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Reviews
Babe: Pig in the City (1998)
What were they thinking?
This movie is not just a disappointment after the first "Babe"...it is a deception to give it the same name. Where the first movie had a plot, was fun and funny on many levels, had sympathetic characters, and appealed to all ages, this movie is shapeless, pointless, cruel, and lacking in any interest or appeal to any age group. It is too dark for kids and too dumb for adults. The longest scene in the movie is an interminable "kidnapping" of dozens of animals by cruel animal wardens culminating after fifteen excrucuiating minutes with the moviemakers tormenting and brutalizing a handicapped dog. It is incomprehensible that anyone gave much thought to what they were doing when this movie was conceived. It is like a demented and breathless child telling a story...and then the farmer fell down a well...and then the pig got lost... and then there was a chase and then the nasty neighbors told on them...and then there was a chase and then the animals escaped...but before that they were captured...and then there was a pregnant monkey...and then the fat farmer got her underwear blown up...and then... and then...
Illuminata (1998)
A self-indulgent and tedious movie with moments of brilliance
This movie treads on very familiar ground -- the confusion of art and reality in the life of actors. It does not have anything particularly novel or interesting to say on this subject and is in fact rather dull. The final scene in particular is interminably tedious. Seeing the audience crying at the "moving" acting they are seeing on the screen made me ask "who do they think they are kidding?"
Nevertheless there are some good performances and interesting scenes, particularly from some of the minor characters. Ben Gazzara plays an old and slightly touched actor, who gets a whole posse of policemen clapping his performance when they come to arrest him.
Christopher Walken again plays an over-the-top wacko. Remember his character "The Continental" on Saturday Night Live; an aging eurotrash satyr chasing a young woman around the furniture and trying to get her into bed? He does an identical turn in the film, chasing his young (male) prey around an antique table and plying him with champagne.
Overall this film was both enchanting and irritating, but mostly irritating.
Late Last Night (1999)
Surprising, darkly hilarious, night on the town goes wrong
This movie was a big surprise -- straight to TV, misleading previews -- I didn't expect much. But it is a sly wickedly humorous tale of Dan (Emilio Estevez) who thinks his marriage is falling apart, contacts an old friend (Bobby Edner) and goes on the town for an increasingly disastrous night out, involving stolen cars, fast girls who turn out to be strippers, various dangerous drugs, and eventually arrest. On the way there are some eyepopping scenes involving sinister people in off-limit night clubs, and an over-the-top choreographed lip-synch to Queen's "Somebody to Love". Dan is lead on in all this by the Stranger Danger Kid, who is every mother's worst nightmare. After his arrest Dan is interviewed by a psychiatrist (Diane Lane) in a hilariously off-the-wall performance, mixing sympathy for the victim with an icy payoff. We are left wondering if perhaps the dangerous friend is real or an alter-ego leading Dan out of his straight life down the path he secretly wishes his life had taken. A game of golf in the dark with the dangerous friend, using a stolen Cadillac as a buggy, leads Dan to the realization that his life is good and that he wants to make a go of it with his wife.
Altogether a clever and witty film with many interesting surprises along the way. The ending is a little soft, but anything else would have been just too edgy.