the courthouse along with the gazebo in which the reverend makes his fiery speech are all still there and looking almost untouched.

The town itself is really the main star. Lear does a terrific job of showing the people who live there as they really are versus in some idealistic, or romanticized way. Too many other Hollywood productions seem to suffer from the Mayberry effect where the citizens are portrayed as simple and content ‘God Fearing’ folk who are devoid of any complex personality. Here they are frustrated individuals who secretly dream of moving away, or ‘hitting it big’ in some way, but because they don’t have the means to achieve this ultimately find themselves stuck and just trying to make the best of it. The people are no more immune from temptation, or corruption, than the ones living in a big city and if anything are even more susceptible since they haven’t been put in that situation much, but when they are, as evidenced when the place gets spoken about all over the media and everyone from all over descends on it including Lottie (Gloria Leroy) a prostitute under the guise of being a masseuse who services all married men.

Beyond the on-target satire the film also scores with its fabulous ensemble of character actors, many of whom would later star, or guest star, in many of Lear’s TV-shows. Each actor plays a distinct personality from Barnard Hughes the fidgety and nervous doctor who resorts to lollipop sucking, or Graham Jarvis the head of a far-right organization, who preaches about the evils of ‘big government’, but then readily accepts for his group, which is mainly made up of senior citizens, to become a voluntary gestapo-like militia that arrests those who are caught smoking and forcibly search all in-coming vehicles. Pippa Scott though, as Clayton’s much put-upon wife, was my favorite. She encompasses what I think a lot of small town people can feel especially those that weren’t originally from the area, who are stuck in a dead-end marriage and perennially forced to ‘put on a happy face’. Her primal scream, which happens during a dream-like segment on the rooftop of one of the houses while neighbors stand around watching I felt was one of the film’s defining moments.

In the lead roles Dick Van Dyke is terrific mainly because he plays against type. Part of what I felt killed his movie career was that he took too many roles that were just an extension of his Rob Petrie persona in his famous TV-show. Here though he’s the opposite playing an egotistical, narcissists who cares about nothing other than his own career ascension, but manages to do it in a way that’s quite amusing. Newhart plays an unusual role for him as well. Typically he’s a buttoned down, strait-laced guy commenting on the insanity around him, but here he is the nutty one and does a trick with his eyes that gives him a psycho appearance.

Spoiler Alert!

The one flaw is the ending in which all three leads (Van Dyke, Newhart, Hughes) get shot in the middle of a crowd of people standing in the town center. The shootings look fake as they show no bullet hole in their clothing, or blood even just a little bit for authenticity. One shot shows people in the crowd holding the heads of the victims as they lay there in an effort to comfort them, but then in the next shot has the three lying all alone as the crowd essentially abandoned them, which seemed unrealistic that absolutely no one would care. Having an ambulance driver trying to drive-in through the mob, but then maybe stopping to run out and grab the cigarettes that rain down on the town from a helicopter, would’ve been amusing and better explanation for why the three didn’t get the help that they needed.

There’s also one shot showing Newhart sitting up and laughing, but what is he laughing about and why would he be doing this when he’s been injured with a bullet? There’s no answer to this, which makes it come-off as a cop-out ending and like Lear had written himself into a hole that he couldn’t get out of.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: January 20, 1971

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated GP

Director: Norman Lear

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Tubi

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Movies with a rural setting, Offbeat, Satire

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Protocol (1984)

Posted on January 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

protocol

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Goldie goes to Washington.

Sunny Davis (Goldie Hawn) works as a cocktail waitress at a Washington D.C. bar, who one evening while driving home from work, she notices a crowd of media people surrounding an event where foreign dignitaries are leaving a dinner gala, which piques her curiosity enough to pull over and get out to see it in person. Once she’s in the crowd she rubs against another man and feels what she thinks is a gun and she accuses him of such, which gets the man to take the gun out and point it at the visiting Emir (Richard Romanus) from the country of El Othar. When Sunny sees this she tackles the would-be assassin and becomes an instant American hero in the process. Overnight she becomes the top of every news story. Politicians in Washington begin to believe she’d be an asset and offer her a position within the protocol department in government. She readily accepts as it pays more than her old waitress job, but it comes with a catch. The US wants to establish a military base on the country run by the Emir whose life Sunny saved, but in order to achieve this deal they offer Sunny to become another one of the Emir’s wives without her knowledge.

This was the second attempt at political satire for screenwriter Buck Henry who did First Family 4 years earlier, which I thought was bad enough, but this thing manages to be even worse. The majority of the problem is that politics and government can be very messy and if one is going to analyze the topic in any type of realistic way then it needs to get messy and dirty as well and yet this movie glosses over all of the negative aspects and tries to make American politics uplifting and inspiring, which might’ve worked in the 30’s and 40’s, but in this more cynical age it comes-off as corny and ill-conceived.

The political and media landscape has changed so drastically that most viewers living today will find the humor to be completely unrelatable. Politics today, for better or worse, has become highly divisive, so having a benign President that everyone supports such as here seems almost like a fairy tale. The satirical jabs at the news media will also prove hollow as we no longer live in a world where the mainstream press as all the clout and instead now takes a backseat to social media and thus making the majority of the jokes here quite dated. The way it portrays Muslims will also be considered problematic and even back then while it was being filmed it was protested by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee over what they felt was a disrespectful approach to Islam.

Goldie is certainly likable, but her character is blah and poorly defined. Outside of living with two gay guys there’s nothing unique about her and the viewer gets no sense of what makes her tick. A good example of this is when she gets offered the position she isn’t even sure what the word protocol means and has to look it up in a dictionary and yet after she gets the job she quickly becomes an expert on all the protocol by-laws. This was apparently because she read-up on all the literature she was given, but this isn’t shown making her newfound sudden expertise come-off as weird and hard to explain. The fish-out-of-water concept really needed to be played-up more. There are a few comically awkward moments, but in order to make it consistently funny it needed to continue through the whole movie.

The fact that she becomes so famous over preventing the assassination of the leader of a foreign (fictional) nation that most people probably couldn’t find on a map didn’t make sense. If she had saved a popular President’s life then I could see everybody getting excited about it, but doing it for a foreign dignitary might be enough for a ‘feel-good’ story, but that would most likely be it. Also, there’s no concept of the 15-minutes of fame here. Even if she did become an overnight sensation it would only have lasted until the next news cycle when another media hero would replace her and yet this movie has her remaining popular for months and even years later.

What really killed it for me though was the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-like ending, which I found to be utterly nauseating. For political satire, if you can even call this that, it fails on all levels. Being There on the other-hand is an example of how to do it right, which this thing unfortunately doesn’t even come close to.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: December 21, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Herbert Ross

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Gay/Lesbian, Satire

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A Wedding (1978)

Posted on November 30, 2022 | 1 comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Guests at wedding party.

Muffin (Amy Stryker) marries Dino (Desi Arnaz Jr.) at a wedding ceremony that is non-eventful. However, during the reception afterwards, held at the mansion of Dino’s family, the Correllis, everything begins to go wrong including having the family’s elderly matriarch, Nettie (Lillian Gish) promptly die just as the guests arrive. Snooks (Paul Dooley) and Tulip (Carol Burnett) are the parents of the bride, while Buffy (Mia Farrow) is Muffin’s jealous older sister. During the party Buffy lets Dino know that she’s pregnant with his baby, which sends the family into an uproar once word gets out. Meanwhile Mack (Pat McCormick), the cousin of the groom, makes it known that he’s ‘madly in-love’ with Tulip and wishes to have an affair with her. Tulip at first resists, but then devises a scheme where the two can meet in 2-weeks, at a location in Tallahassee, Florida under the ruse that Tulip will be going to visit her sister who lives there.

While director Robert Altman made some great movies and revolutionized movie-making with his over-lapping conversations technique, he did also produce a few duds. Most of them came during the 70’s when he was given too much free rein to make whatever he wanted in however way he wanted to do it, which culminated in a lot of over-indulgence. This one though, which came right in the middle of his down cycle, is one of his better efforts The idea came as an accident as he was tired of being hounded by a reporter asking, while he was still working on finishing up on 3 Women, what his next project would-be and he joked that he was set to ‘film a wedding’, which at the time had come into vogue for people to shoot the weddings of their family members in a home movie style. Later that night, after speaking with the reporter, he partook in a drinking session with the crew of 3 Women, where they discussed the possibilities of making a movie about a wedding where ‘everything would go wrong’ and by the end of the night he had already come-up with an outline for his script.

This film though, like with all of Altman’s movies, does come with its share of detractors. Gene Siskel in particular did not like the characters, who I admit are a cliche of the nouveau riche and too easy a satirical target. He also complained that there was no one likable, which is true, though films where one person in a large group somehow manages to rise-above-the-fray and being morally virtuous when all the rest aren’t, is unrealistic and having an amoral climate such as here where everyone gets dragged down to the same level as everyone else makes more sense.

The edginess of the comedy is dated as well as what was considered ‘pushing-the-envelope’ at the time, like introducing the characters who are secretly gay, smoke marijuana on the sly, have had multiple sex partners, or (gasp) had sex outside of marriage, is no longer even remotely the scandal, even amongst the most conservative, as it once was, so to enjoy the film one must put themselves in that time period to totally appreciate it. With that said, it still works beautifully. It’s amazing, when considering the massive amount of characters and intersecting story-lines, how well it flows and it’s never confusing, nor do you ever lose track of any of the characters, or their issues, even if they’ve not been shown for a while. The humor gets exaggerated just enough for comic effect, but always within the realms of reality, which is what I really enjoyed about it, is that this could easily remind people of their own real-life weddings, and wedding parties, that they’ve been through.

The cast is splendid and perfectly game to the script’s demands with many of them allowed to freely ad-lib. Howard Duff probably gets the most laughs as the chain-drinking doctor of a dubious quality and Viveca Lindfors as a caterer who becomes ill, takes a pill, and then breaks-out into a loud song during the reception. Burnett is superb as a middle-aged housewife looking for more excitement in her life while also juggling the difficulties of raising a promiscuous daughter and Paul Dooley is quite enjoyable as her brash, and never shy to speak-his-mind husband. I also got a kick out of Amy Stryker, who was cast on-the-spot simply because she wore braces and resembles a young Burnett in many ways and was therefore perfect to play her daughter. Though the ultimate scene stealer is Mia Farrow, who although well into her 30’s at the time, looks amazingly still adolescent-like and pulls off the part of a young daughter quite convincingly. She utters very few words, but makes up for it with her shocking topless scene (she looks great) and the bit where she openly tries to count everyone she has slept with to the stunned silence of the others, including her parents, in the room.

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My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 12, 1978

Runtime: 2 Hours 5 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Robert Altman

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Movies that take place in Chicago, Movies with Nudity, Satire

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An Average Little Man (1977)

Posted on June 19, 2022 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: Father avenges son’s death.

Giovanni (Alberto Sordi) is an accountant who’s ready for retirement. His son Mario (Vincenzo Crocitti) is following in his father’s footsteps by becoming an accountant as well. He has passed all of his exams and fully qualified, but competition is tough, so his father tries to use his leverage to get his son hired there, or at least have his name pushed to the top of the list. Unfortunately on the morning of the interview Mario is killed by a stray bullet from a bank robbery that was occurring across the street. Giovanni is devastated and the news is so shocking to his wife Amalia (Shelley Winters) that she has a stroke and is no longer able to speak, or walk, or even feed herself. Giovanni doesn’t trust the system to bring the killer (Renzo Carboni) to justice, so he decides he must do it himself by stalking the man and then eventually kidnapping him.

The film, which is based on the novel ‘A Very Normal Man’ by Vincenzo Cerami, who also wrote the screenplay, is filled with many memorable moments. I got a kick out of Giovanni’s tiny car that looked like something he could wear instead of ride and the way he gets around a traffic jam by driving it on the sidewalk. The mounds of paperwork in his office where no one can see each other because they’re literally swallowed up by them is a funny visual as is Giovanni’s supervisor (Romolo Valli) who cleans the dandruff off of his hair and onto his desk. There’s also a scene that is both darkly humorous and highly disturbing where because the cemeteries are filled to capacity the remaining dead bodies must be stored inside a warehouse with each casket put one on top of the other. Families and mourners crowd in to find which one has their loved one in it, but because of the gas coming out of the decomposing bodies that create sporadic explosions that cause the caskets to go tumbling.

The appearance of American actress Shelley Winters is another shocker in that she’s dubbed with an Italian speaking woman. Hearing her in a voice that is clearly not her own is at first disconcerting, but she gives a brilliant performance nonetheless. Normally she’s known for her talkative nature, both for the parts she plays in front of the camera, but also in her real-life interviews, yet she reflects a comatose woman quite convincingly and her facial expressions, particularly when she’s brought into the cabin to observe the killer’s torture, are excellent.

Sordi, a well known Italian film star and comedian, does well too and it’s interesting seeing his hair go from salt-and-pepper to fully gray as the movie progresses. His character though isn’t exactly likable. While he sees himself as being ‘selfless’ as he sacrifices everything, and potentially breaking the rules, for the love of his son, he seems more selfish because why should his son get a unearned break over all the other candidates? While he has his funny share of moments he’s also a bit unhinged even at the beginning with his almost naive belief that a system he knows is corrupt is now somehow ‘morally’ obligated to give him and his son a favor. Maybe this was the intended ironic point, but it would’ve played better had the son been less of a vapid, empty shell.

Spoiler Alert!

What makes this film stand-out from virtually any other is its extreme shift in tone where it starts as a satirical comedy, but ends as a grim thriller. Many script experts will insist this ‘can’t be done’ and in Hollywood would be considered forbidden. It also doesn’t have the inciting incident occur until an hour in even though books like ‘Save the Cat’, which is the ‘screenwriter’s bible’, will tell you it must happen within the first 5 pages of any script. There’s also no forewarning to the killing it’s just a completely random event with no connection to anything that came before, which again most people in the movie business will say is a ‘mistake’.

While I might’ve done it slightly differently by having Giovanni go insane when one of the supervisors refuses to hire his son after promising him they’d do it and then kidnapping that individual to make it seem a little more connected to the first half, I’m still impressed with how effectively it all works either way. It literally breaks every screenwriting rule and still succeeds and should be used as an example to anyone insisting that movie scripts that don’t stringently conform to the Hollywood formula will fail as this one clearly doesn’t.

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My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: March 17, 1977

Runtime: 1 Hour 58 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Mario Monicelli

Studio: Cineriz

Available: DVD-R (Italian with English Subtitles) (Moviedetective.net)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Obscure Movies, Offbeat, Satire

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Carbon Copy (1981)

Posted on June 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

carbon

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: His son is black.

Walter (George Segal) is living the American Dream as a rich company executive residing in the gated community of a posh suburb while also driving a Rolls Royce. However, he’s not happy with his wife Vivian (Susan Saint James) who’s frigid, nor his daughter-in-law Mary Ann (Vicky Dawson) who’s mouthy and spoiled. Yet he remains in the marriage because Vivian’s father Nelson (Jack Warden) is also Walter’s boss and climbing the career ladder is important to him. Then one day Roger (Denzel Washington) drops by and introduces himself as Walter’s son from a relationship Walter had with a black woman many years ago. Walter enjoyed his time with her, but broke it off due to pressure from Nelson who said it would stymie his career. Now Walter feels guilty from what he’s done and wants to make it up by allowing Roger to move in with him, but once his wife finds out she gets him fired. All of his money is tied up in company stocks that is either under his wife’s or father-in-law’s control, so without any income he’s forced to move into a hotel with Roger and then eventually to a rundown apartment in a dangerous area.

The script was written by Stanley Shapiro who received accolades in the early part of his career for scripting many Doris Day movies during the 50’s and 60’s, but he clearly got in over-his-head with this one. The concept and overall reactions from the characters is dated even for 1981. I was around in ’81 living in a small Midwestern town and I didn’t see half the overt racism that the characters here display despite the fact that it all takes place in California known as the liberal capital of the world. I’m not saying there isn’t some racism everywhere, but it gets exaggerated.

The Saint James character is particularly problematic. She plays the part in a funny way, but it’s a caricature. It would’ve been more revealing had she not been this stereotyped rich white person who feels comfortable displaying her bigotry, which would’ve been socially taboo in L.A. and she’d know it, but instead pretending to be okay with it, or even being an outward liberal who tries to be hip with race relations, but then, in more subtle ways, becomes increasingly less comfortable as it goes along.

Segal’s character comes-off as a massive conformist who will do whatever is takes to a part of ‘acceptable’ society. He even changes his last name to hide the fact the he’s Jewish, so where is this rebel side who moved-in with this black lady back in the 60’s when that would’ve created outrage and scandal? Some may argue that people change, sure that can sometimes happen, but there needs to be some factor that created it and the movie does not make that clear. The fact that he morphs into somebody that was so different from what he used to be makes him seem like two different people with no connecting thread at all. A more plausible storyline would’ve had him getting drunk one night and picking-up a black women at a bar for a one-night-stand, or secretly hiring a black prostitute just because he was curious about having sex with someone of a different race and then thought nothing more of it once it was over. 

Susan’s character has the same issue. She coldly kicks Walter out of the house and then for some unexplained reason turns-up at the doorstep of his ratty apartment with her father and begs for him to come back, but with no clear rationale for what created this radical change-of-heart. I don’t think a racist, snotty woman like that would ever dare come into a dangerous area for any reason. She would’ve only done it had she been accompanied by armed guards, or maybe carrying a gun herself and openly flashing it, which could’ve been funny, but of course this stupid movie doesn’t even think to go there.

The over-the-top situations become increasingly ridiculous without a hint of nuance and as satire it’s about as sophisticated as an episode of ‘Gilligan’s Island’. That’s not to say there can’t be some excellent films about race relations as I found The Landlord to be terrific, but this thing lacks any serious insight. Many consider Soul Man to be the worst 80’s film about a white man trying to understand the black experience and get in-touch with their own inner bias and the bias of those around them, but this I consider to be just as bad. Denzel Washington, who makes his film debut here, is the only good thing about it, it’s just a shame they couldn’t have given him better material.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: September 25, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Michael Schultz

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: DVD/Blu-ray

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Stanley: Every Home Should Have One (1984)

Posted on April 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

stanley

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Trying to be normal.

Stanley (Peter Bensley) is a lovable eccentric living on a boat for the past 10 years whose had limited contact with the outside world. His father Sir Stanley (Michael Craig) is a powerful business tycoon who wants his son to take over his company, but after Stanley tries to get the board members to eat dog food his father decides he’s wants his son committed until he can learn to be ‘normal’. Stanley doesn’t want to be put away, so he escapes from his father and moves-in with an adopted suburban family who he hopes can teach him the finer points of normalcy, only to find they are more screwed-up than he is. In the meantime his father hires his butler (Max Cullen), who at one time used to work for the secret service, to track Stanley down and bring him back.

Quirky might be an understatement for this odd comedy with an unusual sense of humor that some viewers might not appreciate, or even get. The script hinges on a lot of non-sequiturs and offbeat situations that are loosely tied together. The emphasis is on odd points-of-view that may appeal to some . For those who are game it kind of works with a fresh indie vibe though by the end it wears itself out.

The main character is likable, but not as unique as he should’ve been. He only acts bizarre at the beginning, but after that becomes pretty normal and only reacts and responds to the goofy people around. The film’s title acts like he’s ‘special’, but really he’s not. In fact Graham Kennedy and Sue Walker, who play the married couple he moves-in with, are far funnier and the movie should’ve centered entirely around them as they’re the only two that get any genuine laughs.

Stanley’s romance with Amy (Nell Campbell), a woman he meets at an employment agency, is a subplot that wasn’t needed. Amy comes-off as cold and prickly and her sister Sheryl (Lorna Lesley) seemed to be a better fit as she conveyed the same wide-eyed optimistic approach to life as Stanley while Amy was the complete opposite. His constant badgering her for a date makes him seem like a creepy stalker who won’t take ‘no’ for answer. Having her eventually cave to Stanley’s unending persistence sends the wrong type of message making it seem like harassment is a ‘good thing’ and can get the other person to eventually ‘fall-in-love’ with them if done right when in reality it almost always leads to a restraining order instead.

The film’s theme is the same as the one in the 60’s cult classic King of Hearts, where the ‘crazy’ people are actually the normal ones while those that are considered ‘normal’ are really screwed-up, but the message here is handled in a heavy-handed way and not particularly insightful. The comedy itself dies-out by the final third culminating in a tired, slapstick chase that doesn’t even include Stanley’s incredibly tiny red car, which was the only interesting element in the film and should’ve been used more for comic effect.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 6, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Esben Storm

Studio: Seven Keys

Available: None

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Posted in 80's Movies, Foreign Films, Movies from Australia, Obscure Movies, Quirky, Satire

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The Check is in the Mail (1986)

Posted on April 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Suburban man drops-out.

Richard (Brian Dennehy) is a married father who’s finding the suburban American Dream not as satisfying as he thought. While he does live a semi-comfortable existence the bills and other demands are making him stressed and he feels the only way to fight it is by dropping-out. He turns his front lawn into a vegetable garden, buys goats and chickens, and even turn-off the electricity. While this gives him some local fame and even a subject of a TV-news report, it does not go-off well with the rest of his family, but Richard, who used to be a social activist during his college days, feels the need to stay the course.

While the film has an interesting premise, the script, which was written by Robert Kaufman, who had success in the early part of his career, but was clearly slumming by this point, goes nowhere. It takes almost 40-minutes in before the dropping-out part even begins and before that meanders around in a lot of loosely related stuff that makes it seem almost like a sketch comedy and not a cohesive story. Certain elements, like Richard’s gambling problems, get glossed over and the film makes no attempt at analyzing anything in any type of realistic way.

With that said there were a few funny bits. The chant that Richard starts and gets others to follow along at an airport is good. Him taking the his car out for a spin in order to test out the supposedly repaired brakes while the forcing the mechanic (Richard Foronjy) to ride along is entertaining too. I also got a kick out of Richard vacationing in Hawaii and sleeping overnight by the pool in order to be able to get a deck chair and how everyone is so desperate to get one and keep it that when a man who cannot swim jumps into the pool no one tries to save him even his own wife for fear they’ll lose their seat. The neighbor’s birthday party, which gets disrupted by Richard’s goats and chickens, who inadvertently raid the place via an open window, is quite funny and the best part of the movie. There are though some really dumb moments like Richard’s wife (Anne Archer) visiting a psychiatrist (Harry Townes) that gets needlessly prolonged, cliched, and not necessary.

Dennehy is likable and while consumers getting upset and losing their temper in public at modern-day inconveniences was a little more socially acceptable then than it is now, as this behavior could get him labled a ‘male Karen’ by today’s standards, he’s able to pull it-off in a way that makes you want to cheer for him instead of judging him as being ‘entitled’. Dick Shawn and Nita Talbot appear late in the film as Dennehy’s neighbors in scenes shot after the main production had wrapped and done by a different director (Ted Kotcheff). While these moments help give energy to a film that otherwise flat-lines, and Shawn even ad-libs, it still would’ve been better had they been introduced earlier.

Dropping-out is certainly something that everyone has secretly thought of at one time or another, but this film doesn’t do it justice. It fails to dig deeply into the subject and misses out on a lot of potentially unique scenarios and insights. The result is a mish-mash of quirky concepts that doesn’t add up to much and fails to makes any type of meaningful, or impactful statement.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 2, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 22 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Joan Darling, Ted Kotcheff (uncredited)

Studio: Ascot Entertainment Group

Available: VHS

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Posted in 80's Movies, Obscure Movies, Quirky, Satire

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The Magic Christian (1969)

Posted on July 25, 2021 | 3 comments

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Everybody has a price.

Sir Guy Grand (Peter Sellers) is a billionaire with an eccentric side, who wants to prove the powerful influence money has over other people. He meets Youngman (Ringo Starr),a homeless man in a park, and decides to adopt him as his son. Together they proceed to play elaborate pranks on the public by watching how far they can push their theory and what humiliating lengths people will go to get their hands on some money.

The film is based on the 1959 novel of the same name written by Terry Southern, who also wrote the screenplay, and while the novel was considered a success the movie, at least when it was first released, wasn’t. My critics complained of the film’s heavy-handed satirical nature and unrelenting jabs at capitalism even though all the same pranks done in the movie were also in the book. The film also has the exact same satirical theme as O Lucky Man, which starred Malcom McDowell and came out just a few years later that also took numerous potshots at capitalism and yet many of the same critics adored that one, but came down hard on this one.

Fortunately through the years the film has managed to find a cult following. I supposed if one has more of a socialist bent they may enjoy it more, but it has such a surreal, creative vibe to it that it’s fun to watch no matter if you agree with it’s message, which is kind of muddled anyways, or not. Some of my favorite bits included snotty, rich aristocrats boarding a ship cruise that puts them in increasingly more humorously challenging and bizarre situations. The final segment, which has the classic song ‘Something in the Air’ by Thunderclap Newman playing during it, features a giant outdoor vat filled with urine, blood, and animal feces and then having Grand throw money into it and challenging onlookers to jump into the mess in order to get at the money, which despite the awful stench they readily do.

There’s many cameo appearances by famous stars who agreed to take small roles as a favor to Sellers who at the time was a top star and friends with many of the big headliners of the day. Some of the best bits here include Laurence Harvey who does a striptease while onstage and in front of a packed house of onlookers while reciting ‘Hamlet’. Yul Bryner, looking almost unrecognizable in a female wig, is great as a transvestite who comes-onto a shy Roman Polanski while at a bar. Spike Milligan is hilarious as a traffic cop who agrees to eat his own traffic ticket for the right price as well as Raquel Welch as a slave commander with a whip, Wilfred Hyde-White as a drunken ship captain, and John Cleese as a perplexed auctioneer.

The problems that I had with the film dealt mainly with the relationship between Sellers and Starr. Sellers meets Starr one day in a park by chance and then begins to have a conversation with him, but there’s music playing over this, so we never hear what they’re saying, which is frustrating as the having a rich man suddenly offer a poor man the chance to be his adopted son seemed like dialogue that should be heard. Starr is also not given much to do and it seemed almost pointless for having even in the movie. In the novel there was only the Grand character creating the pranks, but it was decided for the movie to make it a two man show, but Ringo has so little to do that it didn’t seem worth it and this reportedly was due to Sellers’ insecurity of being upstaged and thus insisting that all the best lines had to go to him.

It’s also never clear why the Sellers’ character does what he does. What’s the motivation for why this rich man feels the need to expose other people’s foibles and vanities? Does he feel guilty about being so rich and therefore has decided to ‘take-it-to’ the others in his own social circle? None of this gets explained or analyzed at all, which on the character end makes the film quite superficial and confusing.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: December 12, 1969

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Rated M

Director: Joseph McGrath

Studio: Commonwealth United Entertainment

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black Comedy, British Movies, Buddy Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Quirky, Satire

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Goodbye Paradise (1983)

Posted on July 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Searching for Senator’s daughter.

Michael Stacey (Ray Barrett) is a retired cop whose written a scathing exposé on the corruption of his former profession, which has gotten him many enemies and, along with his alcoholism, pushed to the very fringes of society. He now lives in a tiny, rundown apartment while playing chess with himself as his only means of companionship. One day he gets a call from a high-ranking Senator (Don Pascoe) who wants Michael to find his runaway daughter as he’s concerned that she’s gotten involved with an underground cult movement, which he fears could be detrimental to both her safety and to his own political career. Have no other means of income Michael takes-up the offer and soon gets immersed with an array of odd people and many twists that ultimately finds him in the middle of a military coup.

This offbeat movie starts out strong, but eventually goes overboard. The original idea by screenwriter Denny Lawrence was to have an ex-cop working as a private investigator who takes on a case of a runaway daughter who joined a religious cult run by a charismatic charlatan that eventually lead to the deaths of many of its members. However, after the Jonestown massacre, which was led by religious cult leader Jim Jones, this idea got nixed and the plot, with the help of co-scripter Bob Ellis who wanted a more political bent, got turned into a completely different direction, which doesn’t work as well.

The whole idea of a parent hiring a down-and-out, aging guy to find his long lost daughter doesn’t make much sense. The father’s a rich senator with lots of connections, so why not use the resources of the police, or a more polished detective to do the searching instead of an old bum more focused on when his next drink will be? Had Michael’s actual job, like in the original script, been as an private investigator then maybe, but in this version Michael was a struggling writer, so why pay someone to do something that they had no practice in doing, or if they did it had been a seriously long time and someone else could’ve been found to do it better?

The protagonist is a lovable loser, a sort of anti-hero who was meant to be a modern-day Philip Marlowe, and the main reason that get me hooked into the movie right away especially with Barrett’s perfect portrayal that is both raw and funny at the same time. However, the supporting characters are dull. The is especially evident with the Senator’s daughter, which due to a case of mistaken identity, he ends up dealing with two different young women, but both of them are stereotyped and cliched to the extreme. The dialogue and conversational exchanges that they have with Michael are flat making these scenes the most boring part of the movie. Nothing is worse than a film that does a excellent job of creating a multi-faceted person in one area, but then cuts-corners with the rest making the viewer like they’ve gotten stuck with only half a movie.

Spoiler Alert!

The climactic sequence, which involves an all-out military coup and lots of warfare-like action, is just too extreme and surreal especially for a story that starts out in a realistic vein. Much of the fault could be blamed on the two script writers with Lawrence wanting it to be a genre piece while Ellis preferring a more political take. The result is an imbalance that gets increasingly more wacky and implausible as it goes on until it becomes too cluttered to make much sense. Whatever statements the writers hoped to make here gets lost in the insanity and leaves the viewer feeling overwhelmed with all of the absurdity.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: July 21, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 59 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Carl Schultz

Studio: New South Wales Film Corporation

Available: DVD (Region 0 Import)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Foreign Films, Movies from Australia, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Satire

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