I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, page 41
The film stars Mark Harmon as a third-rate professional baseball player who is throwing his life away, one day, when he gets a call that Katie Chandler (Jodie Foster) is dead. When he was a kid, Katie was like an older sister to him, encouraging him to do his best while simultaneously tantalizing him with her rebellious spirit. He first met her when he was ten, and they spent carefree summers together on the Jersey shore while she shone like a beacon through his teenage years. But then they sort of drifted apart, and there were reports of a couple of unhappy marriages, and now she has committed suicide.
Why has she killed herself? The movie does not dignify that sensible question with an answer, and so I will supply one. Katie Chandler killed herself so that she could be cremated and her ashes could be used as a prop in this movie. She leaves a note saying that the ashes should be given to Billy Wyatt (the Harmon character), because he will know what to do with them. And sure enough, he does. He knows that he must return to a place where he and Katie shared a very special moment, and cast her ashes into the wind. He arrives at this conclusion several scenes after the audience does, but you can’t really blame him; after all, we’ve seen these clichés before, and he apparently has not.
The movie is told in a lot of flashbacks, to when Billy was ten, and when he was sixteen, and when he was older, and when he did this, and when he did that, and a copy of the screenplay should be provided to anyone entering the theater, since the casting of the “young” versions of various characters is so confusing, and the flashbacks so inept, that it’s a guessing game most of the time as to what we’re watching, and why. Things are further complicated, unnecessarily, by the addition of a Best Friend character (played by Jonathan Silverman as a youth and Harold Ramis in the present), who has his own adolescent adventures, which get confused with Billy’s.
A disproportionate amount of the film is devoted to the issue of whether one of these friends did, or did not, seduce the would-be prom date of the other one. I mention this because it is symptomatic of the film’s general malaise. Stealing Home was cowritten and codirected by Steven Kampmann and Will Aldis, who based it on some of their own memories. Much of the film suffers from the “you shoulda been there” syndrome, in which scenes feel suspiciously like family legends that should have been left around the dinner table instead of being inflicted on us.
Movies like this possibly get talked into being by the confidence of the collaborators, who are so familiar with the material that they never pause to make it accessible, comprehensible, or interesting to the rest of us. Kampmann and Aldis labored for a time in the 1970s at Second City, and have been associated with such TV shows as WKRP in Cincinnati and Mork and Mindy. Did nothing in their previous experience tip them off that this film was KRP on the Jersey shore?
Stigmata
(Directed by Rupert Wainwright; starring Patricia Arquette, Gabriel Byrne; 1999)
Stigmata is possibly the funniest movie ever made about Catholicism—from a theological point of view. Mainstream audiences will view it as a lurid horror movie, an Exorcist wannabe, but for students of the teachings of the church, it offers endless goofiness. It confuses the phenomenon of stigmata with satanic possession, thinks stigmata can be transmitted by relics, and portrays the Vatican as a conspiracy against miracles.
The story: In Brazil, a holy priest has come into possession of a lost gospel “told in the words of Jesus himself.” In the priest’s church is a bleeding statue of the Virgin Mary. The Vatican dispatches a miracle-buster, Father Andrew (Gabriel Byrne) to investigate. “The blood is warm and human,” he tells his superiors. He wants to crate up the statue and ship it to the Vatican for investigation, but is prevented. (One pictures a vast Vatican storehouse of screen windows and refrigerator doors bearing miraculous images.)
The old priest has died, and in the marketplace an American tourist buys his rosary and mails it as a souvenir to her daughter, Frankie (Patricia Arquette), who is a hairdresser in Pittsburgh. Soon after receiving the rosary, Frankie begins to exhibit the signs of the stigmata—bleeding wounds on the wrists, head, and ankles, where Christ was pierced on the cross. Father Andrew is again dispatched to investigate, reminding me of Illeana Douglas’s priceless advice to her haunted brother in Stir of Echoes: “Find one of those young priests with smoldering good looks to sort of guide you through this.”
The priest decides Frankie cannot have the stigmata, because she is not a believer: “It happens only to deeply religious people.” Psychiatrists quiz her, to no avail (“Is there any stress in your life?” “I cut hair.”). But alarming manifestations continue; Frankie bleeds, glass shatters, there are rumbles on the sound track, she has terrifying visions, and at one point she speaks to the priest in a deeply masculine voice, reminding us of nothing so much as Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
Now there’s the problem. Linda Blair was possessed by an evil spirit. Frankie has been entered by the Holy Spirit. Instead of freaking out in nightclubs and getting blood all over her bathroom, she should be in some sort of religious ecstasy, like Lili Taylor in Household Saints. It is not a dark and fearsome thing to be bathed in the blood of the lamb.
It is also not possible, according to the very best church authorities, to catch the stigmata from a rosary. It is not a germ or a virus. It comes from within. If it didn’t, you could cut up Padre Pio’s bath towels and start your own blood drive. Stigmata does not know, or care, about the theology involved, and thus becomes peculiarly heretical by confusing the effects of being possessed by Jesus and by Beelzebub.
Meanwhile, back at the Vatican, the emotionally constipated Cardinal Houseman (Jonathan Pryce) rigidly opposes any notion that either the statue or Frankie actually bleeds. It’s all a conspiracy, we learn, to suppress the gospel written in the actual words of Christ. The film, a storehouse of absurd theology, has the gall to end with one of those “factual” title cards, in which we learn that the “Gospel of St. Thomas,” said to be in Christ’s words, was denounced by the Vatican in 1945 as a “heresy.” That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be out in paperback if there was a market for it. It does mean the filmmakers have a shaky understanding of the difference between a heresy and a fake.
Does the film have redeeming moments? A few. Arquette is vulnerable and touching in an impossible role. I liked the idea of placing her character within a working-class world; there’s a scene where one of the customers in the beauty shop resists having her hair treated by a woman with bleeding wrists. And Nia Long has fun with the role of Frankie’s best friend; when your pal starts bleeding and hallucinating, it’s obviously time for her to get out of the house and hit the clubs.
Stigmata has generated outrage in some Catholic circles. I don’t know why. It provides a valuable recruiting service by suggesting to the masses that the church is the place to go for real miracles and supernatural manifestations. It is difficult to imagine this story involving a Unitarian. First get them in the door. Then start them on the Catechism.
The Story of Us
(Directed by Rob Reiner; starring Bruce Willis, Michelle Pfeiffer; 1999)
Rob Reiner’s The Story of Us is a sad-sack movie about the misery of a married couple (Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer) who fight most of the time. Watching it is like taking a three-day trip on a Greyhound bus with the Bickersons. I leave it to you to guess whether the movie has a happy ending, but what if it does? A movie like this is about what we endure while we’re watching it, not about where it finally arrives.
Meet the Jordans, Ben and Katie. He’s a TV comedy writer, she composes crossword puzzles. They have two kids, Erin and Josh. Their marriage is a war zone: “Argument has become the condition for conversation,” he observes. They fake happiness for the kids. How did they arrive at such pain? It is hard to say; the movie consists of flashbacks to their fights, but their problems are so generic we can’t put a finger on anything.
Gene Siskel used to ask if a movie was as good as a documentary of the same actors having lunch. Watching The Story of Us, I imagined a documentary of the marriage of, say, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. I do not say that to score a cheap point, but because Moore and Willis are spirited and intelligent people who no doubt had interesting fights about real issues, and not insipid fights about sitcom issues.
Example. The movie wants to illustrate Poor Communication. It shows Pfeiffer at home, where the washing machine is spewing suds all over the room and the kids are fighting. Willis calls her from outside their old apartment building, which is being torn down. He tells her the wrecking ball has just taken out their bedroom. She doesn’t pay attention. His feelings are hurt.
The Marriage Counselor is in: She should shout, “The washer just exploded!” And he should say, “Catch you later!” Another marriage saved. Oh, and if I were her I’d turn off the power to the washing machine.
The movie is filled with lame and contrived “colorful” dialogue. Reiner, who plays a friend of the husband, gives him a long explanation of why appearances deceive. “We do not possess butts,” he says, “but merely fleshy parts at the top of our legs.” Whoa! Later there is a restaurant scene in which Willis screams angrily in a unsuccessful (indeed, melancholy) attempt to rip off Meg Ryan’s famous restaurant orgasm in Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally. At the end of his tirade, Willis jumps up and tells Reiner what he can “shove up the tops of your legs!”
Doesn’t work, because (a) he’s too angry to think up or stop for a punch line, (b) the line isn’t funny, and (c) the setup wasn’t funny either, because the concept isn’t funny. Oh, and the scene ends with Reiner doing a double-take directly into the camera. How many ways can one scene be mishandled?
Who thought this movie would be entertaining? The same person who thinks we need more dialogue about why guys do the wrong thing with rolls of toilet paper. And who thinks the misery of this film can be repaired by a showboat monologue at the end that’s well delivered by Pfeiffer, but reads like an audition scene?
There is a famous short story about an unhappy couple, and about what happens when it comes time to tell their children they’re getting a divorce. It is called Separating, by John Updike. Read it to understand how much The Story of Us does not reach for or even guess.
Striking Distance
(Directed by Rowdy Herrington; starring Bruce Willis, Sarah Jessica Parker; 1993)
Striking Distance is an exhausted reassembly of bits and pieces from all the other movies that are more or less exactly like this one. The credits say “written by Rowdy Herrington and Martin Kaplan,” but the right word would have been “anthologized.” How does it recycle its betters? Let us count the ways:
1. It is about an outspoken Pittsburgh cop (Bruce Willis), who gets in trouble by testifying against his partner in a police brutality case.
2. A serial killer is at work in the city.
3. The cop and his dad, also a cop, are on their way to the policemen’s ball when they get involved in a chase to capture the serial killer suspect, and the dad is killed.
4. “The killer must be a cop,” Willis says on TV, because of the way the guy drives and thinks.
5. His uncle (Dennis Farina) is on the force, and so are two of his sons, Willis’s cousins.
6. There is a scene on a bridge where Willis tries to talk one of the nephews out of leaping to his death. The dialogue is amazingly familiar.
7. Willis is demoted, and assigned to the River Rescue Squad, where he remains determined to catch the serial killer (who helpfully starts dumping bodies in the river where Willis can find them).
8. Willis is assigned a new partner (Sarah Jessica Parker). She is a woman. They don’t get along at first. Then they fall in love. Four durable clichés in a row. Good going.
9. Suspicion falls on Willis: Perhaps he is the serial killer?
10. One nephew goes to California, and the killings stop. Then he returns from California, and the killings resume. As veterans of this genre, we know with a certainty that this nephew is not the killer.
And so on, and on, until the ending, which cheats, indicating that all the clues in the story were simply inserted to jerk us around.
I wouldn’t really mind the clichés and the tired old material so much, if the filmmakers had brought energy or a sense of style to the material. A good singer can make an old song new. But Striking Distance seems unconvinced of its own worth. It’s a tired, defeated picture, in which no one seems to love what they’re doing, unless maybe it’s a few of the character actors, like Farina and John Mahoney (as the dad), who have scenes they seem to relish.
Want to write a screenplay? Why not start with these elements: A rebel cop stirs up trouble and is disciplined, but determines to stay on the trail of a serial killer, while meanwhile he is assigned a partner that first he hates and then he likes, while the killer cleverly tries to frame him. Add several chase scenes and a deadly confrontation in which all of the key characters magically congregate at the same time.
Just because it’s been done before doesn’t mean it can’t be done again. And better. Believe me.
Stuart Little
(Directed by Rob Minkoff; starring Geena Davis, Hugh Laurie; 1999)
Any other consideration about Stuart Little must take second place to the fact that it is about a nice family that adopts a mouse. Yes, a mouse, in all dimensions and particulars, albeit a mouse with a cute little sports coat and an earnest way of expressing himself in piping English. Stuart is about two inches long, maybe a little longer. Early in the film Smokey, the family cat, tries to eat him, but is forced to spit him up, damp but no worse for wear.
I once read the book by E. B. White on which this story is founded. The peculiar thing about the book is that Stuart, in the imagination of the reader, swells until he occupies as much psychic space as any of the other characters. He is a mouse, but his dialogue runs from margin to margin just like the words of the humans, and his needs and fears are as great. Our intelligence tells us Stuart is a mouse, but our imagination makes him into a full-size literary character.
In the book, Stuart works just fine as a character. But movies are an unforgivably literal medium, and the fact is, no live-action movie about Stuart Little can possibly work, because he is so much smaller than everyone else!
Stuart is definitely a mouse. He is very, very small. There is something pathetic about a scene where his new parents (Geena Davis and Hugh Laurie) tuck him in at bedtime. It doesn’t matter how much they love him or how happy he is to be in this new home; all we can think about is how he hardly needs even the hem of his blanket. All through the movie I kept cringing at the terrible things that could happen to the family’s miniature son. It didn’t help that a few days earlier I’d seen The Green Mile in which an equally cute and lovable mouse was stamped on by a sadist, and squished.
The movie of course puts Stuart through many adventures and confronts him with tragic misunderstandings. He is provided with a new wardrobe and a tiny red convertible sportster to race around in, and is chased through Central Park by hungry cats. That sort of thing.
My mind reeled back to last year’s grotesque family “comedy” named Jack Frost. That was the film in which a family’s father dies and is reincarnated as a snowman. Now that is an amazing thing. If your dad came back as a snowman after being dead for a year, what would you ask him? Perhaps, is there an afterlife? Or, what is heaven like? Or—why a snowman? But no sooner does the snowman in Jack Frost appear than it is harnessed to a desperately banal plot about snowball fights at the high school.
Stuart Little is not anywhere near as bad as Jack Frost (it is twice as good—two stars instead of one). But it has the same problem: The fact of its hero upstages anything the plot can possibly come up with. A two-inch talking humanoid mouse upstages roadsters, cats, little brothers, everything. I tried imagining a movie that would deal seriously and curiously with an intelligent and polite child that looked like a mouse. Such a movie would have to be codirected by Tim Burton and David Lynch.
I am reminded of the old man who finds a frog in the road. “Kiss me,” says the frog,” and I will turn into a beautiful princess.” The man puts the frog in his pocket. “Didn’t you hear my offer?” asks the frog in a muffled voice. “I heard it,” the old man says, “but frankly, at my age, I’d rather have a talking frog.” My guess is that the makers of Stuart Little might not understand the point of this story.
Switchblade Sisters
(Directed by Jack Hill; starring Robbie Lee, Joanne Nail; 1975)
Sooner or later, every girl’s got to find out—the only thing a man’s got below his belt is clay feet.—Switchblade Sisters
Insights like that were big in the exploitation movies of the 1970s. The dialogue clanked along from one dumb profundity to another, and the sentiments were as pious as political speeches. One of the characters in Switchblade Sisters (1975) quotes approvingly from Mao’s Little Red Book, although enlightenment among the sisters is not universal: After the leader of a boy gang rapes a new member of a girl gang, he asks, “You all right? You were asking for it.” She is inclined to agree.
Switchblade Sisters is one of the countless films viewed by Quentin Tarantino during his now-legendary employment at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, California (the store owner should get a finder’s fee based on QT’s subsequent career). Now Tarantino has started a division of Miramax named Rolling Thunder Pictures to rerelease some of his discoveries. After Switchblade Sisters we are promised Mighty Peking Man (1977), the 1964 Italian horror film Blood and Black Lace, and the 1973 blaxploitation epic Detroit 9000.
