The First Wives Club

The First Wives Club
September 20, 1996
Paramount
Comedy
VHS
C+

I really liked this movie at the time, as did many others, including Katha Pollitt, but that doesn't mean we were blind to its faults, faults that are more obvious a couple decades later.  As directed by WKRP's Hugh Wilson, it is very much a cinematic sitcom, with easy resolutions and cardboard characterizations.  Although it's based on a book (which I've never read), the most serious flaws have to do with the writing, many of the implausibilities and inconsistencies centering around Brenda (Bette Midler).  To begin with, is she Italian or Jewish?  If both, why isn't this established earlier?  And how is ir that her husband (Dan Hedaya, for a change in my movies actually typecast) fails to recognize her boss, even the name?  Also, the whole timeline is screwy, from Yellow Submarine coming out in '69 (rather than '68), to the central trio of first wives (Midler, Goldie Hawn, and Diane Keaton) all about 45, although this seems to be contemporary and they've been out of college for about 27 years.  I'm not even clear how much time is passing in the main story, although there's a vague time pressure (even vaguer than in Don't Tell Mom).  Maybe this is all clearer in the book.

The movie is of course notable for its presentation of the exes, particularly the ex of their suicidal friend Cynthia, as being shallow, insensitive, and ruled by their lust for younger women.  (Sarah Jessica Parker is playing against type as a dumb and tasteless blonde.)  But the wives don't come across as much better and, as in The Women almost 60 years earlier, it's unclear why they regret the loss of such awful men.  Yes, I like seeing the cast, and the theme of female friendship and empowerment is good, but it's often lost in slapstick and stereotyping.  And this isn't 9 to 5, where the stock characters are given believability.  There are nice little moments (like how accepting Keaton is of her lesbian daughter), and even occasional insights about how aging women are viewed, and Maggie Smith proves she can do a lot even with a tiny role, but it just doesn't add up to much.

I don't have any other movies with James Naughton but it's a nice touch to make him Cynthia's cheating ex-husband, since he was Angela Bower's ex on Who's the Boss?  (Cynthia is played by Stockard Channing.)  Victor Garber, who plays Goldie's ex, would be Professor Callahan in Legally Blonde.

Anne Shropshire, who's an A Certain Age cast member, was Mrs. Crawley in Tootsie.  Peter Frechette, who plays the Broadway Director, had his big-screen debut as none other than Louis DiMucci in Grease 2.  (He found a lot of other work in between of course.)  Aida Linares also played a maid in Clueless.

Marla Sucharetza, who's Exercising Woman, would be School Reporter in In & Out, while Debra Monk is Jilted Lover here and would be Mrs. Lester there, and  J. Smith-Cameron is Miss Sullivan here and would be Trina Paxton there.  Rob Reiner plays Hawn's plastic surgeon.  And, yes, that's 41-year-old J.K. Simmons in the small role of a Federal Marshall.

Foul Play

Foul Play
July 14, 1978
Paramount
Comedy, Mystery, Romance
DVD
B+

I saw this movie at the time, when I was 10, and even now watching the title sequence, with Barry Manilow singing "Ready to Take a Chance Again" (alternately belting it out and almost confiding it to us), as Goldie Hawn drives her little yellow VW Bug along the coast to San Francisco, gets to me in a way that no other title sequence does.  (I get shivers from "Hedwig's Theme" in every Harry Potter movie, but that has less to do with the visuals.)  Hawn plays an uncertain librarian, sometimes in big glasses, but there is the giggly Goldie side at some moments.  And yet, she's also thoroughly convincing as the "damsel in distress" who can sometimes rescue herself and try to solve the mystery of who's trying to kill her and why.  She furthermore has probably never looked so simultaneously beautiful and girl-next-door adorable.  She's well named Gloria Mundy, "glory of the world."

She's perfectly matched, comedically and romantically, with a post-Saturday Night Live Chevy Chase, at the peak of his looks, charm, and talent.  He plays a bumbling but clever cop named Tony, who's assigned to protect her, and there's a nice, very '70s moment, when she balances her feminism and her attraction to him.  He apologizes for his chauvinism, while still talking about her "ass," and they're more attracted than ever.  They have incredible chemistry together, such that I had to bump this up from a B to a B+.  I honestly can't think of a cuter film couple, but it's not just the way they look, but the way they talk and smile, and all they bring out in each other, like his sweetness and her mischief.  Interestingly, perhaps to keep the PG rating (despite the violence, drug use, and profanity, including the old ladies' dirty Scrabble game), we don't see Gloria and Tony do more than kiss, although it's very clear that they spend the night together at his place, and we see him wake up in just his jockey shorts.  The sex being offscreen allowed me to see this movie at such a tender age.

Meanwhile, however, there's the Stanley character played by Dudley Moore.  When Goldie needs a place to hide out, she approaches Stanley in a singles bar and asks him to take her home.  He of course thinks he's going to get lucky.  So while she's nervously peeking through binoculars-- "You're into that, too?"-- he gets his "pad" ready for a night to remember, with the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" record, blow-up dolls, a stag-film projector, and a bed that is almost indescribable.  In these days of Internet porn and all-- I'm considering seeing an R-rated comedy called "Sex Tape" this week-- the pad may seem a lot less shocking than it did 36 years ago, but it's still very tacky, and unlikely to impress Gloria.  She's less outraged than puzzled when she looks away from the window, but their paths will cross again.

The funniest moments probably belong to Billy Barty as a "dwarf" Bible salesman that Hawn attacks when she thinks he's one of the bad guys.  Both the attack, and her hospital visit later that day, are played just right by both Barty and Hawn.  Burgess Meredith also does well, as Hawn's protective landlord with the laughing pet snake.  Chuck McCann has a brief bit as the owner of the revival theater where Gloria first witnesses a death.

The movie was written and directed by Colin Higgins, seven years after Harold and Maude.  (And not long after Silver Streak, which I haven't seen since the time.)  It is for the most part successful, although I do think the last half hour is the weakest, with an Obligatory '70s, not Chase Scene, but Rush to Save the Day Scene, that involves things like driving the wrong way on a one-way street, car crashes, and ethnic and other stereotypes (like Italians who exclaim, "Mama mia!").  And while there's more at stake at the Mikado production than there was in the Night at the Opera finale, I don't think this sequence works entirely.  Still, it's great at the very end to see Chevy & Goldie go from smooching (they are a great team of smoochers) to shrugging and taking bows, as Mr. Manilow proclaims he's ready to take a chance again.  (And I'm not even a Manilow fan, except here.)  Both Chase and Hawn are great reactors, separately and as a team.  Like the rest of the movie, they walk a balance between realism and cartoon.

So how's the movie as a mystery?  Well, it's certainly suspenseful, and I remember being really scared as a kid, especially of the albino, but there are a lot of moments of putting convenient clues together, and the cigarette pack with the microfilm in it (probably the most dated of many dated elements in the movie) turns out to be a complete McGuffin.  If you just apply the Gilligan's Island Rule of Broadcasting, then you know that the television news is repeatedly reporting that the Pope will be visiting San Francisco soon, and thus you know whom the villains want to assassinate.  (When Foul Play was first scheduled to be shown on TV in 1981, it had to be postponed because of the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.)  There are aspects that are homages to Hitchcock, some of which I get, some of which I don't.  I have the sense we're not meant to take the mystery entirely seriously, as when late in the film Tony says Gloria will have to identify the albino because she's the only one who's seen him and "he may be in disguise."  What, in colored contacts and a toupee?

Marc Lawrence, who plays Stiltskin ("The Dwarf"), would soon be another villain, Webster in Goin' Coconuts.  Rollin Moriyama and Mitsu Yashima, who play the Japanese couple in the taxi, would be Chinese in Americathon.  Marilyn Sokol, who plays Stella, would be Lulu in Can't Stop the Music.

The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band

The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band
March 21, 1968
Disney
Musical, Comedy, Drama, Romance
VHS
B-

Now that we're getting into the movies that are younger than I am (though it'll be awhile till we reach any I actually saw on first release), I feel like I should attempt to explain what the deal is with these long, sometimes full-sentence-or-question, and sometimes crazy titles.  (And I don't even own The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.)  I have a couple overlapping theories.  One is that these titles catch the eye and the attention, even if they take up a lot of room on the marquee.  (From here on out, I'm abbreviating this movie as The...Family Band.)  Another theory is, well, it was the '60s (the trend might have started with Dr. Strangelove's full title in '63), and everything was getting more and more colorful and larger than life.  That some of these movies-- this one and John GoldfarbPCH spring to mind-- actually have title songs only adds to the craziness.

Although the family band plays that title song and others-- including a recurring salute to Grover Cleveland!-- the family isn't fully fleshed out.  (There are four younger girls, and I couldn't really distinguish them, except by hair color.)  Mostly, we see Grandpa Walter Brennan, who rails against "Ree-publicans," and his lovely eldest granddaughter, played by 21-year-old Lesley Ann Warren.  There are a couple other notable family members though, Buddy Ebsen (only 14 years younger than Brennan but playing his son), returning to his dancing roots, and an always smiling 16-year-old Kurt Russell, who would soon sort of replace Tommy Kirk as the campus-hijinx lead in Disney movies like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.  (I find them mostly boring, although Computer does have a catchy title tune.  I'm more of a Barefoot Executive kinda gal.)

This film, based on a book by Laura Bower, is set in 1888, when Cleveland was defeated by Harrison.  (And, although no one mentions it, Cleveland in turn would later defeat Harrison.)  The stuff about the electoral college looks even more ironic after the 2000 election, but even in '68 it would take only a few months for the election-day "riot" in this film to seem bizarrely mild, compared to the ugliness surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  Yes, it's Disney, but even so, the message that we can put aside our political and other differences must've been a hard one to swallow.

The Republicans are mostly represented by Ebsen, Richard Deacon, and 26-year-old John Davidson.  Davidson's character is courting Lesley AW.  He also urges everyone to move to Dakota, where most of the film is set.  He combines his interests when he sings about the Territory, with a line about "virgin fields" waiting to be "ploughed," sung right at Warren.  Their romance is mostly sweet, although I don't like it when he forces a kiss on her near the end and then makes her join him on a wheelbarrow ride, although she stops being mad when he gives her a wedding ring, so we're supposed to just find it funny and charming.  The two of them try to make each other jealous, he with "Giggly Girl," played by none other than Kurt Russell's future wife, 22-year-old Goldie [Jeanne] Hawn, whose Laugh-In premiered a couple months before this film was released.

Ben Frommer would be in Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?, as would Larry J. Blake, who was in Sunset Blvd.  Delivery boy Hank Jones was in Girl Happy and would be in The Barefoot Executive.  Dakota townsman Peter Renaday would be the roller derby ticket-taker in The Shaggy D.A.  Nine-year-old Pamelyn Ferdin (Laura Bower) would provide the voice of Fern in Charlotte's Web, while nine-year-old Bobby Riha (Mayo Bower) would voice Chinook in Santa and the Three Bears.  Vest Dancer Guy (The Swinger, et al.) shows up, in a period-appropriate vest (far right, below).