What Planet Are You From? (2000)

Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Garry Shandling, Annette Bening, John Goodman, Ben Kingsley
screenplay by Garry Shandling & Michael Leeson and Ed Solomon and Peter Tolan
directed by Mike Nichols

by Bill Chambers To paint a picture of how juvenile Mike Nichols's What Planet Are You From? can get, its running gag is a humming penis. The film stoops, often, to a level of humour rarely found outside the schoolyard–or an episode of "Married With Children". Yet there's infectious sunshine in Garry Shandling's first big-screen starring vehicle that makes it difficult to begrudge its bad taste. Whatever issues I may take with What Planet Are You From? certainly have nothing to do with being offended by it.

Trial and Error (1997) – DVD

Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Jarrod Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Michael Richards, Jeff Daniels, Charlize Theron, Jessica Steen
screenplay by Sara Bernstein & Gregory Bernstein
directed by Jonathan Lynn

by Jarrod Chambers Trial and Error starts off with some pretty stock situations. Charlie Tuttle (Jeff Daniels) is a lawyer, a Yale man who has just made partner at the firm and is engaged to the boss's daughter. He is absurdly uptight, his fiancée (Alexandra Wentworth) is a ridiculously controlling snob, his boss is a hard-nosed hard-case. In other words, everyone (to begin with) is a cartoon. Charlie's best friend since grade school, Richard Rietti (Michael Richards, a.k.a Kramer from "Seinfeld"), is a free-living actor with a wardrobe that relies heavily on flowered prints. Richard is Charlie's best man, despite pressure from his fiancée and her father to choose someone more, ahem, respectable.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) – DVD

Posted in1960s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Patricia Neal, Mickey Rooney
screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novella by Truman Capote
directed by Blake Edwards

by Bill Chambers Would Paul Varjak (George Peppard) be in love with Holly Golightly if she didn’t look like Audrey Hepburn? That’s the question I kept asking myself as I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the story of a batty woman who overcomes her personality enough to make her downstairs neighbour, a published author, fall for her. She’s a socialite too busy for housework; he’d be destitute if he didn’t have a sugar mama (Patricia Neal). Both are humoured by the champagne crowd, but ultimately, Paul can’t even afford a mid-priced gift for Holly when they go shopping together at Tiffany’s.

The Muse (1999)

Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Theatrical

**/****
starring Albert Brooks, Sharon Stone, Andie MacDowell, Jeff Bridges
screenplay by Albert Brooks & Monica Johnson
directed by Albert Brooks

by Bill Chambers Albert Brooks's latest alter ego Stephen Phillips doesn't have writer's block, per se–he's artistically impotent. Only a week after winning a humanitarian award for his body of work, Stephen suffers at the hands of a young pup executive who pans his latest script (it's not edgy enough) and voids his contract with the studio. Jack (Jeff Bridges, deliciously arrogant), Stephen's successful screenwriter friend, suggests he seek out the inspiration of Sarah (Sharon Stone), an alleged "muse for hire." Sarah once rekindled Jack's creative fire; a desperate Stephen suspends his disbelief in her powers and begs for her counsel, even if it means having to shower her with gifts from Tiffany's, rent her a $1500/night room at the Four Seasons, and be at her beck and call. Meanwhile, Laura (Andie MacDowell), Stephen's wife, becomes chummy with Sarah over an expensive lunch and soon decides to start a cookie business, something along the lines of Famous Amos or Mrs. Fields. Long before Stephen finishes a new, edgier script, Wolfgang Puck–another of Sarah's Hollywood clients–is throwing Laura a party at Spago in honour of her baked goods.

Wild Wild West (1999)

Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Western, Will Smith

*/****
starring Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Salma Hayek
screenplay by Brent Maddock, S.S. Wilson, Peter S. Seaman, and Jeffrey Price
directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

by Bill Chambers If you don't think Kevin Kline in drag is funny, wait 'til you see Will Smith in drag–it's even less funny. By the time Jim West (Smith) had disguised himself as a belly dancer to retrieve his captured comrade Artemus Gordon (Kline) from the clutches of evil Dr. Loveless (Kenneth Branagh), I was unequivocally bored with Wild Wild West, the new summer action-comedy from Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld. Is the Old West really a breeding ground for slapstick, anyway? If your answer is yes, you're probably thinking of Blazing Saddles, but Blazing Saddles was a parody of the western genre that also satirized the social climate of 1974, not a nineteenth-century romp in and of itself.

Hurlyburly (1998) – DVD

Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright Penn, Chazz Palminteri
screenplay by David Rabe, based on his play
directed by Anthony Drazan

by Bill Chambers The word "hurlyburly" describes the thought processes of Eddie the Cokehead to a tee. As played by Sean Penn, hypersensitive Eddie is a wind-up toy that threatens to stroll right off the tabletop–he just doesn't let things go. At first, his behaviour smacks of self-absorption, narcissism, solipsism ("My biggest distraction is me," he tells a loved one). Eventually, we come to understand that Eddie is an existential Sherlock Holmes, desperate to get to the bottom of, quite literally, everything. Hurlyburly is about how a place like Hollywood can eat a person like Eddie alive, because there's no there there. What you see is what you get.

You’ve Got Mail (1998) – DVD

Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey
screenplay by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron
directed by Nora Ephron

by Bill Chambers I'm no grammarian, but AOL's syntactical redundancy of a catchphrase "You've got mail!" has always been nails-on-a-chalkboard for me. Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail the movie is somewhat redundant, too: It bears more than a passing resemblance to the 1993 Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan-Ephron outing Sleepless in Seattle while also being the second remake of Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner, which I'm embarrassed to admit I've never seen. (Have since rectified.-Ed.)

Analyze This (1999)

Posted in1990s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Gangster, Robert De Niro, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Robert DeNiro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palminteri
screenplay by Peter Tolan and Harold Ramis and Ken Lonergan
directed by Harold Ramis

by Bill Chambers Robert De Niro is not a comedian. He used this to his advantage in what is arguably his best performance, as The King of Comedy's Rupert Pupkin. In that 1982 media-age satire from Martin Scorsese, a film that becomes more prophetic with each passing year, Pupkin is a struggling comedian obsessed with talk-show host Jerry Langford (a self-parodying Jerry Lewis) and the thought of appearing on his program. Pupkin's routines, however, are painfully unfunny; moreover, he is blithely unaware of their mediocrity. That his jokes don't sound like they were written to bomb (they're like warmed-over Henny Youngman one-liners) is because of De Niro's desperate delivery–the actor has awful comic timing in his bones.

Jackie Chan’s First Strike (1996) + Rush Hour (1998) [New Line Platinum Series] – DVDs

Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Hong Kong, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts, Thriller

First Strike
**½/**** Image B Sound A-
starring Jackie Chan, Chen Chun Wu, Jackson Lou
screenplay by Stanley Tong, Nick Tramontane, Greg Mellott, and Elliot Tong
directed by Stanley Tong

RUSH HOUR
*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Tom Wilkinson, Elizabeth Peña
screenplay by Jim Kouf and Ross LaManna
directed by Brett Ratner

by Bill Chambers Early on in Rush Hour, the smash-hit buddy-cop movie from last fall, there’s a shot of Jackie Chan clinging tenaciously to a Hollywood street sign as he dangles several feet above the L.A. traffic. It’s a powerful metaphor for Chan’s career: Rush Hour represents his last-ditch effort to become a Stateside action star after finally finding a measure of Hollywood success with the popularity of HK imports like Rumble in the Bronx and Supercop. (Indeed, Chan includes said image in the colour stills portion of his autobiography I Am Jackie Chan, annotated by this caption: “On the set of Rush Hour–hanging on to another chance at Hollywood success.”) This final gamble, after striking out in the early-’80s with Cannonball Run II and The Big Brawl, his English-language debut, paid off handsomely. But why?

Rumble in the Bronx (1996) + Mr. Nice Guy (1998) – DVDs

Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Hong Kong, Jackie Chan, Martial Arts, Thriller

RUMBLE IN THE BRONX
***/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Jackie Chan, Anita Mui, Francoise Yip, Bill Tung
screenplay by Edward Tang and Fibe Ma
directed by Stanley Tong

MR. NICE GUY
**/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Jackie Chan, Richard Norton, Miki Lee, Karen McLymont
screenplay by Fibe Ma and Edward Tang
directed by Sammo Hung Kam-Bo

by Bill Chambers Prior to his breakout stateside hit Rush Hour, Chinese box-office sensation Jackie Chan's Hollywood forays were the terrifically unsuccessful films The Cannonball Run I & II and The Big Brawl (which planted Jackie in Prohibition-era Chicago!). When American studios–namely, "mini-majors" New Line and Miramax–elected to give him a second chance, not by casting him in their movies but by importing, dubbing, and retitling his more recent Hong Kong hits and putting the full force of their niche-adept marketing machines behind them, the results were much different: Rumble in the Bronx made a small mint for New Line, which almost immediately signed him up for Rush Hour (review forthcoming), last year's sleeper hit. (Sadly, Chan's masterpiece, Drunken Master II, has yet to be distributed in North America by a North American company. Perhaps it's too, well, drunken.)

Six Days Seven Nights (1998) – DVD

Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Harrison Ford, Anne Heche, David Schwimmer, Jacqueline Obradors
screenplay by Michael Browning
directed by Ivan Reitman

by Bill Chambers Still smarting from back-to-back high-profile failures (the Arnie-gets-pregnant comedy Junior and the Billy Crystal/Robin Williams team-up Father's Day), director Ivan Reitman needed a hit, badly. In casting Six Days Seven Nights, he took out the closest thing to a living insurance policy you will find in Hollywood: Harrison Ford. For Ford's co-star and the female lead, he chose Anne Heche, who's spent a few years in the trenches (best friend and wife roles) gaining traction as the next Meg Ryan. Then Ford seemed to go through a mid-life crisis, sporting an earring and a hip new look on the talk-show circuit that felt like a rejection of his stoic image and the fans thereof. And Heche came out as a lesbian in a public declaration of love for Ellen DeGeneres. It created a lot of static for both their performances and audiences to overcome, yielding Reitman's third flop in a row. Does this mean Six Days Seven Nights is some buried treasure you'd be lucky to discover at the video store? Not really, because the movie is pretty unremarkable except as a PR train crash. Let's be honest: Reitman has coasted since Ghostbusters; sometimes he hits a double, but this is not one of those times.

Antz (1998)

Posted in1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Family, Film Festivals, TIFF

**/****
screenplay by Todd Alcott and Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz
directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson

by Bill Chambers Directors Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson as well as “stars” Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Danny Glover, Jennifer Lopez, and Christopher Walken file into the sweaty, crowded Tudor Room of Toronto’s Four Seasons hotel to discuss the Dreamworks/PDI production Antz, a computer-generated movie that took two-and-a-half years to complete. Antz will beat the not-dissimilar Disney/Pixar project A Bug’s Life to screens by a month. That’s why Jeffrey Katzenberg–Michael Eisner’s former right-hand man, and the K in Dreamworks SKG–is there, tucked between some cameras and journalists. He looks to be gloating–does he have cause to?

The Breakfast Club (1985) [Widescreen] – DVD

Posted in1980s, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Comedy, Drama, DVD, John Hughes, Teen

***/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Emilio Estevez, Paul Gleason, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson
written and directed by John Hughes

by Vincent Suarez Oh, how I wish I could hate The Breakfast Club. Maybe it’s because I was a geeky high-school senior in 1985, when the film was released, and I defiantly loathed anything that smacked of cool. Perhaps it’s because writer/producer/director John Hughes has been responsible for some of the most inane (e.g., Dutch, Curly Sue, Baby’s Day Out) and unnecessary (e.g., Flubber, Miracle on 34th Street, 101 Dalmatians) films in recent memory.