Tune in Tomorrow...

Tune in Tomorrow...
November 1990
Odyssey
Comedy, Romance, Historical
VHS
B-

This is an uneven but pretty good film, where the main plot, of a 1951 romance between Martin, a 21-year-old New Orleans man (played by 26-year-old Keanu Reeves with a shaky Southern accent) and his 36-year-old "aunt" (actually his aunt-by-marriage's sister) Julia (42-year-old Barbara Hershey), who's been living in New York, is overshadowed by the goings on, on and off the air, at the radio station where Martin works.  Reeves and Hershey have decent chemistry together, and the age difference doesn't seem like an especially big deal, but the problem is that their characters aren't particularly interesting or likable, together or separately.  And the way that soap-opera writer Pedro Carmichael (Peter Falk) manipulates them, and that they fall for it, adds to the faultiness of the romance.  (When Martin shows up with a gun and then it's resolved through unfunny humor, it leaves a bad taste.)

Luckily, Pedro's machinations for the characters of Kings of the Garden District more than make up for this.  While some plain-looking and -sounding radio performers act, we see the scenes played out with stars like John Larroquette and Dan Hedaya (as two brothers), Hope Lange, Elizabeth McGovern, Buck Henry (as a priest) and so on.  Incest is a theme on the radio soap as well, but taken to ridiculous heights.  And Pedro's unremitting and unmotivated hatred for Albanians leads to some of the funniest lines.  I'd almost recommend you fast-forward through the romance parts, but that "reality impacts" the soap.  And the Wynton Marsalis soundtrack is nice, although I'm not a jazz fan generally.

Richard B. Shull, who was Emery Bush in The Big Bus, is Leonard Pando (the actor Pedro convinces to masturbate to improve his acting).  Irving Metzman, who was the Theater Manager in The Purple Rose of Cairo, is the Producer of Detroit Radio here, while Crystal Field was in the audience there and is Josephine Sanders here.  (She was also in Radio Days.)  Bill Moor, who's Duke Vermont here, was U.S. Consul in Ishtar.

Peter Gallagher, playing sister-lover Richard Quince here, would be Dan Riley in Bob Roberts.  Jerome Dempsey who plays Sam & Sid (the split-personality/ twins who run the station), would be a board member in The Hudsucker Proxy.

This movie is based on the Mario Vargas Llosa novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (obviously not set in New Orleans), which I couldn't get through when I tried it years ago.

Hannah and Her Sisters

Hannah and Her Sisters
March 14, 1986
Orion
Comedy, Drama
VHS
B-

When I saw this at 18, I was very annoyed with the audience when they (all of whom had been adults longer than I had) laughed at the argument between the characters played by Max Von Sydow and Barbara Hershey.  I found the movie a lot more profound then than I do now.  Yes, you might think that being middle-aged I'd identify with it more, but I think it's partly that I am middle-aged that I feel so impatient with these spoiled, unhappy, upper-middle-class characters.  I want to yell at the screen that they should all be nicer to Hannah (Mia Farrow), who's basically holding the family together.  That only a few years later Woody Allen would leave Farrow for Mia's adopted daughter (and perhaps abuse the very young daughter he adopted with Mia) has also made this film less enjoyable.  It's hard to watch Elliot (Michael Caine) cheat on Hannah with her sister Lee (Hershey's character).  And the jokes about "child molestation" don't help either.

This is not to say that the movie isn't still entertaining.  It is often funny and sometimes genuinely insightful.  The acting is overall solid, with the balance of comedy and drama generally good.  Farrow, Wiest, and Hershey don't look much alike ('80s perms aside), but they're believable as sisters, and of course Farrow's mother O'Sullivan is convincing as the mom.  I do have to say that Helen Miller and Leo Postrel (who were both part of the movie audience in Purple Rose of Cairo) steal the movie with their one scene as Mickey (the Woody character)'s parents, and I'm totally on the father's side when he says who cares what happens when he's dead, "I'll be unconscious."  Julie Kavner (then best known as TV's Rhoda's sister Brenda) also is good and down-to-earth in her scenes as Mickey's coworker Gail, my favorite line being the one about the black spot on his shirt.

But too often the movie takes itself as seriously as Mickey does, and even at 18 I wanted to watch Duck Soup more after that one clip.  Also, I've always felt that the 39 Steps are superior to Bobby Short, if what we see of them here is any indication.  But, yeah, those Thanksgiving dinners look like they might've been fun, if too angsty for my taste.

This time Woody regular John Doumanian is a Thanksgiving guest.  Ivan Kronenfeld, who plays Lee's husband, would be On-the-Spot Newsman in Radio Days.  Mia's son Fletcher Farrow Previn, who's a Thanksgiving guest here, would be Andrew there.  Fred Melamed is Dr. Grey here and would be Bradley there.  And Ira Wheeler, who's Dr. Abel, would be a Sponsor.  The nicest bit of casting is probably Tony Roberts again cast as Woody's friend who goes Hollywood, this time first contributing some sperm for Hannah's twins.

Daniel Stern was a Hare Krishna in One-Trick Pony but has a more prominent role here as Dusty the rock star.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who had just completed a stint on Saturday Night Live, appropriately shows up as part of the staff on Mickey's SNL-like TV show; she was then 25 and would soon play a recent college graduate in Soul Man.  William Sturgis, who's Elliot's Analyst, would be Franklin Benedict in The Royal Tenenbaums.  Carrie Fisher plays Lee's best friend "who steals her boyfriend."

Save me a drumstick and don't seat me next to Ichabod Crane.