The Other Side of the Bed (2002)

February 20, 2004Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Drama, Musical, Romance, Spain, Theatrical

El Otro lado de la cama
**/****
starring Ernesto Alterio, Paz Vega, Guillermo Toledo, Natalia Verbeke
screenplay by David Serrano
directed by Emilio Martínez Lázaro

Othersideofthebedby Bill Chambers By the fifteen-minute mark of The Other Side of the Bed (El Otro lado de la cama), actresses Paz Vega and Natalia Verbeke have both doffed their clothes and bedded down the same man, but the movie, a musical, is–or wants to be–as sanitary as an Elvis vehicle. Director Emilio Martínez Lázaro labours to make promiscuity innocent again, if ever there was such a thing, and his sense of whimsy is quite seductive at first, since films about the self-interested are so often as shallow or tunnel-visioned as their protagonists (see: Thirteen). Lázaro risks, of course, glossing over his characters’ predicaments to the point of condescension by leeching the film of any gloom, but something possibly worse insinuates itself, a kind of apathy as it occurs that frothiness is being used to evade subjecitivity altogether. The Other Side of the Bed is colourfully sterile, if you will, an ensemble piece in the noncommittal sense of the term, and if you find yourself empathizing with anyone on screen, it’s generally because she’s not wearing pants at the time.

The Brave Little Toaster (1987); The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (1998); The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue (1999) – DVDs

December 11, 2003Posted in****/****, 1980s, 1990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Sci-Fi

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER
****/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C-
screenplay by Jerry Rees & Joe Ranft, based on the book by Thomas M. Disch
directed by Jerry Rees

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER GOES TO MARS
**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
screenplay by Willard Carroll, based on the book by Thomas M. Disch
directed by Robert C. Ramirez

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER TO THE RESCUE
*/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
screenplay by Willard Carroll
directed by Robert C. Ramirez

by Walter Chaw I'm most familiar with Thomas M. Disch for his sterling non-fiction work (The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of and The Castle of Indolence) and a few samplings of his less impressive genre short fiction, and though I was aware that he'd written a couple of children's books about a band of appliances, I'd never felt compelled to investigate. The first taste of Disch's novella The Brave Little Toaster, then, came to me by way of a feature-length animated adaptation from Disney that, a little like Babe: Pig in the City, probably caused enough consternation in the hearts and minds of studio PR to result in its relegation to a minor theatrical push with a botched advertising campaign. Here's a film, after all, that's as innovatively disturbed–as usefully frightening–as any of Uncle Walt's own vintage Merry Melodies and Silly Symphonies. In the whitewash of modern American children's entertainment via the Big Mouse, anything that isn't facile and patronizing is to be avoided and disdained.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) [Special Edition] – DVD

December 2, 2003Posted in1960s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, UK

*/**** Image A Sound B Extras B-
starring Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Lionel Jeffries, Gert Frobe
screenplay by Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes
directed by Ken Hughes

by Walter Chaw Released the same year as the marginally less excrescent The Love Bug, Ken Hughes's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang helped mark 1968 as not only one of the most tumultuous years in American history, but also one of the most puzzling in regards to its mainstream kidsploitation fare. Why bad entertainment involving anthropomorphized automobiles erupts during corrupt regimes (see also: "My Mother the Car", from LBJ's term (1965), and Reagan's British Trans Am in "Knight Rider" (1982)) is one of those things someone should ponder someday.

The Singing Detective (2003)

October 24, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Esoterica, Musical, Mystery

***/****
starring Robert Downey Jr., Robin Wright Penn, Jeremy Northam, Mel Gibson
screenplay by Dennis Potter, based on his miniseries
directed by Keith Gordon

Singingdetectiveby Walter Chaw A film about transplants (UK to America, Michael Gambon to Robert Downey Jr., postwar-'40s English tunes to 1950s American doo-wop), The Singing Detective has as its most effective moments the parts transplanted whole from Dennis Potter's amazing six-hour BBC miniseries. Not to say that Keith Gordon's The Singing Detective isn't a frequently fascinating beast all by itself (the late Potter's own screenplay, shot nearly word-for-word by Gordon, assures a measure of quality almost deliriously high), but to say that the inevitable comparisons will be harsh and, frankly, unfair, given the author's hand in the adaptation and the strain of compression.

Sleeping Beauty (1959) [Special Edition – 2-Disc Set] – DVD

September 18, 2003Posted in1950s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
story adaptation Erdman Penner, from the Charles Perrault version
directing animators Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas, Marc Davis, Ollie Johnston, John Lounsbery; supervising director Clyde Geronimi; sequence directors Eric Larson, Wolfgang Reitherman, Les Clark

by Bill Chambers

"Heralded by audiences and critics alike, Sleeping Beauty was the final fairy tale to be produced by Walt Disney himself. Now fully restored with revolutionary digital technology, its dazzling colors, rich backgrounds, and Academy Award-nominated orchestrations shine brighter than ever. When an enchanted kingdom and the most fair princess in the land falls prey to the ultimate mistress of evil, the fate of the empire rests in the hands of three small fairies and a courageous prince's magic kiss. Their quest is fraught with peril as the spirited group must battle the evil witch and a fire breathing dragon if they are to set the Beauty free. From spectacular action to the breathtaking pageantry of the princess and her kingdom, Sleeping Beauty has something to charm every member of your family." — Sleeping Beauty DVD liner summary

SleepingbeautycapThe second animated feature shot in CinemaScope after Disney's own Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty looks on the widescreen frame as a vast frame for the spread of darkness. This is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with twenty years' worth of successes and failures factored in, Disney's most fatalistic vision and one of their most gratifying when all's said and done. The picture is so doomy that its happy ending feels more coma-dream than fairy-tale resolution, something like the conclusion to Taxi Driver; in its world of medieval tapestries come to life, joy looks out of place. Joy, in fact, becomes nothing less than a magnet for evil, with villain Maleficent dooming Princess Aurora on the festive occasion of her birth to an untimely grave (by a poisonous prick from a spinning wheel on her sixteenth birthday–a menstrual nightmare from which the animators do not flinch) and later stumbling upon the secreted-away Aurora by scouting the kingdom for excess merriment.

Dirty Pretty Things (2003); Shanghai Ghetto (2003); Camp (2003)

August 20, 2003Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Musical, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

DIRTY PRETTY THINGS
***/****
starring Audrey Tautou, Sergi López, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Okonedo
screenplay by Steve Knight
directed by Stephen Frears

SHANGHAI GHETTO
**/****
directed by Dana Janklowicz-Mann & Amir Mann

CAMP
*½/****
starring Daniel Letterle, Joanna Chilcoat, Robin de Jesus, Steven Cutts
written and directed by Todd Graff

by Walter Chaw Stephen Frears, like antipodean director Phillip Noyce before him, found the Hollywood waters to be a touch turgid and so in 2000 went back to the small country where he first rose to prominence. For Frears, who made his first resonant mark with a fantastic quartet of films–My Beautiful Laundrette, Walter and June, Prick Up Your Ears, and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid–in the mid-’80s, the return to his homeland presaged a return to his interest in England’s bottom caste and immigrant class, first with the grim, slight Liam and now with the trancelike, nightmarish Dirty Pretty Things. Its title both a reference to smarmy hotel manager Juan’s (Sergi López) philosophy of hotel management (“Our guests are strangers–they leave dirty things, we make them pretty things”) and the idea that the “pretty things” might be the film’s pretty heroes, Nigerian refugee Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Turkish illegal Senay (Audrey Tautou), dirtied by the realities of blue-collar London. The struggle between the pragmatism of Juan’s outlook and the idea of sullied purity of Okwe and Senay is really all you need know about the picture–it’s a piece composed of equal parts social realism and fairytale martyrdom, with either part watered down by the other.

Hello, Dolly! (1969) – DVD

August 14, 2003Posted in1960s, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Musical, Romance

*/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Barbra Streisand, Walter Matthau, Michael Crawford, Louis Armstrong
screenplay by Ernest Lehman, based on the stage play by Michael Stewart and The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder
directed by Gene Kelly

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Hunter S. Thompson once remarked that the Circus Circus casino would be “what the whole hep world would be doing on a Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war.” The family audience, meanwhile, would be taking in something like Hello, Dolly!, a film so totalitarian in its crushing good cheer that anyone without a predisposition towards its phoney “togetherness” will find themselves beaten down in their seats. Equal parts Lawrence Welk and Albert Speer, it’s a grotesque epic pageant designed to show off all the money spent on production while being as condescendingly “cute” and innocuous as possible–a brew of wastefulness and sentimentality so strong that it’s hard to breathe in its aroma, let alone drink it to its dregs.

Piglet’s Big Movie (2003) – DVD

August 5, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical, Mystery

*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C-
screenplay by Brian Hohlfeld, from stories by A.A. Milne
directed by Francis Glebas

by Bill Chambers To its credit, Piglet's Big Movie, unlike so many Disney franchise pictures, is inoffensive (unless being monotonous is offensive), but it was hamstrung (har-har) from the outset by the departure through death or firing of original Pooh voice actors Sterling Holloway (Pooh), Paul Winchell (Tigger), Ralph Wright (Eeyore), Junius Matthews (Rabbit), and Hal Smith (Owl). Only the inveterate John Fiedler returns to lend his pipes to the eponymous Piglet, and while Jim Cummings technically sounds like Holloway and Winchell in replacing them, he lacks the mischievous twinkle that both brought to their respective roles. Meanwhile, the character-sprung songs, a major ingredient of the series' charm, are too attached this time around to Carly Simon, who appears in an inexplicably live-action closing-credits sequence singing solo in the Hundred-Acre Wood like she's a real "get" for an audience that hasn't learned to tie their shoes yet. (There are no tunes to get kids in touch with their melancholy side early like Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day's depressing "The Rain Rain Rain Came Down, Down, Down," only stuff to teach them how most songs are sub-folk music until you replace your Fisher-Price radio with a ghetto blaster.) And while it makes more sense here, given that Pooh's first feature film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was a compilation of short subjects, did we really need another Disney flick with an anthology structure on the heels of Cinderella II, Atlantis: Milo's Return, and Tarzan & Jane? It's starting to feel like an injection mold.

Copacabana (1947) – DVD

July 24, 2003Posted in1940s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Musical, Mystery, Romance

*½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Groucho Marx, Carmen Miranda, Steve Cochran, Andy Russell
screenplay by Alan Boretz, Howard Harris, Laslo Vadnay, Sydney R. Zelinka
directed by Alfred E. Green

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Like many great comedians, Groucho Marx was punished for being too good. One can't actually make movies like Horse Feathers, Animal Crackers and the great Duck Soup and not expect to pay a price, so the studio, in its infinite wisdom, decided to impose normalcy onto The Marx Brothers' films in an attempt to restore public order. This, of course, marked the beginning of his team's decline, so that by 1947 he was reduced to making unsalted soda crackers like Copacabana just to pay the rent. And what a reduction it is: Groucho and hapless co-star Carmen Miranda are the only things worth watching in this limp backstage musical, and while they work all the wonders they can with limited material, it's not enough to keep it from seeming more than a woeful desecration of a great comic's talent.

Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940) – DVD

June 10, 2003Posted in1940s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Musical

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C+
starring Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, George Murphy, Frank Morgan
screenplay by Leon Gordon and George Oppenhemer
directed by Norman Taurog

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover If you are like me, you will like Broadway Melody of 1940–that is to say, if you sing the praises of the Hollywood musical. If you thrill to pointless dance numbers and unlikely romantic pairings. If you rejoice at absurdly lavish sets and novelty numbers involving sailors and palm trees. If you have ever hated someone for "not getting" musicals, or wanted to punch someone for complaining that the numbers happen "for no reason," content that there is never a reason beyond the pleasure of the moment and the beauty of aesthetic movement. If you are not, God forbid, John Grierson.

Franchise Boogie: The Jungle Book 2; The Brady Bunch Movie; A Very Brady Sequel; Terminator 2: Judgment Day; Die Another Day; The Animatrix

June 9, 2003Posted in1990s, 2000s, Action, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, James Bond, Musical, Sci-Fi

THE JUNGLE BOOK 2 (2003)
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
screenplay by Karl Geurs
directed by Steve Trenbirth

THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE (1995)
***/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Christine Taylor, Christopher Daniel Barnes
screenplay by Bonnie Turner & Terry Turner
directed by Betty Thomas

A VERY BRADY SEQUEL (1996)
***½/**** Image B Sound A-
starring Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Christine Taylor
screenplay by Harry Elfont & Deborah Kaplan and James Berg & Stan Zimmerman
directed by Arlene Sanford

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)
***½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick
screenplay by James Cameron & William Wisher Jr.
directed by James Cameron

DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002)
**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A-
starring Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rosamund Pike
screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade
directed by Lee Tamahori

THE ANIMATRIX (2003)
***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
written by The Wachowski Brothers*, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Kôji Morimoto, Shinichirô Watanabe, Peter Chung
directed by Peter Chung, Andrew R. Jones, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Takeshi Koike, Mahiro Maeda, Kôji Morimoto, Shinichirô Watanabe

(*We defer to screen billing but recognize this is inaccurate.-Ed., 2016)

by Bill Chambers The studios apply their stratagem for summertime theatrical releases to DVD in 2003, having overcrowded video store shelves this month and last with sequels and offshoots to the degree that, a few weeks from today, you will notice that a Matrix film and a Terminator film are vying for attention both at home and at the multiplex. As Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Bad Boys II, and Legally Blonde 2 touch down in theatres, Die Another Day, The Jungle Book 2, and the Brady Bunch movies land on DVD, and then there are the cross-promotions: It seems like everyone wants a piece of the fallout from Universal’s big-screen Hulk, with Fox, Buena Vista, Anchor Bay, and Universal itself issuing “Hulk”-branded discs prior to the feature film’s June 20th opening. Synergy this aggressive may well erase the line separating legitimate media from its ancillaries yet; Fox takes a bold step in this direction with the upcoming From Justin to Kelly, slated to debut on disc a mere six weeks past its theatrical premiere date, thus rendering the latter a glorified trailer for the former.

West Side Story (1961) [Special Edition – DVD Collector’s Set] – DVD

March 23, 2003Posted in****/****, 1960s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Crime, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Musical, Romance

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris
screenplay by Ernest Lehman, based on the play by Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins
directed by Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins

Mustownby Walter Chaw With apologies to Frank Zappa, Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s West Side Story is dancing about the tumultuous social architecture of Manhattan’s West Side in the 1950s–a picture as political as it is ephemeral and, consequently, as timeless as it is exhilarating. It is one of those rare pictures that feels like the first time I’ve seen it every time I see it–renewing itself endlessly through its rare energy and meticulously choreographed nihilism. That it doesn’t hold together particularly well as a drama, much of the emotional power of its doomed love affair sapped by Richard Beymer’s amazingly bad performance as lead Tony, is secondary to the enduring effectiveness of the Leonard Bernstein score (with Sondheim’s amazingly current lyrics and Saul Chapin’s bright orchestration); Jerome Robbins’s ebullient dance sequences; Rita Moreno and George Chakiris; and the revelatory location work and lighting design.

Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie (2002) [2-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVD

March 22, 2003Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical, UK

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
written and directed by Paul Vischer and Mike Nawrocki

by Walter Chaw Sort of Monty Python-lite with a Christian message, the VeggieTales direct-to-video series of didactic sketches is, I’m told, the top-selling home video series in history, speaking at once to the creepy rise of grotesquely hypocritical religiosity in the United States and the fact that VeggieTales, judging by its first feature-length film Jonah, is extremely clever and entertaining. Packed with visual gags and semi-subtle references (a “Moby Blaster” video game in a seafood reference recalls Melville’s fondness for the Jonah tale), Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie is a bouncy Christian animated musical with a handful of compulsively catchy tunes and some crisp computer-imaging work. It occurred to me a few times during the course of the picture that as far as Christian entertainment goes, this is the first product that didn’t disqualify the term as an oxymoron.

Labyrinth (1986) [Superbit] – DVD

March 5, 2003Posted in1980s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Muppets, Musical, UK

*½/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly
screenplay by Terry Jones
directed by Jim Henson

by Walter Chaw As riffs on Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz go, Jim Henson’s Labyrinth is a painfully dated, shockingly un-magical romp through a fragmented netherworld populated by Ziggy Stardust and a horde of little people wearing giant papier-mâché heads. Following a wish by bratty Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) that her bratty kid brother be spirited away by the Goblin King (David Bowie) and Sarah’s inevitable lapse into unconsciousness and journey into the titular, Escher-inspired labyrinth, the picture unfolds at a laboured clip marked not so much by a sense of wonder, but rather a feeling of confused disinterest. While the film is a nostalgic hallmark for many (and so is Pete’s Dragon, it occurs), cinematically and artistically, better to revisit Henson’s flawed but alive The Dark Crystal.

Chicago (2002)

December 27, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Musical

**½/****
starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere, John C. Reilly
screenplay by Bill Condon, based on the musical by Fred Ebb & Bob Fosse and the play by Maurine Dallas Watkins
directed by Rob Marshall

Chicagoby Walter Chaw As adaptations of stage musicals go, Rob Marshall’s film of the Bob Fosse revue Chicago is professional and slick, if lit too darkly and oddly flaccid. Its musical set-pieces are generally excellent, with a trio of performances from Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere that surprise with their versatility and verve, but the unevenness of Marshall’s direction lends the picture a sort of confused rhythm that threatens to stall it during every narrative stretch. Buoyed by Sam Mendes’s recent Broadway revival of another Kander and Ebb classic, “Cabaret”, “Chicago” suffers from a distinct slightness, its attack on the evils of media culture not so much current as battered to death by decades of same. Chicago offers no surprises, then, only really coming to life during a press-conference scene with Zellweger the dummy and lawyer Gere the ventriloquist and puppet master. It’s gorgeously shot and choreographed and throws the malaise of the rest of the picture into sharp relief.

Beauty and the Beast: Special Edition (1991|2002) [Platinum Edition] – DVD

October 22, 2002Posted in1990s, 2000s, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance

*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
screenplay by Linda Woolverton
directed by Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise

This review was popular for its contrarianism, but to my current thinking it’s insubstantial and hurries through the movie to get to the DVD; I’d like to take another crack at it someday.-Ed. (6/14/17)

by Bill Chambers Disney solidified the comeback of 2-D animation after the success of The Little Mermaid with Beauty & the Beast, a throwback to the fairytale reimaginings that defined the studio in its heyday. Uncle Walt himself had, in fact, kicked around the idea of adapting the “song as old as rhyme” during his reign but threw in the towel when he couldn’t figure out a way to sustain kiddie interest in what is, in its classical tellings, the story of a monster and a hottie who dine together in the evenings.

Trembling Before G-d (2001) + Satin Rouge (2002)

October 4, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Drama, France, Israel, Musical, Theatrical, Tunisia

TREMBLING BEFORE G-D
**½/****
directed by Sandi Simcha Dubowski

Red Satin
**/****
starring Hiyam Abbas, Hend El Fahem, Maher Kammoun, Monia Hichri
written and directed by Raja Amari

by Walter Chaw “Leah” and “Malka” are a lesbian couple whose names have been changed and faces obscured (a fey conceit that begins to grate with the use of potted plants) to protect identities that appear, for all intents and purposes, to already be “outed”–at least before their families and their rabbi. David, after struggling for a dozen years with his homosexuality, returns to visit his childhood rabbi, a genuinely kind man whom we manage to forget once advised David to snap himself with rubber bands whenever he had a “gay” thought. Then you have Mark, HIV positive, English, and terminally unfocused, and Schlomo, so outspoken and demented that it’s surprising we still muster sympathy when he gets a pathetically dissociative telephone call from his two decades-estranged father.

TIFF ’02: 8 Femmes

August 31, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Italy, Musical, Romance, TIFF
8 Women***/****starring Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béartscreenplay by François Ozon, Marina de Van, based on the play by Robert Thomasdirected by François Ozon by Bill Chambers Almost every French actress I can rhyme off without help from the audience is in the cast of François Ozon's 8 Femmes, a delightfully odd murder mystery with song-and-dance interludes. (Imagine if John Waters had directed Clue.) The film takes place during Christmastime in 1950s France at a country manor where various women have gathered to celebrate the holidays with Marcel, the only significant man in any of their lives. But…

Mad Monster Party (1967) – DVD

July 27, 2002Posted in1960s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Horror, Musical

Mad Monster Party?
***/**** Image A+ Sound B+ Extras B
screenplay by Forrest J Ackerman, Leo Korobkin, Harvey Kurtzman
directed by Jules Bass

by Walter Chaw From Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass, the creators of such disturbing “animagic” fare as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the unintentionally terrifying Frosty the Snowman comes 1967’s Mad Monster Party?, a sort of Jay Ward Lite stop-motion revue featuring the vocal talents of Boris Karloff (shudder) and Phyllis Diller (shudder) as well as Allen Swift doing his best Jimmy Stewart, Peter Lorre, and Bela Lugosi.

Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001)

July 6, 2002Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, India, Musical, Sports, UK

***/****
starring Aamir Khan, Gracy Singh, Rachel Shelley, Paul Blackthorne
screenplay by Kumar Dave, Sanjay Dayma, Ashutosh Gowariker
directed by Ashutosh Gowariker

by Walter Chaw With the subtitle “Once Upon a Time in India,” Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan holds a kinship to Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China in more than just appellation and an abiding dislike of the Colonial British. Other than substituting elaborate musical numbers–as is Bollywood’s wont–for Hong Kong’s martial arts features, Lagaan is in fact as interested in the sociology of enslavement before the rush of technology (embodied in cameras and firearms) as its farther-eastern brethren. The rather serious-minded attack of India’s own caste system and the ineffectualness of its Raj ruling structure lends additional layers to the picture’s surprising depths, yet all the politicized subtext in the world does little to suppress the essential exuberance of the gaudy visceral Bollywood experience.