Comedy Isn't Pretty: Steve Martin's Fall From Funny

The DVD release of CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN this week has been a huge seller. My guess is that it was an impulse buy Dad bought for the kids while picking up MATRIX REVOLUTIONS. Whatever the case, CHEAPER is a horribly unfunny family film that will surely soon collect dust as its target audience moves quickly on.

Kind of like Martin's last film, BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE, which was an exercise in commercial blandness despite some funny moments courtesy of Eugene Levy, CHEAPER is throwaway family fluff that further removes Martin from his former famous funniness.

There is possible redemption ahead with the prospect of Martin's excellent book Shopgirl's film adaptation but unfortunately that's overshadowed by the news that he is set to start filming a new PINK PANTHER movie next month. That news is met with much concern and doubt from me.

Very few, myself included think it is a good idea to try to revive a series that is over 20 years dead with 3 failed awful attempts to revive it since long buried. Maybe Martin can pull off playing the famous part of Inspector Clouseau defined by the late great Peter Sellers (which was #67 on Premiere's Greatest Movie Characters list in their latest issue, Martin's Navin Johnson, a.k.a. THE JERK is #66 interestingly) but judging by his strained slapstick work and the forced physical comedy that dominates CHEAPER I wouldn't put money on it.

In my estimation the last truly good Steve Martin comedy was BOWFINGER. It had a good premise: aspiring filmmaker scams a cheapie sc-fi movie out of a actor (Eddie Murphy) who doesn't know he's being filmed. It had a funny screenplay with moments like when starlet Heather Graham flirtaciously offers - "I love Smashing Pumpkins" and Martin's Bowfinger excitedly responds - "I love to do that!" And it has a good nature to it even with the bit about the self-promoting lesbian that Graham's character becomes which made everyone think Martin was taking a swipe at former lover Anne Heche.

But to get to that comic gem though we had to suffer through SGT.BILKO, THE OUT OF TOWNERS, and MIXED NUTS. Hiding behind those flops was a little seen David Mamet movie THE SPANISH PRISONER which featured a rare mannered dramatic performance by Martin.

Another failed foray into this direction was the thriller NOVOCAINE which was silly, but I have to admit I enjoyed.

For the record, here's Film Babble Blog's pick for the best Steve Martin comedies. It's an unsurprising but essential list : 

10 GREAT STEVE MARTIN COMEDIES:

  1. THE JERK (Dir. Carl Reiner, 1979)

  2. THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS (Dir. Carl Reiner, 1983)

  3. ALL OF ME (Dir. Carl Reiner, 1984) 

  4. DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID (Dir. Carl Reiner, 1982)

  5. ROXANNE (Dir. Fred Schepisi, 1987)

  6. PLANES, TRAINS, & AUTOMOBILES (Dir. John Hughes,    1987)

  7. L.A. STORY (Dir. Mick Jackson, 1990)

  8. BOWFINGER (Dir. Frank Oz, 1999)

  9. PARENTHOOD (Dir. Ron Howard, 1989)

10. LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (Dir. Frank Oz, 1986): Just a cameo, but his song "Dentist" steals the whole show.

SPILLOVER: 

11. ¡THREE AMIGOS! (Dir. John Landis, 1986)

12. THE LONELY GUY (Dir. Arthur Hiller, 1984)

13. MY BLUE HEAVEN (Dir. Herbert Ross, 1990) 

14. LEAP OF FAITH (Dir. Richard Pearce 1992)

15. DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS (Dir. Frank Oz, 1988)

5 BAD STEVE MARTIN MOVIES:

 1. MIXED NUTS (Dir. Nora Ephron, 1994)

 2. SGT. BILKO (Dir. Jonathan Lynn,1996)

 3. THE OUT-OF-TOWNERS (Dir. Sam Weisman, 1999)

 4. LOONEY TUNES - BACK IN ACTION (Dir. Joe Dante, 2003) 

 5. SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (Dir. Michael Schultz, 1978): Just a cameo but still!

5 WORTHWHILE NON COMEDIC STEVE MARTIN MOVIES:

 1. PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (Dir. Herbert Ross, 1981)

 2. THE SPANISH PRISONER (Dir. David Mamet, 1997)

 3. NOVOCAINE (Dir. David Atkins, 2001)

 4. GRAND CANYON (Dir. Lawrence Kasdan, 1991)

 5. AND THE BAND PLAYED ON (Dir. Roger Spottiswood, 1993) (HBO telefilm)

We haven't given up on you Steve - we're all hoping you can do some good with SHOPGIRL (now in post production) and that you will prove us wrong on the PINK PANTHER deal.

We all loved when in your only bearded role as a schlock movie producer in Lawrence Kasdan's GRAND CANYON you said to Kevin Kline: "That's part of your problem: you haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies." 

And if you don't agree with that or any of this, well EXCUSE ME!!!!

More later...

A Night With Michael Moore: Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 4/3/04

Here’s my report of seeing Michael Moore speak last night at the Full Frame Documentary Film Fest that was held in Durham over the last several days: 

A Night With Michael Moore: April 3rd, 2004

“I’d like to share with you the rest of my Oscar speech…” Michael Moore offered to his rapt audience shortly after his introduction by noted documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker.

The Full Frame crowd responded in applause and laughter. It seems that nobody was unaware of Moore’s controversial comments upon winning the Best Documentary Academy Award for “Bowling For Columbine.”

He elaborated on his now famous statement that “we live in fictitious times, with a fictitious president who was elected with fictitious election results and we’re fighting a war for fictitious reasons.”

Since this happened a year ago Moore has told this story countless times. No doubt that many in the audience had already heard his tale of his being publicly criticized and even threatened for what was being labeled a vicious anti-Bush rant but it didn’t matter to this crowd. My family who attended with me beforehand all voiced concern about detractors protesting the event and disrupting the evening. I assured them that that was extremely doubtful, because Moore would be preaching to the choir.

And he definitely was. Even mild remarks and slight comical gestures got rousing response. It also didn’t matter that the event was a pretty ramshackle affair. Lights would dim unexpectedly cutting off Moore to start a film clip and despite the presence of microphones placed in the aisles questions were randomly shouted out with no sense of a structured Q & A forum.

A moderator might have been a good idea. But again none of this really mattered since the audience ate it all up anyway. Clips from Moore’s TV shows and movies were applauded with such enthusiasm you would have thought they were classic rock songs. That was the spectacle though, the real heart of the evening came from the communal feeling among us all that through all the jokes and deflating of political egos and policies there was a genuine belief that we can really change things.

Moore made a big point out of encouraging everyone not only to vote but to travel to “swing-states” and help to transport others to the polls. Moore wanted to make explicit the difference between “us and them.”

“Us” was not to be confused with what he called “liberal poseurs,” but what he mostly just referred to as “our side” vs. the conservatives. The word liberal has become a dirty word because they are wimps with no real drive he explained. “What I admire about the other side is that they have the courage of their convictions. They are unyielding. They are up at the crack of dawn trying to figure who to screw next.” Moore raised his voice, “our side, we never see the crack of dawn! The only time we see the crack of dawn is when we’ve been up all night!” The laughter of familiarity filled the room.

Moore continued with this diatribe even imitating weak liberals whining “‘where do you want to go eat tonight?’ ‘I don’t know, where do you want to go?’ - ‘let’s get some pizza’ ‘no we had pizza last night.’ You know the conservative they’re like ‘get in the car we’re going to Sizzler! Red meat!’”

All in all it was a very entertaining evening. It was great to see clips from Moore’s little seen Bravo show The Awful Truth (available on DVD) being shown on a big screen and a couple of people in the audience did actually make their way to the microphones but not to engage in political discourse but to simply thank Moore for the job he’s doing.

One young woman was on the verge of tears as she told of Columbine-style shootings happening where she went to school and expressed her intense appreciation for Moore asking the question “why?” Throughout the night Moore gave some of his personal rules of filmmaking and made us all excited about his upcoming film project “Fahrenheit 911” to be released on the July 4th weekend with the DVD video release slated for just weeks before the Presidential election in November.

Obviously he’s got a plan in place and it was indeed inspiring to have somebody encourage others to take a stand and try to make a difference. Now if we could only get up and get to it at the crack of dawn – that would be a start.

More later...

A Few New DVD Review Blurbs

Since the Full Frame Documentary Film Fest in Durham is starting today, I thought we’d kick off these blurbs with a highly recommended new release documentary DVD: 

CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS

(Dir. Andrew Jarecki, 2003)

At first, Andrew Jarecki’s debut documentary comes across like a modern reality-TV influenced update of Kurasawa's RASHOMON, but then it unfolds into something completely different to quote a beloved British comedy troop who themselves are quoted in this fascinating film.

Concerning a Long Island family getting torn apart when accusations of child molestation are directed at the patriarch, formally respected teacher Arnold Friedman, this film uses tons of home movie footage and video mostly shot by son David Friedman. It's an endlessly involving myriad of allegations and defenses that lingers long after the film is over.

The DVD's second disc is full of just as involving bonus material, most interestingly the featurette “Altercation at New York Premiere” and the short “Just A Clown,” which was Jarecki’s original film about clowns hired for children's parties. It was while making that film, that Jarecki came across David Freidman - one of New York's most popular clowns for children's parties - and learning the Friedman family's intriguing yet confusing story. 

CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS can be seen as an alternate AN AMERICAN FAMILY (the pioneering 1973 PBS reality series about the Loud Family) with a much darker truth within.

GOTHIKA (Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz, 2003) 

For Christ's sake, when is this trend of thrillers in which a supernatural force guides somebody to solving a murder going to freakin' end? Halle Berry heads a great cast (Charles Dutton, Robert Downey Jr, John Carroll Lynch) through a movie nightmare of psycho gibberish. To get the plot, if you could actually call it that, straight - Berry is a prison psychiatrist who wakes up after an automobile accident to find she's accused of murdering her husband and that she's jailed in the same prison she worked at. 

Berry can only remember flashes of imagery surrounding her accident and has no idea what really happened at the scene of the crime. Flashes of imagery and screeched dialogue are the only things I remember after viewing this badly named maze of contrivances. Now, the MONSTER'S BALL Oscar winner is a very talented actress, and a gorgeous woman, so it's easy to get somewhat caught up in this silliness for a bit, but in the end you'll hardly feel this is time spent well.

The darkness of the prison does little to shadow obvious plot points coming, the murky jarring music (sounding a bit like the staccato whale sounds in STAR TREK IV) tells us when we are supposed to be scared or at least pay more attention and when it's stated in the first 10 minutes that the security center's electrical system is faulty with the lights occasionally going out, I don't know anyone anywhere that would not consider that a extremely contrived convenience. 

GOTHIKA is bad as you'd think Limp Bizcuit covering the Who's "Behind Blue Eyes" would be, and that's featured on the soundtrack.

SHATTERED GLASS (Dir. Billy Ray, 2003)

In the true story of New Republic writer Stephen Glass, who had fabricated much information and sometimes entire articles back in the '90s, Hayden Christiansen proves that he actually can act. No joke, Christiansen is way more convincing as a sniveling whiny man-child caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar than a Jedi in 2 (soon to be 3) misguided STAR WARS prequels.

Peter Sarsgaard as Glass's harried editor is the voice of reason in this tale, despite the fact that he barely says anything until the storm really starts a-brewing. When Glass's fraud is found out by way of sources who were quoted proven to be fake, reports of committees holding conferences exposed as false, and a website a non-existent software company is suspected of being created after the fact, true human nature also comes out of hiding.

Although there's great work by the cast (including Steve Zahn and Rosario Dawson as webzine reporters who investigate Glass's work), the story really is the star here, and what a star it is. Funny how a movie about lies is actually one of the most accurate "true stories" to get an run (albeit limited) on the silver screen. Go figure.

Dr. SEUSS' THE CAT IN THE HAT (Dir. Bo Welch, 2003) 

You've probably heard this was awful, but it's far worse than you could possibly imagine. Mike Myers brings nothing new to the the famous Dr. Suess character;  he just shows up with his ratty bag of over used tricks. 

Obviously, this is a cash-in after the success of the Jim Carrey GRINCH movie which was bad as well but still superior to this catastrophe. Pun intended. 

I'm not going to go into the plot or tell you about production values or how painful it is to see talented actors like Alec Baldwin and Sean Hayes humiliated in this brightly colored crap. I'm just going to give you this example of the humor in this movie:

Conrad: (jumping up and down on the couch) It's like being in a circus! 

Cat in the Hat: Yeah, but without those tortured animals or drunken clowns that have hepatitis! 

And that's one of the better one liners. The only good news I have to report here is 1. It's only 78 minutes long. 2. Because it was a massive flop (budget : $109 million. US box office gross: $38 million) it is unlikely we will have to suffer further lame ive action film forays into the work of Dr. Suess. 3. Uh, I guess there's only 2 good things to report. 

As pointless as the Paris Hilton cameo (I mean who in the target audience would that mean anything to?) this is definitely a contender for a list of worse children's movies ever. Do yourself a favor take the kids to a circus. The tortured animals and drunk clowns with hepatitis will surely provide more wit and entertainment than anything under this hat.

More later...