Tag Archives: Ted Danson

Three Men and a Baby (1987)

Posted on February 23, 2024 | Leave a comment

threemenbaby

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Infant on their doorstep.

Peter (Tom Selleck) is an architect, Michael (Steve Guttenberg) is an artist, and Jack (Ted Danson) is an actor. All three live in a large apartment in downtown Manhattan. None are married and spend most of their time, when not working, hosting lavish parties and dating beautiful women. One day a baby gets left at their doorstep while Jack is away starring in a movie that’s filming in Turkey. Peter and Michael find the infant and attached note stating that it’s from one of Jack’s previous girlfriends whom had a brief fling with while starring in a play. The two men have no idea how to take care of it, which leads to many amusing mishaps. Once Jack returns they find themselves in even more chaos when drug dealers appear at the apartment looking for a package of heroin that had also been delivered there.

This is the American version of the French hit Three Men and a Cradle and while I’ve been routinely critical of most Hollywood remakes from European films this one, which was directed by Leonard Nimoy, makes many improvements on the story. There’s nothing that’s hugely different, but there’s enough small changes to the plot that helps fill in the caveats from the first one.

One of the things this one does better is it shows the men’s partying side, which the first one didn’t do as well as it started pretty much right away with the baby’s arrival and only elaborated about their wild ways while here, in perfect movie fashion, we see it. Although a bit garish, I enjoyed Michael’s artwork that gets drawn all over the outside walls of the apartment and creates a rather surreal look. There’s also definite strong 80’s vibe that permeates almost every shot at the beginning from the colorful lettering of the opening credits to the theme of ‘Bad Boys’ by Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, which was a big band back in the day. There’s even Guttenberg doing a corny imitation of Robin Leach from ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ though anyone that didn’t live through the decade will most likely not get that one.

The characters are much better defined with each having a distinct personality. While his movie career never really took-off Selleck shines as the leader of the group due to him being the oldest and at times the most stern. Guttenberg, with his boyish face, is perfect as the immature and clueless one while Danson scores as the eccentric actor. I liked that the men continued to work their jobs even as they looked after the baby, while in the first one they would just call in ‘sick’, which became excessive and unrealistic. In fact probably the funniest moment in the whole movie, at least for me, is when Danson is on stage rehearsing a play with the baby strapped to his back.

Even the drug dealing scenario gets handled better. In the first one the guys return the drugs to the dealers by putting it into one of the babies diapers and then tossing it into a trashcan in a park, but here the men use the opportunity to catch the crooks in the crime by having Guttenberg secretly filming them as they take the drugs back and there’s even some legitimate tension as they try to outrun them when the bad guys catch-on to the scheme. I also liked that the dealers infiltrate the apartment while a babysitter is there as in the French version the infant gets left alone and even though it was supposedly only for a short time was still irresponsible.

There’s a girlfriend character as well, or in this case ex-girlfriend, gets added for Selleck, she gets played by Margaret Colin, and reveals how Selleck just automatically presumes because she’s a woman she’ll know exactly what to do with a baby even when she states she doesn’t. This I felt finely observed how the different sexes can misjudge the other, or project characteristics onto them that they may not actually have.

Spoiler Alert!

Even the ending is a bit better though there’s still the issue of the girlfriend leaving a helpless child at someone else’s doorstep without warning, or making sure there would be someone there to take care of it, which in the real world would be dangerously reckless. At least though there’s more action as the three rush to the airport to try to stop the plane the girlfriend is on with the baby while in the French version the three guys just sit at home moping around, which isn’t as interesting.

It’s still problematic that the girlfriend, played by Nancy Travis who speaks with an accent, moves into the apartment with the bachelors to help take care of the kid. This though goes against the title as it states Three MEN and a baby, so I felt the Travis character should’ve just given up her parental rights and let the guys do all the parenting since they had become better at it anyways.

End of Spoiler Alert!

The only change that I didn’t like is when Danson brings his mother, played by Celeste Holm, to see the baby and tries to get her to agree to take care of it for awhile. In the French version the Jacques character tries the same ploy with his mother only to learn, to his shock, she has no interest in raising another kid and wants to spend her retirement having fun like traveling the world, which I felt was a good statement on ageism and how not all seniors want to be stuck being homebodies. Here Holm’s acts like a strict parent who doesn’t want to be bothered with a kid because Danson needs to ‘grow-up’ and learn to amend for his mistakes though if she was really a proper parent she probably should’ve warned him when he was younger to always wear a condom, so he wouldn’t have gotten himself into this mess in the first place.

This is also the scene that became a bit notorious back around August of 1990 when a rumor started that an image of a little boy, who it was said had killed himself in the place where it was filmed, can be seen in the window that Holm and Danson walk past. Granted it does look a little spooky at first, but upon second glance you can plainly see that it’s actually a cardboard cut-out of Danson wearing a top hat. The whole film was shot on a soundstage in Toronto and not a house where any boy past or present had ever lived.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: November 23, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 42 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Leonard Nimoy

Studio: Touchstone

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies with Nudity, Remakes

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The Onion Field (1979)

Posted on May 26, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Guilt over partner’s death.

Los Angeles police detectives Ian Campbell (Ted Danson) and Karl Hettinger (John Savage) are on-duty driving around in an unmarked police car when they spot two men, Gregory Powell (James Woods) and Jimmy Smith (Franklyn Seales), driving suspiciously, so they pull them over. While Campbell is talking to Powell, Powell is able to pull out a gun he had hidden in his trousers forcing Campbell to drop his weapon. Hettinger is then told to give up his weapon as well, which he does, or risk seeing his partner get shot. The two cops are then taken at gunpoint to an remote onion field where in the darkness of night Campbell is shot and killed, but Hettinger escapes and manages to run 4 miles until he finds someone and gets help. While the two criminals are eventually apprehended and found guilty it is Hettinger that suffers the most from the guilt of surviving when his friend and partner didn’t and from the humiliation of being the subject of a police video detailing what not to do when stopping a vehicle, which leads him to a severe mental breakdown in both his personal and professional life.

The story is based on the actual incident that occurred on March 9, 1963 with the traffic stop happening on the corner of Carlos Avenue and Gower Street in Hollywood and the murder happening off of Interstate 5 near Bakersfield. It was written into a novel by former cop turned author Joseph Wambaugh in 1973. I remember reading it when I was 14 and finding it captivating from beginning to end. While the film stays faithful to it I still felt it wasn’t as effective and in a lot of ways not as gripping. Even though it was a long time ago I remember the part about Powell’s ‘disguise’ where the only thing he changed about his features was putting a distinctive mole on his left ear lobe, which sounded completely absurd. This is discussed in the movie, which gets a subtle eye roll from Smith his partner, but the irony is, which is talked about in the book and not the film, is that the witnesses from the robbery that Powell was in described the mole to the police and this litrerally threw the detectives off for awhile as they kept searching for a man with a distinctive mole that Powell had since removed, so as silly as it sounded, his idea had actually worked, but the movie never gives this pay-off.

The chase through the onion field is also really hurt. I remember finding this section the most captivating part of the book and finding it a truly tense and horrifying moment that seemed to go on forever and a major element of the story, but in the movie this moment gets trimmed down significantly. Years ago, when I first saw the movie on TV, I thought it was because they had edited it down due to time constraints in order to get more commercials in, but when I finally viewed the full version on DVD I found this wasn’t the case. For whatever reason the chase in the onion field lasts for only a few minutes and not done from Hettinger’s perspective, which is what made it such an intense reading and it’s a real shame as it makes the movie much less impactful then it could’ve been. It turns the whole onion field incident into a side story instead of the main event.

The performances by Woods and Seales are outstanding and the element that really gives the film its energy they also look exactly like the people they’re playing to the point it’s almost freaky. Woods is especially creepy and he literally demands your attention with each moment he’s in it. Seales though, whose career never really took off and he died at the young age of 37 from AIDS, is excellent too as he plays someone who is very timid especially when initially with Powell, but brazen at other points and the way his and Powell’s relationship evolves both through their criminal and then when behind bars is quite fascinating. The scream that he lets out when Campbell gets shot, which was not in the script and completely improvised, has a very riveting effect and the one thing about the film that I had remembered from watching it decades earlier.

Unfortunately the two leads, the people we’re supposed to be the most connected with, are quite boring. It’s not like it’s the actors faults either. Danson, this was his film debut, is not bad, but his character isn’t fleshed out enough. Other than enjoying playing the bagpipes we don’t learn much else about him and nothing he says his captivating, or interesting. The same with Savage his inner turmoil and mental breakdown really doesn’t have the intended emotional impact in fact his moments bogs the movie down and you can’t wait until they get back to the bad guys who as rotten as they are what gives the movie its liveliness. I realize that Wambaugh felt it was very important to get Hettinger’s story out there and it was the whole reason that motivated him to write the book, but I came away feeling, at least movie wise it would’ve worked better had it just focused on the two crooks and their weird ‘friendship’.

On the whole it’s still an adequate production that holds enough interest and makes some good points about an important event that shouldn’t be forgotten, but at times it also seems like an overreach. Wambuagh’s insistence that everything be as accurate as possible gives the narrative a cluttered feel particularly with all the various court proceedings with each one having a different set of attorney’s, judges, and courtrooms which becomes dizzying instead of riveting. Pairing certain elements down would’ve helped as it’s not quite a completely effective, despite the great effort, as it could’ve been and without question another incidence where the book is far better.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 19, 1979

Runtime: 2 Hours 6 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Harold Becker

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Court Drama, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Police Drama

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Dad (1989)

Posted on October 4, 2019 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Son cares for father.

John (Ted Danson) is a busy executive who learns during one of his business meetings that his mother (Olympia Dukakis) has had a heart attack and rushes back home to care for his father (Jack Lemmon) who isn’t use to doing things on his own. John teaches his father how to do the every day chores while also learning to bond with his own son Billy (Ethan Hawke) who comes to visit. Just as things seem to be getting better and his mother gets out of the hospital it is the father who then gets sick with cancer leading to even further complications.

The film is based on the 1981 novel of the same name by William Wharton, which I’ve never read, but if it’s anything like this script then it’s not too good. One the main problems is the extreme shifts in tone that starts out with elements of Rain Man and then at the halfway mark becomes like a dark satire of incompetent medical delivery in the vein of Hospital and then in the third act turns almost fable-like.

My biggest beef is the pseudo-science that gets thrown in after the father goes to the hospital with his cancer. This is when the old man suddenly without warning starts going delusional and then ultimately into coma only to one day miraculous snap out of it. We’re told that the explanation for this is that the father was so fearful of cancer that the brain produced some sort of enzyme that acted as a defense mechanism that shut off the mind so it wouldn’t have to deal with it and it was the love shown by the son that ultimately allowed the dad to come back to consciousness, but what reputable medical journal has ever discussed this phenomenon?  Things get even more ludicrous when the old guy starts thinking he’s on a farm in a different time period and we’re told this is a schizophrenic condition caused by the cancer and everyone needs to play along with it, or he’ll go back into a coma.

Danson, for what it’s worth, gives a strong performance here, probably the best in his otherwise lukewarm film career. I found it frustrating though that his character doesn’t have all that much of an arch. Supposedly he’s self-centered at the start and needs to learn to be caring, but this only gets explained by the character during a long soliloquy during the middle part, when the viewer should’ve instead seen the transition play out. I also thought it was wacky that he’d be allowed to bring in a cot and stay with his father inside his hospital room as I’m pretty sure most doctors would not allow this.

Lemmon’s performance is good too, but I didn’t like how a tuft of white hair was kept on his otherwise balding head as I found it distracting. While it was nice that his character wasn’t a crotchety old man, which has become a bit of a cliche, I found his extreme dependency on his wife, to the point where he allowed her to dress him and even butter his toast despite the fact that he was physically able to do it himself, as pathetic. His later transition to laid-back hippie who wears colorfully garish outfits as he takes on a whole new perspective on life is too jarring and extreme.

The film never comes together as a whole and if anything could’ve been shortened with the first half dealing with the mother’s heart attack taken out and just started with the father’s cancer diagnosis as that’s when the main plot gets going. In either case it tries too hard to be cute while compromising too much on the believability.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: November 10, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 57 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Gary David Goldberg

Studio: Universal Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a Hospital setting

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Just Between Friends (1986)

Posted on June 26, 2017 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 0 out of 10

4-Word Review: Friends share same guy.

Holly (Mary Tyler Moore) and Sandy (Christine Lahti) become friends while attending an aerobics class. Holly then invites Sandy over to her home for dinner unaware that Sandy is having an affair with her husband Chip (Ted Danson). Sandy is equally unaware that the man she is seeing is her new best friend’s mate. After the awkward experience is over Sandy decides to call off her relationship with Chip only to have him die unexpectedly a little bit later. Sandy then tries to help Holly get back on her feet, but without ever confiding with her that she was at one time ‘the other woman’. When Holly is cleaning out her husband’s office she comes across incriminating photographs of Sandy and Chip together and decides to angrily confront her with it.

One of the biggest drawbacks to the film is the casting of Moore in the lead. She’s an actress I’ve always liked, but here she is too old for the part. She was already pushing 50 at the time and Danson, who was 11 years younger, comes off more like an older son than a husband. In fact the opening shot has an extreme close-up of her where you can clearly see the age lines etched on her face making her later conversation where she asks her hubby if they should have another child seem utterly absurd. The intended idea of showing how completely opposite Holly and Sandy are seems more like a generation gap than contrasting personalities and watching Moore in an exercise outfit is genuinely disturbing as she is too thin and her ribs jut right through her shirt.

Lahti’s character is crass and snarky and not at all likable. The idea that she would know nothing about the personal life of the man she was seeing isn’t believable. Now I’ve never been involved in an affair, but I would think if someone is really into someone else, even if it is as the other woman, they’d want to know as much about him as they could including having some knowledge about who he was married to instead of being completely in the dark with what they were up against.

The affair angle gets introduced too suddenly and then right away she gets invited over to Holly’s for dinner and the awkwardness ensues, which isn’t half as funny or compelling as it could’ve been. The film should’ve shown how the affair began as well as to why Chip was unhappy with Holly, which never gets thoroughly explained, and then had the dinner scene played out later on when the viewer was more engrossed with the situation and characters.

There is also a lot of embarrassing comedy that gets mixed into the already cringy drama and only helps to unnecessarily prolong the scenes. The satirical jabs at the on-air news talent are particularly poor as it exaggerates how dumb they are in a film that is supposedly trying to be realistic otherwise. I don’t exactly know what writer/director Allan Burns has against newscasters, but both he and James L. Brooks produced the ‘Mary Tyler Moore Show’, which portrayed Ted Baxter, the newscaster on that series, as being a complete imbecile and here the news anchors are shown in much the same way, but by this time it comes off like an old, overplayed joke.

Having Danson die in the middle was a big mistake as his character was the only thing that brought in any interesting dramatic tension and the film flat lines the rest of the way without him. Allan Burns had some success producing TV-series despite the dubious distinction of having created ‘My Mother the Car’, but clearly making movies was beyond his capabilities and it’s no surprise that he never directed another film after this one.

My Rating: 0 out of 10

Released: March 21, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 50 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Allan Burns

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: DVD (MGM Limited Edition Collection), Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Buddy Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies with Nudity

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A Fine Mess (1986)

Posted on January 19, 2017 | 1 comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: They buy a piano.

Spence (Ted Danson) works as an actor and during a break in shooting, which is being done at a local horse track, decides to take a rest in a nearby horse stall. While he is there he overhears a conversation between two men (Stuart Margolin, Richard Mulligan) in the next stall discussing how they are going to inject a horse with a drug that will cause him to run faster and therefore make him a ‘sure thing’ in the his next scheduled race. Spence decides to use this information to bet on the horse and make a killing at the track with the help of his friend Dennis (Howie Mandel), but the bad guys realize that they’ve been found out and try to nab Spence and Dennis before they are able to place the bet. Spence and Dennis try to hide from their pursuers by attending an auction where they inadvertently purchase a piano, which they must later deliver to a rich customer (Maria Conchita Alonso) who is dating a mobster (Paul Sorvino).

I was genuinely shocked at how limp and threadbare this script was and how it routinely resorted to some of the most empty-headed humor I’ve ever seen. Much of it consists of long and extended chase sequences that aren’t particularly exciting or imaginative and rely on gags that we’ve all seen a million times before.

The casting is also off. Margolin can be a great character actor, but not in this type of role and Mulligan’s dumb guy routine and facial muggings is to me the epitome of lame. Danson doesn’t seem particularly adept at physical humor and shows no real chemistry with his co-star. Sorvino, who walks around with a limp, gets a few chuckles, but believe it or not I came away liking Mandel the best and actually found him to my surprise to be the most normal person in the movie.

The intention was to make this a completely improvisational exercise, which would give the actors free rein to come up with lines and scenarios as they went while relying on the broadest of story blue prints as their foundation, but the studio wanted more of an actual script and forced director Blake Edwards, who later disowned this project, to approach the thing in a more conventional way. The result is a mish-mash of nonsense that doesn’t go anywhere and makes the viewer feel like they’ve done nothing but waste their time in watching it.

All could’ve been forgiven had they at least played up the piano moving bit, which is what I was fully expecting. The inspiration was to make this a remake of the classic Laurel and Hardy short The Music Box with a scene, like in that one, where the two stars must somehow move an upright piano up a long flight of stairs. However, instead of showing this it cuts away to the next scene where the two have somehow without any moving experience gotten the piano up the stairs with apparently no hassle, but what’s the use of introducing a potentially funny comic bit if you’re not going to take advantage of it?

I still came away somewhat impressed with the way that it managed on a very placid level to at least hold my interest. I suppose in this era where scripts with a plethora of winding twists tend to be the norm one could almost deem this a ‘refreshing’ change-of-pace in its simplicity. Those that set their entertainment bar very low may enjoy it more.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: August 8, 1986

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Blake Edwards

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Buddy Movies, Farce, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies for the Whole Family

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Body Heat (1981)

Posted on August 4, 2014 | 6 comments

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Lawyer kills lover’s husband.

Every Monday for the month of August I’ll review an 80’s film that has the word ‘heat’ in its title starting with this modern-day film noir classic. Ned Racine (William Hurt) is a shyster lawyer looking for some action and on one sultry hot Florida night finds it when he spots the beautiful Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) at an outdoor concert. The two soon fall into having mad passionate sex, but there is one problem. Matty is married to Edmund (Richard Crenna) who is rich, but boring. She plants the seed in Ned’s head to kill him and thus allow the two to live happily ever after with the money they will get from his will. Ned jumps into the scheme with his eyes wide-open only to later realize after it is too late that Matty has other plans that don’t involve him and thus making him a schmuck of the first kind.

I still enjoyed Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice better, but for a modern day film noir this one isn’t bad and rates superior to most of the others. Writer/ director Lawrence Kasdan creates characters that are amoral, but fascinating. The dialogue is snappy and the production stylish without ever getting too overdone or pretentious.  The first hour is a bit slow and it takes too long to get to the killing, but once the second half kicks in it becomes a wild ride of twists and turns that remains as entertaining as ever.

The movie also has numerous references to the heat even more so than most movies that takes place in a hot climate. Overall I enjoyed this as it makes the viewer feel sweaty and muggy even if the weather outside isn’t. The sweat glistening off their naked bodies is effective and not an irritating cliché like in most other movies. The only problem I had was that Matty lives in this giant, luxurious mansion and yet must rely on fans and open windows to cool off when in reality the place would have been wired with indoor air conditioning.

Turner, in her film debut, looks stunning and it is just unfortunate that due to illness and age she no longer looks anything like she did here. Her nude scenes are brief and from far away, but still hot.

Hurt is excellent as usual, but the character was a bit irritating. I realize that the guy is thinking with his penis and not his brain, but it still seemed hard to believe that he wouldn’t once just for a second step back and contemplate whether he was being set-up especially since her ‘tactics’ to convince him to do it weren’t in any way novel or sophisticated. The minute she brings up wanting to change the will like she does here so that she gets all the money instead of Edmund’s ex-wife should have been a red flag to even the dumbest and horniest of males that this woman is in love only with money and a good signal that he is being used and to dump her.

Ted Danson looking almost unrecognizable in horn-rimmed glasses is a stand-out in support and almost ends up stealing the film as Ned’s lawyer buddy. He also gets the movies best line. As everyone is sitting in a smoke filled room looking over the will and someone offers him a cigarette he states “No thanks. I don’t need any. I’ll just breathe in the air.”

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My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: August 28, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 53Minutes

Rated R

Director: Lawrence Kasdan

Studio: Warner Brothers

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Moody/Stylish, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Prison Flicks, Thrillers/Suspense

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