Roxanne

Roxanne
June 19, 1987
Columbia
Comedy, Romance
VHS
B-

As with All of Me (1984), I enjoyed this Steve Martin movie more at the time, although it's still a pretty good movie.  The setting (Nelson, BC passing as Nelson, WA) is lovely, a little mountain town with Victorian houses.  The romantic triangle (based on the play of course) generally works, even if there are times it's a bit implausible that someone as bright as the title character is supposed to be (played by Daryl Hannah) doesn't figure out the deception sooner.  Shelley Duvall, as Martin's "godsister" Dixie (I guess her mom was his godmother, or a similar situation), gives a good supporting performance as friend to both CD and Roxanne, with a life of her own.  The third side of the triangle gets his own happy ending with a character who has been established early on.  I can't think of anything seriously wrong with the movie, other than that a lot of the firefighter slapstick doesn't hold up.  (There is one nice sight gag out a window.)  It's a pleasant enough movie but I think ultimately forgettable.

This time, Fred Willard plays Mayor Deebs, who of course (like all Willard characters) frequently puts his foot in his mouth and doesn't notice.  Matt Lattanzi, who plays Trent, was Brad (and thus a subject of a song) in Grease 2.  We get early and small but instantly recognizable appearances by two men who'd go on to comedy success, particularly on the little screen: then 33-year-old Kevin Nealon as a drunk and then 26-year-old Damon Wayans as a fireman.

"You don't have to wear that dress tonight."

Popeye

Popeye
December 12, 1980
Paramount
Comedy, Musical, Action, Romance, Fantasy
DVD
B-

When Robin Williams died last month, one of my first thoughts was of this movie.  Although this was not a full-out critical and commercial flop as some think, it didn't live up to expectations, and yet it's grown a fandom in the intervening three decades.  I find it simultaneously comforting, funny, and symbolic that the "Popeye Village" that was built from scratch on a Maltese island has become a tourist attraction, with all the drab Depression-era houses now brightly colored.

The movie is still an oddity though.  As I mentioned in my review of the behind-the-scenes pre-movie-release tie-in book, http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-popeye-story.html, the film is odd and off-putting.  There are some genuinely heart-warming moments, especially with Popeye and the unquestionably adorable but quirky Swee'Pea, but there is a dark, depressing undertone, as exemplified in the "Sweet Haven Anthem."  Additionally, you've got circus performers and other physical comedians acting like cartoon/comic-strip characters but there's also the Robert-Altman quasi-documentary touch in the look of the film and the way things keep happening in the margins.  Williams adds ad-libs on top of the Jules Feiffer script, from the brilliant reply to Swee'Pea's "I'm a baby" to his muttered line about catching "a venerable disease."  Some of this I got at 12 (not the "you expects a cervix" one though), and some I've figured out later.

It's not just Williams's death that made me appreciate his performance here.  It really is great, mixing humor, wistfulness, and of course toughness.  Duvall, as everyone notes, is perfectly cast as Olive Oyl.  Some of the others, like Paul Dooley as Wimpy, don't seem quite right but they're giving it their best shot anyway.  Ray Walston shows up late in the movie and has to do a quick turn-around from villain to good guy and succeeds less than Gary Oldman would as Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but he has some funny exchanges with his film son.  Mostly though, I'd recommend this movie for Williams, as I'd recommend Little Darlings for Kristy McNichol.

This film doesn't quite come together (it really does fit all those genres I've listed and maybe Western and Sci-Fi for all I know), and I can see why it has gotten such extreme reactions, then and now, but I've enjoyed it every time I've seen it and it certainly hasn't gotten stale.

Williams's then wife, Valerie Velardi, has her only movie role, as Swee'pea's mother, Cindy the Drudge.  MacIntyre Dixon, who's Cole Oyl, was the bartender in Thank God It's Friday.  Donovan Scott, who plays Castor Oyl, would be the Sancho-Panza-like sidekick Paco in Zorro the Gay Blade.  Geoff Hoyle, Scoop the Reporter, would have a more substantial role in The Spirit of '76, as Heinz-57.  Allan Nicholls, who's Rough House here, would be "Cutting Edge Director" in Bob Roberts.

Then and now, my favorite visual gag, Bluto seeing red when his fiancee shows up with a stranger and a baby.

Annie Hall

Annie Hall
April 20, 1977
United Artists
Comedy, Romance
VHS
B+

This is probably my favorite Woody Allen movie, but not because I saw it at the time.  I mean, I was 9, so I didn't get very many of the jokes then and most remembered it for the Snow White parody.  I started to appreciate it as a teenager, although I obviously get different things out of it now in middle age, having gone through the good and bad of so many romantic relationships.  It's easy to see why Annie Hall and Alvy Singer are drawn together and why they can't last, and it's interesting that this was made after Keaton and Allen broke up.

The script by Allen and Brickman is strong, with many quotable lines.  And the direction by Allen is equally good, with even the more unbelievable characters, like the one played by Shelley Duvall, believable within the world of the movie.  Although the movie is about Alvy & Annie, it also is about New York vs. California and a lot of other things.  I like that, like novelist George Meredith, Allen is able (at least at this point in his career and life) to include himself in his laundry list of what to mock.  Diane Keaton is absolutely lovable and charming here, but Annie has flaws of her own.

The supporting cast, only some of whom I've tagged, hold their own, including Goldblum with his one scene-stealing line.  Tony Roberts is much more relaxed here than he was in Star-Spangled Girl six years earlier, probably because the dialogue is so much better.  Carol Kane gives a fine early performance, as one of the women that illustrate Alvy's quote of the Groucho line about not wanting to belong to a club that would have him as a member.  Marshall McLuhan shows up as himself-- "If life were only like this!"-- and delivers a line that still cracks me up because it makes no sense yet is meant to be a put-down of a pseudo-intellectual: "You know nothing of my work!  You mean my whole fallacy is wrong."

There's a lot of fourth-wall-breaking, especially but not exclusively by Alvy.  One of the old ladies giving him advice on the street is seventy-six-year-old Paula Trueman, who would be Stick-Up Lady in Can't Stop the Music, as well as Woman on Telephone in Zelig, while another, sixty-nine-year-old Loretta Tupper, would be the music store owner in The Purple Rose of Cairo.  Another "street stranger" is Lou Picetti, who was the beauty pageant MC in Sleeper.  

One Lacey party guest, William Callaway, would be an intern in Rabbit Test.  Gary Muledeer, who's a man at the health food restaurant, would be Gary in The Gong Show Movie.  The two men who bother Alvy outside the theatre are Bob Maroff, who'd be a bartender in I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and Rick Petrucelli, who'd be a penny pitcher in Purple Rose.  "Coke fiend" John Doumanian would be a Greek waiter in Zelig and a Thanksgiving guest in Hannah and Her Sisters.  Hy Ansel, who's Joey Nichols, would play Mr. Waldbaum in Radio Days, which would feature Martin Rosenblatt, who's Alvy's uncle here, as Mr. Needleman.  One of the schoolteachers, Gary Allen, would be a board member in The Hudsucker Proxy.