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Reviews
The Saint: The Fiction Makers: Part 1 (1968)
The Eternal Fallacy
Sylvia Sims is an Ian Fleming-type writer. Simon Templar is mistaken for her and kidnapped, though she goes along as his "secretary." They are held captive by a man who has studied her books and set up the villain's hide-out precisely as delineated. The bad guys are staging a raid on a place with lots of anti-theft equipment and they want Simon to WRITE their way in and out of the place.
A good if wacky show, with lots of laughs. And not only Sims but Justine Lord, "The Girl Who was Death" from "The Prisoner." And one of the bad guys, Philip Locke ("Frug") was in "Thunderball." Another Bond connection.
The great fallacy the leading bad guy, Warlock, makes is that crime, detective or adventure writers write forward and figure out the crimes as they go along. In fact, with rare exceptions, they start at the end, set up the crimes and adventures and then figure out how to get there. No writer worth her salt would walk her characters into a problem without knowing how to get out beforehand.
Still, most people don't have this insight into the writers' life and so they will buy it. Overall, lots of fun.
The Saint: Sibao (1965)
Do You Believe?
A story of voodoo and the supernatural set in the Caribbean (all done in the studio) and featuring the unearthly loveliness of Jeanne Roland as the title character. Why haven't we heard more from her?
Naturally, there's a power-mad character who thinks he can use voodoo to take over the world. He thwarts U. S. government officials looking into his affairs. He's already so powerful, how can Simon Templar stand against him?
A precursor to Moore's first Bond film, "Live and Let Die" using similar themes, treating voodoo as real. Without Jeanne Roland's presence it would make for hard sledding. But it's better than Charteris' foray into sci-fi with giant ants.
The Saint: The Imprudent Politician (1964)
All-Star Saint
"The Saint" often featured players familiar to American viewers from other popular British shows or (more rarely) rising international stars. This episode has several familiar faces, some established.
We'll start with the politician in the title, Anthony Bate. Best known these days for "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." His brother-in-law is played by Michael Gough, familiar from "Man in a White Suit" or "Batman," depending in your taste. Gough was an established movie star.
Then there's lovely Justine Lord, "The Girl Who Was Death" from "The Prisoner." Also in small parts are Jean Marsh, not yet of "Upstairs, Downstairs." And a rising Moray Watson ("Dr. Who," "Campion" and "The Pallisers.") Watson's kindly but befuddled establishment-type persona is not yet with us and he's unfortunately not here for long.
And don't forget one on the biggest movie stars of the 1970s, Roger Moore.
The story is unusual. The imprudent politician is being blackmailed for insider trading. The villains want to see an advance copy of a speech he's preparing that may affect stock shares so they can make a killing on the market, rather than shaking him down for personal money. Quite enjoyable, both intelligent and action-packed. Though there's quite a bit of meaningless driving around to pad the story out.
One of those rare who-done-it episodes.
And it keeps us guessing to the end, who's behind the muscle.
Charade (1963)
Great movie of its rare kind
"Charade" could be the poster child for "they don't make 'em like this anymore." It's an intelligent, fun comedy for adults with adult minds. Marred at the end by a little sloppy gunplay.
After the death of her husband, Regina (Audrey Hepburn) finds a gang of crooks pursying her (George Kennedy, James Coburn and Ned Glass) who think she has some money her husband pilfered from them. She is helped by Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) but is troubled that he keeps coming up with new names. Is he all he's cracked up to be?
By turns funny and disturbing (as when Coburn, not yet "Mr. Cool," has Hepburn trapped in a phone booth and throws lighted matches on her), it's a mostly frolicsome farce that never takes anything too seriously, especially not the hilarious funeral setting.
It'll probably bore the kidos, and perhaps modern adults who grew up on faster-paced comedies. But like some great comedies of my youth (Ghostbusters, Back to the Future) it's not ashamed to dawdle a bit setting up its premise. I don't know if Cary Grant or Audrey Hepburn fans are extinct or if I'm a voice crying in the wilderness, but those two phenominal stars play well together. And the rising stars like Coburn make the most of their screen time.
At times it's almost a perfect changing of the guard, with old-style Studio product Grant facing down exciting new blood like Coburn, two huge stars of their respective days with totally different styles. It's clear in retrospect Grant's day has passed and a new breed of actor will be seizing the screen. *But not yet.* Grant looks a little creaky but he's still Cary Grant. Hepburn is lovely and funny and what else do you need?
Overall, lots of fun and excitement and romance for those who can stomach a leisurely comedy that takes time over details.
One caveat: the ending feels uncomfortably rushed, as if the movie took up all its time up front and has to cut the end off with a knife. Very jarring. But taking the advice in Lewis Carroll's novel, it comes to an end and stops. Boom.
Who's Minding the Mint? (1967)
Great Heist Flick
While the idea of a "Heist" being breaking into a Mint and making real money from plates is not new (and has raised its head since) it's given a happy face here.
It's everything a heist movie should be. The desperate need for money. The flawed hero floating just inside the parameters of honesty (Jim Hutton, father of Tim). The gathering of the oddball henchmen (and do they come odder than Bob Denver, Milton Berle, Jack Gilford, Joey Bishop, Victor Buono, Walter Brennan and Dorothy Provine as the "moll" who wants her man ro go straight?) It even has puppies! One of the many snags they run into is Brennan's dog having pups.
The story: After accidentally destroying fifty thousand bucks (big money back then), rather than facing his boss with the truth and maybe going to jail a Mint employee (Hutton) decides to reprint the money. And so he has to gather a gang including Brennan (a forcibly-retired printer), Gilford (a safe-cracker), Berle (who controls the safe-cracker's hearing aid) and the rest.
Unfortunately for them (though fortunately for us) the heist has to be moved up, so all the members of the gang look like they're in costume (for instance, Bishop was with a Scout Troop, Provine in her ballet class, &c.)
It also has early roles for Paul Winfield and the hilarious Jamie Farr as a look-out who, incidentally, can't speak English.
The sets are pretty frowsy (apart from the opening shots I hope the US Mint doesn't look like this and isn't this easy to break into or we're in big trouble). But with the brisk direction of Howard Morris (Ernest T. Bass on the Andy Griffith Show) it goes by so quickly one hardly has time to dwell on how ridiculous is it. It's like a Don Knotts comedy without Knotts.
This movie's a lot of fun filled with familiar faces, saving its biggest laugh for a closing-title squence I won't spoil even with a spoiler alert.
"Who's Minding the Mint" doesn't make much sense but it's not for deep, philosophical reflection. It's a delightful romp that harms no one. It goes on a little too long with Berle posing amongst wax figures, but he was probably the biggest star in the piece at the time! A lively little comedy. Enjoy.
Hitchcock (2012)
A Return to Old-Fashioned Film Making
That is, making a factless biopic. "Til the Clouds Roll By" is a biopic of musical writer Jerome Kern written by one if his collaborators, Guy Bolton, and the only thing about it that was true was the one thing that sounds false, Kern's missing the Lusitania because his clock didn't go off. Kern had an uneventful life, apart from writing Broadway musicals, and the movie had to be spiced up with lots of lurid and fictional melodrama.
I mention that movie because it featured Robert Walker as Kern, though he looks nothing like him. Walker went on to star on the Hitchcock classic "Strangers on a Train" to much better effect.
It's really impossible to discuss this movie sensibly without spoilers at every turn but I'll give it a go.
Alfred Hitchcock was a brilliant director. He distressed micromanaging studio bosses like Selznick by "cutting in camera" (i.e., shooting no more coverage than he needed to piece a film together his way when the bosses or their hired guns wanted to edit all their features--what sort of sparks would fly had Hitchcock gone up against Irving Thalberg, who got up everyone's nose?)
The conceit of this movie is the old saw that behind every successful man is a woman. Carried to extremes here, it means Hitchcock was a lump whose wife and collaborator did everything behind the scenes, even directing for him (nonsense). Why bother using a real person when they could have used a generic fictional character who danced on his wife's strings? I'm surprised they didn't use that image, as with "The Godfather," in the PR.
The setting uses Hitchcock's most notorious movie (and most famous, though not his best) as the framing device. From there they could have followed the route of Mike Leigh in "Topsy-Turvey" (about Gilbert and Sullivan writing The Mikado) and done it correctly, as well as one can fit such a thing into movie length; or they could have undermined his legacy with a work of fiction designed to be as mendacious as the oft-repeated but totally dishonest statement that Ginger could do everything Fred could do but backward (Fred helped choreograph the dances, Fred dubbed his own taps, Fred tried for perfection while Ginger whined that good enough was good enough. . . While in her own right Ginger was an Oscar-winning actress who deserves better than being stuck in a musical back-alley like Fred was, and it's no shame she was never in Astaire's class--who is?)
Hitchcock relied on Alma and she helped on his scripts but she was not a Svengali working him the way this movie depicts. As far as the other aspects thrown about in this folderol, I can't and won't speak. They were both physically unattractive people who found comfort in each other. But that was done in "Marty." All they needed to do was add professionalism in a human story.
But just as both Fred's and Ginger's true legacies and talents are undermined by the calumny printed above, the true roles of Alfred and Alma are undermined here. A much more fulfilling psychological tale might have been made out of their true working relationship, but apparently the producers wanted Helen (who has, admittedly, been one of my favorite actresses since I first saw her in "As You Like It") and she wanted a larger part. How many times are we told there are no small parts . . . Bang goes another myth. She's no small actress. I thought.
The terrible thing is, this will stand for all time as the image of one of the world's finest filmmakers. Just as it's a shame several generations of viewers will exercise Peter Jackson's vision of Middle-Earth rather than their own when reading Tolkien (thank you, Mister Jackson, for stealing their imaginations) so this will stand as the foremost idea of who Mr. Hitchcock was. Too bad.
See Strangers on a Train. And Rebecca. And Shadow of a Doubt. And The Lady Vanishes. And Notorious. And Suspicion. And if you don't like B&W see Vertigo or my favorite, The Trouble With Harry. Hey, see Psycho if that sort of thing turns you on. That's Hitchcock's legacy to us.
And what's this about Jimmy Stewart being troubled and "Winchester 73" being a bad movie? Everyone agrees Stewart was truly Mr. Nice Guy, a representative of "middle America" who loved his country. . . Oh, yeah. I get it. That's Hollywood-ese. 😉
But "Winchester 73" is a good if not great western featuring the wonderful, almost forgotten Dan Duryea, who is better than Stewart in a . . . Smaller part.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)
Completely Misses the Point of Thurber's Whimsey
Danny Kaye plays a milquetoast employee of a pulp fiction firm in this version of James Thurber's story, who has a vivid fantasy life but gets mixed up in a bad case of espionage involving art NOT looted by the National Socialists in World War II.
Kaye has plenty of opportunities to play bumbling. And he does one of his patented patter songs, penned by his wife, Sylvia Fine.
So it has everything splayed out for the Danny Kaye fan (and I admit I am one). But the movie barely touches base with Thurber.
Thurber's story is about an ordinary man henpecked by his wife (not his mother), who retreats into fantasy lives when he has a moment to spare.
Perhaps the producers or screenwriters did not believe ordinary people capable of imaginative leaps. Or perhaps, having a famous title on their hands, they decided to stretch it out to 100 minutes and fie for Thurber's delightful little yarn.
By making Mitty the employee of a publishing company they explained his imagination (as if it needed explaining) but they in fact undermined the story's premise: that Mitty is not an artist nor a writer but just a guy with a need to escape the humdrum so he daydreams he's someone heroic, someone who matters--when he doesn't, even to his wife.
In any case, the movie eqips Mitty with a bossy mother, a man who plays practical jokes on him knowing no harm will come to him because of Mitty's good nature, a fiance who laughs when he's belittled and her terrible little doggie.
They don't even get "puppy biscuits" right.
Perhaps in the long run it was foolish for them to try to mount a slight short story as a full-blown feature film. But if they'd set out to they could not have gotten everything more wrong. It's not even a good movie.
It's not a bad idea for a man with a colorful daydreaming life to find himself involved in a genuine cops-and-robbers scenario (up against no less a figure than Boris Karloff). But as little as they touched on Thurber (though they did get the ka-pocketas in) they might have called it something new.
Danny Kaye was a great talent, as this movie proves. But anyone hoping to find Thurber should look elsewhere. This movie has a full cast of characters but it's a one-man show and that man is Kaye, not Thurber.
The Golden Spiders: A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2000)
Not a Special Introduction to an Extraordinary Series
Like the 1981 Nero Wolfe series starring William Conrad and Lee Horsley, the A&E series pilots out with "The Golden Spiders."
This is disappointing in many ways as I prefer earlier cases (THE RUBBER BAND, THE RED BOX, SOME BURIED CAESAR, etc.) Though the did go back to the hard-to-find OVER MY DEAD BODY (which toyed with Wolfe's past) so had the series not been yanked they might have rooted back to earlier adventures.
I don't see what's so special about THE GOLDEN SPIDERS but a series based on a literary character has to start someplace.
"Golden Spiders" establishes Maury Chaykin as the temperamental, overbearing Wolfe, a creature of habit who'd rather not work at all but has to, to support his lifestyle. Frankly, I've always thought Wolfe's devotion to his orchids and beer were affectations though I always enjoyed his gourmet/gourmand characteristics in the novels and stories, that explains his one-eighth of a ton (here, one seventh of a ton).
Much more satisfying is Tim Hutton's letter-perfect Archie Goodwin. Archie's look is rather drab here. Later episodes would make him a flashier dresser as the series adopted a bright, almost comic-strip set of colors where everything looks bright and new.
The best decision they made was leaving Archie bulks of his inimitable narration, which earned the admiration of experts like P. G. Wodehouse. Archie's narration is always the best part of any Nero Wolfe mystery.
The rudiments of the Repertory cast of later episodes make tentative bows though more notable names like George Plimpton or Remington Steele's James Tolkan aren't yet in place. After this they did a little (advisable) juggling with the roles of Saul and Lon. Neither do the recurring lovely ladies the series was noted for ( Kari Matchett, Francie Swift, etc.) appear. At this stage "A Nero Wolfe Mystery" is stripped of glamor.
Overall, a good, workmanlike version of the story, highlighted, as all episodes were, by Archie's narration; but lacking those little touches of flashiness, color and firework performances that would become the hallmark of the series.
Frasier (1993)
Funny show that occasionally falls in a rut
I watched no series TV between "Twin Peaks" in 1990 and "Andy Richter Controls the Universe" in 2002. So I was delighted, when finding "Frasier" in reruns in the 2010s, to see it wasn't half bad.
I was afraid at first I'd have to be conversant with "Cheers," which I've never watched to this day. But living through the 1980s left me with enough knowledge to get by. So when Lillith, Frasier's ex-wife, shows up I understand her, having heard friends in the 1980s discussing "Cheers."
As a boy in the 1960s I grew up watching comedy shows set on POW camps and western forts and desert islands; comedies featuring genii and witches and talking horses. Fish out of water stories about hillbilly families striking it rich and moving to swanky neighborhoods; fish out of water stories where swanky city slickers move to bizarre country towns . . . In fact, I grew up watching TV comedies that showed imagination. Shows where people drove cars and trucks and tractors. Where they managed funny situations and funny lines without an obsession with sex.
People complained about canned laughter but I found it less annoying than live audiences forcing laughter on cue by signals and signs at what might have been a twelfth take. I got quickly tired of comedies run like stage plays where characters have entrances and exits rather than filmed comedies cut like movies. And though only a teen in the 1970s I got sick of the same-ness. Shows about families, some that got along, some that didn't. Some that had lots of kids, some with even more kids. And all the episodes of all the shows pausing just after the 2/3s mark to demonstrate a moral that never had anything new to say. The only show I watched regularly in the 1980s was "Newhart," a "Green Acres" retread but which, stagey though it was, was at least funny--a quality comedy writers had been abandoning for years in favor of high- and ham-handed social commentary.
"Frasier" was as stagebound and moralistic as any comedy show broadcast since the comedic imagination of the 1960s pooped out. And like the worst of the shows since then, it was just as obsessed with sex (well, Frasier Crane was a Freudian psychologist). And sex is titillating as the lowest common denominator for audiences and provides lots of easy laughs for lazy and unimaginative comedy writers.
What's funny about "Frasier" is, first, the characters. Frasier Crane is a psychologist on the radio (sometimes wonderfully, sometimes overactingly, portrayed by Kelsey Grammer). His brother, Niles, is a psychologist of a different branch of the discipline who has a weird (never seen) wife. Their father, a crippled ex-cop, hates their hoity-toity ways. The father's strange dog and his live-in physiotherapist, who has "psychic" episodes, add to the humor.
Frasier and Niles are like real siblings: similar but different; in constant rivalry, but closing shoulders and standing together when outsiders, or their father, threaten one or both. My late brother and I had a similar relationship.
Funniest of all are the sometimes insane things their father tells about Frasier and Niles in boyhood (for instance, seeing then gad about with derby hats and umbrellas after they started watching "The Avengers"); hearing the nutty things about Niles' off-stage wife; or hearing more of Frasier's or Niles' unnatural tastes. Neither is the sort of person normal people would love hanging with in real life--we've met too many who think their tastes are superior. Who sling around, say, opera terms. Or who claim superiority in wine or musical or artistic knowledge. Who needs them? But both Frasier and Niles make such types laughable, yet endearing.
And what other show can claim hosting legendary stage and screen actor Derek Jacobi as a notably bad actor?
Nevertheless. . . It might not have been so obvious when "Frasier" was first on, but watching it daily I noticed too many episodes where Frasier meets a girl who might have committed to him. Then he agonizes over some penny-ante problem in her or in their relationship and plunges headlong into making a speech about it, running her off. What a nincompoop.
Apart from that recurring nightmare, the episodes are usually written well to a high standard (apart from the constant, annoying misuse of "me" for "I") with enough bizarre twists in some episodes and even more bizarre mentions if something off-stage, to make them funny. Enough. Not as funny as "Andy Richter Controls the Universe," but that show sank like a stone while "Frasier," with a familiar character from "Cheers" and appealing to a lower common denominator, stayed afloat through the 1990s.
It's worth a peek; but since the humor is nearly all verbal (with, yes, notable exceptions) it can be followed just as well while you're doing other things and not keeping your eyes on it all the time. An especial irritation of mine since the 1970s: television is a visual medium but most comedies tell you what's going on and have little action and lots of talk. It's like visible radio. Whereas shows like "Green Acres," with lots of slapstick, demanded watching. And so did a notorious comedy featuring Barbara Eden, for different reasons. Apart from the silent-movie "tags" at the end of each episode, most of "Frasier" can be listened to from the next room with little loss.
Where is the American "Mr. Bean"?
Alias Nick Beal (1949)
Twenty twenty
Ray Milland is the stereotypical tall, dark and handsome stranger who wangles deals to get Thomas Mitchell's character elected governor.
Milland is Nick Beal, a mysterious man who comes and goes as if by magic (great yet simple practical effects that had me continually rewinding to see how they did it).
Beal corrupts Mitchell gradually, enticing then extorting him to do his bidding for political gain.
Beal also uses a failed actress turned prostitute to help turn Mitchell to evil, including cutting a deal between Mitchell's character and a mobster he once tried to put away (a subtle and serious Fred Clark).
Interestingly, Mitchell's character belongs to the "Independent" party. Imagine movie-makers these days bending over that far backward not to offend people who have honest political disagreements with them.
This is a great fantasy where Milland, a few years after his "Lost Weekend" Oscar win, continues to expand his elastic leading man character on his way to its zenith in "Dial M For Murder." In fact, Milland's smooth performance as Beal is for me among his better.
The last scene is often criticized but it's the only logical and proper conclusion, though it forgets Shakespeare's true dictum that the devil can quote Scripture.
Worth a peek for fantasy buffs, a must for Milland fans.
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes (1965)
Charming Rather Than Funny
"Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" was made at a curious time. People were staying home from theaters to watch TV so the movies offered wide-screen, star-studded epics to draw people to features that often required advance tickets sales like stage shows. Ironic, since most of us first saw these pictures on TV anyway.
This movie was set in a favorite time for epics, the Edwardian Era; it's a lighthearted romp in early aviation set during a (fictional) air race from London to Paris. But the race doesn't start until after the Intermission. It's a long movie so beware, anyone who has a short, post MTV attention span.
Warning: This movie was also made when movies took their time establishing character. Here, they sped character developing along by using national stereotypes as a type of shorthand.
James Fox and Robert Morley are proud empire building English. Jean-Pierre Cassel is a lascivious Frenchman. The Frenchman's running gag is that every girl he meets looks the same to his eyes (she's played by lovely Irina Demick, producer Daryl Zanuck's then-girlfriend, which probably explains the gag).
The main female love interest sought by both leading men is played by Sarah Miles. She's a woman reared as a proper lady who is desperate to break out of that mold, a character that was itself a tired stereotype by then (Natalie Wood played it better in "The Great Race").
Anyone liable to be hurt or outraged by National stereotypes should stay away and instead pat their puppies and hug their teddies. But at the time this movie was set legitimate scientists were developing theories that national characteristics were formed by the soil they grew their bread-grain in. So much for scientists.
One big disappointment is Stuart Whitman as the main American, Orvil (sic) Newton. Whitman has nothing comic about him. Nor is he used like the serious actors cast so brilliantly in "Airplane!" fifteen years later. He's simply a drag on the comedy. The director explained in the DVD commentary that they tried to get Dick Van Dyke but had a mix-up caused by his agent. Too bad. Van Dyke would have been perfect. Why they didn't try to get another American actor who could play comedy, he didn't say. But we can't base a review on what a movie might have been, only what it is.
Overall, the movie is charming rather than funny. But the production values are great and most of the actors get A for effort. It's a beautiful movie and everyone seems eager to make it work. Anyone who loves the look of the pre-Great War era, as I do, will enjoy the feature.
The movie is dotted with familiar comic faces, albeit British: Benny Hill as the leader of firemen based on the Keystone Kops, Tony Hancock as an inventor of ridiculous aircraft, Eric Barker unrecognizable as a French postman, etc.
But the prime scene-stealer is the wonderful Terry-Thomas, abetted by Eric Sykes playing his servant/henchman. After their introduction the movie starts going flat when they disappear for long stretches.
Also good is Gert Frobe ("Goldfinger") who started out as a comic actor in Germany and who manages to be his own brass band.
The ending is a bit of a cop-out (most of these epic race-comedies are). But it ends better than most cop-outs and everyone winds up happy. And what's wrong with that?
Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)
Ted, I have the strangest feeling we've been through this exact same thing before
This title comes from a line by Elaine, Julie Haggerty. She's right. We have been through this before. In a movie called "Airplane."
The original writers and directors of "Airplane" didn't want to return. They thought they had nothing new to do. They were right.
The pure, unadulterated genius of "Airplane" was not just in throwing out so many jokes laughter covered up each next one, but in casting actors who were not known for comedy. Peter Graves, Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, etc.
"Airplane II" adds Chuck Connors, Chad Everett, Kent McCord, Richard Jaekel and a particularly hilarious Raymond Burr. Still, funny as that still is, it's the same idea. BTW the last act has another serious guest star who is great but I won't spoil it.
A few good laughs, but definitely diminishing returns.
Also, if you're not a far-leftie buckle yourself in for some viciously cruel jokes about Republican heroes and perceived right-leaning groups. Lefties can get away with that filth, and they seem to think no one who doesn't walk in lockstep with them wants, or deserves a laugh. Just as well. There aren't many here.
BTW, the ending depends on a Bobby pin. Does anyone know what that is these days?
Rocky Mountain (1950)
Last and Least Western for Flynn
I wanted to like this movie. Had it been shot in the studio I'd call it "stagebound." Since it was set and shot in a desert I'd call it rock-bound.
Flynn leads a small group (including Slim Pickens on an early movie role) on a secret mission for the Confederates near the war's end to separate California from the Union.
Unfortunately, once they get on a rocky mountaintop, they get stuck there.
Still, the scenery is gorgeous. Especially when you see dark cloud formations in the distance. Remember, black and white film is never really black and white. Like people, it's full of subtle gradations of gray.
Speaking of gray, if you forget to keep history in its place (the past) and get your panties in a wad at the sight of a Rebel flag, one appears near the end. So beware.
Flynn's getting old and years of dissipation show. Too bad. He was one of the great film stars of his day.
The story, as laid out, never really gets going. Just because there's action doesn't mean the movie can't be tedious.
Lots of action. Lots of talk, too. But there's a cute dog with a cute theme so maybe if you can't take the sight of a rebel flag or a wordless tune "Dixie" and forget that history, as Henry Ford said, is bunk and can't get on with your life going forward for wallowing in the past, real or imagined, maybe a cute doggie can get you through alive without gnawing off your leg to get out.
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
The Movie Died Sooner
What do you get when you mix Gary Cooper, Madeleine Carroll, Akim Tamiroff, William Frawley and Philip Ahn in a story of a monkey-carrying courier delivering money to buy arms against an egomaniac general tring to take over China? A big bore, that's what.
I'd swear I didn't doze off, but if not there must be a reel missing because I never figured out what Frawley was supposed to be, though he had an important part in the climax.
The others are all favorite actors of mine, especially Carroll, the normally scenery-chewing Tamiroff (here so low-key he's practically catatonic) and the shamefully underutilized (by Hollywood) Ahn. And Cooper, usually only second to James Stewart as a bastion of rectitude. I wish Stewart made this dog. He might've found a way made the lead role interesting.
Director Lewis Milestone has a few nice moments I won't betray. But rather than looking for neat camera angles he ought to have tried injecting some life into the proceedings.
It's not the movie's age. I enjoy movies from this period, whether comedies, dramas, swashbucklers or musicals. Despite a tense story on paper there's a howling lack of suspense. The scriptwriters, fine actors and director simply haven't got there.
The flick is set in a period of warlords ruling China after the collapse of the last Dynasty. I'd like to see them make a similar feature on Chairman Mao, a genuinely dangerous imperial warlord if ever there was one.
Too Late the Hero (1970)
Soporific
"Too Late the Hero" is one thing a good war movie can't afford to be. It is dull.
Starring Cliff Robertson, hardly Mr. Dynamic, the movie concerns an American officer appointed to lead a group of British commandos on a suicide mission. Henry Fonda shows up in a blink and you'll miss him role as Robertson's superior.
The British are in two major divisions, those who follow Robertson and those who stay home.
Those accompanying Robertson include medico Michael Caine, who is determined to come back alive; and a gung-ho Denholm Elliott, equally determined to see the mission through whatever the cost. Ian Bannen is a half-crazed type who goes into combat singing "The Teddy Bear's Picnic." Percy Herbert, Ronald Fraser and Lance Percival also stick their heads up as common movie types. All the commandos are clichés of some sort. Left behind guarding the fort is Harry Andrews.
The movie lacks action. Movement? Oh yes, it has movement as Robertson and his gang traipse through the jungle like Jack Hawkins' team in " The Bridge On The River Kwai." Only this jungle trek seems pointless and aimless.
Despite bursts of violence the only thing that happens of any interest is when the Japanese officer (the best-played role in the piece) does Tokyo Rose stuff through loudspeakers in the trees.
This movie was made in the wake of the phenominal success of "The Dirty Dozen" from a script the director long had gathering dust in a drawer. He should have left it there.
Fantasy Island (1998)
It's hrd to reboot a classic
It's easy to see why this reboot of "Fantasy Island" didn't last long.
It wasn't as bad as I feared. Though in high school when the classic "FI" started, I actually never watched it until it was off the air 20 years, so it's not nostalgia that made me enjoy it. I liked its amiable ambiance, I liked the gravitas and comforting presence of Ricardo Montalban's Roarke and the feeling that, though he often issued dire warnings and advised against certain dangerous fantasies, he'd appear in truly dire situations to help. And I liked seeing the celebrity faces of the day, though some of them made too many repeat trips. How many times can we stand watching Dennis Cole or John Saxon playing different characters who look and act exactly like their previous manifestations? I not only enjoyed Montalban but the characters Tattoo and the short-lived Julie.
In the 1998 reboot Malcolm McDowell plays a different sort of Roarke. Montalban was an old MGM Latin lover type. Still handsome, his hair and eyes were dark and he wore white suits. Eschewing white, McDowell (who came with lots of baggage as an actor who appeared in weird stuff) wore black to contrast with white hair. He's more like a negative of the old Roarke, inside and out. Montalban, long after his series ended, claimed he saw Mr. Roarke as a sort of fallen angel. This is almost tangible in McDowell's portrayal.
McDowell's manner is off-putting. He acts like a danger himself and rather than providing a comforting presence he's more typically sarcastic. But his humor, bizarre as it can be (unlike Montalban's gravitas), makes him likeable in a totally different way.
Tattoo and Julie have been replaced by two bumbling assistants, Harry and Cal. And by Ariel, played by lovely Madchen Amick ("Twin Peaks"). Ariel is some sort of magical creature while the others can be irritatingly stupid and inept for comic effect.
The old series rarely left the island. One clever change is the opening, when two elderly people lure clients into a rattletrap old travel agency connected to the island by pneumatic tube.
And this is a major change. The old show seems to be based on free market forces and clients came to Roarke. And while the price of Roarke's fantasies started out ad fixed, when the original series got rollong Roarke had a sliding scale of payments. In the reboot, it appears McDowell's Roarke chooses clients by his magic.
In the old show Roarke's clients often learned new lessons about themselves and others. The reboot gets rather preachy and tends to have an intense dislike for people from "flyover country" (the conceit that if you don't dwell in the "sophisticated" big cities like NY or LA you're a lazy, stupid, oafish failure. The reboot also seems to react sneeringly for "middle class values." No wonder the reboot sank with only 13 episodes. Even Madchen Amick couldn't save a show with such a high handed contempt for its target audience. It deserved to fail on that alone).
But the reboot has its plusses. While no one's ideal Roarke, McDowell is a good actor and fills different roles. While unpleasantly dark, the show can be quite funny, especially (as in the old show) as we see how Roarke interprets vague fantasy requests. A lesson for us to learn precise writing. And there's Madchen Amick.
It's subjective (all art is) but I miss the hula-girl, lei-draping opening with the variously colored drinks comic actors played with in the original "FI." McDowell's Roarke meets the planes on an infernally long dock and the distributed drinking cups all look the same. The guests might as wll all be given Slurpees.
As with the old series, the fantasies fall in three acts. The arrival and the start of fantasies. The fantasies begin going wrong. The fantasizers learn (old show) or are preached to (reboot).
Some fantasies follow along the lines of the old series, but some have new twists. In one of the better episodes of the reboot, a horror writer who wants to spend his vacation in a genuinely haunted house gets possessed by the ghost for comic effect. Compare and contrast that to Tanya Roberts in the original series who wanted to spend time in a haunted house and wound up befriending a cowardly ghost (Dack Rambo).
Other fantasies are not so intriguing (or funny) and can get dull. As with the original series, what's important is the nature of the fantasy and whether it can help pad out the hour. If not, any episode of any "Fantasy Island" can get tedious fast.
One note: oh-so-clever reviewers have shown off their superior sophistication by pointing our parallels between the reboot and Shakespeare's play "The Tempest." Well, I'm a Shakespeare and "Tempest" fan and I'll point out that the "parallels" are mostly confined to names, and the fact that the lead character performs magic.
Like I said, it's not as bad a show as I feared. I had low expectations and they were partially justified. But overall the reboot just isn't as fun as the original and I prefer Ricardo Montalban's kinder, gentler Roarke. And there's a world of difference between a character on a learning curve and a show grabbing its audience by the scruff of the neck and shaking it around to demonstrate the superiority of Hollywood types to those of us daring to live in small towns or the countryside where they wonder if we're born with thumbs or wear woad.
Perhaps it's just that hit shows are products of their times and times can't be replicated. A rebooted "Love Boat" with a new cast also failed. Things converged the right way at the right time for the original "Fantasy Island." The 1970s were a psychedelic but also cutesy time when TV people were just beginning to understand that hour-long shows didn't have to be uber-serious. So we got The Rockford Files and Kolchak: the Night Stalker and Charlie's Angel's and The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.
The "FI" reboot tried to survive in the decade of "The X-Files" and "Twin Peaks," when all tv shows began to seem like they lacked sufficient lighting.
Once you've shown an FBI agent in a red room with a little boy holding a double-handful of creamed corn ("Twin Peaks") you can't go back to cutesy. I didn't watch much 1970s or 1980s TV but I thought the 1990s were too dark a time both physically and emotionally on TV, and I don't like dark.
The Love Boat: Chef's Special/Beginning Anew/Kleinschmidt (1981)
Trio of Easily Swallowed Stories
I'm pretty jaded and hardly ever laugh at "The Love Boat." But here I laughed out loud twice.
Two of the stories are pretty amusing. In the best, the actor playing Doc adopts two roles. Besides Doc he plays a Clouseau-type detective with a German accent, hired by a beautiful woman (Tricia Noble) to protect her jewels.
In the second funny story Jay Johnson ("Soap") is the ship's chef, distressed at fresh cuisine notions by a new female cook hired by the line. Why they'd hire a talented ventriloquist and not use him in that capacity (not even lifting pot lids like they're talking) is one of the curiosities of "The Love Boat." Whoever hires the actors often casts counterintuitively.
The third story is always serious. Richard Basehart is a bitter man confined to a wheelchair meeting up with an old flame (Oscar winner Joan Fontaine), who has a secret of her own.
All the stories are easy to swallow. I've been a fan of Fontaine and Basehart for a long time. And also Tricia Noble, who pingponged around 1970s and 1980s shows. Good, clean fun. If you tolerate that sort of thing.
Ministry of Fear (1944)
Ministry of What?
Stephen Neale (Ray Milland), just released from a mental home, guesses the correct weight of a cake at a fete and his life becomes a nightmare where he sees Nazi spies behind every bush (clearly a Democrat). Or is he on an express train back to the nuthatch?
A good cast including Hillary Brooke, Dan Duryea, Byron Foulger and Alan Napier. Unfortunately, no on is in there pitching for long. Duryea, an actor I enjoy, makes two brief appearances and both times is . . . But that's too much of a spoiler!
I was not familiar with the work of Marjorie Reynolds but she's good and very lovely.
Though I'm more for the Buchan, Oppenheim, Ambler wing of espionage literature (along with Christie's excursions in the form), rather than the more serious entries in the genre, I love reading stories of innocent people caught up in criminal or spying enterprises they don't understand (nor does the reader, until a point when the light finally winks on).
This story is not difficult to follow. Just put your mind in neutral and let it haul you along. But it is unremittingly grim, until a big laugh at the tacked-on happy ending. Frankly, I wish Hitchcock had done it rather than Lang, who seems to have sacrificed some story for speed and effect.
I've never read Graham Greene so I don't know how closely this movie plays by the book, but when has that mattered in the movies? And Milland is solid, as usual, as the man who doesn't know whom to trust, if anyone.
The Uninvited (1944)
Nothing New Here for Spook Fans But A Good Movie
"The Uninvited" is advertised by some fine directors as one of the scariest movies ever. But that was in 1944 money. These days we've seen it all before, and seen it done with better effects. SPOILER ALERT: Yes, there is a ghost and it's a slow reveal, like the shark in "Jaws."
So why watch it in the twenty-first century?
Because it's superbly made, with a strong story. A brother and sister (Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, no relation to Olivia) buy an old mansion for a knockdown price. It's set on a clifftop overlooking the sea. But their dog doesn't like it and runs away. And their housekeeper's cat has a violent reaction to going upstairs. SPOILER ALERT: For people who worry about movie animals more than people, neither of the pets winds up dead.
A lovely young lady is strongly connected to the house, and her stuffy grandfather doesn't like her going near it. Naturally, the girl has a deep, dark secret even she doesn't know. It would hardly be a ghost movie without one. The grandfather telegraphs it very early in the proceedings but the secret does stay secret for nearly the whole movie. There's a second secret . . . About the ghost. While the guy doing a "visual essay" on the criterion collection dvd for this movie says it's difficult to follow I had no trouble with it. And the second secret is something a lifelong and cynical movie-watcher like me didn't see coming. So that's pretty good writing.
I'm not familiar with Hussey's work but Milland is solid as always, just a bit cocky since he and his sister are from London and he thinks he's too "sophisticated" to believe in spooks. Milland could play heroic in "Beau Geste" or he could do screwball comedy. Here, it's like the screwball-comedy Milland, sans tuxedo, blundered into a nightmare.
Also strong is the very tall Alan Napier as a friendly local doctor. Napier went on to play "Alfred" in the "Batman" TV show of the 1960s. He looked surprisingly young and fit and the doctor's sympathy for the brother and sister is one of the joys of the piece, since as a doctor new to the district (he's only lived there 12 years) he can be considered the "man of science" of the piece. Yet he's open-minded about the proceedings, when Milland keeps denying what's becoming increasingly obvious: that his new house really is haunted.
The young woman involved is played by the lovely Gail Russell in what may be her best performance. For her grandfather I'd rather have seen C. Aubrey Smith but Donald Crisp does an adequate job as the stuffy and unfriendly older man who knows too much but says naught.
Like I said, this has been imitated so many times since 1944 there's hardly an unexpected step. But there is a lady running a sanitarium who may qualify for one of the inmates.
"The Uninvited" is a must for Milland fans (who must be few on the ground by now). I didn't care for the very ending, when there's an extra little twist thrown in in the final minutes, allowing Milland to indulge in a few mock-heroics. But that's subjective.
Overall, a solid haunt-movie that has a few tricks up its sleeve, though its punch has been sadly diluted by imitators. Still, it's well-written and well-acted by Milland & Co.
Fantasy Island: The Last Cowboy/The Lady and the Monster (1981)
Mister Roark the Trickster
Tough guy William Smith turns in a touching performance as the monster as Linda Day George plays a descendant of Baron Frankenstein determined to prove her famous ancestor wasn't nuts. If you like that "poor, misunderstood monster" sort of thing it's right down your alley.
In the other story, Stuart Whitman plays an insurance executive who wants to see the "real" west and play cowboy. But Mister Roarke sends him to work on a hardscrabble farm in the real modern west.
"Fantasy Island" had some good stories in its sixth season. This isn't one of them. Though "Julie" fans get a little extra.
Fantasy Island (1977)
Great 1980s Fun
"Fantasy Island" was a great show running practically through the 1980s. But it succeeded for one reason only, which I shall reveal at the end of the review.
In case you don't know, for a cost of fifty thousand dollars (1978 money) anyone can pay for a vacation at Fantasy Island, a sort of resort where for a certain length of time you may live out your most intimate fantasies.
The concept may go back to "Honey for thr Prince," an episode of "The Avengers" with Diana Rigg. But I'm not reviewing that.
Fantasy Island is operated by Mister Roarke (Ricardo Monalban) whose primary assistant (perhaps familiar) is Tattoo (Herve Villechaize, who had made a strong impression as the bad guy's henchman in "The Man with the Golden Gun").
In the earliest pilot movies it's pretty clear Mr. Roarke's offerings are recreations. Gradually, as the series unrolls, Roarke adopts supernatural characteristics. Perhaps, after all, he does send clients into the past, or . . .
The clients, and the people involved in the fantasies are an interesting cross-section of older TV stars (Craig Stvens from "Peter Gunn," say; or repeated visits by "Hee Haw" beauties Barbi Benton and Misty Rowe); current 1980s TV stars and celebrities whose importance may be missed in the 21st century; the occasional rising star who later became a megastar; and celebrity singers or entertainers. Those types of shows were big back then and included, but weren't limited to, "The Love Boat" and "Murder She Wrote."
Spoilers:
But like Peter Cook's devilish promises in "Bedazzled," the fantasies often have nasty catches. For example, in one fifth season episode, sawed-off songwriter Paul Williams plays a man who wants to spend time in a harem. Beginning his fantasy he's greeted by a bevy of beautiful women, but they're not the harem. The chief there is female and her harem is full of body-building musclemen.
Some catches are funny, some are deadly serious or would be if Mister Roarke did not step in.
Which brings us to the real reason "Fantasy Island" worked while many reboots did not.
"Fantasy Island" succeeded because of Ricardo Montalban's great and powerful Mister Roarke. He's not just tall, dark and handsome (well, grizzled). He has gravitas. He's a strong man, obviously, not just physically but morally, inside. And with it, he also comes off as compassionate and with a twinkle in his eye that makes you feel everything will be all right in the end.
He also gives some of his clients warnings about dangers inherent in the fantasies and leaves it to their free will as to whether they'll proceed.
"Fantasy Island" is a necessarily dark concept (though in the 1980s how dark could it get with the tepeated likes of Benton and Rowe?) Yet it should also be fun and rewarding, or the place would get terrible word of mouth and it would close down. As succeeding versions which go very dark, making Roarke out to be a devilish figure, have learned.
The reason newer versions don't take off is the absence of Montalban. Part of this is the wacky modern mistrust of morally and physically strong men. Hollywood types have embraced this paranoia until casting a Montalban type (if there is one) is anathema to them.
This show is a lot of 1980s fun and excitement. But not recommended for binges. How many times can we stomach Dennis Cole (for a spell in real life Mr. Jaclyn Smith) reappearing as different characters who look and talk just alike? Obviously, a 1980s casting director invented cloning. I'll have nine Barbi Bentons to go, please.
Back to the Future Part III (1990)
Best of the Series
"Back to the Future 3" is the best.
"Back to the Future," the Big daddy that started the legend, is exciting at the beginning, but when Marty is sent back in time out of sheer desperation, all he does is try to get his folks together while waiting for lightning to strike.
Part II is a mess. Forced into visiting the future (2015, which was the future then) due to a throwaway joke at the end of Part I, it was silly and troubling simultaneously. And it's third act was basically a rehash of Part I.
But at the end if Part II, with the arrival of the Western Union man, Part II gets skewed and turns into an exciting lead-in for Part III.
Part III is set in the old west. Everyone loves a good western, especially actors. Fox and Lloyd, by now a perfect team, seem to be having a high old time.
Then there's the addition of Mary Steenburgen, very popular back then (and who starred in 1979's lost-in-the-shuffle "Time after Time.")
Part III sometimes has the feel of someone saying, "Hey, let's just have a party to wrao this thing, having fun with western tropes."
But the story is good and taut (unlike Part II) and the very real dangers inherent in wild frontier country add a large amount of suspense. There's a sense this is the last movie. Will everyone survive?
A few genuine western hands are on hand, including Dub Taylor and Gene Autry's comic sidekick, Pat Buttram. It would have been nice to see more cameos but budget limitations and the ravages of time probably combined to put the kibosh on that.
Unfortunately, Part 3 is heavily dependant on Part 2, including the hoverboard and Jennifer in the porch swing. And the first few minutes are a replay of the ending of Part II (and Part I, of course).
With a sense of fun virtually absent from the dark and even mean-spirited Part II, Marty and Doc blunder through the old west seeming even more helpless than their precursers in western comedy like Bob Hope and Don Knotts.
And the last act is set on a Train. Who doesn't love a good old steam locomotive in a movie? And they are able to avoid too much copying of movies with trains except a bit reminiscent of the Sherlock Holmes feature, "The Seven Percent Solution."
This would've been a fun little stand-alone flick were it not so dependant on Part II. As it is, it's lots of fun. Enjoy.
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Worst of the series
Most three part movies have dark middle sections. "Back to the Future," "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Arc" have strong first movies because that's all there is of them. No sequels were considered until their success demanded more, so they made perfect little narratives with everything thrown in but the kitchen sink. The sink in all three cases was left for the second movies.
"Back to the Future" featured two popular TV stars. Michael J. Fox from "Family Ties" and Christopher Lloyd from "Taxi." It was a nice little story but not that great when Fox was hurtled from 1985 (I temember it well) to 1955 as he had little to do except hang around waiting for lightning to strike. You try that some time.
A throwaway joke at the end of "Back to the Future" guaranteed a sequel had to be set in the twenty-first century.
Part II's plot: Marty and Jennifer have to get to 2015 (an impossibly far-off date for us 1980s denizens) to get their kids out of trouble. While there, Marty buys a sports stat mag to win a chunk of change on sporting events when returning to his own time. Doc talks him out of it on specious grounds but old Biff Tannen gets his hands on the mag, steals the time-car and (shades of "It's a Wonderful Life") gives the mag to 1955 Biff who somehow turns Hill Valley into a hellhole by his winnings.
Marty and Doc must figure out when young Biff got the mag and somehow wangle it away from him to restore the proper 1985 timeframe. We're beginning to need a physics degree to comprehend these flicks.
The middle sections of many plays, etc. Are "descents into Hell," Some more graphic than others. This one's pretty graphic.
The whole second act is very unpleasant.
The first act is merely nutty. Futurism is a dangerous discipline and while defenders of this movie's vision point to this or that thing that was right, it was really little like the 2015 I knew. That makes the first act of this movie look silly in retrospect (even sillier than when it first came out and we first-generation "Back to the Future" fans and semi-fans hoped we wouldn't spend 2015 with our pockets hanging inside out).
Then there are the incredibly dangerous hoverboards. I wouldn't be surprised to learn accidents like the one depicted didn't happen daily.
The third act, when Marty risks life and limb to get his hands on the sports mag, is largely a recap of the first movie's final act, seen with a skewed POV.
The movie is, however, slightly redeemed when the mysterious Western Union man appears. The last few minutes are very good and lead directly to the vastly superior Part III.
Unfortunately, Part III (which I am not reviewing here) became dependent on ideas and devices from Part II. That's the real shame of it. To understand Part III we have to survive Part II, which I've heartily disliked since it first came out.
One other reason to watch Part II is to see Michael J. Fox trying to extend his acting chops. Some of it not pretty. His family don't look so much like they have a family resemblance, but that they were cloned. Why did George McFly look so different from Marty when so many members of Marty's family look just like him? Then there's Jennifer! In many ways she's the delight of Part II, small a role though it is.
I always liked Michael J. Fox. He's a good actor, we're born just weeks apart, and he's shorter than my 5'8". Fox's twinkly elfin charm, certainly more than Lloyd's overacting, helped me through this mess. Get through yourself however you can. But wake up before the superb ending that hurls us feet first into Part III, which I love.
The Jigsaw Man (1983)
Amateur Night
A defector to the USSR is sent back to England with a new face. He tries making a deal with the new head of the secret service . . . Or something.
Awful script directed by Terence Young, who helmed three of the better Bond movies. Peter Hunt, Bond editor and director of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," directed the second unit. A mostly A-list cast. All for nought.
Michael Caine plays the defector. He never was much for non-English accents. He's English but attempts too much Russian.
Laurence Olivier is his primary nemesis, but he's showing his age, I'm afraid.
Robert Powell and Charles Gray aren't bad but they aren't given much worth saying.
Pretty poor all around. Too bad. Lots of talent wasted.
My Science Project (1985)
"Seventeen years of television down the drain."
Around the same age as John Stockwell, Michael J. Fox and Matthew Broderick, only slightly younger than John Cusack, Anthony Michal Hall and Christian Slater, I became something of a connoisseur of 1980s teen movies (starring people who were in their mid-to-late 20s). It doesn't matter whether it's comic fare like "Ferris Bueller," "Better off Dead," or "Heathers"; or tongue-in-cheek soft sci-fi stuff like "Back to the Future," "The Last Starfighter," "Night of the Comet," or "Weird Science" or "My Science Project"--the last being the subject at hand.
The late 1970s and 1980s were a curious time. I was there. High School and college aged students were voting for Ronald Reagan but Hollywood kept cranking out "teen" movies ignoring this trend, maintaining their liberal slant (apart from the Michael J. Fox character in "Family Ties," Hollywood's idea of what a young conservative should be like without caring what they were really like).
"My Science Project" boasted few stars of the time. Dennis Hopper comes in as a 60s radical teacher who seems to have dropped too much acid, but he disappears about half-way through. Richard Masur is nearly unrecognizable, and for good reason. If he did this for the money, he didn't make a lot.
The story: a group of various high school types uncover a strange device in an air force junkyard that generates power without heat. Impossible. On Earth. But then the device starts devouring energy from everywhere. And then it begins playing around with the time-space continuum and wreaking havoc that the high schoolers must face, to save the world and their grades. The movie doesn't seem to know much about high school because people kept asking others what their major is.
It's not funny enough to be a comedy, nor deadpan enough to be serious. Like much of this stuff that reared its head in the 1980s, it's neither fish nor fowl.
The worst thing is, none of the characters are likeable. Though set in a small town out west somewhere, comic relief comes in the form of a Brooklyn kid, who seems to be channeling Sal Mineo and who watches too much television. He starts out unpleasantly abrasive, then it turns out all he really does is watch television. There's a nerdy guy who isn't at all "Revenge of the Nerds" material, being snotty and unpleasant. There's a girl who isn't pretty even when she takes her glasses off (the acid test for 1980s movies: that the unattractive girl is obviously beautiful but no one sees it until her spectacles are removed). And the leading actor, John Stockwell (apparently no relation to Dean) isn't really likeable either. Or even there.
It's one of those movies they made in those days when a long time is spent setting up both setting and character. Though the kids do find the device and it starts acting weird, nothing really important happens in the first half.
The second half, however, raises this movie to a show worth seeing, as the time-space continuum begins to wobble, making nasty creatures and people come and go from the past and the future. The effects aren't bad, but they're not George Lucas, either.
Overall, not a great movie, but a must for anyone who enjoys save-the-world movies before CGI took over. Yet it suffers from a severe problem apart from a dearth of star talent and, perhaps, sense. The ending is terrible. I have a perfect ending (a little trite, perhaps, but which ties up the loose ends, though I won't divulge it). In the end, loose ends are not tied up and serious problems are left hanging. But I suppose we're not to think about that. The world is saved, so what's a little teen problems with the law?
So, to recap: the story is slow to start in the first half, accelerates like crazy in the second half, and ends without an ending. The characters aren't likeable and the only reason we care whether they live or die is because they put the rest of us in danger. It not only leaves the ending hanging, it leaves a whole lot unexplained. But it's fun for what it is.
A few naughty words are scattered throughout, but no sex or gratuitous nudity.