If you looked at the average lifespan of “Saturday Night Live” alumni compared to the general population, you'd find it’s shockingly low. So many talented comedic fireballs have gone to early graves -- some to disease (Gilda Radner) or violence (Phil Hartman), but far too many to excessive lifestyles and a lack of self-control.
Anyone watching the show in the 1990s initially viewed Chris Farley as the reincarnation of John Belushi: a maniacal tubby guy with a natural grace for physical comedy that belied his girth. “I Am Chris Farley” is the new documentary about his life, where he came from, why he was so popular on the show -- and why he was incapable of doing anything halfway.
Directors Brent Hodge and Derik Murray interview an impressive list of people who knew or worked with Farley, tracing his rise from class cut-up in a bucolic Wisconsin town to king of the Second City comedy troupe in Chicago up through the seemingly ordained call-up to SNL. We learn that he was a man who would literally do anything for a laugh, even being suspended from his Catholic school for exposing himself during typing class.
People like Adam Sandler, Dan Aykroyd, David Spade, Bob Saget, Mike Myers, Christina Applegate, SNL chief Lorne Michaels and many others weigh in with memories, regrets and praise. Farley’s brothers and childhood friends speak of a soul so innocent and pure that there was simply no nastiness in him. His inability to cope with alcohol and drugs was, they say, simply an extension of a man whose appetite for joy was unquenchable.
Myself, I was never a particular fan of Farley’s. He seemed to operate under the principle of “comedy by volume” -- that is, any line of dialogue becomes funny if you shout it loudly and repeatedly. The half-life he could wring out of material was regrettably brief; no doubt the reason his two films in a starring role both bombed as audiences couldn’t summon the endurance for 90 minutes of Farley’s pratfalls and mugging.
His act got old fast, and so did Farley. His death at age 33 of an overdose, compounded by his obesity, came as a shock to exactly no one, his friends say.
Still, if Farley’s brand of merriment wasn’t my bag, I appreciated the devotion he put into his craft. As this doc underlines, no one put more effort into looking like a screw-up.
It’s an insightful, affecting portrait of a misunderstood comedy giant who left us too soon.
As a straight-to-video release that’s also being shown on the Spike TV channel, there are no bonus materials.
That's my three-word review of Melissa McCarthy's new comedy "Tammy," an oft-turgid wallow in sentiment and icky embarrassing humor. It's still got some genuine laughs, and is buoyed by McCarthy's winning screen presence. It's not a long movie at 96 minutes, yet you could easily chop a half-hour out of it and have a winner.
Mumblecore, for those not into zero-budget indie films, is epitomized by rambling dialogue that has the appearance of being ad-libbed. Its influence on mainstream comedy is clear to see, though usually it's punky young guys -- think Jonah Hill or Michael Cera -- with the verbal diarrhea.
After an impressive string of hits including "The Heat" and "Identity Thief," McCarthy is currently sitting in the unlikely catbird's seat as Hollywood's most consistently bankable star over the last few years. She's running the show on her projects, and has decided to team up with her husband Ben Falcone, who co-wrote the screenplay with her and makes his directing debut.
He frequently turns up in her movies as her beau, though here he just has a bit part as the jerk boss at the Topper Jack's burger joint where she works.
The result of their collaboration is a raunchy road trip comedy starring McCarthy and Susan Sarandon as her grandmother. They have some fairly predictable misadventures, some romantic hook-ups, binge drinking and petty larceny.
In the end, we all Learn Something -- in this case, that McCarthy had better find some new material if she wants to keep her streak alive.
The story starts off with an epic bad day for Tammy. Living in tiny Murphysboro, Ill., she crashes her ancient Corolla into a deer on the way to work, then gets fired for being late. Arriving home unexpectedly early, she's surprised to find her husband (Nat Faxon) serving an elegant dinner to his mistress (Toni Collette). Tammy promptly packs her stuff and decamps to her parents' place, two doors down.
"You never cooked me dinner!" she shrieks. "And it smells good, too!"
But her mom, played by Allison Janney, is something of a pill. Tammy's grandmother Pearl (Sarandon) lives with her but has had enough, so the pair take off for an impromptu jaunt for parts unknown with $6,700 of grandma's cash as their stake.
It's sort of a Thelma & Louise thing, with a cross-generational twist.
The ages of the actresses don't exactly sync up, with less than a quarter-century dividing them all -- McCarthy is only 11 years younger than Janney, who in turn is only 13 years Sarandon's junior. It is rather strange to see Sarandon, whose potent sexual presence has lit up screens for four decades, doing the cranky oldster routine complete with puffy feet from diabetes.
The running joke is that Tammy is the hard-partying cutup of the family, but Granny Pearl is at least her equal despite her prim outward appearance. She's a nasty drunk, supplies teenagers with beer and boasts of having been an Allman Brothers groupie.
Kathy Bates and Sandra Oh turn up late in the game as wealthy lesbian friends of Pearl's, who help them out when they're on the lam from the law. Bates lights up her scenes, feisty yet down-to-earth, and has one emotional crescendo that feels like it belongs in another movie.
Actually, most of "Tammy" feels like it belongs in another flick. McCarthy may be all that as a screen comedienne, but she and her hubby needed to run their screenplay through the spin cycle a few more times.
Before you get your knickers into a twist about a new animated movie compromising the purity of the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz,” I’d like to point out that there was already an “official” sequel in 1985. (Which is not well remembered because, well, it was pretty awful.) And there have been a handful of films over the years that continued or adapted the story of Dorothy & Co. – “The Wiz” and last summer’s blah “Oz the Great and Powerful” starring James Franco.
Author L. Frank Baum actually wrote a number of Oz books, and his descendants published even more. Heck, there already was an animated version in 1971 called “Journey Back to Oz,” and the Muppets did their own Oz flick in 2005.
So if the very existence of “Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return” offends you, then my advice is to just get over yourself.
It’s actually a rather agreeable little film, aimed more at small kids than grown-ups looking to relive childhood memories. The computer animation is decent, the voice acting lively and engaging – including a first-rate turn by Martin Short as the bad guy – and it even features a number of catchy musical sequences.
Sure, this is a few steps down the ladder from “Frozen” in terms of quality and artistry. But it greatly exceeds low expectations.
For Dorothy (Lea Michele), only one day has passed since the twister that transported her to Oz. She wakes up to find her Kansas home leveled, and a shifty appraiser (Short) convincing people to sign over their property and depart.
Back in Oz, though, many years have passed. Scarecrow (Dan Aykroyd) has come into his own as the resident brainiac running the wizard’s palace and contraptions, while Lion (Jim Belushi) and Tin Man (Kelsey Grammer) have become a brave warrior and emotional soul, respectively. But they’re under attack from the evil Jester (Short again) and zap Dorothy back to help out.
This requires a new journey down the yellow brick road, but with a new set of companions assembled along the way.
Wiser (Oliver Platt) is an immensely fat, clever owl who wears spectacles and has a tendency to finish other people’s sentences. Marshall Mallow (Hugh Dancy) is a brave, resolute soldier who just happens to be made of gooey marshmallow. The China Princess (Megan Hilty) is the brittle leader – both in terms of her body and fractious personality – of a tiny people made out of delicate china.
Rounding out the cast are Bernadette Peters as Glinda, trapped by the Jester, and Patrick Stewart as Tug, an aged tree who helps Dorothy along her way.
The Jester is quite a memorable villain. The sibling of the wicked witch killed by Dorothy, he’s both cursed by and hungry for magical power. He can work his sister’s crystal ball and broomstick, though not particularly well, and commands her army of flying monkeys. Short gives him a frenetic desperateness, and also displays some quite amazing singing pipes.
The music by Toby Chu will get toes a-tapping, though the songs tend to be short expositional transitions between scenes rather than show-stoppers.
Co-directors Will Finn and Dan St. Pierre keep things moving along at a brisk pace, and the action scenes are crisply-staged. We get to see a lot more of the fanciful world of Oz, including a bestiary of neat critters. (Though personally, I would have liked to see more than a token munchkin or two.)
This “Oz” film may seem like a cheap spinoff, but it’s fun and breezy. It certainly beats that smarmy Franco flick by a gold-bricked mile.
"The Candidate" really slows down in its last half-hour or so, as this raunchy, no-holds-barred take on modern politics pulls up its pants, gets a little serious and tries to say Something Important. But the first hour or so is loose and carefree, and is as gut-bustingly funny as anything I've seen in awhile.
Call it two-thirds of the funniest movie of the year.
There's one scene that nearly made me cough up a lung. Marty Huggins, the prissy Christian family man played by Zach Galifianakis, is telling his clan the sort of scrutiny they can expect now that he's running for Congress. He asks them to lay any embarrassing secrets out on the dinner table so they can confront them. The two cherubic young boys and his prim wife proceed to lay out a litany of scatological transgressions that would have Dante warming up his inferno.
His opponent, four-term incumbent Cam Brady (Will Ferrell), gets into plenty of his own hilarious escapades. One involves babies, and in his zeal to beat out Marty to lay some kisses on them in the time-honored political tradition, he ends up ... well, kind of the opposite of kissing the baby.
Much of the humor is over-the-top and zany, and bears no relation to even the worst antics we've seen in this or any election cycle. (Thought Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got pretty close with his line, "He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain.")
Later on, though, things go from crazy-funny to crazy-implausible -- such as when one candidate shoots another during a hunting "accident," or another seduces his opponent's wife, tapes it, and uses the footage as the basis for a campaign ad. In both instances, their poll numbers go up.
These moments pierce the bubble of carefully cultivated disbelief, and the movie just becomes one big goof job.
Finally, there's the schmaltzy finale, in which we're asked to believe that one candidate would take an action that has never been performed in the history of politics, and probably isn't even legal. Also, oddly, that both campaigns would share the same hall for their victory parties. All to set up a big moment where things get tender and teary.
You can practically hear the windbag gas escaping.
Director Jay Roach and screenwriters Chris Hency and Shawn Harwell are careful to keep the political barbs nonpartisan, or more accurately multi-partisan: everybody comes off looking bad.
In a bit of a switch, it's the Democrat Brady who's a boozing, corrupt tool of the big corporations, represented by the not-even-slightly subtle duo of super-rich brothers named Motch. They're played by John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd, and their presence mostly serves to remind us that Aykroyd is now old enough to play the aged evil tycoons he battled in "Trading Places."
Huggins, meanwhile, is the humble do-gooder who's chosen to run as a patsy, and even has to take lessons on how to appear more manly from his appointed svengali, played by Dylan McDermott. With his Cheetos mustache and slightly swishy manner, Galifianakis paints a complex comedic portrait of a man who doesn't really fit into any neat box.
Ferrell, meanwhile, is mostly doing a takeoff on his caricature of George W. Bush, with a thick coating of North Carolina molasses. Think of a DNA splicing of John Edwards and Sean Hannity. (His motto: "America. Jesus. Freedom.")
"The Campaign" is definitely worth a ticket, though be forewarned the language and sexual terminology is about as nasty as you can get without an NC-17 rating. Keep the little ones at home, and keep your expectations low for the last act, and you'll have a good time.
I've occasionally seen well-known movie critics reverse themselves -- almost invariably, giving a second positive review to a film they dissed the first time around. Never the other way around. Roger Ebert famously gave "Unforgiven" an indifferent review, then changed course shortly thereafter when an overwhelming preponderance of the critic corps lavished it with praise. He begged off that he was distracted by his upcoming marriage. A decade later, he went so far as to include it in "Great Movies," his compendium of reviews of masterpieces.
Personally, I have never seen a movie I deemed bad that I later changed my mind about enough to view it positively. More often, films I adored once upon a time diminish when seen years later with a different perspective. Frankly, I'm more than a mite suspicious of anyone who totally changes course when they find their negative opinion of a film leaves them all alone.
I will say, however, that "Ghostbusters 2" was much better than I remembered it. I saw it only once back when it came out in 1989, and watched it again while experiencing some down time (a nearly unrecognizable commodity these days) during a recent trip.
This isn't to say it's great, or even good. But it's a reasonably funny and entertaining movie that, if it existed on its own, would not be seen as the disaster it was generally viewed as at the time. It doomed any talk for a third movie, though that's perked up again lately, with Bill Murray insisting he won't be involved.
I think a couple of things made "2" seem like such a letdown. The first was the relative long interval between the first film in 1984 and the sequel. At least during the '80s, if a movie did very well the sequel almost always came out two years later, three max. Apparently there was some problem getting the cast to all come back with a screenplay they agreed upon, and that's reflected in the disjointed nature of "2."
The biggest reason, though, is what a huge act it had to follow. I really don't think it's possible to overpraise the original "Ghostbusters." Perhaps my views are colored by childhood memories, but for my money "Ghostbusters" is right up there with the all-time great film comedies -- "Some Like It Hot," "Singin' in the Rain," and so on. Other than being raucously funny, it tapped into scientific and psycho-babble neuroses that were flying around at the time. It essentially launched the genre of the big-budget action/comedy, and brought science fiction into the cinematic mainstream by poking fun at it.
Strangely, one of the things I remember most about "2" was the characters of Louis Tully, the Ghostbusters' nerdy attorney played by Rick Moranis, having a romance with their laconic secretary, Janine (Annie Potts). Like most teenage geeks, I was entranced by the idea of a woman throwing herself at a man with no reason to expect such attentions. Plus, their coupling was cute.
The script, by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, contains a few good zingers. The courtroom scene is one, where Tully addresses the judge in his opening comments and concludes with the patter, "and one time I got turned into a dog and they helped me." Director Ivan Reitman plays out the comic timing on that reaction exquisitely, cutting back to the judge looking utterly gobsmacked.
Another great throwaway line is where the Ghostbusters pop in on their ostensible leader, Peter Venkman (Murray), while he's having dinner at a fancy restaurant with erstwhile lady love Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver). They're covered in ghost goo and make quite a scene, until Venkman hushes them with the classic, "Guys, guys, you're scaring the straights!" This is perhaps one of the first Hollywood movies in which gay humor did not come at the expense of the homosexual community.
I also enjoyed Peter MacNicol's daffy Janosz, the curator at the art restoration museum where Dana is working. He talks in a flighty Eurotrash accent, but when pressed reveals that he's a native-born American.
So why doesn't he film work? Well, the lack of a really good bad guy doesn't help. The villain is Vigo, a long-dead Slavic slayer who is brought back to life when a giant painting of him is reanimated by the negative energy flowing in great churning rivers under the city of New York. He's kind of scary-looking, but just doesn't have a lot of personality.
I also missed the prickly peevishness of Walter Peck, the hostile city bureaucrat so memorably played by William Atherton in the original. Until Gozer arrives on Earth and starts wreaking havoc, Peck operated as the main adversary for the Ghostbusters. Kurt Fuller tries bravely to fill in as the mayor's newest jerk toady, but he just doesn't conjure up the sort of quotidian malevolence personified by Peck.
And of course, the story's finale is a virtual repeat of the one in the original, with the aggressive giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man replaced by the benevolent Statue of Liberty, brought to life by the boys and ridden to the rescue. One icon blown up to titan size smashing stuff in the Big Apple equals big comedy; the second go-round feels like a cynical, uninspired rehash.
Still, I have to give "Ghostbusters 2" points for exceeding expectations, or at least my wrongful recollection of it as a disastrously bad flick. Time may not have totally changed my mind, but it did mellow out my hostility.
Although it hasn't aged particularly well since winning the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1989, "Driving Miss Daisy" is an exquisitely-acted slice of cinematic comfort food that evokes the look and feel of the Old South -- or, at least, how we would like to remember it.
Looking back on this film directed by Bruce Beresford from a screenplay by Alfred Uhry, based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, it feels a little quaint and musty -- like a room in your grandmother's well-tended house that seemed magical when you were little, but upon reaching adulthood seems cramped and a little stale-smelling.
Still, it's mostly a showcase for two finely-written characters, and the actors who portray them. That's how "Driving Miss Daisy" registers now: Marking the coda of one great acting career, and the rise of another.
Jessica Tandy made her bones on the stage, but had many memorable film appearances beginning in 1932, including "The Seventh Cross" and "The Birds." Already in her 70s, she stepped into a major career revival in the 1980s and '90s with "The World According to Garp" and "Cocoon" and its sequel, capped off by her Oscar win for Best Actress for "Miss Daisy," becoming the oldest actress (at 81) to win the statuette. She would be nominated again a couple years later for "Fried Green Tomatoes," and died in 1994.
"Driving Miss Daisy," along with "Glory" that same year, vaulted Morgan Freeman into stardom at the age of 52, beginning a 20-year run of screen roles that is, in my estimation, unmatched by any other actor in the modern era. "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves." "Unforgiven." "The Shawshank Redemption." "Se7en." "Kiss the Girls." "Amistad." "Deep Impact" (portraying a black American president). "Bruce Almighty" (playing God, no less). "Million Dollar Baby." "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight." "Gone Baby Gone." "Invictus."
Five Oscar nominations, and one win. Amazing. Only Tom Hanks' run in the 1990s is even worthy of comparison.
Even when "Miss Daisy" came out more than 20 years ago, many people were critical of it because of its portrayal of a deferential black man playing servant to an rich, elderly white woman. All of the "Yes'ms" and "Yessirs" coming out of Hoke Colburn's mouth grated on the ears of a younger, more assertive generation of African-Americans -- especially filmmaker Spike Lee, who still speaks ill of "Miss Daisy" winning Best Picture when his film of the same year, "Do the Right Thing," did not even garner a nomination.
(Lee is correct in his assessment that "Right Thing" is the superior film, but doesn't seem to realize how much his harping diminishes him.)
Daisy Werthan is a member of a small community of Atlanta Jews prominent during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She is wealthy but denies it -- in fact, her main objection to her son Boolie (Dan Aykroyd) hiring a driver for her after she crashes her Chrysler is that her friends will think she's putting on airs. She's furious when Hoke picks her up right in front of the synagogue after services, "like the queen of Romania."
Their relationship progresses with an unsurprising but still genuine thawing period. Daisy teaches the illiterate Hoke to read, he helps her in the garden, and eventually learns to stand up for himself. "Hoke, you're my best friend" is her declaration after 25 years together, and its utterance surprises her as much as it does Hoke.
As a confirmed classic car nut, the automobiles in the movie were a gorgeous feast for these eyes. I could barely stand to see Miss Daisy crash her brand-new Chrysler, but was rewarded by its replacement with a maroon 1948 Hudson Commodore. That gave way to a black 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood 75, and Miss Daisy stayed in Caddies from there on in -- a 1965 and 1972, I believe.
I'm all for dopey flicks designed to keep small children entertained, or at least distracted, for a while. I've got a rugrat myself now, so I'm sure I'll soon be making the acquaintance of Sponge Bob, Barney and Elmo.
But does programming for kids -- I won't deign to call it filmmaking -- have to be as aggressively bad as "Yogi Bear"?
Straight from the lame school of "Garfield" and "Alvin and the Chipmunks," "Yogi" stars live humans interacting with computer-generated versions of cartoon characters. The effect is not convincing, nor is it expected to be. Every minute Yogi and his vertically challenged sidekick Boo Boo are onscreen, they're calling attention to the fact that they're not really there.
Dan Aykroyd does a reasonable facsimile of Yogi's voice, which was originally done by Daws Butler, who was doing a knockoff of Art Carney's character from "The Honeymooners." Justin Timberlake provides the voice of Boo Boo, and instantly wipes out all the good feelings I had about his burgeoning acting career after "The Social Network."
If you remember, Yogi is "smarter than the average bear," and traipses around Jellystone Park with Boo Boo scheming up ways to steal food from visiting humans. Yogi has a major craving for, as it comes out in his rollicking speech, "pick-a-nick baskets."
Tom Cavanaugh plays Head Ranger Smith, who inherited his post from his father and has spent his whole life learning the ins and outs of Jellystone. Alas, attendance has been dropping for years, and his only companionship is dimwitted Ranger Jones (T.J. Miller), who's a rookie but already has eyes on the top job.
Things get shaken up with the arrival of Rachel (Anna Faris) -- or, as Yogi dubs her, "movie-maker lady." She wants to film a documentary about Jellystone's famous talking bear. Though I don't know how famous he can be if nobody comes to the park to see him.
Needless to say, Ranger Smith and Rachel are soon making moony eyes at each other.
The evil mayor (Andrew Daly) is facing a shortfall, and wants to close down Jellystone and auction off its prime acres to the timber company. So it's up to Yogi, Rachel, Smith and Boo Boo to come up with the cash.
Now, think about that last paragraph. The mayor of a city is going to shut down a massive park encompassing thousands of acres? What kind of park like that is inside municipal limits? And even if it were, Jellystone (a parody of Yellowstone) is clearly a national park under federal jurisdiction.
This movie is dumb, dumb, dumb. At 80 minutes long, it felt like eternity sitting through it. My advice: Run. Run now. If your kids really want to see Yogi Bear, show them some of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
