Sunday, June 26, 2011
Comic Training, Sir!
By J.D.
Watching Stripes (1981) again after all these years makes me nostalgic for the early comedies of the first generation of Saturday Night Live cast members: Animal House (1978), Caddyshack (1980), Fletch (1984) and so on. They were goofy and silly but they also had an engaging, anarchistic attitude that is so much fun to watch. This is definitely the case with Stripes, released 30 years ago today, a film that pits a “lost and restless generation,” as the film’s main protagonist puts it at one point, against rigid authority only interested in producing, lean, mean, killing machines, to paraphrase another character. Much of the film’s humor comes from the clash of these two ideologies.
After losing his job, his girlfriend, and his apartment all in one morning (“You still have your health,” deadpans his best friend), John Winger (Bill Murray) decides to enlist in the Army and straighten out his life. He convinces his best friend Russell Zisky (Harold Ramis) to enlist as well (“If I get killed, my blood is on your hands,” he says, to which John replies, “Just don’t get it on my shoes.”). Once they arrive at the base and meet their no-nonsense drill instructor, Sergeant Hulka (the perfectly cast Warren Oates), John and Russell realize that it’s not going to be as easy as they imagined.
Stripes settles into a classic fish-out-of-water formula as John and his misfit platoon (with the likes of John Candy and Judge Reinhold) gradually become efficient soldiers despite their complete ineptitude and perchance for breaking all the rules. The gang of misfits fulfills all the requisite stereotypes: “Cruiser” (John Diehl) is the dumb guy, “Ox” (John Candy) is the lovable oversized oaf, “Psycho” (Conrad Dunn) is the crazy guy, and, of course, John is the group joker and self-proclaimed leader. Other conventions include casual nudity (Ox wrestles three strippers in a mud wrestling contest) and the obligatory love interests as John and Russell get involved with two cute, female MPs (P.J. Soles and Sean Young). This template would prove to be so successful that it was exploited in films such as Police Academy (1984), PCU (1994) and countless others.
On his way to the premiere of Meatballs (1979), director Ivan Reitman thought up the idea for a film: “Cheech and Chong Join the Army.” At the premiere, he pitched it to Paramount Pictures and, incredibly, they greenlit the project that day. Len Blum and Dan Goldberg wrote the screenplay in Toronto and would read it to Reitman (who was in Los Angeles) over the phone. He would, in turn, give them notes. The director gave the script to Cheech and Chong’s manager and he read it and thought it was very funny. He gave it to the comedians but they wanted complete control. Reitman then suggested to Goldberg that they change the two main characters to ones suited more for Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, figuring that if they could get Ramis interested in it and let him tailor the script for the two of them that Murray would be interested in doing the film. It worked and Murray signed on to do Stripes.
Ramis already had co-written Animal House and Meatballs but was unknown as an actor. He screen-tested for Columbia Pictures, who hated his audition but Reitman told the studio that he was hiring him anyway. Judge Reinhold’s character, Elmo, ended up with a collection of all the best jokes from the Cheech and Chong version of the film. Before filming he thought that he had a handle on his character but once filming started, he was “petrified” because this was his first big studio film. The casting agent picked Sean Young based on how she looked and P.J. Soles tested with Ramis and they got along very well together. John Diehl had never auditioned before and this was his first paying acting job. Goldberg knew John Candy from Toronto and told Reitman that he should be in the film. He didn’t even have to audition.
One of the reasons why Stripes is my favorite Bill Murray comedy is the little touches that he adds to a scene making it that much funnier. For example, in the first scene where John goes to pay a guy after getting a shoe shine, Murray turns his back to the man so that he won’t see how much of a tip he’s going to give him. It’s an odd, idiosyncratic choice that no one else would’ve thought to make but it enriches the scene ever so slightly. The next scene demonstrates Murray’s gift for physical comedy when he loads a snotty rich lady’s luggage into the trunk of his cab and accidentally bags himself. It’s an obvious gag to be sure but Murray still makes it funny.
John continues to antagonize the lady (Fran Ryan) during the ride to the airport but in a deadpan, sardonic way. At one point she says, “I’ve never gone this way before,” to which he replies, “I’m sure there’s a lot of ways that I’ve gone that you haven’t,” implying that she’s square and conservative while he’s hip and liberated, thereby establishing a clear generational gap. The rich lady insults John and so instead of getting angry at her he decides to mess with her, including one memorable bit where he starts driving fast. Suddenly alarmed, she says, “Aren’t you going too fast?” He replies, intentionally slurring his words, “Oh, it’s not the speed, really so much, I just wish I hadn’t drunk all that cough syrup.” John proceeds to give the lady a little scare but when she calls him a bum, he’s had enough and quits right in the middle of a bridge, throwing his car keys in a river and leaving her stranded.
It’s not until almost eight minutes into the film that Elmer Bernstein’s first musical cue appears and it is a slightly sad, whimsical tune. The scene where John’s girlfriend Anita (Roberta Leighton) leaves him is interesting because it straddles the line between comedy and drama. She is clearly unhappy with their relationship and he tries to deflect her complaints with humor before half-heartedly saying, “I’m part of a lost and restless generation,” and follows this up asking her a rhetorical question, “What do you want me to do, run for the Senate?” This scene underlines John’s dilemma — he lacks direction and any kind of motivation. Interestingly, no music plays during this scene so that the gravitas of the scene, if you will, is not undermined by manipulative music. Bernstein’s whimsical score only returns when Russell arrives and the two banter back and forth about John’s sorry state of affairs.
The chemistry between Bill Murray and Harold Ramis is excellent. Ramis is the perfect straight man to Murray’s smart-ass slacker. They had been friends and worked together for some years and play well off each other as evident in the scene where Russell bets John that he can’t do five push-ups. It is in this scene that John realizes that he’s in crap physical shape and that the army is his only hope in turning his life around. Every scene had some element of improvisation and this was due in large part to Murray and Ramis who suggested things for him to say and this spread to the other cast members. Stripes is quite possibly Murray’s best comedy. He was well on his way to becoming a big movie star (he had already conquered T.V. with Saturday Night Live and a scene-stealing turn in Caddyshack) and applied the comedic chops he honed on T.V. to this role. Murray has a way of delivering dialogue and being able to give certain lines a sarcastic delivery or add a look or a facial expression that makes what he says so funny.
Reitman was a fan of Westerns that Warren Oates had been in and wanted someone who was strong and that everyone respected to control the misfit platoon. Reinhold said that during filming, Oates would tell everyone stories about working on films like The Wild Bunch (1969) and they would be enthralled. The casting of Oates, the veteran of many Sam Peckinpah films, gives Stripes a dose of gravitas and provides a certain amount of tension in some of the scenes he has with Murray. Sgt. Hulka is the ideal antagonist for the anti-authoritative John and their scene together in the barracks’ washroom, where Hulka finally asserts his authority, is filled with a palpable tension — unusual for a comedy but it works. Reitman wanted “a little bit of weight in the center,” and have a real argument between Hulka and Winger. It wasn’t played for laughs and allowed Murray to do something he hadn’t done before.
However, the improvisational nature of Reitman and some of the cast did not impress an old school actor like Oates. During one of the days of filming the obstacle course scenes, Reitman told the actors to grab Oates and drag him into the mud without telling the veteran actor about it in order to see what would happen in the hopes of getting a genuine reaction. Oates’ chipped his front tooth and was understandably pissed at Reitman, yelling at the director for what he did.
If Stripes has any weaknesses it is in the last third of the movie where the platoon, fresh from a successful graduation parade, is trapped in an Eastern Bloc country (remember, the Cold War still was in full swing at this point) looking for John and Russell after they took off with the army’s top secret armored recreational vehicle (the uber Winnebago). This part of the film feels forced and tacked on. It just isn’t as strong or as funny as everything that came before it. However, the first two thirds of the Stripes are so good that not even this hurts the picture all that much.
Stripes actually was fairly well-received by critics. Roger Ebert praised the film as "an anarchic slob movie, a celebration of all that is irreverent, reckless, foolhardy, undisciplined, and occasionally scatological. It's a lot of fun." The New York Times’ Janet Maslin called it "a lazy but amiable comedy," and praised Murray for achieving "a sardonically exaggerated calm that can be very entertaining.” However, in his review for the Washington Post, Gary Arnold wrote, "Stripes squanders at least an hour belaboring situations contradicted from the outset by Murray's personality. The premise and star remain out of whack until the rambling, diffuse screenplay finally struggles beyond basic training."
Only during a time when the United States wasn’t at war with anyone (unless you count the Cold War), does joining the Army to improve your life seem like an option if you’re reasonably educated as John and Russell are in Stripes. One gets the feeling that they could have easily had a productive life in almost any career if they only applied themselves. Joining the Army on a whim doesn’t seem that funny in our current climate which does date the film somewhat. Regardless, the script is filled with tons of witty dialogue and funny gags, the cast is uniformly excellent, and Murray and Ramis have never been better. At the risk of falling back on an old cliché, they just don’t make comedies like this anymore.
Tweet
Labels: 80s, Ebert, Movie Tributes, Murray, Oates, Peckinpah, Ramis, Television
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Monday, June 13, 2011
Giving Rodney some respect
By Edward Copeland
There used to be a story that recurred year after year in Rodney Dangerfield's later years where someone would nominate him to become a member of the Actors Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and each time, his application would be rejected. It sounds like a setup for one of his jokes that would end in how he "don't get no respect," but it wasn't a joke, it was true. When you look again at his performance in Back to School, which was released 25 years ago today, there's a real actor there. His Thornton Melon is quite different from his Al Czervik in Caddyshack. Oh, and the movie itself holds up pretty damn well too.
Aside from the 1971 film The Projectionist, a 1977 TV movie and uncredited work as an extra in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, 1980's Caddyshack truly marked the beginning of Dangerfield's acting career — when Rodney was nearly 60. Of course, his career as a comedian got a similar late start. After an unsuccessful early try, he gave it up for regular work until he tried again at the age of 40. In a movie full of funny people, Caddyshack really boosted Dangerfield's image. Unfortunately, his next film, 1983's Easy Money, didn't quite work, though no one could say his Monty Capuletti was a repeat of Al Czervik either.
As a rule, the more names you see credited with writing a film, the more likely the movie will be a mess. Back to School turned out to be a great exception to that rule with three people, including Dangerfield, receiving story credit and four people named as writing the screenplay. The four credited screenwriters were Steven Kampmann, who wrote seven episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati and played Kirk, the compulsive liar who ran the diner in the first two seasons of Newhart; Will Porter, who co-wrote two films with Kampmann and an episode of Newhart; Peter Torokvei, who wrote eight episodes of WKRP as well as co-writing Real Genius and Guarding Tess; and Harold Ramis, whose resume runs too long to list. With the exception of Torokvei, everyone, including the other two people who have story credit, Greg Fields and Dennis Snee, had ties to Dangerfield, often through TV comedy specials. Many also had separate ties to each other through other projects, so I think this familiarity helped Back to School break the multiple writer curse. What surprised me just looking up things for this post is that I forgot what a huge hit Back to School was. It grossed more than $91 million at the U.S. box office and in its opening weekend, beat Ferris Bueller's Day Off (though Ferris had a two-day head start, opening on a Wednesday) by $2 million. By comparison, Caddyshack's total gross was merely $39 million. (Ferris only ended up around $70 million.)
Not too long ago, Back to School was being shown on commercial TV a lot and I caught much of it many times, but re-watching the uncut version for this anniversary tribute was the first time I'd seen it from start to finish in a long time. I had noticed that the TV versions never showed the scene where Dangerfield sings "Twist & Shout" in the bar (and what strange synchronicity that two films that opened within two days of each other in 1986 both had that song in it, one sung by the star, the other with its star lip-synching The Beatles' cover), but there were quite a few scenes that seemed to have been excised from TV versions. I was relieved that "Twist & Shout" remains on the DVD. I feared it was another example of money-grubbing music industry strong arms forcing them to remove it because they didn't keep paying them extortion and the movie's producers and copyright owners were being threatened with broken legs and cement boots if they didn't keep coughing up the dough. Television does this re-editing of movies quite often and, surprisingly, it's not for content. Edward Norton's underrated Keeping the Faith has its entire framing device removed from the TV cut as well as the hilarious blind date scene Ben Stiller's character has with a woman played by Lisa Edelstein, better known as Cuddy on House. I know they do it to shorten films to squeeze more commercials in, but some of the cuts just seem odd and I wonder who makes these decisions.
My mind may be blanking, but I certainly don't remember the TV cuts opening with the nice black-and-white prologue. The first image we see is an old style phonograph player with the needle coming down to play some opera. We then see a city street scene identified as New York 1940 and a young boy (Jason Hervey, the older
brother on The Wonder Years) admiring a fancy car pulling out into the street before he steps into Meloni's Tailor Shop, where his father (Boris Aplon) is busy working. He asks young Thornton how school was and he reluctantly hands over his report card, which does not contain glowing grades. His immigrant father expresses outrage — how does his son expect to go to college unless he gets good grades? Young Thornton says he doesn't want to go to college. He wants to work with his dad in the family business. Mr. Meloni gets angry and tells his son, "No matter how rich or successful a man is, if he don't got no education, he got nothing." Hervey even does Dangerfield's signature move and pulls at his shirt collar. As the rest of the credits roll, it's a great mockup of Thornton's coming of age into Dangerfield, changing his last name to Melon and transforming that little tailor shop into a successful chain of Thornton Melon's Tall and Fat Stores. Among the mocked up clips of Melon acquiring wealth and fame, they even sneak in a shot of him from Caddyshack, only in black and white. It then goes from the credit montage to Thornton's latest television commercial, which starts Dangerfield's verbal entrance in the film with a rapid series of one liners:"When you go jogging, do you leave potholes? When you make love, do you have to give directions? When you go to the zoo, do the elephants throw YOU peanuts? Do you look at a menu and say, 'OK?'"
We realize he's watching the ad in the back of his limo, driven by his faithful chauffeur/man for all purposes Lou (Burt Young). You hear the ad espouse the store's sizes such as "heavy, stout, extra stout and their new Hindenburg line." It closes with his slogan: "If you want to look thin, hang around with fat people." Melon is en route to a board meeting at his corporate headquarters, where everyone at the conference table is chowing down. Among the ideas offered include a toy to compete with the-then popular Cabbage Patch Kids, only the Melon Patch Kids, instead of being adopted have been abandoned. The meeting gets cut short when Thornton gets a call from his son Jason (Keith Gordon) from college. His dad asks him how his fraternity and the diving team are going and Jason tells his father that everything couldn't be better, though we can see that he doesn't belong to a frat and he serves only as the towel boy for the diving team, where he's tortured by one of the team's members, Chas (William Zabka, the lead adversary in The Karate Kid). Then, Melon has Lou take him home to prepare for a party his wench of a wife Vanessa (Adrienne Barbeau) has planned and which he's dreading. As he confides to Lou, "She gives good headache." When they arrive, he tells Lou that he can't believe they've been married for five years. "It seems like yesterday — and you know what a lousy day yesterday was."
As Thornton says to a potential romantic interest later in describing his marriage to Vanessa (after decades of bliss with Jason's late mother), "I was an earth sign, she was a water sign. Together, we made mud." He hates her and she feels the same toward him, basically using him as a bank account to throw trendy parties
where people come to suck up to her. She doesn't try too hard to hide her infidelities. Thornton even catches her at the party with Giorgio (Robert Picardo). Melon does his best to embarrass her, saying how he hates tiny food and taking most of the hors d'oeuvres off a table and turning them into a sandwich. When she introduces him to a couple she's trying to impress and compliments the woman's dress and its lovely shade of green, Melon's response is "If that dress had pockets, you'd look like a pool table." That's the final straw for Vanessa who asks to see Thornton in private where she demands a divorce. "I knew we had something in common," Melon says, whipping out divorce papers he's already had prepared. Vanessa vows he won't get off that easy — it'll cost him. Melon disagrees and starts showing her Polaroids he has of Vanessa and Giorgio in various places, though he asks for an explanation on one. "There's you, there's Giorgio…What's with the midget over here?" Vanessa storms out and Thornton takes a swim, tells Lou he's free and decides to visit Jason at college.At Grand Lakes University (mascot: The Hooters), things aren't going well for Jason. In addition to not making the diving team or being accepted into a fraternity, his grades aren't doing well either. He's telling his iconoclastic dorm roommate Derek Lutz (a hilarious Robert Downey Jr., with splashes of blue and purple in his hair) that he's thinking of dropping out of the whole enterprise. It doesn't help that he's got a mad crush on
Valerie Desmond (Terry Farrell), a girl who is sort of dating Chas and who Derek reminds him is far out of the league of dorks like the two of them. Farrell, who would go on years later to be Lt. Dax on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the movie's weakest link in a cast that otherwise amazes with the depth of its great collection of character actors. When Lou and Thornton arrive, Thornton first starts walking blindly into Greek houses looking for Jason, learning that he doesn't belong to a frat, and checks out the diving team, where he finds out he's really the towel boy. So, when Jason and Derek get back to the dorm, Thornton and Lou surprise them by already waiting inside. Jason's dad confronts him about what he's discovered and wants an explanation. Jason gives a straight-forward response, "I lied." His father hugs him but tells his son, "Jason, you don't lie to me — you lie to girls." When Jason tells Thornton that he's thinking of dropping out, Melon won't have it and repeats his father's words to him. "If you don't have an education, you don't have anything" and he decides, he's going to go through the process with him — Thornton Melon is going to enroll as a freshman at Grand Lakes University.
Now, Thornton can't just waltz into enrollment. He never finished high school, has no records or GED, ACT or SAT scores that the university can take into account when considering him, explains Dean Martin (admittedly, a cheap laugh they use too often) played by the always reliable Ned Beatty. Melon finds a way around those problems by suggesting he donate the money for construction of the future Melon
School of Business, which introduces Thornton's villain for the film, business professor Philip Barbay (Paxton Whitehead), who holds Melon in disdain and feels his admission makes the accomplishments of students who worked hard to get there lack meaning. He shows up at the groundbreaking to protest to Dean Martin, who replies, "In Mister Melon's defense, it was a really big check." The rivalry grows worse when Melon becomes a student in Barbay's class and embarrasses him when he proposes the class set up a pretend business and Thornton corrects him on all the steps he left out that you have to go through to build a factory in the real world. The final straw though comes when Melon starts wooing his English teacher Dr. Diane Turner (Sally Kellerman), who had sort of been dating the stuffy Barbay.
Back to School was directed by Alan Metter and it can't really be said that he directed any notable films before or after this one (his most recent credit on IMDb is a 2005 Olivia Newton-John video) with a filmography that includes Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Moving, Police Academy: Mission to Moscow and, for television, The Growing Pains Movie. However, he has one bona fide winner on his resume with Back to School. It's almost wall-to-wall jokes, but it also has heart as well. No one can accuse it of being terribly original or having surprises in its plot (except for one delicious one which now, 25 years later, I'm sure every knows about). Thornton, who becomes a true party animal on campus treats college like
he does his business: He delegates, bringing in experts to do his homework. When Jason tells him that he's got a paper due on Kurt Vonnegut and he hasn't read any of the books, his dad tells him he tried, but he just didn't get them. Then, there's a knock on the dorm room door and who's standing there but Kurt Vonnegut himself. Then, to add another layer on the joke, Dr. Turner gives Thornton an 'F' on the paper because she says she can tell he didn't do it and "Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!" For the final punchline, cut from TV because of language, we see Melon calling Vonnegut up to complain about the grade. "And another thing Vonnegut, I'm gonna stop payment on the check. Fuck me? Hey, Kurt, can you read lips? Fuck you! Next time, I'll call Robert Ludlum." 
What really holds Back to School together, other than Dangerfield himself and the high joke quotient, and helps it overcome its paper-thin, predictable plotting is the amazing cast assembled for it. In addition to the
aforementioned Gordon, Young, Beatty, Whitehead, Kellerman and Downey, we also get supporting actor extraordinaire M. Emmet Walsh as the diving team coach and a single scene of Edie McClurg (who appeared in both films with "Twist & Shout" that 1986 weekend) as one of Thornton's secretaries that he sends to Barbay's class to take notes on a dictation machine. Gordon really has the hardest role of them all because he's basically playing straight man to an entire cast as well as trying to shoulder the more "dramatic" parts of the story as he deals with the embarrassment his father causes him on campus. It doesn't help that Gordon must also moon over his would-be love interest Valerie, as played by Farrell, which provides the film's dullest moments since, to be blunt, Farrell's acting is horrid. That plot also entangles Zabka, whom you can't really judge since he's just there to be a one-dimensional frat boy asshole the same way he was a one-dimensional karate school asshole in The Karate Kid two years earlier, though we do get spared a moment at the end where his character suddenly has a turnaround and shouts, "You're alright, Melon!"
Perhaps the most memorable appearance of the film — though it was the only film in which the comedian ever appeared — is one that should ensure that the legend of the far-too-short career of Sam Kinison will go on. Discovered in his club by Dangerfield, he insisted on finding a place in the film for the brilliant wildman. There never was and never has been another comedian quite like Kinison, who was a huge influence on my friends and I during our high school years. I remember the night when I learned of his death and calling up a friend with the news, crying out, "Why couln't it have been Dice?" In Back to School, Kinison has a brief role as American history Professor Terguson, a shell-shocked Vietnam vet who has a tendency to explode into the type of rants you'd find in a Kinison standup routine. It's a hlarious, brief encapsulation of the comic's style that hopefully encourages people to seek out his actual comedy. Gone far too soon.
Of all the supporting performances that deserve special recognition, more must be said about the wonderfully droll work of Burt Young as Lou — driver, bodyguard, confidant and whatever job Thornton needs to be done. He's a man of few words, but he can earn so many laughs with no words at all, whether he's crushing a napkin
holder before proceeding to single-handedly beat up the university's football team or just laying in a chaisse lounge after Thornton and Vanessa finally split. He pulls off his one big speech when he tells Jason that he's being a big hard on his father, who needs his help for a change. "I know your pop 30 years. He understands. He's a nice guy and he's tough," Lou tells Jason. "Like me. I'm nice and I'm tough. I'll give you an idea what I mean. My two boys — I put one through college and the other I put through a wall. Your papa loves you. He's lookin' out for ya. Look out for him." Then, in one of my favorite moments, Lou gets to sit in the stands at the diving team event next to Derek who comments how no one heckles divers and blows an air horn when the opposing team dives (another scene cut for TV since it's an illegal act) prompting Lou to tell Derek, "I'm beginning to like you kid."
Back to School also offers one of the earlier Danny Elfman film scores, but it goes one step further. Elfman appears in the film himself with his band Oingo Boingo singing their song "Dead Man's Party" at a huge blowout that Thornton throws in the revamped dorm room that he, Jason, Derek and Lou share.
In the end though, this is Dangerfield's film and he deserves credit for giving an actual performance that goes beyond being a mere joke machine. True, Thornton Melon doesn't go too long without delivering a punchline,
but he's also a character with depth, a man whose love for his son truly comes through, who can register hurt. It's a shame that in his lifetime the Academy were such snobs to always refuse him entry, especially when you see some of the people who they have allowed to join. (Hell, they allowed Barbra Streisand to join before she had her first film even released). Dangerfield made some bad movies, but he did show he could act, even in a film I despised such as Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. Back to School though I believe contains his best performance and it was his biggest hit. There was talk before he died about trying to do a remake. Don't even try. I can't imagine them finding an equal to Dangerfield or the rest of the cast. Leave well enough alone. If you've run out of new ideas, stop making new movies and just re-release the old ones. It would be better for the studios' bottom lines and audiences would be better served. Tweet
Labels: 80s, Beatles, Burt Young, Edward Norton, Kubrick, Movie Tributes, N. Beatty, Oliver Stone, Oscars, Ramis, Robert Downey Jr., Streisand, Television, Vonnegut
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Sunday, May 15, 2011
“Tired of ordinary television?” Oh, you have no idea.
By Richard von Busack
Thirty years ago today, SCTV began broadcasting on NBC as a replacement for the Friday night music show The Midnight Special. Titled SCTV Network 90 (the 90 eventually was dropped), NBC conceived SCTV as another Saturday Night Live, just on tape and a different night. Though SCTV had comedy sketches and variety, that’s about all it had in common with SNL. SCTV Network followed the programming day of a small and strange Canadian TV network, essentially a mom-and-pop operation broadcasting in Melonville and the Tri-County area.
That loose theme allowed them to have movies of the week (elaborate, brilliant film parodies conducted on the show’s teeny budget). Just the mention of the titles is enough to make some people start laughing: Grapes of Mud, The Man Who Would Be King of the Popes, Lust for Paint, Scenes From an Idiot’s Marriage. Best remembered is the Godfather parody that cast the actual John Marley (the unfortunate owner of the racehorse in Coppola’s film) re-creating his most famous on-screen moment.
I could go on; happily the show’s run is preserved on Shout Factory!’s fine, comprehensive and expensive DVD set. Let’s also get something out of the way. Sentimental as people are about their Killer Bees and their Blues Brothers, in all categories except the all-important ratings, SCTV smoked Lorne Michaels’ much-vaunted SNL.
In Canada, SCTV had been on the air since 1976; a bare bones production rooted in the improv scene of Chicago and Toronto. For tortured financial reasons (the finances of the show went through everything but waterboarding, as Dave Thomas’ book on the show outlines), SCTV was filmed for a while in Edmonton. We can only guess how much that prairie city gave to our notion of Melonville.
SCTV shared performers with SNL, losing some talent to 30 Rockefeller Plaza (most irreplaceably Martin Short); the actors, writers and directors were lured to Hollywood. Harold Ramis was following his own successes all the way up to Ghostbusters for instance.
Certainly early 1980s SNL had its moments and it loosened up the concept of what could be done on comedy television, but I do have a grudge and I’ll air it. When I see the likes of Tina Fey — a witty performer who also is one of those endless legions of relatively normal people who consider themselves an outré weirdo…when I hear her called a comic genius, who single-handedly fractured the glass ceiling as a writer for a show that is, when all is said and done, a sitcom…and ultimately, when I compare the very best work I’ve seen Fey do with, say, Catherine O’Hara in even a middling SCTV sketch circa 1980…or when I compare Fey to the memory of the soulful Andrea Martin in leopard prints and cat’s-eye glasses as Miss Edith Prickley, snorting back a nasal laugh marinated in smoker’s phlegm…more than the usual embitterment sets in at the end of the day.
It is the women of SCTV that strike my memory most — Robin Duke was one of them and should be mentioned — but Martin and O’Hara were ultimately what one loved about SCTV first.
The lovely and talented O’Hara came close to an Oscar not too long ago for A Mighty Wind. The scarifying For Your Consideration was O’Hara’s rich payback for not being nominated. I’m planning on watching that film before every Oscar broadcast just like I watch Bad Santa before every Dec. 25.
In A Mighty Wind, O’Hara played it seriously as a lightly masked version of folk singer Sylvia Tyson. Her partner, the phenomenal Eugene Levy was mostly Ian Tyson, but also Phil Ochs in his crazier stage as well as some other shaky performers. Of course, most of our colleagues in the critical fraternity went, “Uh, are they supposed to be Sonny and Cher?”
Key to the poignancy of this film about folkie has-beens and never-weres was the real-life backing beneath the fiction. Indeed, O’Hara and Levy were performers who had worked together back in the day, who had been loved, but who hadn’t ever made the big time. In a just world, O’Hara would have been huge. In this one, she was merely one of the greatest comic actors of the last 50 years. It is O’Hara as tight-nerved and sadly overmedicated chanteuse Lola Heatherton that I think of, when thinking of the single finest moment of SCTV’s six-season run.*
In the familiar two-camera double-exposure fades used on daytime variety shows, O’Hara’s Lola has a splendid meltdown while performing a parody of Carly Simon’s hit, “That’s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be.” What was the song title? Of course: “You’re All Just Parasites Draining Me For Love.” Miss Lola, ripped to the pectoral muscles on some kind of pharmaceuticals, is in a semi-autobiographical fugue. The song is aimed like a ninja throwing star at the jittery president of the SCTV Television Network Guy Caballero (Joe Flaherty), a snazzy-looking spiv who uses a wheelchair. He doesn’t need it — it’s for respect.
O’Hara loved “cheesers” as she called them, odd ducks who’d never have a place anywhere outside of show business. Below, her performance as “Dusty Towne,” a Rusty Warren-style red hot mama hosting a completely inappropriate Christmas special. Martin, about whom there’ll be more in a moment, plays the zonked adagio dancer in the bleached fright wig.
Andrea Martin’s people were Armenian. I have the received idea (I received it from Armenians) that they are great storytellers, who prefer a method of storytelling in which parts of a story are nested in other parts…in the way a Russian grandmother doll contains doll after doll. (The Armenian who told me this said it explained Atom Egoyan’s films, particularly Family Viewing, Ararat and Adoration.) How this affects Martin’s comedy style is a matter of opinion, though SCTV was nested like that; you could follow threads, mull over backstories, glimpse the personal abysses of the characters. Martin was dark and could be either glamorous, or the old babushka on the back of the bus. She was good looking enough to be the smoldering Italian in the Fellini parody Rome: Italian Style). And she was also capable of tragedy, as suicidal pop singer Connie Franklin. She also was a superb physical comedian. There’s things Martin does in the movie that comes closest to the madness of SCTV, Harold Ramis’ 1986 Club Paradise, that are as good as anything Lucille Ball did.
“Bob and Doug were not the cleverest thing we did, by a long shot. Other characters we did were much smarter and more worthy of recognition. But Americans love dumb characters…”
That’s Dave Thomas in his book SCTV: Behind the Scenes on his partnership with Rick Moranis. Made up almost on the spot to fulfill the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the likable half-wits Bob and Doug McKenzie, emissaries of “The Great White North” became the mascots of SCTV. They deserve respect in a way. The two fools are essential to the growing concept of nationhood in a country where 90 percent of the people live within 100 miles of the U.S. border. The idea that Canadians say “eh?” is a result of that bit.
And if Americans like comedic saps (we still do: what are South Park’s Terrance and Phillip but descendants of Bob and Doug?) the two toque-wearing, Molson guzzling layabouts were even more popular north of the border. “I had never experienced any contact with the audience during my three years at SCTV.” That changed when he and Moranis were mobbed at the Edmonton airport by fans of “The Great White North.” The resulting fame of these two characters contributed to the jealousies and strain at the show. John Candy was gone to Hollywood, working in movies that were often beneath him; he deserves an article all his own, that comedian whose rise and early death makes him a figure you could mention with the same reverence as Fatty Arbuckle and Curly Howard.
Martin Short’s own ability to do classic Hollywood (and the most devastating impersonation of Jerry Lewis ever) served him well on Broadway and TV specials. (I, Martin Short, Go To Hollywood is the masterpiece among them). Levy and Flaherty, the utility players on the program, are as funny now as they were then.
Looking over the Shout Factory! discs, one notices that a lot of the topical references decayed with time; the barking voice of the KTEL-like salesman (Thomas, that was) hawking “Gordon Lightfoot Sings Every Song Ever Written” may seem hard to believe, but it’s strange how much of this stuff has aged well, and the fascination with old films and TV keeps them current: the divine sparkle of these performers still is remembered by a relatively few but rabid fans.
Richard von Busack is the longtime film critic for Metro Newspapers. His book The Art of Megamind was published last year.
EDITOR’S NOTE: By saying SCTV ran six seasons, it requires a bit of complicated explanation, since it doesn’t equate to six years or fit the standard definition of a television season. The original Canadian television incarnation debuted as a 30 minute show 35 years ago on Sept. 21, though it did eventually make it to America in syndication. It wasn’t a weekly program at first, airing just once a month for its first six episodes. When the next batch of seven Canadian TV episodes began to air in February 1977, it was shown once every other week. When the Global Television Network, the Canadian network on which SCTV aired, ordered another 13 installments in September 1977, it finally had a weekly slot – at least until December of that year. This surreal scheduling of its first 26 episodes (produced over the course of 15 months) were considered SCTV’s first season. Its second Canadian season was more conventional, airing weekly from fall to spring 1978-79, though it lost original cast member Harold Ramis as a performer after the third episode, though he retained the title of head writer for the rest of the season. (The other original performers were Candy, Flaherty, Levy, Martin, O’Hara and Thomas).
For the 1979-80 season, SCTV didn’t air at all on Canadian television. However a deal was reached for a third Canadian season for 1980-81 without Candy, O’Hara and Ramis. As replacements, Robin Duke, Rick Moranis and Tony Rosato joined the cast. Less than two months after the third Canadian season wrapped, NBC launched SCTV Network 90. Candy and O’Hara were lured back and Duke and Rosato were given their walking papers, which actually included directions to eventual spots on SNL. NBC practiced fuzzy math as far as what counts as a season as well, calling the episodes produced between May 15, 1981 and July 16, 1982 the fourth season, so long that Martin Short joined the cast during the latter part of it as O’Hara left once again, this time joined by Moranis and Thomas. Unfortunately, NBC only gave SCTV Network one more season, its fifth, which ran from October 1982 until its final NBC episode aired on March 18, 1983.
The reason SCTV is considered to have had a sixth season has another quirky explanation. After its NBC cancellation, it moved to pay TV (Superchannel in Canada, Cinemax in the U.S.). It also was rechristened SCTV Channel and only Flaherty, Levy, Martin and Short remained, though Candy, O’Hara and Thomas did some guest appearances during the sixth and final season’s 18 episodes that ended July 17, 1984. So that’s how a show can run six seasons over nearly eight years.
Tweet
Labels: 80s, Animation, Books, Coppola, Fellini, Jerry Lewis, L. Ball, Nonfiction, Oscars, Ramis, South Park, Theater, TV Tribute
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Sunday, July 25, 2010
It's still alright
By Edward Copeland
A realization washes over me each time I've watched Caddyshack in the past 30 years since it was first released, an anniversary we mark today: my memories of the film always are of a movie that's better and funnier than the one I've just finished sitting through. This is not to say that Caddyshack is bad or unworthy of salute — no film that contains so many memorable moments and pop culture touchstones can be completely devoid of value — it's just that the Caddyshack that runs in my mind is a helluva lot better than the one I recently re-watched on DVD.
Each time you see Caddyshack it becomes more glaringly apparent what a patchwork production the movie truly was. I revisited the film on an older DVD whose extras included interviews with some of the principals who freely admitted how much was improvised and how the film began as the story of caddy Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe) and his coming of age and search for a mentor until more big-time comic stars joined the cast and, while it did make for some hysterically funny moments, it also made Caddyshack feel as if many of the actors were performing in different films and just happened to cross paths occasionally. Some scenes actually were worked out that way, as director and co-writer Harold Ramis tells it on the DVD, when they realized they had no scenes between Chevy Chase and Bill Murray and scrambled to cook one up.
Now, who knows what the real film that focused on Danny and his other caddies might have looked like? Though Chase, Murray, Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight get above-the-title credits, the starring credit
goes to O'Keefe and it's his character we begin with, trapped in a house in Nebraska with too many siblings to count, making his escape from home via fire escape and heading to work at the Bushwood Country Club atop a bicycle in some of the most obvious back-projection scenes seen in a movie that wasn't using them as a spoof in ages. Odds are that Ramis and co-writer Douglas Kenney did what they could with the semi-autobiographical script by Brian Doyle-Murray (Bill's real-life brother and the actor who plays Lou, manager of the caddies here), but still maybe we should have expected more since Ramis and Kenney were the main writers of National Lampoon's Animal House (and the late Kenney also played Delta member Stork in that film). Besides, Ramis also was dealing with the fact that he was directing a movie for the first time, so his attention was divided. We shouldn't feel too bad for O'Keefe though: He had a pretty good 1980 anyway, earning a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for playing Robert Duvall's son in The Great Santini. 
Because of this schizophrenia inherent in the screenplay, you have a movie that bounces all over the place. Danny's path does cross most of the comic stars brought in to save the film and transform it into a comedy, but at times when they go back to his isolated story, it just seems very strange. There will be parts when Lou, the caddies' manager, warns them that they could all be replaced by golf carts that sort of reminded me of all the times on TV's WKRP in Cincinnati that they feared radio stations becoming automated without live disc jockeys. You have his relationship with snack bar worker Maggie (Sarah Holcomb) while lusting after Judge Smails' niece Lacey Underall (Cindy Morgan), complicated by his need to suck up to Smails (Knight) in hopes of winning the
caddy scholarship to go to college. (It's sort of a sign of desperation when there's an overabundance of names that are silly puns: Judge Smails, Lacey Underall, Bushwood, Dr. Beeper, etc.) You also get weird diversions such as when Maggie fears she's pregnant only for that plot worry to be resolved as a negative three scenes later. They seem as if they were spliced into the film from another movie by mistake and are speed bumps to the comedy. Having written with Ali so recently about the 30th anniversary of Airplane!, which was released just a matter of weeks before Caddyshack, part of me wonders if the good will generated by the other film rubbed off on this one. I also find it interesting that two comedies released in the same month in the same year both used John Williams' Jaws score for laughs, though here it serves as accompaniment to a floating Baby Ruth candy bar. The caddies-invading-the-pool sequence does have the movie's one moment of bizarre inspiration that I've always appreciated: When out of nowhere, the male caddies all perform a water ballet as if it's out of an Esther Williams' film or composed aquatically by Busby Berkeley to appropriate music that seems to spring from nowhere. It's hilarious because it's so inexplicable.
The person who more or less steals the film was basically making his film debut, having appeared in only one other theatrical release back in 1971 — and he was 58 at the time. Though a legend as a comic, Rodney Dangerfield was a novice as an actor and no one can make the claim that he was giving a Method performance or a carefully modulated turn here, but he did spark a comedic cinematic explosion as Al Czervik and his work in Caddyshack definitely deserves respect. He's not just repeating his standup routine (he does utter his catchphrase "I don't get no respect" once, but it's said so quietly, almost under his breath, that you have to be listening very closely to even hear it). It's not to downplay the other great comedic talents in the film — Ted Knight delivers brilliance and it goes without saying that Bill Murray turned Carl into a creation that's a work of wonder that will last for eons — but I believe Dangerfield really deserves a great deal of the credit for the film's reputation. (I apologize Chevy Chase fans — I don't think he adds much.) In the DVD extra, Ramis mentions how
Dangerfield was convinced he was doing a terrible job on the set because no one was laughing. It had to be explained to him that if everyone laughed, it would ruin the soundtrack and that he was doing great, but he was so used to the immediate feedback a comedian gets from an audience he couldn't be certain that his jokes were working. Boy, were they working. Dangerfield performs like a manic dervish, whirling out of control through the film, dropping insults and one-liners and leaving chaos in his wake. (Introducing a Chinese business associate, he tosses out that the man has property behind the Great Wall of China — on the good side.) His compliments always end up sounding uncomplimentary as when he tells Smails' wife (Lois Kibbee) that she must have been something before electricity. Of course, he also gets the film's final line, after the final round of golf has been completed and all the good guys have gathered back at the clubhouse and he shouts to them from below, "Hey everybody — we're all gonna get laid!" He's a vulgar lout, but a joyously vulgar lout — pure id — and only sticks in the mud such as Judge Smails can't appreciate the fun he contributes when he's around, but movie audiences certainly did.
As much as I (and millions of others) love Rodney in Caddyshack, I don't want to give short shrift to some of his co-stars who also played a major role in making such a flawed and uneven film into a beloved comedy classic. First, I feel the need to pay special tribute to Ted Knight as Judge Smails. While he is the ostensible "villain" of the piece, he also is hysterically funny. In a way, his performance reminds me of the ones put forth by Robert Stack, Leslie Nielsen, et al. in Airplane! except that instead of being known as a serious actor as the Airplane! crew were, Knight would forever be labeled as the buffoonish dunce anchorman Ted Baxter from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. (His second successful sitcom, Too Close for Comfort, wouldn't premiere until the fall after Caddyshack's opening to give Knight a chance to distance himself further from the Baxter persona.) Knight's Smails though proves to be a fine comic creation,
at times charming, mostly full of bluster, but downright hilarious, especially when he's exploding with indignation at Dangerfield's antics. He's also funny when being frustrated by his nitwit nephew Spaulding (John F. Barmon Jr.) as when Spaulding rattles off what he's going to order at the snack bar, quickly and in monotone changing from one choice to another until an exasperated Smails finally spits, "You'll get nothing and like it!" Then there is his scene with Danny after he's caught him in his bed with Lacey and attempts to have a calm conversation with him in his office, starting with the expression when he spins and smacks his own leg into the desk and then for a punchline tires of trying to see Danny around his desk lamp. While his performance is purely a comic one (and a masterful one), what makes it so great is that in his own way, he does play it straight, at least when compared to the zaniness that surrounds him. Too often his contributions to Caddyshack don't get the credit they deserve.
Then there is Carl Spackler. Earlier, I mentioned how many of the actors seemed as if they were in their own movie and there is no clearer case than Bill Murray's Carl whose main co-star is a puppet of a gopher. I didn't realize how many special effects were involved in the gopher and his series of tunnels, all designed by John Dykstra and his team, visual effects wizards who worked on Star Wars and Star Trek: the Motion Picture and the TV pilot for the 1970s Battlestar Galactica. Still, that doesn't compare to the special effect that was Murray's Carl. From his lusting after older female golfers ("You wore green so you could hide") to his menacing speech to the young caddy about carrying the golf bag for the Dalai Lama, who was going to stiff him on the tip, but who said at the end that he wouldn't give him money, but on his deathbed, Carl would experience complete consciousness, "So I've got that going for me — which is
nice," the entire monologue delivered as he poking the young caddy's neck with a pitchfork. Mostly though, Carl battles the elusive gopher with his "license to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations." The bizarre creation that is Carl gives the payoff to the Baby Ruth scene and to the movie itself. He also gets to take part in a nice little vignette where he caddies for the reverend (played by veteran actor Henry Wilcoxon) during a driving thunderstorm. Despite the dangers, the clergyman persists because God wouldn't dare ruin the best game of his life. Well, yes He would and Carl just leaves the reverend prone on the course after he misses a putt, curses the heavens and gets struck by lightning, only to later renounce his faith and declare that there is no God. As many problems as I have with Caddyshack as a film, writing about it makes me grin again and forget most of the flaws I find in it when I watch it. Still, recollecting those good parts contributed by Dangerfield, Knight, Murray and some of the nameless others, I'm forgetting again what an imperfect comedy it is. Perhaps this is a Cinderella story after all.
Tweet
Labels: 80s, Duvall, John Williams, Movie Tributes, Murray, Nielsen, Ramis, Star Wars, Television
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Freaks & Geeks shall inherit the mirth
By Edward Copeland
Judd Apatow seems to defy just about everything one might hold true about certain forms of comedy. By and large, I subscribe to Jeffrey's 90-minute rule that comedies pushing their luck if they extend much past that running time, but Apatow provided a glowing exception to that rule with The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, the most I've laughed at a recent movie in ages. Then on top of that, he now seems to specialize in extremely vulgar comedies that, at their heart, hide family friendly messages: staying pure until marriage in the case of Virgin and now staying together for the sake of an unexpected baby in Knocked Up. Unfortunately, while Virgin manages to keep its momentum throughout its long running time, Knocked Up doesn't bear its extra frames as well, coming off as a bit flabby. Despite its need for some judicious trimming, it's still ends up as an entertaining way to spend your time.
One thing proving so special about Apatow's films, especially for fans of his great and short-lived TV series Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, is his penchant for bringing back his extended family time and again, making each enterprise feel as if you've been invited to the reunion as well. Seth Rogen, part of the great ensembles of both Freaks and Undeclared, gets the lead role of Ben Stone in Knocked Up, a stoner/slacker who believes that "weed cures everything" and lives off the dwindling proceeds of a postal truck accident with dreams of an Internet fortune made from a Web site that tracks nude scenes in movies.
Other Apatow alumni along for this ride include Jason Segel (also of both Freaks and Undeclared), Jay Baruchel (Undeclared), Martin Starr (Freaks), Apatow's real-life wife Leslie Mann and two who have joined his creative clan in his films, Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill. Loudon Wainwright III of Undeclared even pops up briefly and provides part of the score and Freaks alum James Franco makes a good-natured cameo as himself. Knocked Up feels as if you're being welcomed home, but that doesn't give it an automatic pass: It still must work as a movie as well and while most of it does, it doesn't quite hit all its marks.
As most should know by now, the premise involves drunken sex between Ben and the in-normal-circumstances unattainable babe Allison (Katherine Heigl), just promoted to on-air talent at E!, that results in an unexpected pregnancy. (The E! setting also provides a priceless Ryan Seacrest cameo, showing that he's got great humor about himself.) In fact, Allison's extreme denial early on prompts her sister (the great Mann) to ask if she's one of those women who won't realize she's pregnant until she's on the toilet and a baby falls out.
So, with great hesitancy, Allison shares the situation with an understandably shocked Ben. However, he then embraces the idea of a pending spawn, even though he's nowhere near ready for any responsibility. Ben seeks advice from his thrice-married dad (Harold Ramis) who tells him that he's the best thing that ever happened to him, which Ben says only makes him feel sad for him.
The rocky relationship of Allison's sister and her husband (Rudd) gives both Ben and Allison reason to pause. Mann and Rudd both deliver great comic performances laced with pain, especially Mann who plays a character similar to Laura Dern's in Year of the Dog but Mann never sinks to caricature at the expense of humor. Rudd finds marriage to be disappointing, commenting that he wishes he liked anything as much as his kids like bubbles and comparing matrimony to a tense, unfunny episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that lasts a lifetime instead of 22 minutes.
Parts of Knocked Up remain hard to swallow. Allison's decision to try to form a lasting relationship with Ben, even if she's decided to keep the baby, seems sudden and unconvincing. You believe that he'd fall in love with her, but it sounds odd when she says the same thing once she's sober.
Despite misgivings, the film does elicit a lot of hearty laughs and even some touching moments. One favorite speech gets delivered by a doorman at an exclusive nightclub.
In the interest of full disclosure, I did not have an ideal viewing experience. For some reason, an idiot couple thought that an R-rated comedy called Knocked Up, which wears its vulgarity proudly on its trailer, looked like an appropriate film to show their 3-year-old. The kid wouldn't shut up and the parents would take him out of the theater, then bring him back. Finally, I yelled in the dark, "Take the damn kid home already." Thankfully, the kid stayed pretty quiet after that. It always helps to put the fear of God – or at least angry audience members – into people.
It's also ironic, given the movie. Sorry folks: If you can't afford a baby sitter, get ready for a few years without moviegoing. You had a child, don't make the rest of the moviegoing public pay for it.
Tweet
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Judd Apatow seems to defy just about everything one might hold true about certain forms of comedy. By and large, I subscribe to Jeffrey's 90-minute rule that comedies pushing their luck if they extend much past that running time, but Apatow provided a glowing exception to that rule with The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, the most I've laughed at a recent movie in ages. Then on top of that, he now seems to specialize in extremely vulgar comedies that, at their heart, hide family friendly messages: staying pure until marriage in the case of Virgin and now staying together for the sake of an unexpected baby in Knocked Up. Unfortunately, while Virgin manages to keep its momentum throughout its long running time, Knocked Up doesn't bear its extra frames as well, coming off as a bit flabby. Despite its need for some judicious trimming, it's still ends up as an entertaining way to spend your time.
One thing proving so special about Apatow's films, especially for fans of his great and short-lived TV series Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, is his penchant for bringing back his extended family time and again, making each enterprise feel as if you've been invited to the reunion as well. Seth Rogen, part of the great ensembles of both Freaks and Undeclared, gets the lead role of Ben Stone in Knocked Up, a stoner/slacker who believes that "weed cures everything" and lives off the dwindling proceeds of a postal truck accident with dreams of an Internet fortune made from a Web site that tracks nude scenes in movies.
Other Apatow alumni along for this ride include Jason Segel (also of both Freaks and Undeclared), Jay Baruchel (Undeclared), Martin Starr (Freaks), Apatow's real-life wife Leslie Mann and two who have joined his creative clan in his films, Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill. Loudon Wainwright III of Undeclared even pops up briefly and provides part of the score and Freaks alum James Franco makes a good-natured cameo as himself. Knocked Up feels as if you're being welcomed home, but that doesn't give it an automatic pass: It still must work as a movie as well and while most of it does, it doesn't quite hit all its marks.
As most should know by now, the premise involves drunken sex between Ben and the in-normal-circumstances unattainable babe Allison (Katherine Heigl), just promoted to on-air talent at E!, that results in an unexpected pregnancy. (The E! setting also provides a priceless Ryan Seacrest cameo, showing that he's got great humor about himself.) In fact, Allison's extreme denial early on prompts her sister (the great Mann) to ask if she's one of those women who won't realize she's pregnant until she's on the toilet and a baby falls out.
So, with great hesitancy, Allison shares the situation with an understandably shocked Ben. However, he then embraces the idea of a pending spawn, even though he's nowhere near ready for any responsibility. Ben seeks advice from his thrice-married dad (Harold Ramis) who tells him that he's the best thing that ever happened to him, which Ben says only makes him feel sad for him.
The rocky relationship of Allison's sister and her husband (Rudd) gives both Ben and Allison reason to pause. Mann and Rudd both deliver great comic performances laced with pain, especially Mann who plays a character similar to Laura Dern's in Year of the Dog but Mann never sinks to caricature at the expense of humor. Rudd finds marriage to be disappointing, commenting that he wishes he liked anything as much as his kids like bubbles and comparing matrimony to a tense, unfunny episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that lasts a lifetime instead of 22 minutes.
Parts of Knocked Up remain hard to swallow. Allison's decision to try to form a lasting relationship with Ben, even if she's decided to keep the baby, seems sudden and unconvincing. You believe that he'd fall in love with her, but it sounds odd when she says the same thing once she's sober.
Despite misgivings, the film does elicit a lot of hearty laughs and even some touching moments. One favorite speech gets delivered by a doorman at an exclusive nightclub.
In the interest of full disclosure, I did not have an ideal viewing experience. For some reason, an idiot couple thought that an R-rated comedy called Knocked Up, which wears its vulgarity proudly on its trailer, looked like an appropriate film to show their 3-year-old. The kid wouldn't shut up and the parents would take him out of the theater, then bring him back. Finally, I yelled in the dark, "Take the damn kid home already." Thankfully, the kid stayed pretty quiet after that. It always helps to put the fear of God – or at least angry audience members – into people.
It's also ironic, given the movie. Sorry folks: If you can't afford a baby sitter, get ready for a few years without moviegoing. You had a child, don't make the rest of the moviegoing public pay for it.
Tweet
Labels: 00s, Apatow, Franco, Jonah Hill, L. Dern, Paul Rudd, Ramis, Seth Rogen, Television
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
