Half-Assed Movie Reviews

March 28, 2009:  Police Academy

Why, when I tell people I recently watched Police Academy, do I feel like I need to explain myself?  The first Police Academy movie, released in 1984, was a decent comedy, with a suitably ridiculous plot device and a bunch of colourful characters who strayed charmingly into the territory of actual caricatures.  The descent of the series through six sequels is a whole other story and I can’t imagine that I’ll revisit those films anytime soon, but the original is a bona fide 1980s comedy classic.

The movie is set at a police training academy, following a mayoral decree that all willing applicants must be accepted into the academy.  With the removal of the usual restrictions on new recruits based on physical size and capability and mental competence, the doors are flung wide open for the goofiest and most inappropriate police officers possible.  Their de facto leader, Mahoney (played by Steve Guttenberg), is a small-time criminal who is sentenced to go to the academy and figures it will be trivial to get kicked out, but the new policy prevents that and leaves him stuck where he is, with the ragtag bunch of tall, short, fat, skinny, smart and stupid recruits.

It’s been many years since I last saw this film.  The one thing which really struck me this time about Police Academy was how episodic the structure was, with heavy emphasis on slapstick.  The thing is, though, the episodic pacing really seems to suit the movie, since any little comedy bit plays out naturally and they move on to the next thing.  The gags generally don’t feel like they are being pushed too far – some of them last a few minutes, others only 30 seconds, and that’s fine.

Iconic performances abound, though mostly not from anyone who became big stars outside the franchise.  Steve Guttenberg had a middling 1980s comedy career but in people’s minds he is mostly associated with the Police Academy films (he was in the first four of the seven which were made).  Kim Cattrall is probably the biggest eventual star, with a minor role here as a romantic interest, but she went on to middling acting success through the 1980s and 1990s before hitting her big breakout with Sex and the City in the late 1990s.  G. W. Bailey as the smarmy and tortured Lieutenant Harris is even more strongly associated with only these films.  Bubba Smith as the massively tall Hightower, Michael Winslow as the strange noisemaker Jones, Leslie Easterbrook as the busty Sgt. Callahan, David Graf as the militant Tackleberry, and Marion Ramsay as the stout and feisty Hooks, are all indelible characters first realized in this kickoff film of the franchise, and I hope for their sake that half a dozen films generated enough income for them to coast through the rest of their careers.

The video looked decent on this DVD edition of the film, if somewhat grainy.  The overall aesthetic struck me as being a couple of years older than the movie, more like 1982, in clothing and hairstyles.  As far as I know, there was no significant delay between shooting and release of the film, so maybe I’m just labouring under the illusion that 1984 was more significantly removed from the early 1980s, stylistically, than it actually was.  But comparing with similar films from the same year (Ghostbusters; Gremlins), it seems to me that by 1984 the style really had moved beyond the feathered haircuts and really ugly jeans (not to mention the really ugly cars) more prominent 4-5 years earlier.

Police Academy earns a clear R-rating, with nudity and some swearing, which got me to wondering how old I was when I first saw it.  I can’t imagine that it was too long after it was out on video, meaning I was probably around 11 or 12.  I’m glad I got in just under the wire to grow up in the home video generation, and not be “restricted” from seeing such “adult” fare until I was 18.  It’s worth noting that none of the later Police Academy films were R-rated, presumably because the natural target audience of teenagers was far more lucrative.  That trend of PG-13-ifying crude humour snowballed and continues to this day, with so-called “horror” movies regularly getting PG-13 ratings, and with Judd Apatow having only just in the past few years reintroduced the moviegoing masses to the fact that comedies don’t have to be toned down for children.

Police Academy stands respectably in the canon of 1980s movie comedies, and while not perhaps as enduring a classic as Ghostbusters (1984) or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), and indeed not as deserving, it does remain quite watchable as a coarse slapstick reminder of movie comedy days gone by.

Solid kickoff to an embarrassing franchise.

March 21, 2009:  Flash of Genius

I had heard of this film when it had an incredibly brief theatrical run last fall, and was very interested since it’s about cars and engineers, and I’m an engineer with an interest in cars.  It’s the true story of an inventor in the early 1970s (Bob Kearns, played by Greg Kinnear) who solves a problem which has kept Detroit engineers stymied for years – intermittent windshield wipers on cars.  In this day and age of computer-controlled everything in cars, where you just program whatever you like and put in switches to control things, it’s hard to comprehend that it was not even 40 years ago that such a mechanism had to be controlled by just the right combination of capacitors, resistors, transistors and other solid-state components, and be resistant to temperature and humidity fluctuations from weather and engine heat, and behave properly the whole time.  And that’s just controlling the windshield wipers.  It makes you realize why there weren’t very many features on older cars!

Anyway, we have Greg Kinnear playing this earnest inventor, trying to go about the marketing of his solution the right way by working with a partner who is a friend in the automotive supply business, but wanting to manufacture the parts himself because that’s what he’s always wanted to do.  The car companies show interest initially but then give him the runaround, and somehow shortly afterwards magically come up with a solution themselves.

The overall arc of dramatic tension comes from the battle with the car companies over compensation for an allegedly stolen idea.  However, significant time is devoted to the growing obsession of our keen inventor and how the desire to put things right alienates him from his wife and children over the years, and we really have to wonder whether it’s all worthwhile.  Zodiac (2007) covered similar territory as a backdrop to that film’s main story of trying to track down a serial killer.  Flash of Genius is able to provide us with some reward in this area, however, as Kearns’ children, years later and towards the end of the court proceedings, end up bonding with their father as they help him with research, and he leaves to them the decision about whether to take a huge settlement offered by Ford, or to take their chances in court to hear an official judgment that they were wronged.  He knows by this point that he has caused great pain to those he loves and he can’t take that back, but he can include them in the fight and give them ownership in the outcome, which is all they really wanted in the first place.

Unfortunately, all of this means that the movie follows a fairly predictable pattern, as we know that our hero needs to “win” in some fashion in the end.  The writer takes a similar approach to that taken in A Few Good Men, with what appears to be a good settlement available before taking changes on a court judgment, but having the underdog going to trial on principle instead, and coming out a winner in the end but not without some compromise.  The movie is passable, with a story which is engrossing in its way but not particularly well done, and undeniably formulaic.

Partially realized potential.  Worth a rental.

March 13, 2009:  W.

Here we come back around to Oliver Stone again.  I’m still stuck at 1999 in my review of all of Stone’s films, and I’ve been stuck there for 2 years now.  What can I say, I’ve been busy.  W. is Stone’s look at the life and career of U.S. President George W. Bush.

The ultra-liberal Stone is not a stranger to Republican president biopics.  Nixon (1995) starred Anthony Hopkins in a fascinating study of the disgraced ex-president.  One might have expected W. to take the form of a fascinating study of a disgraced sitting president, but Stone throws us for a loop by painting a picture which helps us to understand possibly how he came to think how he thinks, and be where he is.  It’s noteworthy that Stone did not write this film, which is uncommon for him.

We are presented with Bush’s life in the form of intercut timelines, switching from past to present to link experiences and lessons from earlier in life with situations he has encountered in his political life.  We get some good insight into how the overbearing pressure from his father, earlier president George H. W. Bush, may have led to rebellious earlier behaviour which continued into the modern era on a far larger scale and with a far greater impact.  Can Bush Junior really be blamed with all of this?  It’s a difficult question.  Of course, it’s competely unknown how much of this material is true and how much is conjecture, but a biopic always needs to walk that line, authorized or not.

The movie was nice and short, which doesn’t always happen with such films, and this is a great strength.  Josh Brolin’s performance as “W” is another in a line of recent roles which have brought him to prominence, including his lead role in No Country for Old Men, and an Oscar-nominated supporting performance last year in Milk.  There is some direct imitation but he puts his own spin on it, not unlike the gruff performance by Hopkins in Nixon – not directly imitating but capturing the essentials of the personality.  Richard Dreyfuss makes a great Dick Cheney, although Thandie Newton is little more than a caricature as Condoleezza Rice.  With a box office gross almost exactly matching its $25M budget, the film will probably just pay for itself on home video, but didn’t exactly inspire the moviegoing public.

W. is not saddled with the usual visual tics and thematic habits we usually see from Oliver Stone, making it much more accessible to the general audience.  It doesn’t quite go so far as to make the widely hated George W. Bush sympathetic, but takes the approach of ensuring we understand that everyone has a human side.  I applaud the intent and the result.  It’s more light entertainment than a heavy exercise in contemplation, but recommended.

About-face from expectations.  Works well.

February 27, 2009:  Mary Poppins

Ah, Mary Poppins (1964).  The one-two punch of this and The Sound of Music the following year brought Julie Andrews to well-deserved stardom like a rocket, and gave children and adults alike two timeless classic films about singing nannies.  But Mary Poppins was the one who could fly.

I had seen Mary Poppins before, but I can’t guarantee that I had seen it within the past 25 years.  I’ve always had the impression that it rises above the usual middling Disney pap from the 1960s (director Robert Stevenson was also associated with the Herbie movies, Son of Flubber, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and The AbsentMinded Professor), but I’m not so sure anymore.  To be fair, there are great performances by Julie Andrews and particularly Dick Van Dyke, but they are strait-jacketed to a certain extent by the contrived plot.  It seems to be just a goofy story built to allow a bunch of singing, which generally doesn’t appeal to me.  It’s good for the kids, but I can do without it.

This is a tale of parents and their two children in 1910 England.  The kids keep running their nannies ragged, and the father has put out a “help wanted” ad to hire yet another poor soul to look after them.  Mary Poppins, possibly with the aid of some magic, ends up winning the job and while she is strict and no-nonsense when it comes to following the rules, the kids quickly take a shine to her as she shows them experiences, again possibly with the aid of some magic, which no other nanny has ever shown them before.  What is the purpose of Mary Poppins?  Well, the father, a dull banker, eventually comes to appreciate the good things in life, so one might assume that was the point, but it was apparently was not that way in the book.

(The film is based on a series of books which had been read by my wife and son who accompanied me in this viewing, so I got the always-appreciated running commentary about things which were “not in the book”.)

As mentioned earlier, Dick Van Dyke adds a lot to this.  I really liked his energetic goofiness, and he really seems to connect with the kids.  Julie Andrews is charming in her way, but her strict nanny behaviour, interspersed with the contrasting whimsical journeys on which she takes the children, somehow didn’t click with me.  In thinking about this, I realized that I couldn’t tell whether she was really fun or really strict or actually struggling herself to figure out which she is.  The third act of the film hints at this inner conflict, as she has to leave but maybe doesn’t really want to.  The movie has a LOT of songs, but most of them are well-placed, and many of them are as well-known as those in The Sound of Music, such as Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and A Spoonful of Sugar.  Julie Andrews, with her tremendous voice, good looks and enigmatic performance, won her a Best Actress Oscar for this star-making turn which has led to a career in which she has pushed limits and really been able to do her own thing.

I had for some reason thought that Mary Poppins was shot in Super Panavision 70 or one of the other large formats used in the 1960s for the big epics, so I was surprised to see the 1.66:1 aspect ratio when we started watching, but this was the typical European aspect ratio at the time and was fine once I got used to it.  I had thought that the film might benefit from the epic scale of the wider field, but as I’ve considered it, it seems that maybe Mary Poppins is indeed better suited to the more intimate frame of the narrower field.

Mary Poppins is a product of the moviegoing appetites of its time, and that has to be considered.  There are good songs, unique characters, and maybe some moral lessons mixed in, but it’s from an era when movies for kids weren’t so carefully constructed as to fully entertain adults as well.  It deserves its classic status, but that doesn’t mean I need to see it more often than every quarter-century.

Unquestionable classic, but of its time.

February 16, 2009:  Trouble the Water

Trouble the Water was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar for 2008.  It is primarily about the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.  It did not win the Oscar, which was pretty much guaranteed to go to the significantly superior Man on Wire.

Trouble the Water centres on a couple, Kim and Scott, who videotaped the lead-up to the hurricane, and were trapped in their attic throughout.  They return to the area a couple of weeks later when the water levels have gone down, and they document the destruction in New Orleans.  We then follow them in through several months as they eventually leave for Memphis to try and start over, and end up returning to the only place where they really feel comfortable, where they feel like they are home.

Kim turns out to be a singer (quite a talented one, once we eventually see her in action).  They use music to capture their feelings of devastation, the title song for the film being performed by the leading lady, and they end up creating a record label once they return home several months after Katrina.

We are close witnesses to a complicated set of emotions, as our protagonists return shortly after the hurricane to witness the destruction and chaos.  They simply cannot believe that this place which is so familiar to them can have changed so completely, and be so completely uninhabitable now.  It’s difficult watching how people were ignored and officials were disorganized and unhelpful, most distressingly the staff at a local military base who refuse to let anyone on the property even though they have plenty of empty barracks which could provide safe and dry temporary housing for hundreds of people.  While many of these people being refused were frankly kind of annoying, they still should have been properly cared for.  People flee the state and try to re-establish themselves by staying temporarily with friends or relatives in far-flung areas, but it’s not realistic to expect everyone to simply uproot and try to settle in an unfamiliar city.  The racial question, so commonly discussed by observers and pundits during the long aftermath of the event, is asked but never really addressed – the protagonists are black, and are keenly aware that their race and their lack of economic clout must be factors in the botched response to the disaster.

One of the most devastating scenes in the movie is an interview with a travel agent, who in her bright and airy office shows a videotape promoting New Orleans.  Chillingly, she illustrates how the rest of the world and even the rest of America didn’t really care what happened in New Orleans, as long as the tourist area and everything there seemed to be untouched and unchanged.  Even now, years later, many areas of New Orleans still aren’t habitable, and the remnants of houses destroyed by the hurricane or demolished since are still scattered around everywhere, often in the middle of neighbourhoods where some of the residents have returned and are trying to push on with their lives.  But the French Quarter is up and running as it always was (largely due to this oldest part of the city having been built on a viable above-sea-level area, but that’s a whole other argument).

Harrowing though the scenes were, and tragic as the stories are, I didn’t find that this documentary really connected with me.  The characters weren’t generally folks I could identify with individually, although I feel guilty citing that as a reason I had difficulty with the film, since the tragedy which befell the people of New Orleans transcends any personal connection.  I had perhaps hoped for more of an overview rather than the personal stories, since larger-scale approaches tend to resonate better with me when watching documentaries.

Too real, or not real enough?