leapso Reviews

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

Do You Like 'Em Big and Stupid?

[13 October 2003]

This is an intriguing, exciting, dreem-wip of a revisionist superhero movie for about ten minutes when Sean Connery's doing an antique, prequel James Bond routine in Africa at the start.

After that, the only problem is the rest of the picture. And, as the punchline to a very old joke goes, "And the good news is...there's plenty of it."

I haven't read the Alan Moore comic book, so other than the general portentous plod of the overall enterprise due to lack of humour - the one trustworthy Achilles' Heel of probably the best writer comics ever produced - can't tell what was his fault and what we could paper-bag, set on fire, and lay at the door of the movie-makers' responsible.

This is probably not the first "high concept" movie to be all high-concept and otherwise entirely devoid of content, but it sure sets a lofty standard.

The basic idea is a period superhero team movie, and you could as easily call them The League of Out-of-Copyright Superheros. We've got the guy from "King Solomon's Mines", a minor character from "Dracula", Dr Jekyll and his famous alter-ego the Incredible Cockney Hulk, some bloke who knew the Invisible Man (why would I make this up?), and Captain Nemo from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea".

My favourites are Oscar Wilde's "Dorian Gray" as an invulnerable immortal - that whirring noise you're hearing is Oscar-baby reaching CD-playing speeds as he revolves in his grave - and the inclusion of Tom Sawyer as a US government agent (which agency remains a closely guarded secret between the screenwriter and his barber) - a conception only matched in its gratuitousness by its under-writing.

The initial plot is vaguely intriguing, so having hooked you with that, they abandon it about one ice-hockey period into the movie. No fooling. It's just "We've changed our minds and now we're going over here." You'd need gallons of cement and complete hunks of Stonehenge to fill in the holes in the writing throughout. If you're a fan of Deus Ex Machina type balderdash in plot-construction, such as the above, please enjoy the use of one character - just in case you're awake by that point, I won't spoil it by naming him/her for you - who disappears entirely from the picture for enormous swathes of it, only to re-appear to save the day out of nowhere when the plot hits yet another giant iceberg and all hope for the writers appears lost.

Apart from leaning heavily on the names of characters painfully extracted from their original fictional settings, they do nothing with them at all. It could as easily have been the Michelin Man as Dorian Gray, the blonde guy from Scooby Doo for Tom Sawyer, Allen Funt as Allan Quartermain, etc etc.

On the plus-side they've spent a lot of money right where you can see it, they eventually get to some action here and there (you know, explosions, gratuitous kung fu, and stuff), and it's all real LOUD in case your attention drifts off towards doing your laundry, or buying bread on the way home every ten minutes or so.

The only actor detectable in the picture is Sean Connery. The woman playing Mina Harker provides some added action-value wrestling with her accent, which skews all over the joint from Sydney's suburbs to various locales in London and rural England. They obviously told the Johnny Depp-looking guy playing Dorian Gray to keep his trick facial hair in shot and otherwise stand around looking bored, and he does a fabulous job in both regards.

Plum role must go the poor schlub landed with Captain Nemo. He has to chew all his dialogue through two ZZ Top members' worth of facial hair, which is probably meant to make him look mysterious, but is likely to draw considerable acclaim as the only detectable hilarity in the movie. He comes over like a tired, cranky shop-keeper, and either the guy's real short, or they've deliberately shot him to look like a midget. For little apparent reason twice in the picture he breaks out into his own fighting code - Sword-Fu. If it wasn't for Unnecessary Tom Sawyer, this would probably be a lock for dullest performance in the movie this year. (Except the yard-long beard, which should probably get a special comedy Oscar).

I can't wait for the next "League of Public Domain Superheros". Just imagine who we'll encounter in that one. Frankenstein's caterer, The Little Engine that Could, the Wolfman's cousin Myron, Pippi Longstocking, Lenny & Squiggy, Bill Sykes from "Oliver Twist" - the skies are the limit.

By the by, just when you think they've hit on something moderately conclusive and viable for the ending, they go and pimp on that too.

If you like big, dumb pictures where the villain puts the heroes through all manner of scantily-written trials and then they FIGHT BACK AND WIN - you know, like nine out of ten mainstream pictures - and everything explodes and it's all at AC/DC concert volume - then see "The League of Ultra-Ordinary Gentlefolk", because it's got all that stuff down to a skit. Otherw die-hard laugh-chasers might want to watch for Captain Nemo's comedy beard, or at least hope it stars in its own series of spin-off movies.

Dick Tracy (1990)

How Did Folks Miss This One?

[13 October 2003]

Up until Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" came along, this was arguably the best feature-length movie adaptation of an existing comics character. Maybe it still is.

The script and direction took the shrewd-ish tack of giving the characters of Tracy, his girlfriend and the Madonna character a little breadth and humanity, while retaining the grotesque nature of the Chester Gould villains which drove the comic strip. There are some concepts of loyalty, morality and personal ethic examined in the Tracy character reminiscent of the John Woo approach in some of his Hong Kong movies with Chow Yun Fat.

They manage to pull this off without dulling down the narrative, and without clashing with the highly stylised, cartoonish and riotously played villains, which is some feat.

When I saw this on release with a friend, we both thought it was an obvious major hit, and one that would become a favourite on video and in revival screenings. Actually it seems pretty much forgotten now. It was probably more intricate than the action movie crowd of the time really wanted (not that it's any devastating mental challenge or anything) and the idea of a superhero movie with at least the rudiments of heart and "issues" (crime v society/personal morality/what makes the hero tick etc) in a superhero type setting probably didn't come into its own in the mainstream until the "Spider-Man" movie.

Anyway, it's overlooked. Everything about it shows craft and care, from the design (particularly use of colour), visual direction, and the music. (Of the three soundtrack albums I believe there were, skip the instrumental one, and the Madonna songs one, and try and get the "various artists" song one, which is one of the best and most varied soundtracks of original material to accompany any movie.)

The battle between Al Pacino's caricature Al Capone character and Beatty's Tracy makes this come off as a musical and sometimes comedy (controlled) parody of Brian De Palma's movie version of "The Untouchables" - or "alternate-universe" version of that film - which is probably not an accident. It works on that level very well, and also on enough other levels to more than hold the attention.

Consistently enjoyable and refreshingly non-stupid big movie overdue for rediscovery, but with its current status, this would take some muscular archaeological work

Barricade (1950)

Abnormal western with unusual characters, point of view

[10 March 2003]

This movie seems to have fallen through the cracks, in the sense that, of all the conventional westerns made around that time, this isn't one of them, and nobody seems to have found anything much to say about it.

It's supposedly a remake of "The Sea Wolf" (I haven't seen that) from the same source novel by Jack London.

A fairly evil joker (played by Raymond Massey) runs a gold mine like it's the prison work camp from "Cool Hand Luke". But there's no slow-burning, cool-talkin' anti-heroes here - Massey is the most dynamic character in the film, most of the men in his charge are a dim mob, and everybody is flawed in one way or another.

One man comes to town looking like the hero, but he's on the run from prison, not notably moral or likeable, and he gets beaten to a pulp by either the major heel, or the minor ones, on a regular basis throughout the picture.

There's a disgraced former judge who Massey keeps around apparently for personal amusement, who talks of faith and morals, but is a slave to the bottle.

And there's a well-spoken nosey gent, who also talks a good game but has a bad leg, and is even victimised by the comedy relief. The comedy relief, by the way, isn't funny, but is one of the more memorably slimy characterisations to turn up in a Western before the spaghetti westerns of a later period. Even the female love interest is on the run from prison.

Weird movie, due to the unusual perspective in which the most hateful character in the flick is also presented as clearly the most interesting, dynamic, and in some ways, admirable character.

"Barricade" is probably worth more attention than it's had, for all its flaws, including some weak acting among the featured characters, and some of the more memorably lousy fight scenes in Hollywood history.

Never really heard of director Peter Godfrey before, and his CV doesn't really include anything that would pointer you towards this, let alone what to expect out of "Barricade". If it comes up on TV, and you're not violently allergic to westerns, you might want to give it a look.

Wacko (1982)

See, they made dumb, funny comedies before the Farrelly Bros

[5 September 2002]

Parody of the first generation of US splatter pics works on about the level of a Mad Magazine parody, but one of the FUNNY ones. (You may have to be kind of old like me to remember those.)

Some veteran hams give it a kick along. Julia Duffy, (who was the snooty chambermaid who never did any work in the "Newhart" TV series set in an inn in Vermont)has exactly the right aloof/just don't care/not all there presence for the heroine here. Andrew Dice Clay has a great bit as the Vinnie Barbarino parody "Tony Schlongini". His theme-song/entrance is a case of 'once fingerpopped, never forgotten'.

Proudly unsophisticated comedy has the dual charm of complete conviction in its silly gags, and not pretending it's anything other than what it is. Very easy watch, with more than enough laughs to get you through.

The Parole Officer (2001)

Conventional feelgood caper movie, unconventional lead character

[25 August 2002]

You've seen similar plots, characters, tension/release "will the good guys prevail against unbelievable odds" elements if you've seen any movies at all. But you probably haven't seen too many lead characters like Steve Coogan's rather ungifted parole officer in this.

Coogan specialises in 'little' English characters (though quite a diverse range over his career) - graceless, irritating, of terrific drive but little achievement, and prone to finding the greatest possible embarrassment and humiliation in any situation. They're somewhat like Michael Palin's favourite type of characters (if you know Eric Olthwaite from the TV series "Ripping Yarns" that's probably one of his) but Palin had more affection for them as a rule.

Somewhat unusually for Coogan he displays a certain affection for his parole officer here - he has his triumphs - but this is a more conventional kind of entertainment than Coogan is normally prone to.

It really is just a feelgood comedy caper movie, with a stand-out lead character, but the feelgood stuff is done pretty slickly, and the protagonist is invariably hilarious - Coogan is funny every time he puts himself at the centre of a scene.

I can understand why other long-term Coogan fans are surprised or disappointed about the conventional nature of this movie, as opposed to his TV work. But I think "The Parole Officer" achieves everything it intended to. Steve Coogan is an exceedingly talented man.

American Pie 2 (2001)

They try to make the same movie again - they succeed - All riiight!!

[25 August 2002]

This is the same movie again, same actors, same characters, except the boys have come home from college for vacation this time, and the climactic party is at a beach-house.

They do a pretty good job of it too. Downsides are that some of the characters - crucial to the balance of the first one - are "demoted" and given little (or little useful) to do. Klein's character and Mena Suvari have already resolved their story, and they're still happy, are given little screen-time, and hardly needed to be there. The character who was the most anonymous of them in the first movie (who didn't have sex with his long-term girlfriend)is outstandingly boring in this movie, not that the actor concerned was given anything to work with.

Similarly the chap who had the non-billiards-related pool-table experience with Stifler's Mom - a kind of off-centre intriguing change-of-pace character in the first movie, is a bore here too. As with the above characters he's trapped in a go-nowhere subplot, and his character (undeveloped here) is more irritating than anything else this time.

On the upside they give Stifler a more prominent role, and most of the energy that's not from Jason Biggs' performance and character comes from him. I thought Stifler would get irritating in larger doses but you're grateful for the energy. (On the downside Stifler's forgotten younger brother turns up prominently towards the end, and does a singularly charmless variant on Scott Baio as Chachi in "Happy Days", which wastes some more time.)

Basically the movie is built around Jason Biggs and Alyson Hannigan, and Biggs is really handy at character-comedy. As they say about young sports guys, he "could turn out to be anything". He seems to have talent to burn, and he's very funny in this. Alyson Hannigan is about the only woman in the movie who has to do much acting - and has some comedy burden placed on her character too - and she's really good. The other acting highlight is Eugene Levy as the dad of Biggs' character. Used to enjoy Levy a lot in "Second City TV". Different sort of approach here - more realistic, more restrained - but the net effect is at least as good. He's funny every time he's on.

The basic good-heartedness, tone, and main elements (romance counts/fleeting "best days of our lives" setting/young guys are sex crazy and it's OK) easily carry the rest. It's a fun movie, though it lacks the focus the first one had, because it doesn't have anything resembling the "We've all got to score this summer" gimmick which drove the original. It's all very well put together, with the exception of some minor mistiming in the direction and editing of some of the comedy set-piece stuff. If you liked the first one, you're almost certain to like this, and that's really why the movie was made, at a guess.

The Gig (1985)

Pretty exceptional little movie on a jazz theme, sort of.

[27 September 2000]

So, a group of middle-age guys who play jazz for a hobby get to live out their dream of playing a professional gig (at a resort hotel), and the dream doesn't turn out like they thought it would.

Doesn't sound like much, but "The Gig" is a movie that sticks with you, because of its understated exploration of the stakes involved in just living a life - failure, hopes, small comforts, friendship, disappointments. The jazz group is the nominal theme, but the film is a character study. Not an academic one - it has the guts (and script) to bleed a little for the characters, and is unconventional in its avoidance of easy tie-ups and crowd-pleasing pay-offs.

An extremely satisfying, heartfelt, well-crafted picture, with performances from Wayne Rogers (TV MASHs 'Trapper John') and Cleavon Little (best known probably as the sheriff in "Blazing Saddles", though he also played a comedy TV doctor in "Temperatures Rising") which suggest they generally didn't get the roles they deserved and were capable of.

Laws of Gravity (1992)

Excellent small-scale crime movie about characters, not crime

[12 September 2000]

I've heard this compared to Scorsese's "Mean Streets", but the crime and situations depicted are much more low-key than that film. This is really unique. A couple of incredibly minor Brooklyn thieves, one's wife, the other's girlfriend, and their local bottom-feeder milieu, futzing around interacting with the locals and just squeaking by. That's about the whole film, give or take a subplot about a stash of guns that our 'heroes' come into and try to sell. But it's not about plot so much, it's a character study, and the performances are incredible, so the characters stick. The two leads are both great, although Adam Trese has the gift of a part as the young psychotic/Jerry Lewis type. Edie Falco (Tony Soprano's wife in "The Sopranos") has an unusually great role as written, in the sense that they don't write too many parts as varied and interesting as this for women to play, particularly in crime-related movies. But what she does with it is pretty astonishing. It's a great performance. That director has one unusual eye for picturesque composition of unlikely subject material too. "Laws of Gravity" is an uncommonly good movie. Its dialogue-ear for humour in banal minutiae has a smell of the Tarantinos, but this pre-dated "Reservoir Dogs".

Oscar (1991)

Very old-fashioned, stagey farce, lotsa charm, pretty funny.

[12 September 2000]

John Landis pretty much makes two kinds of pictures - the ones he's really into, and the commercial ones he attempts to do a pro job on. This is obviously one of the former. Sylvester Stallone as farceur is a bizarre idea, but the lead role of wannabe reforming gangster 'Snaps' Provolone is built around his abilities and limitations, and it wouldn't be easy to think of a film where he's better than this.

Basic idea is that 'Snaps' is trying to reform, but his gangster 'business' has a lot of ongoing loose ends, plus there's his gang, a rival one, the police, some 'straight' bankers he's trying to get involved with, a recalcitrant daughter, and five or six other catastrophes all going on at the same time. If the similarities to another revivalist screwball comedy "What's Up Doc" weren't evident enough, there's also a number of identical looking bags with widely diverse contents getting endlessly confused and turning up in the strangest places. It's that sort of farce, with engaging, ornate little eccentric characters, of which the show stealers are Harry Shearer and Martin Ferrero as gentle little tailors the Finuccis (who are mistaken for vicious mob hitmen), and Tim Curry walking off with hunks of the movie as a swish elocution teacher. Very very deliberate pacing may put some viewers off, though not me, and it does clearly show its stage-farce origins. A real one-off though.

Finders Keepers (1984)

Very old-style caperish farce, with nice tone, funny gags

[12 September 2000]

Richard Lester is an American-born director who was a quiet architect of a certain type of English screen comedy, working on early TV experiments with members of radio's "Goon Show" (Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan), then the first couple of Beatles movies, then some movie stuff which parallelled the surreal comedy of the TV Monty Python, inc "The Bed-Sitting Room" (from a play co-written by Milligan) and "How I Won The War". This is a nice little film which has some of the gagsmanship of his old stuff, and kind of a "What's Up Doc" type plotline, with money from a heist, plenty of screwball characters, and general old-fashioned movie farce confusion. Doesn't probably get the momentum it wants to, but it's low-key affable loopyness is pretty watchable. As the Maltin review suggests, in a pretty decent little comedy cast, the David Wayne turn as the antique, shambolic train conductor is the real highlight, with laughs pretty much every time he turns up. In Lester's career, it's not a "Hard Day's Night", "Three Musketeers", "Cuba", or even "Juggernaut", but it's different and enjoyable enough on its own terms for comedy movie addicts to take a look.

Rented Lips (1987)

Woeful, bedraggled porn industry spoof, one great scene

[11 September 2000]

Setting a movie in the porn movie industry is a fertile basis for a hilarious comedy film. "Rented Lips" is not that film. Decent cast and a noted director of unconventional 60s satirical films all come to a grinding 82-minute halt here. You'll be amazed by how successfully this film avoids humour, and is an unholy mess to boot.

However it has one high-larious scene. I don't consider describing it a "spoiler" as the scene has nothing to do with plot development. In fact I defy viewers of "Rented Lips" to detect any plot development. Indeed, for those viewers unfortunate enough to come into contact with this movie, this will encourage them to at least fast forward to the scene, rather than give up entirely after ten minutes, as sanity would dictate.

The scene concerns the porn-movie making lead characters shooting an unusually complicated sequence involving a WWII porn-musical. The sequence contains a lot of movement, dancing, actors, entrances and exits. At its climax, a character who is an inept porn-actress is to burst in, and warn of the impending attack by the German airforce. The sequence goes into action, everyone runs about as intended, the effects all work, then the actress bursts in in her milkmaid outfit, takes centre stage, and declaims her memorable line: "We are being attacked by the dreaded Lufthansa!!!" Hahahahaha, ohhh, mercy. And if that doesn't grab you, there is absolutely no reason for you to see "Rented Lips". Be warned.

Bad Manners (1984)

Trashy, enjoyable, surprisingly focussed kids-in-prison movie

[7/10 · 11 September 2000]

This is a really, really obscure movie - doesn't make the Leonard Maltin guide under either title - which, for trash movie lovers, offers more than a lot of better known flicks.

For those familiar with the women-in-prison genre of campy movies, this is kind of a kids-in-prison equivalent. You don't want to do "Growing Pains"/"Bad Manners" the disservice of taking it too seriously, since it doesn't demand anything of the sort, but unusually for this kind of film, it has the odd serious undertone, and good acting from the kids.

Where it wins, is its unsentimental, hilariously upfront portrayal of the kids and their language - it kind of pre-dates the "South Park" approach in a small way. The adults are routinely presented as gross caricatures. These two factors, in 1984, probably account for the film's howling commercial success, ahem.

Martin Mull and particularly Karen Black give some good value mugging in the grotesque adult category, but it's the kids' film. In a way it also kind of parallels kid rebellion movies like "Over the Edge", which preceded it. Not great, but very watchable, and unusual enough to be a real curio.

Schlock (1973)

Genuinely funny horror movie parody. Neglected comedy classic

[11 September 2000]

John Landis's first movie may be as good as anything he made. "Schlock" falls in neatly with other 'progressive' US comedy movies of the early 70s, which kicked around genre conventions and added a new frankness in language and toilet humour to US film comedy vocabulary. (Others like this were sketch comedy flicks like Landis's "Kentucky Fried Movie"; plus the Mel Brooks and Woody Allen movies of around the same time).

What sets this one apart is its sustained comic atmosphere, which is goofy, laconic and giddy. Set-pieces - like the 2001 parody, the bar scene where the monster 'Schlock' observes a Jose Feliciano-like blind musician playing a piano boogie and ends up joining in, and a very funny scene where the allegedly fearful Schlock goes into a cinema to see a horror movie, and is terrified - all come off perfectly.

Some beautiful bits of background business too - the hippie in the background of the 2001 scene, just ignoring the portentous foreground action while eating his frozen custard is worth a look. This is just a really, really funny film.