Ron Howard: 50 Years in Film (2008)
*** (out of 4)
The title "50 Years in Film" makes you blink when you think about it but Ron Howard has been around that long with his start in the film The Journey then moving to The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days before hitting it big as an Oscar-winning director. If you've seen Schickel's previous documentaries like Woody Allen: A Life in Film or Spielberg on Spielberg then you should know what to expect as the director doesn't get historians to comment on the subject but instead has the subject talking about the subject. In what's basically an interview, Howard talks about how his father got him his earlier role and how this led to other TV shows before he became a house hold name on Andy Griffith. Not too much time is devoted to his TV career, which to me is a good thing since there are countless documentaries out there with them as the subject. Howard's directorial debut, Grand Theft Auto, gets some nice talk as Howard explains what it was like to work with Roger Corman. Bette Davis also gets mentioned as the two worked together on Skyward. Other films talked about are Night Shift, Willow, Parenthood, Backdraft, Far and Away, Cinderella Man, The Da Vinci Code and the recently released Frost/Nixon. Director projects like The Missing, Cocoon and How the Grinch Stole Christmas are not mentioned and neither are rather famous acting projects like American Graffiti and The Shootist, which had Howard working with John Wayne and James Stewart. I'm not sure why certain admissions were made by Schickel, although a couple are clearly left out before they weren't critical successes. In the end, this is a pleasant documentary/interview with Howard.
*** (out of 4)
The title "50 Years in Film" makes you blink when you think about it but Ron Howard has been around that long with his start in the film The Journey then moving to The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days before hitting it big as an Oscar-winning director. If you've seen Schickel's previous documentaries like Woody Allen: A Life in Film or Spielberg on Spielberg then you should know what to expect as the director doesn't get historians to comment on the subject but instead has the subject talking about the subject. In what's basically an interview, Howard talks about how his father got him his earlier role and how this led to other TV shows before he became a house hold name on Andy Griffith. Not too much time is devoted to his TV career, which to me is a good thing since there are countless documentaries out there with them as the subject. Howard's directorial debut, Grand Theft Auto, gets some nice talk as Howard explains what it was like to work with Roger Corman. Bette Davis also gets mentioned as the two worked together on Skyward. Other films talked about are Night Shift, Willow, Parenthood, Backdraft, Far and Away, Cinderella Man, The Da Vinci Code and the recently released Frost/Nixon. Director projects like The Missing, Cocoon and How the Grinch Stole Christmas are not mentioned and neither are rather famous acting projects like American Graffiti and The Shootist, which had Howard working with John Wayne and James Stewart. I'm not sure why certain admissions were made by Schickel, although a couple are clearly left out before they weren't critical successes. In the end, this is a pleasant documentary/interview with Howard.