I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, page 10
The filmmakers made no effort to empathize with their prehistoric characters, to imagine what it might have really been like back then. They are content to assemble the usual narrative clichés and standard story lines and apply them to some actors in costume. If modern men came from beginnings like this, why did they even bother to develop civilization, since they already possessed its most wretched excesses?
Clifford
(Directed by Paul Faherty; starring Martin Short, Charles Grodin, Mary Steenburgen; 1994)
I felt a little glow as the opening titles rolled up for Clifford: Martin Short . . . Charles Grodin . . . Mary Steenburgen . . . Dabney Coleman. Funny people. Even the technical credits were promising. John A. Alonzo, great cameraman; Pembroke Herring, skilled editor. I settled in for some laughs. And waited. And waited. In a screening of some 150 people, two people laughed, once apiece. The other some 148 did not laugh at all. One of the laughers was me; I liked a moment in a showdown scene between Short and Grodin. The other person laughed right after I did, maybe because he agreed, or maybe because my laugh is darn infectious.
A movie like this is a deep mystery. It asks the question: What went wrong? Clifford is not bad on the acting, directing, or even writing levels. It fails on a deeper level still, the level of the underlying conception. Something about the material itself is profoundly not funny. Irredeemably not funny, so that it doesn’t matter what the actors do, because they are in a movie that should never have been made.
The story opens in the year 2050, when a kindly old priest is trying to reason with a rebellious kid in a home for troubled kids. The priest (Short) tells the kid that he was once a troubled kid, himself. That sets up three flashbacks that make up most of the movie. To deal with the 2050 scenes right up front: They are completely unnecessary. Their only apparent function is to show Martin Short made up as an old man.
Now. Back to the main story, which takes place in the present. Martin Short stars as little Clifford, a brat, about ten years old, I guess. Short plays him with no makeup other than a wig and little boy’s suits, and the camera angles are selected to make him look a foot shorter than the other actors. Clifford is a little boy from hell, a sneaky practical joker, spoiled, obnoxious. We meet him with his parents on a flight to Hawaii. He wants the plane to land in Los Angeles so he can visit the Dinosaur Park amusement park. So he talks his way into the cockpit and shuts off the plane’s engines.
This sets up the body of the movie, in which Clifford’s uncle Martin (Charles Grodin) agrees to take the lad for a week, partly to convince his girlfriend (Mary Steenburgen) that he does, indeed, like children. But no one could like this child, who grows enraged when his uncle won’t take him to Dinosaur Park, and plays a series of practical jokes, beginning with filling his uncle’s drink with Tabasco sauce and ending with the destruction of his uncle’s plans for the Los Angeles transportation system.
Many of the jokes are of a cruel physical nature, involving a hairpiece worn by the uncle’s boss (Dabney Coleman), or face-lifts, or phony bomb threats. What they boil down to is, little Clifford is mean, vindictive, spiteful, and cruel. So hateful that if a real little boy had played him, the movie would be like The Omen filtered through The Good Son and a particularly bad evening of Saturday Night Live.
But Martin Short is clearly not a little boy. He is a curious adult pretending to be a little boy, with odd verbal mannerisms, like always addressing his uncle with lines like “Oh, yes, My Uncle!” and fawning to strangers like a horny spaniel. If Clifford is not a real little boy, then what is he? The movie doesn’t know and neither does the audience, and for much of the running time we sit there staring stupefied at the screen, trying to figure out what the hell we’re supposed to be thinking.
Grodin emerges relatively unscathed, because as a smooth underactor he is able to distance himself from the melee. Steenburgen is given a scene where Coleman assaults her in the back of a limousine, for no reason that the movie really explains. Short has a couple of dance routines that have more to do with his SNL history than with this movie.
And then there is the “climax,” in which Uncle Martin finally does take little Clifford to the Dinosaur Park. The movie treats the sequence as a bravura set piece, but actually it’s an embarrassing assembly of shabby special effects, resulting in absolutely no comic output. At one point the movie sets up an out-of-control thrill ride, and we in the audience think we know how the laughs will build, but we’re wrong. They don’t.
To return to the underlying causes for the movie’s failure: What we have here is a suitable case for deep cinematic analysis. I’d love to hear a symposium of veteran producers, marketing guys, and exhibitors discuss this film. It’s not bad in any usual way. It’s bad in a new way all its own. There is something extraterrestrial about it, as if it’s based on the sense of humor of an alien race with a completely different relationship to the physical universe. The movie is so odd, it’s almost worth seeing just because we’ll never see anything like it again, I hope.
Color of Night
(Directed by Richard Rush; starring Bruce Willis, Leslie Ann Warren; 1994)
Color of Night approaches badness from so many directions that one really must admire its imagination. Combining all the worst ingredients of an Agatha Christie whodunit and a sex-crazed slasher film, it ends in a frenzy of recycled thriller elements, with a chase scene, a showdown in an echoing warehouse, and not one but two clichés from Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary: the Talking Killer and the Climbing Villain. I am compelled to admit that the use of the high-powered industrial staple gun is original.
The film stars Bruce Willis as an East Coast psychologist who loses his faith in analysis after he talks tough to a patient and she hurls herself through the window of his skyscraper office, falling to the ground far below in the best suicide effect since The Hudsucker Proxy. (The pool of bright red blood under her body turns black, as Willis develops psychosomatic color blindness right there on the spot.)
Desperate for a change, Willis heads for Los Angeles, where his best friend (Scott Bakula) has a psychiatric practice that finances a luxurious lifestyle. He is a guest one night at a group therapy session run by the friend. The group is an updated, kinky version of one of those collections of eccentrics so beloved by Dame Agatha, who in plot exercises like The Mousetrap introduced a roomful of weirdos so that all of them could have their turn at being the Obvious Suspect.
In no time at all a suspect is required: Willis’s friend is found murdered in his high-security mansion, and of course there is a reason why each member of the group seems guilty. The group includes Sondra (Lesley Ann Warren), a nymphomaniac with a nervous giggle and a careless neckline; Clark (Brad Dourif), who lost his job at a law firm after he started compulsively counting everything; Buck (Lance Henrickson), an ex-cop who foams at the mouth with anger at the least provocation; Casey (Kevin J. O’Connor), a neurotic artist; and Ricky, a young man with a gender identity problem, of whom the less said the better.
Willis, who wants to retire from psychology, takes over the group at the urging of Martinez, the detective in charge of the murder investigation, who is played by Rubén Blades as an anthology of Latino cop shtick (during a chat with Willis on a sidewalk, he slams a passerby against a car and frisks him while continuing the conversation). The therapy group is of course a seething hotbed of neurosis and suspicion, and the screenplay (by Matthew Chapman and Billy Ray) sends Willis to visit each of the group members in turn, so they can spread paranoia about the other members while establishing themselves as possible suspects.
Meanwhile, a beautiful young woman materializes in Willis’s life. She is Rose (Jane March, from The Lover), who seems to come from nowhere, who is lovely, who adores him, and who quickly joins him in a swimming pool sex scene that contained frontal nudity by Willis before the film was trimmed to satisfy the MPAA’s censors. (The best possible argument for including Willis’s genitals would have been that the movie, after all, contains everything else.)
Readers of Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary will guess that Rose is explained by the Law of Economy of Characters, which teaches that there are no unnecessary characters in a movie. Either she is there simply to supply him with a partner in the sex scenes, or she is somehow involved with the mystery surrounding the murder. How and why and if this is true, I will not reveal.
There is, indeed, not much I can say about the rest of the movie without revealing plot points so subtle and cleverly concealed that they would come as astonishing surprises to Forrest Gump. So let’s move on to the chase scene, in which a bright red car with blacked-out windows tries to force Willis off the road. It fails, but comes back for more, and there is a scene where Willis’s car is driving on a street next to a parking garage, and a high-angle shot shows the red car on the roof of the garage, stalking him.
It is clear that from this angle the driver of the car cannot possibly see over the edge of the garage, and thus could not have any idea of where Willis’s car is, but wait, there’s more: A little later, the red car pushes another car off the top of the parking garage, so that the falling car barely misses Willis. How could the person in the red car know where a pedestrian six floors below would be by the time he pushes a car over the edge? Answer: This movie will do anything for a cheap action scene, and so we should not be surprised, a little later, when people who should be perfectly happy to remain at ground level go to a lot of trouble to climb a tower so that one can almost fall off, and the other can grab him, during and after heated dialogue in which the plot is explained.
Miss Christie would have loved the explanations. Her plots always ended with puzzled questions and serene answers (“The dog did not bark because the poisoned dagger . . .”), and so does this one. By the end of Color of Night I was, frankly, stupefied. To call the movie absurd would be missing the point, since any shred of credibility was obviously the first thing to be thrown overboard. The movie has ambitions to belong to the genre of Jagged Edge, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Single White Female, and other twisto-thrillers, but why did it aim so low? The movie is so lurid in its melodrama and so goofy in its plotting that with just a little more trouble it could have been a comedy.
The Concorde—Airport ’79
(Directed by David Lowell Rich; starring Robert Wagner, John Davidson, Mercedes McCambridge; 1979)
Q. Gee, Mr. Science, what’s a Concorde?
A. A Concorde is an airplane like the one you see in this movie, Penrod. It flies faster than the speed of sound. It can go from Washington, D.C., to Paris, France, in less than four hours.
What does it do then?
It lands, Penrod. Then it flies on to Moscow in the morning.
But . . . golly whillikers, Mr. Science! Why doesn’t it just fly to Moscow in the first place!?!
Because then, Penrod, there wouldn’t be the scenes in Paris where Robert Wagner takes Susan Blakely out to dinner, and George Kennedy takes Bibi Andersson out to dinner.
But . . . gosh all get out, Mr. Science! Why does Robert Wagner take Susan Blakely out to dinner in Paris!?! After all, she has the secrets that could destroy his industrial empire, and so, when the plane was flying to Paris, he tried to shoot it down with one of his guided missiles?
When you are a little older, Penrod, you will learn that there are great restaurants in Paris.
But . . . when he has her alone, why doesn’t he just shoot her or stab her or something? Instead of trying to shoot down the plane when she’s on board? And then the next day, he tries to bomb the plane. Wouldn’t it be simpler if . . .
Nothing is simple, Penrod. you do not buy a woman dinner in Paris only to shoot or stab her.
But . . . why did the people get back on the plane in Paris after it had been attacked by guided missiles and fighter jets, and had done a loop-the-loop in the air and almost crashed in the ocean? Weren’t they scared?
Not scared enough to turn in their Concorde tickets for tourist class on Aeroflot, I guess, Penrod.
Golly, Mr. Science, that plane sure was going fast!
As I said, Penrod, two thousand miles an hour.
Remember that scene where the pilot opens the cockpit window and sticks out his hand with the flare gun, Mr. Science???
Who could forget it, Penrod? It was a high point of the movie.
But . . . at two thousand miles an hour, wouldn’t the air tear the side off the plane, and pull the pilot out of the cockpit through the open window?
The plane had slowed to one thousand miles an hour by then, Penrod. Pay better attention.
But . . . the pilot wanted to fire a flare gun because the heat from the flare would distract the heat-sensitive guided missile chasing the plane, but wouldn’t the plane’s engines be hotter than a little old flare?!?
Only seemingly, Penrod.
Thanks, Mr. Science!!!
Critters II
(Directed by Mick Garrett; starring Scott Grimes, Liane Curtis; 1988)
Critters II is a movie about furry little hand puppets with lots of teeth, who are held up to salad bars by invisible puppeteers while large numbers of actors scream and pronounce unlikely dialogue. It lacks all of the style and sense of fun of the original Critters (1986), and has no reason for existence—aside, of course, from the fact that Critters is a brand name, and this is the current model.
I mention the hand puppets because they are so obvious. Unlike the original film, which was a genuinely entertaining rip-off of E.T., this movie is not even a competent rip-off of Critters. It is quite obvious, in many shots, that the critters—who are about the size of a bowling ball and have lots of teeth—are lined up along the edges of tables and other flat surfaces so that unseen puppeteers can operate them. It is rare to see a critter moving anywhere on his own, except as a ball being pulled along by an invisible string. The critters in the first movie had personality. In this movie, they’re only props.
The plot is as before. The Cripes, a toothy, voracious race of interstellar garbage disposal units, have landed on Earth. They are followed here by bounty hunters, who blast them down with weapons that look as if they were made out of old tailpipes. The bounty hunters can assume the appearance of actual human beings, which means that the producers didn’t have to spend any extra money on special makeup; all they had to do is hire an actor and say that he was an alien.
Anyway, the Cripes attack the same town they attacked the first time around. And the movie attacks the same plot it attacked the first time around—right down to the cantankerous local sheriff and the townspeople who band together to fight the invasion. But while the first movie had considerable wit, this one is a demoralized enterprise from beginning to end. And it particularly misses the presence of M. Emmet Walsh, who played the sheriff in the first film with his usual oily charm.
Which leads me to a helpful suggestion. In the case of a movie like Critters II, the story is by definition utterly inconsequential. The only element from the original movie that interests the financial backers is the title. Since Critters II can be used as a title by anyone who holds the copyright to Critters, and the title alone will lure people into the theater, why bother with a mere retread? Why not have some fun?
My suggestion for Critters III: Make it a satire on sleazoid critter movies, starring the hapless and unseen employees who operate the hand puppets. Take us backstage. Show us the crummy special effects, but make fun of them. Pillory the crass financial guys who cynically demand a no-brainer remake. Make the hero a bright young film-school grad who dreams that his version of Critters will win an Oscar.
Opportunities for satire are everywhere. In Critters II there is an amazingly bad sequence in which all of the critters roll themselves up into one gigantic ball, and roll out to flatten the town. Anyone reading this review could write a funny scene about the difficulties of manufacturing and operating a critter ball. What is it made out of? Does it smell? Do the local dogs have a tendency to pay it rude visits? What happens if you’re an extra who has to be crushed by the hairy ball, and you suffer from allergies? And what about the pecking order between puppeteers who operate the starring critters, and others who are relegated to the obscure critters?
I make these notes only to illustrate the bankruptcy of imagination behind Critters II. The makers of this film could not generate a single idea that was not provided for them by the makers of the original film. They went into the project with a rip-off on their mind. Since there is inevitably going to be a Critters III, I offer my story ideas free of charge to whoever is condemned to make it. If you want to dedicate the film to me, that would be nice.
Cyborg
(Directed by Albert Pyun; starring Dayle Haddon, Vincent Klyn, Jean-Claude Van Damme; 1989)
I am not sure I remember the opening words of Cyborg exactly, but I believe they were, “After the plague, things really got bad.” I do remember laughing heartily at that point, about thirty seconds into the movie. Few genres amuse me more than postapocalyptic fantasies about supermen fighting for survival. Cyborg is one of the funniest examples of this category, which crosses Escape from New York with The Road Warrior but cheats on the budget.
The movie takes place in a future world in which all civilization has been reduced to a few phony movie sets. Leather-clad neo-Nazis stalk through the ruins, beating each other senseless and talking in Pulpspeak, which is like English, but without the grace and modulation. It’s cold in the future, and it’s wet, but never so cold or wet that the costumes do not bare the arm muscles of the men and the heaving bosoms of the women.
The plot of Cyborg is simplicity itself. The movie’s heroine (Dayle Haddon) is half-woman, half-robot, and wears a computer under her wig. Her knowledge may include the solution to the plague that threatens to destroy mankind, but first she must somehow return to headquarters in Atlanta. Her enemy, Fender Tremolo (Vincent Klyn) wants to destroy her because he believes that if anarchy is unleashed upon the world, he can rule it. The hero, Gibson Rickenbacker (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is on a mission to escort her safely to Atlanta.
