I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, page 28
Most LA restaurant owners do not live in colorful apartment buildings where all the neighbors know each other, and little old ladies play strip poker. But the screenplay throws in the colorful rental units as a way of supplying recycled sitcom characters, and to place Dylan near the apartment of Lila (Sophie Marceau), a French cellist. She has a former boyfriend named Rene (Patrick Breuel), whose function is to look pained and supply straight lines to Dylan. And she has a dog named Jack, who is treated as much like the dog in There’s Something About Mary as is possible without actually including clips from the other movie.
Dylan and Lila have a Meet Cute. She runs into him and knocks him flat, with her landing on top, which is about the cheapest Meet Cute you can buy at the Movie Cliché Store. He falls in love with Lila, gets nowhere, and steals her dog so that he can claim to have found it and thus win her love. Lila is so unobservant that Dylan often carries the dog past her windows, and even walks it in a nearby park, without Lila ever seeing them together. When the dog needs to poop, Dylan wears one of those tool belts you see on power company linemen, with eight or nine bright plastic pooper-scoopers dangling from it. Supplying a character with too much equipment is a creaky comedy wheeze; in a good movie, they’d give him one pooper scooper and think of something funny to do with it.
Anyway. Dylan has an employee at the restaurant named Wally (Artie Lange), who is tall, fat, and dumb, sleeps over one night, and ends up in Dylan’s bed because he gets scared. As they leap to attention in the morning, they can’t even think of a funny payoff (such as Steve Martin in Planes, Trains & Automobiles, shouting at John Candy, “That wasn’t a pillow!”). Instead, when Lila rings the doorbell, they both answer the door in their underpants and she assumes they’re gay. Ho, ho.
Meanwhile, Jack the dog eats junk food and throws up. When Dylan comes home, we get a nauseated-dog’s-eye-view of an optically distorted Dylan dressed in 1970s disco gear while dancing to a record on the sound track. Don’t ask how a dog could have this hallucination; be thankful instead that the dog’s fantasies are more interesting than any other visual in the movie.
Lost & Found ends at a big lawn party for rich people, which in movies about people over twenty-one is the equivalent of the Senior Prom scene in all other movies. There is a role for Martin Sheen, as Mr. Millstone, the tight-fisted banker who wants to fly in Neil Diamond as a surprise for his wife. In 1979, Martin Sheen starred in Apocalypse Now. In 1999, he plays Mr. Millstone. I wish he had taken my advice and gone into the priesthood.
As for the Neil Diamond imitation, my best guess is that David Spade secretly thinks he could have a parallel career as a Las Vegas idol, and is showing us how he can do Neil Diamond better than Diamond himself. All that’s lacking is for Spade to take that hank of hair that hangs in front of his eyes, and part it, so that it hangs over his ears.
Truth in Criticism: The movie has one funny scene, starring Jon Lovitz, as a Dog Whisperer.
Lost Horizon
(Directed by Charles Jarrott; starring Peter Finch, Liv Ullmann, Sally Kellerman, John Gielgud; 1973)
I don’t know how much Ross Hunter paid Burt Bacharach and Hal David to write the music for Lost Horizon, but whatever it was, it was too much. Not that the movie would have been better if the music were better; no, the movie is awful on its own. But the music is really bad. About two hours into the movie, Bobby Van has a birthday party and they sing “Happy Birthday” to him. That’s the one you’ll come out humming.
The movie is a remake of the 1937 Ronald Colman classic, which was fun because it maintained its sense of humor. I mean, how seriously can you take this stuff? The story involves a group of political and social refugees whose airplane is mysteriously hijacked and taken to Shangri-la. There they discover a civilization where nobody ever gets tired, nobody ever grows old, there’s gold in every stream and the coolies have not yet been organized by Cesar Chavez. The movie more or less follows the earlier version, with a few twists. For example, the prostitute in the 1937 movie has now become a Newsweek correspondent.
What I don’t understand is why the remake had to be a musical in the first place. Just a nice, quiet new version of the good old story would have been enough. The material is so slight it can hardly bear the weight of music, and it sinks altogether during a series of the most incompetent and clumsy dance numbers I’ve ever seen.
There’s one production number, for example, in which the people of Shangri-la celebrate the solidarity of the family. A young man (symbolic of a young man) and a young woman (symbolic of a young woman) solemnly hand a baby back and forth in order to symbolize how neither one holds the baby all the time. Meanwhile, several other young men twirl orange scarves. I mention this particular number because, if you go to the movie, I want you to look out for it. You wouldn’t want to spend all that money and miss the worst single piece of choreography you’ve ever seen in your life. The dancers march about and twirl their scarves as if Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will had been gotten pregnant by Busby Berkeley.
Meanwhile, several love affairs get under way. See, the people of Shangri-la are sort of happy that the strangers have arrived, since some of them have been waiting eighty years for their first love affairs. Good thing you don’t age in Shangri-la. Anyhow, Peter Finch falls in love with Liv Ullmann, Michael York falls in love with Olivia Hussey, George Kennedy falls in love with Sally Kellerman, and Bobby Van teaches the children of the valley how to dance (God knows the valley could use a good choreographer).
These pairings are celebrated by Bacharach-David songs that I absolutely cannot remember. Between songs, the Shangri-la philosophy is unveiled. In the valley, you see, if you love a woman more than her lover does—why, you just cleave her to your side. And the lover understands. But if he loves her more than you do, he gets to keep her. You see how fair it is, especially for the woman, who is relieved of the bother of choice. On the other hand (as that guy in the back row used to shout in cold war jokes), what about the workers?
Well, they’re happy, too. They get to carry water and do odd jobs, work in their field, that sort of thing. On holidays they get to twirl their scarves. Don’t worry about them; they’re happy. They get a new bucket and a new scarf every Bastille Day. We have a saying in the valley that I hope you’ll remember. It goes like this: When the strong wind bends the mighty tree, the tree stands all the straighter when the wind stops blowing. Remember that; it’ll be on the final.
Lost in Space
(Directed by Stephen Hopkins; starring William Hurt, Heather Graham, Lacy Chabert, Matt LeBlanc, Gary Oldman; 1998)
Lost in Space is a dim-witted shoot-’em-up based on the old (I hesitate to say “classic”) TV series. It’s got cheesy special effects, a muddy visual look, and characters who say obvious things in obvious ways. If it outgrosses the brilliant Dark City, the previous s-f film from the same studio, then audiences must have lost their will to be entertained.
The TV series was loosely modeled on the novel The Swiss Family Robinson, about a family shipwrecked far from home and using wit and ingenuity to live off the land. I loved that book, and especially its detailed description of how the family made tools, machines, and a home for themselves, and trained the local animals.
The movie doesn’t bother with such details. After a space battle that is the predictable curtain-raiser, and a quick explanation of why and how the Robinson family is setting off for a planet called Alpha Prime, the film takes place mostly on board their saucer-shaped ship, and involves many more space battles, showdowns, struggles, attacks, hyperspace journeys, and exploding planets. In between, the characters plow through creaky dialogue and exhausted relationship problems.
Imagine the film that could be made about a family marooned on a distant planet, using what they could salvage from their ship or forage from the environment. That screenplay would take originality, intelligence, and thought. Lost in Space is one of those typing-speed jobs where the screenwriter is like a stenographer, rewriting what he’s seen at the movies.
The story: Earth will not survive another two decades. Alpha Prime is the only other habitable planet mankind has discovered. Professor John Robinson (William Hurt) and his family have been chosen to go there and construct a hypergate, to match the gate at the Earth end. Their journey will involve years of suspended animation, but once the other gate is functioning, humans can zip instantaneously to Alpha Prime.
There needs to be a hypergate at both ends, of course, because otherwise there’s no telling where a hyperdrive will land you—as the Robinsons soon find out. Also on board are the professor’s wife Maureen (Mimi Rogers), their scientist daughter, Judy Robinson (Heather Graham), their younger daughter, Penny (Lacey Chabert), and their son Will (Jack Johnson), who is the brains of the outfit. The ship is piloted by ace space cadet Don West (Matt LeBlanc), and includes an intelligent robot who will help with the tasks at the other hand.
Oh, and lurking below deck is the evil Dr. Zachary Smith (Gary Oldman), who wants to sabotage the mission, but is trapped on board when the ship lifts off. So he awakens the Robinsons, after which the ship is thrown off course and seems doomed to fall into the sun.
Don West has a brainstorm: They’ll use the hyperdrive to zap right through the Sun! This strategy of course lands them in a galaxy far, far away, with a sky filled with unfamiliar stars. And then the movie ticks off a series of crises, of which I can enumerate a rebellious robot, an exploding planet, mechanical space spiders, a distracting romance, and family issues of trust and authority.
The movie might at least have been more fun to look at if it had been filmed in brighter colors. Director Stephen Hopkins and his cinematographer, Peter Levy, for some reason choose a murky, muted palate. Everything looks like a drab brown suit, or a cheap rotogravure. You want to use some Windex on the screen. And Bruce Broughton’s musical score saws away tirelessly with counterfeit excitement. When nothing of interest is happening on the screen, it just makes it worse when the music pretends it cares.
Of the performances, what can be said except that William Hurt, Gary Oldman, and Mimi Rogers deserve medals for remaining standing? The kids are standard-issue juveniles with straight teeth and good postures. And there is a monkeylike little alien pet who looks like he comes from a world where all living beings are clones of Felix the Cat. This is the kind of movie that, if it fell into a black hole, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
Love Always
(Directed by Jude Pauline Eberhard; starring Marisa Ryan, Moon Zappa, Beverly D’Angelo; 1997)
“You are like a cluster bomb that explodes in a thousand different ways at once,” the heroine is told in Love Always. As opposed to a cluster bomb that doesn’t? I dunno. This movie is so bad in so many different ways you should see it just to put it behind you. Let’s start with the dialogue. Following are verbatim quotes:
• “Someday you’ll love somebody with all the intensity of the Southern Hemisphere.”
• “There’s a Starbuck-free America out there!”
• “To be young and in love! I think I’m gonna head out for some big open spaces.”
• “Like sands in an hourglass, these are the days of our lives. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
• “Watch your back.”
And my favorite, this advice from the heroine’s girlfriend (Moon Zappa), as she sets out on her hitchhike odyssey across America: “Follow your intestines.”
Does Jude Pauline Eberhard, the writer and director, intend these lines to be funny? Does this film belong in one of those funky festivals where they understand such things? Alas, I fear not. Love Always is sincere in addition to its other mistakes.
The movie tells the story of Julia Bradshaw (Marisa Ryan), an intrepid San Diego woman who finds herself in a series of situations that have no point and no payoff, although that is the screenplay’s fault, not hers. Early in the film, for example, she goes to the race track and her horse comes in, and she says “Yes!” and rides her bike home along the beach, and we never really find out why she was at the track, but no matter, because before long the film goes to visit an amateur theatrical and we see an entire “rooster dance,” from beginning to end, apparently because film is expensive and since they exposed it they want to show it.
The rooster dance also has nothing to do with the film, which properly gets under way when Julia gets a postcard from her onetime lover Mark, asking her to come to Spokane so he can marry her. This information is presented by filling the screen with a big close-up of the postcard, which Julia then reads aloud for us. Soon we find her in the desert with a bedroll on her back, posing photogenically on the windowsill of a deserted house so that interesting people can brake to a halt and offer her rides.
Her odyssey from San Diego to Spokane takes her via a wedding in Boston. That’s a road movie for you. At one point along the way she shares the driving with a woman who is delivering big ceramic cows to a diary. Julia drops a ceramic calf and breaks it, drives the truck to Vegas to get another calf, but when she gets there the ceramic cow lady’s husband tells her the dairy canceled the order, so Julia wanders the Strip in Vegas, no doubt because the Road Movie Rule Book requires at least one montage of casino signs.
Back on the road, Julia meets a band of women in a van. They are the Virgin Sluts. They dress like models for ads for grunge clubs in free weeklies in the larger cities of smaller states. She is thrilled to meet them at last. She also meets a makeout artist, a sensitive photographer, and a guy who is convinced he has the movie’s Dennis Hopper role. On and on her odyssey goes, until finally she gets to Spokane, where she finds out that Mark is a louse, as we knew already because he didn’t send her bus fare.
Mad Dog Time
(Directed by Larry Bishop; starring Richard Dreyfuss, Jeff Goldblum, Diane Lane, Ellen Barkin; 1996)
Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I’ve seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you’re not sure they have a bus line.
The plot: A gangster boss (Richard Dreyfuss) is released from a mental hospital, and returns to a sleazy nightclub to take over control of his organization. He has been gone long enough that a long list of gangsters would like to have his job, led by (Jeff Goldblum), who has been conducting an affair with Dreyfuss’s girlfriend (Diane Lane) and her sister (Ellen Barkin). The girls share the last name of Everly, so they’re the Everly Sisters—get it? Ho, ho, ho. God, what rich humor this movie offers!
Other candidates for Dreyfuss’s throne include characters played by Gabriel Byrne, Kyle McLachlan, Gregory Hines, Burt Reynolds, and Billy Idol. The way the movie works is, two or three characters will start out in a scene and recite some dry, hard-boiled dialogue, and then one or two of them will get shot. This happens over and over.
“Vic’s gonna want everybody dead,” a character says at the beginning, in what turns out to be a horrible prophecy. Vic is the Dreyfuss character. Goldblum is named Mick, and Larry Bishop, who directed this mess, is Nick. So we get dialogue that thinks it’s funny to use Vic, Nick, and Mick in the same sentence. Oh, hilarious.
I don’t have any idea what this movie is about—and yet, curiously, I don’t think I missed anything. Bishop is the son of the old Rat Packer Joey Bishop, who maybe got him a price on the songs he uses on the sound track, by Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, and Frank Sinatra (Paul Anka sings “My Way,” which was certainly Bishop’s motto during the production).
What were they thinking of? Dreyfuss is the executive producer. He’s been in some good movies. Did he think this was a script? (Not a bad script—a script at all?) The actors perform their lines like condemned prisoners. The most ethical guy on the production must have been Norman Hollyn, the editor, because he didn’t cut anybody out, and there must have been people willing to do him big favors to get out of this movie.
Mad Dog Time should be cut up to provide free ukulele picks for the poor.
Magic in the Water
(Directed by Rick Stevenson; starring Mark Harmon, Joshua Jackson, Sarah Wayne; 1995)
Now that the Loch Ness monster has been unmasked as a trick photograph, is there a future for legendary creatures of the deep? Magic in the Water hopes so. It’s about a couple of kids and their preoccupied dad, who visit a Canadian lake said to be inhabited by a mysterious creature named Orky.
The creature has been drummed up into a local tourist industry by the go-getters down at the chamber of commerce, who stretch banners across Main Street proclaiming the town to be the “Home of Orky.” For Josh and Ashley, the two kids, Orky is not much harder to spot than their dad, Jack (Mark Harmon), who is so busy with business calls on his cellular phone that he pays little attention to them.
Better communication between parent and children is but one of the uplifting themes of Magic in the Water, which also introduces a wise old Indian (Ben Cardinal), who spends much time chanting and explaining to the kids that at one time, men and animals could trade places. (The Indian’s name, Joe Pickled Trout, may help explain why animals grew disenchanted with men.)
Josh (Joshua Jackson) is obsessed by vehicles of any kind; his catch-phrase is “I bet I could drive that,” so we know with absolute certainty that sooner or later he will be called upon to drive something. Ashley (Sarah Wayne) spends much time looking at the water, where Orky seems to manifest itself as ripples, waves, heaves, and spouts. Even more proof Orky exists: When Ashley leaves her Oreos on the dock, Orky takes the cookies, eats the white stuff in between, and returns the outsides, still dry. That can’t be easy if you don’t have hands and live underwater. Try it yourself.
