Can't Stop the Music

Can't Stop the Music
June 20, 1980
EMI
Comedy, Musical, Romance
VHS
B

While this doesn't consistently hit the OMG heights/depths of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, it is a fine example of a so-bad-it's-delightful musical of the (in this case very late) disco era.  The two big moments, musically and visually, are the "YMCA" number that adds nudity to the subtext of the "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love" number of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and the wow! "Milkshake" number that supposedly is a commercial, but begins with Valerie Perrine playing mom to preteen versions of the Village People and then explodes into several minutes of silvery whiteness: white sets, white costumes, white everything!  It's also the catchiest number, and I'm right there with Valerie when she cries, "One more time!"

She's playing the recently retired supermodel of the '70s, but as she notes two or three times, these are the '80s and times are different now.  That the '80s, for Perrine, the Village People, and all of us, did not at all resemble this shiny, cartoony world is a sad loss, but that makes this movie all the more fun to revisit.  That the movie is teetering on the edge of the closet the whole time-- no mention of the G word or the H word or the Q word, but tons of hints-- adds a certain poignancy, considering how rough the '80s would be for gay men, with AIDS and the accompanying homophobia.  But CStM doesn't know that.  It can put Bruce Jenner in a crop-top and Daisy Dukes and just keep going.

He's a terrible actor.  Not that anyone is giving a great thespian performance here, but he is the bottom of the barrel.  There's a sort of triangle with him (at the age of 31) as an uptight but loosening tax lawyer romancing 36-year-old Perrine, who's platonic roomies with 21-year-old Steve Guttenberg, who clearly has a crush on her.  She's the muse for what's probably the weakest song on the soundtrack, "Samantha."  As Jack Morell, Guttenberg is a thinly disguised version of Jacques Morali.  You see, this is pretending to be a biography of the VP, although it has almost no bearing on reality, from the Guttenberg-roller-skating credits onward.

The movie was a flop, except oddly enough in Australia.  Alan Carr and Bronte Woodard had co-written the screenplay for Grease, but that was based on a successful stage play and didn't have lines like "Housework is like bad sex.  Every time I do it, I swear I never will again, until the next time company comes" and Perrine's recital of song titles as she makes a graceful exit from the office of her ex, played by Paul Sand.  Still, this has long been the more enjoyable movie of the two, and surprisingly amiable considering the mean-spiritedness of Grease.  I could go on and on about it but I know others have on the Internet and elsewhere.  And besides, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Marilyn Sokol plays the best friend of the heroine, as she did in Foul Play, although this time she's man-hungry rather than man-bashing, spending much of the movie hitting on the indulgent VP.  Jack Weston, not looking much older than he did in Please Don't Eat the Daisies twenty years earlier, turns up in a small role as the lecherous owner of the local disco.

The Village People had a couple songs on the Thank God It's Friday soundtrack.  Dancer Wade Collings was Jennifer's partner in that movie.  "Young Disco Dancer" Daniel Selby was Boy in Airport in Goin' Coconuts.  Ventriloquist Jerry Layne was also in Americathon.  Selma Archerd, Mrs. Williams here, was a Telethon Phone Celebrity in that movie, as well as a passenger in The Big Bus.

Dick Patterson plays the boss at the record store, and he was Mr. Rudie in Grease and would be Mr. Spears in Grease 2.  Stick-up Lady Paula Trueman was one of the old ladies in Annie Hall and would also appear in Zelig.  Blackie Lawless (great name!) is "Metal guy with leash at audition" and would be Commercial Headbanger in This Is Spinal Tap.  

One more time!

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.