Spice World

Spice World
December 15, 1997
Columbia
Musical, Comedy
VHS
C+

This movie has of course dated badly, but let me first offer you some background on where I'm coming from, because my criticisms are probably not the usual ones.  My housemate of the time (still one of my dearest friends) was then a 21-year-old gay man who loved the Spice Girls and he'd play their music a lot.  Since I like pop music, I soon grew to like them.  I was never a great fan, but I could tell them apart.  (Well, to this day I can't remember which is Mel B. and which Mel C., but I knew their Spice identities.)  He, I, and another of his besties went to see this movie.  At almost 30, I was the oldest woman there who wasn't accompanied by a preteen daughter.  We had a blast, with the goofiness and the music.

Watching it now, when the Girls breaking up is no longer a plot complication and it's hard to remember their international popularity, what's left is a movie that did not exactly do for the Spices what A Hard Day's Night did for the Beatles one-third of a century earlier.  I want to like this movie more, at least on a camp level, but the problem is that it does not in fact present a "Spice World."  They don't dominate the screen like the Beatles did.  There are too many sideplots and side characters, with the girls offscreen too much of the time.  Even when we get to see them perform or joke around, there are too many interruptions and cuts away.  And there's a scene where the girls play dress-up, as each other and as various female icons, but much of the impact is lost when I can't tell most of them apart in long-shot.  I will say that the music remains catchy, but I'd rather watch a set of their videos, where their energy isn't thwarted as it is here.

There are lots and lots of cameos, most of them wasted, e.g. Roger Moore doing a Blofeld satire that seems feeble after Dr. Evil.  Jonathan Ross plays himself, as he did in The Tall Guy, but that's pretty meaningless to an American.  And having Barry Humphries appear out of Dame Edna Everage drag seems a little pointless.  (This is 19 years after his brief appearance in Sgt. Pepper by the way.)  On the other hand, I realize that most people don't care that I was happy to see Neil Mullarkey show up, even if it's just for one line.  Bob Hoskins is in a brief sight gag, pretending to be Ginger.  (Don't ask.)  Elvis Costello appears 18 years after Americathon, but much more briefly.

Another Americathon survivor, Meat Loaf, is, no, not a roadie, but a bus driver for the Spices.  Alan Cumming, who's usually entertainingly awkward (as he was in Emma and Romy & Michele, and as he would be again in Josie and the Pussycats), is just awkward here.  Hugh Laurie does the best he can in one scene as Poirot (where Baby Spice gets away with murder), but his old friend Stephen Fry almost steals the movie in his scene as a stern judge.

Note, the joke about a potential Clinton scandal of him tucking his shirt into his underwear became ironic by the time this film hit America.

Like animals in the zoo, as baffled by us as we are by them.

Wayne's World

Wayne's World
Feb. 14, 1992
Paramount
Comedy, Romance
VHS
B

It's very tempting to say, "Let the '90s begin!"  Although the influence of the '80s is still felt in this movie (from Bill & Ted to heavy metal), this has a very '90s sensibility.  It is also far better than you'd expect for a concept inspired by a running sketch on Saturday Night Live.  The funny, often sharp, fourth-wall-breaking script was cowritten by Wayne himself (Mike Myers) with wife-and-husband writing team Bonnie & Terry Turner, whose affection for '60s through '90s pop culture would also be seen a few years later in The Brady Bunch Movie.  From Grey Poupon commercials to Bugs Bunny's drag act, this movie references a lot of things that Gen-Xers in particular can appreciate.  And that fourth-wall-breaking is used to great effect, mostly by Wayne and best buddy Garth (Dana Carvey, acting like a shy, demented child), but sometimes "borrowed" by Ed O'Neill and others.

If I can't rate the film higher, it's that it's not non-stop hilarious, and there are times when Mike Myers gets on my nerves (although nowhere near what he does in his movies from this century).  Also, I can't say I was particularly invested in his romance with cover-singing Cassandra.  Still, there are few better examples of a '90s time-capsule movie, and if you want to hear "As if!" pre-Clueless, or see what sort of technology was then available to beam a live music act into someone's limo, look no further.

Brian Doyle-Murray appears as Noah Vanderhoff, the buffoon sponsor, while Lara Flynn Boyle is Wayne's obsessed ex Stacy.  Alice Cooper yet again plays himself, while Meat Loaf is "Tiny," ha ha.  Carmen Filpi, who plays Old Man Withers in the "Scooby Doo ending," would be Old Man in Bar in The Wedding Singer.

"Bohemian Rhapsody"

Roadie

Roadie
June 13, 1980
United Artists
Comedy, Romance, Musical
VHS
C-

The general idea for this movie isn't bad: Meat Loaf (as Travis W. Redfish) has inherited his father Art Carney's mechanical aptitude (the Redfish house is full of all kinds of gizmos, like a moving phone booth) and thus becomes, despite his reluctance, the greatest roadie in the world.  Unfortunately, the movie is too meandering and there's a very annoying leading lady, Kaki Hunter as Lola Bouillabase.  Also, the various musicians aren't given much to do other than show up, although Deborah Harry has a moment when she's eating with Mr. Loaf that shows what the movie would've been like if she'd been the love interest.  (She'd have a more interesting role in Hairspray, much later in the decade.)  Another performer who makes a slight impression is Soul Train's Don Cornelius, as concert-promoter Mohammed Johnson, who late in the movie decides to try to become the first black President.  It's a throw-away line, without follow-up, like much of the movie, except for Lola's tedious plans to lose her virginity to a seemingly indifferent Alice Cooper.  The only musicians who redeem themselves are Cheap Trick, twice singing the song with the Redfish motto, "Everything Works If You Let It."

Alice Cooper's wife Sheryl appears as herself, and she was in Sgt. Pepper as a dancer.  Hank Williams, Jr. also appeared in that movie.  Lenore Woodward would play a little old lady again, in Hamburger-- The Motion Picture.  Richard Portnow, who's First New York Wino, would be Sy in Radio Days.  This time Hamilton Camp plays Grady.

Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger Hunt
December 21, 1979
Fox
Comedy
VHS
D+

Wow.  I never considered this a good movie of course-- it has the same director, Michael Schultz, as Sgt. Pepper-- but I had remembered it as at least silly fun.  This time it was painfully unfunny.  Well, there's one sort of funny part, when Richard Mulligan is disguised as a mummy in order to steal a suit of armor, and he's doing his Burt Campbell mannerisms, and he wouldn't scare a mouse, while everyone runs screeching from him, acting like they're refugees from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!  (Which is entirely possible, since both movies were filmed in San Diego.)  There's gratuitous sexism, particularly with the Babbette [sic] character.  The gratuitous racism shows not so much with Cleavon Little's character-- he always carries himself with grace and style (this is after all the man who got away with the line "Where the white women at?" in Blazing Saddles)-- as in the characters of the Japanese gardener (who for some reason doesn't make it onto the servants' team) and of the elderly Indian whose dentures get stolen.

You see, there is, as the title suggests, a scavenger hunt (with what must be the easiest clues ever), the winners of which will inherit a $200 million fortune.  Vincent Price, as Milton Parker (see, he's a game inventor) dies in the first scene, lucky him.  A dizzying cast (why this is a D+ rather than a D) participates in the hunt.  I'd better just list them:

• Team A:  The servants are Cleavon L. as the American chauffeur, Roddy McDowall as the English butler, James Coco as the French chef, and Stephanie Faracy as the French maid.  (Little and Faracy would play a married couple on the early '90s Fox sitcom True Colors, which I've always had a soft spot for.)
• Team B:  Cloris Leachman is Parker's bitchy sister, Richard Masur (of the early days of One Day at a Time) is her overage bratty son, and Richard Benjamin is their shady lawyer.
• Team C: Leachman rejects her stepdaughter Lisa (Maureen Teefy), but Lisa is invited to join the Stevens brothers, Parker's nephews, played by Dirk Benedict and Willie Aames (in his film debut, although he was already on Eight Is Enough).
• Team D:  Tony Randall plays Parker's widowed son-in-law, whose four children include Shane Sinutko (not given much to do, so I can't say if he's improved as an actor since The Shaggy D.A.), shark-jumping David Hollander ("Little Earl" on What's Happening!!), Julie Anne Haddock (tomboy Cindy on the first season of The Facts of Life), and some little girl I don't recognize.
• Team E:  Mulligan, as taxi driver Marvin Dummitz (a Melvin Dummar parody I believe), works alone until he recruits Scatman Crothers, who gets kidnapped by Team B while unconscious in the suit of armor, leading to the happy ending.
• Various cameos, from Carol Wayne as Parker's nurse to go-to fat guys Stuart Pankin and Stephen Furst.  (If you've ever wanted to see a movie where Dirk Benedict and Willie Aames try to abduct Stuart Pankin into their van, this is the one.)  In amazingly creative casting, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a fitness instructor, Meat Loaf the leader of a biker gang, and Ruth Gordon a nutsy, gutsy old lady.  Pat McCormick works at the carnival, while Avery Schreiber is a lisping ostrich-keeper at the zoo.
• The only performer I don't feel sorry for is Robert Morley, because he just does his Robert Morley eccentric-but-reasonable-sounding-English-chap thing and spends most of his scenes sitting in the shade and calmly watching the chaos around him.  He's accompanied by the scorekeeper, Hal Landon, Jr., who would be Ted's father in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Jerado Decordovier (who was Samoan) plays the Indian here and was a waiter in Gidget Goes Hawaiian.  Janine King was a crying baby in Tony Randall's Hello Down There and is a carnival patron here.  Alan Scharf, who's a clerk here, was Roberts in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, while Art Koustik was the FIA director there and is the zoo director here.  Henry Polic II (probably best known for his role on the sitcom Webster) plays the "naked" policeman here (he's stripped down to his underwear when his uniform is on the list), and he was Tito in Rabbit Test.

Adam Anderson, who was Sobbing Sailor in Rabbit Test, is Policeman #2 here and would be a pilot in The Nude Bomb.  Marji Martin, who plays fat lady Kay here, would be "Sister" in Going Ape!

Note that both Aames and Crothers sing on the forgettable soundtrack.  There is no title song.

Some of the subtle humor that has made this the cult classic that it is.

Americathon

Americathon
August 10, 1979
United Artists
Comedy, Musical, Sci-Fi
VHS
B

My review of the "fotonovel" is here:
http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/11/americathon.html.  I'll add that the music really does make a difference, particularly the Beach Boys, "still together after 40 years," singing over the opening and closing credits.  I also think Monty's (Harvey Korman) answer to "My Way," which opens "My life, I'm loved and hated, yes, even envied because I'm gifted," is near perfect.  I still laughed out loud at the movie, during this umpteenth viewing, although not every joke works.  (There is an audible silence, like we're waiting for the laugh track, after the joke based on the picture below.)  The energy is sometimes off and the timeline makes no sense (Chet and Mouling disappear for days before they're kidnapped, and no one notices.)  Still, there are touches that I like, such as the surprisingly sweet (if not really) developed romance between Riegert's Eric and Chet's "old lady" (wife? girlfriend?) Lucy, played by Ritter's real life wife Nancy Morgan.  And any line about the ventriloquists is gold.

Peter Marshall plays a respected newsman and Chief Dan George the wealthy founder of NIKE, both nice bits of counter-casting.  Howard Hesseman is a sound-booth technician who often seems disgusted by what's being televised.  Meat Loaf is a daredevil who's so popular he comes back.  (Unlike the more dubious entertainers.)

Jerry Maren is still alive at 94, although he was in the Lollipop Guild in The Wizard of Oz and Little Professor Atom in At the Circus.  One of the musclemen, Dennis Tinerino, was Atlas in Hercules in New York, while Kal Szkalak was an athlete in Sextette.  May Boss, who plays Adele Miller (who boxes a young Jay Leno), was "Frail Old Lady" in Rabbit Test.  Rollin Moriyama and Mitsu Yashima, who pretend to be Chinese here, were the Japanese couple in the taxi in Foul Play.  (John Lone and Ben Fong Torres are part of their group of tourists.)

Selma Archerd, who's a "telethon phone celebrity" here, was a passenger in The Big Bus and would be Mrs. Williams in Can't Stop the Music.  Ventriloquist Jerry Layne would also be in Can't StM (and on Three's Company).  Fred Lerner, Commando #3, would be KAOS #2 in The Nude Bomb.  Gene LeBell, who plays the referee, was in I Wanna Hold Your Hand and would be in Going Ape!, while Sosimo Hernandez, who's Juan Flan here, would be "Flugist" in the latter movie.  I don't have the Del Rubio Triplets in any other movie, but I was delighted when they turned up on Married with Children as Peg's aunts.