Flushed Away

Flushed Away
November 3, 2006
DreamWorks/ Aardman
Children's, Comedy, Action, Musical
DVD
B

This movie was and remains more fun than it should be.  I mean, it's a movie about a pet rat who gets flushed down a toilet and has adventures in the sewer.  But it's surprisingly sweet and funny, and although I'm not an action fan, I like the way the chase scenes are done, and the soundtrack choices.  The movie is unofficially a musical, thanks in no small part to the singing slugs, who start out as a throw-away joke and grow into a Vegas-level show-stopping ensemble.  The film is also almost a romance, with a great deal of chemistry between its lead rats, voiced by Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet, as a posh male and a working-class female, but Roddy and Rita never quite get together.  I used to hope for a sequel (or at least a spin-off with the slugs) but that seems increasingly unlikely.

Slight Harry-Potter connection (not surprising in a British movie), as Miriam Margolyes voices Rita's Tom-Jones-loving Grandma, while Bill Nighy does Whitey.

Morons from Outer Space

Morons from Outer Space
March 29, 1985
Thorn EMI
Comedy, Sci-Fi
VHS
B-

Written by and starring comedy partners Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith (although they don't appear together till the final scene), this silly but never moronic British comedy doesn't feel as fresh as when I first saw it on cable a few years after its release, but it still makes me smile.  Part of the problem is not just that I've seen it before (after all, that didn't hurt Johnny Dangerously), but also that that style of physical comedy and sight gags, with "surprise" elements popping up, has been used so much since then.  (However, the "brick joke" that goes much faster than the TV Tropes' examples still impresses me with its timing.)  Most of the gags actually work better in the closing credits, set to the title tune (sung by the Morons).  Also, the film references are to movies I've either never seen or haven't seen in decades.

Still, it's an amiable if twisted movie.  It takes balls to cast James B. Sikking as gung-ho Col. Raymond Larrabee, CIA, and then kill him off early in the movie.  (He does show up for one of those dead-guy reaction-shots that were apparently popular in the mid-'80s, cf. Johnny Dangerously.)  The trio of moronic aliens, with their Northern accents (sorry, I can't place them more specifically than that, other than non-Liverpudlian), have no redeeming features but they're fun to watch, especially in their New-Wavey rock concert gear.  My favorite performer is Dinsdale Landen, who remains stiff-upper-lip as Commander Grenville Matteson, even when chaos breaks out around him, until he falls for (and serenades) the female alien.  Smith is "the fourth alien" and Jones is their manager.

This time Miriam Margolyes plays the fat little scientist the other scientists try to push through the air shaft; she would of course later become Harry Potter's Herbology teacher.  And Derek Deadman, who's Man in Car, would be the first Tom the Bartender at the Leaky Cauldron.  Peter Whitman, who's Friborg here, was a Yeshiva student in Yentl.  Space Pilot Robin Driscoll would be Actor in Agent's Office in Smith's The Tall Guy.

Any resemblance to Alannah Currie is purely coincidental.

Yentl

Yentl
January 6, 1984
United Artists
Comedy, Drama, Musical, Historical, Romance
DVD
B

This has obvious similarities to Zelig.  Not only were they released close together, but both titles are from the end of the alphabet.  (There's even a minor character here, the tailor's assistant, who's named Zelig.)  Both producers/writers/directors/stars (born six years apart and becoming famous at roughly the same time) explore identity, including Jewish identity, although Yentl is definitely more of a "Jewish" film in theme and setting.

The movie also has things in common with Tootsie.  Besides the cross-dressing plot and the resulting tangled romances, both movies star performers who are known for being difficult, and they parody themselves a bit.  More so in Tootsie, but the pushy, argumentative, talkative Barbra shows through in Yentl, or rather in her male alter ego Anshel.

As in Tootsie, the tangled romances don't untangle quite satisfactorily, more so here than in Tootsie.  When I saw this movie at 15, it was almost painful to watch, because I was attracted to both Barbra and Amy Irving,  (Not so much Mandy Patinkin, although he is cute, and he can definitely play a near-nude scene.)  When beautiful Amy Irving tried to kiss her "husband," that was both titillating and embarrassing for me as a closeted bisexual adolescent.  The friendship between Anshel and "his wife" Hadass moves from slumber-party to a not-quite-sisterhood, and Yentl recognizes she loves this other woman, although not romantically or sexually.

There's no good way to resolve the triangle, not in that time and place, however much I want the married couple to move to a new town, with Avigdor as their "roommate."  And Yentl recognizes that Avigdor will never fully accept the Anshel side of her.  In a way, it's right that he go back to a newly assertive (but still feminine) Hadass.  The problem is, because the story focuses on Yentl, we're left to fill in a lot of gaps, wondering how Avigdor told Hadass (Yentl writes her a note, but surely that's not enough), and how she reacted, and how Avigdor and Hadass were able to defy her parents.

It's a good movie: warm, sweet, funny, sad, with Barbra's lovely voice providing her own Greek chorus through songs that vary greatly in mood.  The film is definitely worth seeing despite the resolution.  It's based on "Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy" by Isaac Bashevis Singer, who hated the movie, particularly that Yentl sails to America.  But I accept that part because it's pure Barbra.  I just wish the script had given more thought to Hadass.

Nehemiah Persoff, who plays Yentl's wise, sweet papa, is almost unrecognizable a quarter century after his role as Little Bonaparte in Some Like It Hot.  Bernard Spear, who plays the tailor, was the second spy in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Peter Whitman, a yeshiva student here, would be Friborg in Morons from Outer Space.  Miriam Margolyes, who's Sarah here, would be Dr. Wallace there, although she may be best known as Professor Sprout in a couple of the Harry Potter movies.  Norma Atallah, who plays Debra here, would be Irini in Mamma Mia!  

Unspoken