Something's Gotta Give

Something's Gotta Give
December 12, 2003
Columbia
Romance, Comedy, Drama
DVD
B-

I bought this movie on accident.  I was thinking it was As Good As It Gets, because they both have forgettable, almost meaningless titles and they're both rom-coms with dramatic streaks and Jack Nicholson.  By the time I realized my mistake, I wasn't sure if I had ever seen this movie.  Possibly but not necessarily.

It turns out I had but it hadn't particularly stayed with me.  Not that it's bad but it's so I don't know, genteel (even in the crude moments), with characters dressed in white and beige (and sometimes black) and spending much of their time in a Hamptons beach house out of a design magazine, that I had blocked it out.  Watching it again, I remember thinking I couldn't imagine any circumstance in which I would choose Nicholson over Keanu Reeves.  It's not just a matter of looks and age.  Keanu is absolutely sweet but not stupid in this movie, and in my head-canon he later hooks up with the heroine's sister Zoe, played by the wonderful Frances McDormand, who's off the screen far too much.

The heroine is playwright Emily Barry, played by Diane Keaton in a deservedly praised performance.  She hits so many emotional tones and it doesn't hurt that she was still a knockout at 57.  I could've done without the way Emily pretty much libelously "fictionalizes" her relationship with Nicholson's character, especially since the things that writer/director/producer Nancy Meyers finds funny, like "the dancing Henrys," just aren't.  It makes the whole thing feel like the sort of wish-fulfillment yet life-inspired fiction you get in the smarter chick-lit, like the works of Marion Keyes or Susan Isaacs.  (See my book blog for examples.)

Getting back to the Nicholson-Keaton romance, I think we're just supposed to accept that they're in love and right for each other, despite their differences, including his general preference for younger women and inexperience at "being a boyfriend."  Maybe it's that I've always found Nicholson a bit creepy and insincere that I just couldn't buy not only his appeal but his change of heart.  That said, I wasn't repulsed, just not invested.  And I do find it ironic that for a movie about people in late middle age, this movie is more "modern" than some of its peers, with IMing, cell phones, and of course Viagra.  Oh, and note, as when Keanu was paired with Barbara Hershey as an older woman in Tune in Tomorrow..., the film ends in Paris.

At least he makes her laugh.

But she doesn't look all that miserable with Keanu.

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.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
February 17, 1989
Orion
Comedy, Sci-Fi, Historical
VHS
C+

Every time I start to watch this movie (and I've seen it a few times since the original theatrical release, when I was 21 and living in Southern California), I wonder why I never got around to watching the Bogus sequel.  There's that awesome Big Pig song "I Can't Break Away" playing over the then-cutting-edge visuals as the opening credits play.  And there's the Bill & Ted bromance.  (With a typically '80s touch of them cheerfully calling each other "fag" after they hug in relief.)  And there's George Carlin as the coolest big-screen Rufus since Groucho's Mr. Firefly.

But then there's that darn time-travel plot.  Nothing against time travel of course, but so little is done with it.  We're meant to find it automatically funny when two modern dudes travel into the past, which it sort of is.  But we're also meant to find it automatically funny when the historical figures enter modern (1988) San Dimas, CA (actually Arizona).  And it just isn't.  Part of the problem is that the writers (and of course Bill & Ted) seem to have only a superficial knowledge of who these figures are, so we get a Beethoven who can hear well enough to appreciate a synthesizer, and a Socrates who hits on girls at the mall.  And a Napoleon who loves water slides and sundaes?

At this point, the movie is most notable for truly putting Keanu Reeves on the map, and for paving the way for Wayne and Garth and so on.  Note, Stephen Herek would also direct Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, about a very different Bush-Sr.-era teen.

Hal Landon, Jr., who plays Bill's father, was Cornfield in Scavenger Hunt.  Amy Stock was the nameless Girl in Bed in Soul Man, but she had since gotten married (becoming Amy Stock-Poynton) and worked her way up to the more memorable role of Bill's sexy young stepmother.  Philip V. Caruso (who seems to be primarily a still photographer) plays Dance Photographer here and would be War Commercial Photographer in Wag the Dog.