I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, page 5
Signed, Dennis Boy
Dear Mr. Boy: Ah, but those Amazons were Greek; these Amazons live someplace in Asia Minor. That is all the more puzzling because none of them is Asian and only three are minors. The drinking age was well below nineteen at that time in history, however, you will be glad to learn.
The Amazons and their captives are also interesting because, if I read lips right, they spoke Italian dubbed into English. Many historians are of the opinion that neither language existed then, but American-International, the distributor, may be onto something. One thing is for sure: No movie in the last twenty years has been dubbed more ineptly. No, not even Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster. In one scene, a man has his head split open with a ferocious blow from a sword. On the screen we see his lips opening in an anguished scream. On the sound track we hear him say, in English: “Oh, no!” It is possible to respect his opinion while questioning his sincerity.
Another problem in the movie is that the actors who were hired to dub it into English have a hard time not laughing. There was one speech that went something like: “Zeno, surely you agree that no matter what Ilio, Antiope, Medio, Eraglia, and Sinade say, Valeria is right!”
An additional difficulty is that most of the pretty girls in the movie are Amazons. No wonder the men of the village will not fight to resist capture. It’s hard to be sure exactly when the movie takes place; there are spears and bows and arrows and swords, which suggests early times, but then again all of the women on both sides are fresh from the hair dryer. They also employ impressive advances in the art of brassiere design.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Battle of the Amazons is that it was released only four weeks before the scheduled opening of The Amazons, a big-budget epic directed by Terence Young, who made some James Bond pictures.
Sometimes a schlock picture will be rushed in to exploit the publicity of an expensive movie, but here’s the funny thing: both movies are from American-International, which by ripping itself off solidifies its reputation as the best exploitation outfit in the business. I am waiting confidently for the first Kung-Fu Amazon movie. No, wait: One’s due before long. It’s called Red Hot China Doll, which used to be the name of an interesting Szechwan-style chicken dish served in a nice little place on Clark Street.
Beautician and the Beast
(Directed by Ken Kwapis; starring Fran Drescher, Timothy Dalton; 1997)
Fran Drescher is a taste I have not acquired, but I concede that one could acquire it. It would help if she made a silent film. Her speaking voice is like having earwax removed with a small dental drill. And yet, doggone it, there’s something lovable about her. I picture her making the coffee at Stuart Smalley’s AA meetings, or doing the ringside announcements for pro wrestling.
You have seen her on The Nanny and on countless talk shows. Most talk-show guests say something and then laugh, so you know it’s supposed to be funny. She laughs, and then says something, so you know it was supposed to be a laugh and not a respiratory emergency. Not every role would be suitable for her. I cannot visualize her, for example, in The English Patient, saying “Promise you’ll come back for me.” Or as Sheriff Marge Gunderson in Fargo, saying, “And I guess that was your accomplice in the woodchipper.”
Beautician and the Beast contains a role that seems to have been whipped up out of two parts of Drescher’s public persona and one part of nothing else. She plays Joy Miller, who teaches beauty secrets in a Queens night school. After a smoking mishap leads to a wig fire and the school burns down, she is hailed on the front pages as a heroine (for saving the lab rats), and approached by a representative of the obscure central European nation of Slovetzia.
That nation has recently emerged from communism into a dictatorship controlled by Boris Pochenko (Timothy Dalton), a despot who wants to soften his image and thinks maybe importing an American tutor for his children might help. (Pochenko is also the name of the European exile who is killed at the beginning of Shadow Conspiracy, but I cannot think of anything to say about this coincidence, other than that they are both named after a popular Japanese pinball game.) Dalton plays the role as if he had somehow found himself the villain in a James Bond film instead of the hero.
Slovetzia is not an advanced nation. There are sheep on the runway of the national airport. Pochenko lives in a castle possibly mortgaged from Young Frankenstein. Joy makes a bad first impression, when she is late for her official welcoming ceremony because she hasn’t finished her hair and nails.
The dictator (known to his subjects as the “Beast for Life”) has three children, who have grown restive under his iron fist while nevertheless managing to speak in American accents after their first few scenes. The daughter is unhappy about her approaching arranged marriage. The son bites his nails. “Don’t do that!” Joy tells him. “Do you want to grow a hand in your stomach?”
Joy’s wardrobe runs toward day-glo stretch pants and pullover blouses. She is sublimely indifferent to the veiled threats of Pochenko, so he tries unveiled ones, which she tut-tuts away. Meanwhile, she has the castle running like a catering kitchen, and is able to save precious currency reserves by planning a diplomatic reception around frozen Chung King egg rolls.
The trajectory of this story is clear from its title. The beautician will get the beast, and in the subplot Juliet will get her Romeo. The direction is by Ken Kwapis, whose He She, She Said (1992) is invaluable for getting you from John Tesh to the Addams Family in the Kevin Bacon game. Kwapis tries to build suspense where none can possibly exist, which is always an annoyance; is it a crime for a movie to know as much about its story as the audience does?
But there are some genuine laughs here and there, and a certain charm emanates from Fran Drescher, who I suspect is easier to stand in real life than she lets on in her acting. And we are not disappointed in our wait for the Obligatory Transformational Entrance Scene, which all movies like this lead up to. After being an ugly duckling for three-quarters of the movie, the heroine turns up at the top of a staircase looking regal and beautiful, and descends while trying to keep one of those “are they looking at poor little me?” looks on her face. Beautician and the Beast made me laugh, but each laugh was an island, entire onto itself. They didn’t tie together into anything very interesting. Drescher never really seems to be interacting with the other characters. Like Mae West or Groucho Marx, she eyeballs the stiffs while they’re talking, and then delivers her zingers. We don’t care about her character because we never feel she’s really uncertain, insecure, or vulnerable. Here’s a woman who will never grow hands in her stomach.
Beethoven’s 2nd
(Directed by Rod Daniel; starring Charles Grodin, Bonnie Hunt, Debi Mazar; 1993)
There is a scene in Beethoven’s 2nd in which Beethoven, who is a large St. Bernard dog, takes his girlfriend Missy, also a large St. Bernard, to a drive-in theater for the movies. They sit on a hill above the parking lot, where they have a good view of the screen. This much I was prepared to believe. Some dogs are very clever. But when Beethoven came back with a box of popcorn for Missy, I realized these were not ordinary dogs but two of amazing intelligence, and when it was revealed that Missy got pregnant later that night, I found myself asking if they’d never heard of taking precautions.
In due time Missy’s four puppies are born into a world filled with human problems. The central tragedy is that Beethoven and his lady love have been separated. Beethoven of course lives with a large and loving family, the Newtons. But Missy has been dognapped from her loving owner by his bitter estranged wife, a woman who in appearance and behavior resembles the witch in Snow White.
The three Newton kids manage to rescue and cherish the puppies, after winning over their dad (the priceless Charles Grodin, who must have charged a high one for appearing in this). Mom (merry-faced Bonnie Hunt) of course loves the pups at first sight. And then the screenplay provides a vacation trip to a lake, where Missy’s evil dognapper (Debi Mazar) and her goon boyfriend (Chris Penn) are also visiting.
That sets up the entirely predictable ending, in which the evil villains attempt a puppynapping. It also sets up a scene so unsavory that it has no place in a movie rated PG. The oldest Newton girl, Ryce (Nicholle Tom) is trapped in a locked bedroom by a slick boy she knows from the city. “Ummm,” he says, dangling the keys and advancing on her, “this is gonna be great!” Luckily Beethoven saves the day before a sexual assault takes place, but were the filmmakers so desperate they could think of no scene more appropriate for a family movie?
The dogs are of course cute. All St. Bernards are cute. But their best features are not their eyes, which tend to be small, red, and runny—something director Rod Daniel should have considered before shooting so many soulful close-ups of Beethoven, who looks like he needs doggy Visine.
One of the film’s genuine blessings is that we do not hear the dog’s thoughts, although we do get several songs on the sound track that reflect their thinking. Missy and Beethoven are first smitten with each other while Dolly Parton and James Ingram sing “The Day I Fall in Love,” and I’m telling you, there wasn’t a dry face on the screen, mostly because the dogs were licking each other.
This movie has one clear reason for being: The success of the original Beethoven, which grossed something like $70 million. That film was no masterpiece, but it made good use of the adorable Beethoven, and in Charles Grodin it had a splendid comic actor who made the most of his role as a grumpy dad who didn’t want a dog causing havoc around the house. This time, with Grodin elevated to an innocuous role and Debi Mazur acting as if she were being paid by the snarl, it’s up to the dogs. You know you’re in trouble when the heroes of a comedy spend more time swapping spit than one-liners.
The Believers
(Directed by John Schlesinger; starring Martin Sheen, Helen Shaver, Robert Loggia; 1987)
Here’s another one of those movies where a Caribbean voodoo cult wants to practice a blood sacrifice using the child of a Manhattan psychiatrist. Can’t they think of anything new to make a movie about? I’m getting tired of the dingy tenements in Spanish Harlem with the blood-soaked chicken feathers on the floor, and the scenes where the shrink realizes he needs a witch doctor to save his child.
Most religious movies are about peace and love and friendship, and how one day all of humanity is going to hold hands and be brother and sister. Movies about Caribbean religions are always about guys with blank eyes who stare at you for ten seconds and you’re volunteering to wring the chickens’ necks yourself.
I am as ignorant as most people on the facts about such religions, including the ancient Cuban cult in The Believers, which keeps its diabolical gods a secret by disguising them as Catholic saints. I would like to imagine that most Caribbean religions, like most religions everywhere, are a comfort to their believers, and hold up a prospect of a saner, more joyous life.
I would like to believe that, but the movies give me little reason to. Every voodoo movie ever made has depicted bloodthirsty cults of savagely sadistic murderers, vengefully thirsting for innocent blood. There has been a lot in the papers recently about “Arab-bashing,” the practice of creating strongly negative stereotypes of Arabs on TV and in the movies. I’m in agreement. But what about voodoo-bashing? Isn’t it just as prejudicial?
In The Believers, which is an awesomely half-witted movie, Martin Sheen plays a psychiatrist whose wife is electrocuted by touching the coffeemaker while standing barefoot in a pool of spilled milk. This event has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story. It’s simply a pretitle sequence. So much for the wife.
After Sheen and his young son start anew in Manhattan, they attract the attention of a Cuban cult that sacrifices children in order to gain all sorts of fringe benefits, such as success, a better mental attitude, and so on. Sheen has these benefits explained to him by an old friend who secretly is a convert, but demurs at the opportunity of sacrificing his own child.
Meanwhile, he has a tempestuous pre–AIDS-era affair with his gorgeous landlady (Helen Shaver), while a police lieutenant (Robert Loggia) investigates a series of child killings. (One of Loggia’s big scenes involves missing his coffee cup with the little plastic container of cream, so that Sheen can stare at the puddle on the desk and have a flashback to his wife’s death.)
This is one of those movies that use the paraphernalia of expertise instead of the expertise itself. “Are you a Catholic?” people keep asking Sheen, who is, and there’s the implication that his church affiliation somehow will protect him or endanger him—it’s not clear which. There are lots of shots of ashes and blood and weird little voodoo charms, but no real explanations of what’s going on—possibly because it doesn’t matter. The Believers should be ashamed of itself.
Ben
(Directed by Phil Karlson; starring Joseph Campanella, Meredith Baxter; 1972)
I wonder how Ben learned English. I seem to recall from Willard, last summer’s big rat movie, that Willard trained Ben to heel, beg, roll over, play dead, and sic Ernest Borgnine. Not bad for a rat. But when did Ben learn English? It takes Berlitz six weeks of intensive training to get a French businessman to the point where he can proposition an American girl, and here’s Ben learning instinctively.
Ben also talks in his new movie. It’s hard to understand what he says, however, because all he does is squeak in various octaves. He sounds like Rubber Ducky being goosed. The movie’s hero is Danny, an eight-year-old with a heart condition. Danny loves Ben. Danny apparently understands Rubber Ducky talk, too, maybe because he’s a graduate of Sesame Street. Do you ever get the feeling that when Earth is finally conquered, it won’t be by rats but by tiny, beady-eyed, preschool superintelligences who attack us with nuclear alphabets?
Ben and his friends head for the sewers and plan their assault on mankind. This involves being thrown through the air by invisible animal trainers, so that they land onscreen and scare hell out of sewer workers. Everyone knows this is nonsense. If Art Carney could go down in the sewers day after day and fearlessly face alligators, what’s a few rats?
Doesn’t matter, though. This isn’t a thriller but a geek movie. In a thriller, we’re supposed to be scared by some awesome menace to mankind—the Green Blob maybe, or Bigfoot, or the Invincible Squid and his implacable enemy, red wine sauce. But in a geek movie, the whole idea is to be disgusted because the actors have rats all over them.
You know what a geek is, or at least you do if you grew up near a county fairgrounds like I did. He’s the guy who bites the head off a living chicken. I used to hate the geek show, but I sat through it manfully because that was a test of your courage. If you passed it, you got to pay the extra quarter and see the lady who was tattooed all over. Also the Half-Man, Half-Woman, who, to my intense disappointment, turned out to be the wrong half of each.
Besieged
(Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci; starring Thandie Newton, David Thewlis; 1999)
Bernardo Bertolucci’s Besieged is a movie about whether two people with nothing in common, who have no meaningful conversations, will have sex—even if that means dismissing everything we have learned about the woman. It is also about whether we will see her breasts. How can a director of such sophistication, in a film of such stylistic grace, tell such a shallow and evasive story?
But wait. The film also involves race, politics, and culture, and reduces them all to convenient plot points. The social values in this movie would not have been surprising in a film made forty years ago, but to see them seriously proposed today is astonishing. In a hasty moment I described the film as “racist,” but it is not that so much as thoughtless, and lacking in all empathy for its African characters, whose real feelings are at the mercy of the plot’s sexual desires.
The film opens in Africa, with an old singer chanting a dirge under a tree. We see crippled children. A teacher in a schoolroom tries to lead his students, but troops burst in and drag him away. The young African woman Shandurai (Thandie Newton) sees this. The teacher is her husband. She wets herself. So much for the setup. The husband will never be given any weight or dimension.
Cut to Rome, where Shandurai is a medical student, employed as a maid in the house of Mr. Kinsky (David Thewlis). He will always remain “Mr. Kinsky” to her, even in a love note. He is a sardonic genius who plays beautifully upon the piano, and occupies a vast apartment given him by his aunt and hung with rich tapestries and works of art. Given the size and location of the apartment she was a very rich aunt indeed. The maid’s quarters are spacious enough for a boutique, and Mr. Kinsky’s rooms are reached by a spiral staircase to three or four levels.
Thandie Newton is a beautiful woman. She is photographed by Bertolucci in ways that make her beauty the subject of the shots. There’s a soft-core undertone here: She does housework, the upper curves of her breasts swelling above her blouse. Little wisps of sweaty hair fall down in front of those wonderful eyes. There is a montage where she vacuums and Mr. Kinsky plays—a duet for piano and Hoover.
It is a big house for two people, very silent, and they move around it like stalkers. One day she drops a cleaning rag down the spiral staircase and it lands on Mr. Kinsky’s head. He looks up. She looks down. Mr. Kinsky decides he loves her. There is a struggle. “Marry me! I’ll do anything to make you love me!” She throws him a curve: “You get my husband out of jail!”
He didn’t know she was married. Other things divide them, including their different tastes in music. He performs the classics, but one day plays rhythmic African rhythms for her. She smiles gratefully, in a reaction shot of such startling falseness that the editor should never have permitted it. Later Shandurai has a speech where she says how brave, how courageous, her husband is. Eventually we gather that Mr. Kinsky is selling his possessions to finance the legal defense of the husband. Even the piano goes.
