Reviews

Snark turns into heart as former Letterman head-writer Steve Young becomes more and more involved in the mysterious world of industrial musicals.

For several decades, unbeknownst to the general public, corporate America treated its sales and management staff to custom made musical theater, all themed to product lines and selling strategies. Through the discovery of some souvenir records, originally obtained for "Dave's record collection" bits on Late Night with David Letterman, Young goes down the rabbit hole of this bizarre world of big-budget corporate one-off musicals. The film begins offering bits and pieces of this strange world as Young's obsession with collecting the rare relics leads him to contacting various players from the world of industrial musicals.

Early-on, it becomes clear that Young's appreciation has moved beyond snark into genuine affection. He still finds the music absurd, but he is charmed by It nonetheless. However, for the first half of the film he appears to be on a self-serving, obsessive quest to acquire these records, and the relationships he develops with other collectors he seem to be just a means to that end. Gradually, he begins to meet the players involved in the creation of the musicals: the songwriters and actors, many of whom used these evanescent works as their sole means of support. He, and the film's audience, cannot help but be charmed by these characters and their enthusiasm for what they created. It is only toward the latter third of the film that Young moves from a fairly engaging guide through the history of industrial musicals to a character the audience can root for. He goes from a sort of disaffected comedy nerd to a more evolved and empathetic human being. It's that sub-plot that gives this gem of a documentary it's real heart.

I watched this documentary from a different perspective than most, as I knew Alig and James St. James for a brief period in the 90s. I found that the documentary was inaccuarate, poorly edited, and sensationalist. While it does a good job of portraying Alig as the self-absorbed sociopath that I knew him to be, what it fails to do is educate anyone about the real story of any of the events it pretends to cover. Alig's "rise" in real life took place entirely before any of the footage in the film, which is all (rather obviously I might add)culled from the time when the club scene in NY was in shambles and promoters like Alig were basically just pied pipers luring people into drug addiction so that the few remaining club owners could deal them their drugs. Overall, the movie disgusted me, not because of the story it told, but rather in the way it told it.

Aside from the CGI Hulk, who looks about as good as the current technology will allow, there is absolutely NOTHING REDEEMABLE about this film. Ang Lee, in a misguided attempt to re-create the "look" of a comic book, divides the screen into panels (think picture-in-picture T.V. set). What he does not seem to realize is that comic books do not expect one to look at the entire page at once, but rather to go from picture to picture. At times Lee has in upwards of 5 boxes on screen simultaneously, each with a moving picture within. The result is a dizzying, nausea-fest. Add to this mix a penchant for odd zooms and transitions and you are left with a sense of vertigo akin to staring into a hypno-disc for several hours. Unfortunately, feeling ill is about the only feeling you will experience while viewing the film, both as a viewer and from the actors themselves. Script-wise,there are several attempts throughout the story to elevate the film to the level of classic Greek tragedy, but only a simpleton would be impressed with the hackneyed writing of this movie.

This abysmal Chan/Hung vehicle is a poorly thought-out attempt at drama which will not sit well with most fans of Chan's usually high-octane mix of action and comedy. The plot concerns a mentally challenged "gentle giant"(Hung) and his able-minded/bodied brother(Chan)who must sacrifice his freedom to care for his reliant sibling. What attempts to be a drama is marred by Hung's ridiculous portrayal of a mentally challenged adult as being nothing more than a gigantic baby, complete with overalls and a giant swirly lollipop. The movie attempts to generate sympathy for Hung's character while simultaneously deriving all of its humor from his various misadventures, a mix that left this viewer cold. The DVD version is dubbed so poorly that all attempts at drama seem to come from training at the Shatner school of acting. The movie limps along for over an hour before there is a significant plot developed involving gangsters, stolen jewels, and the eventual kidnapping of Hung. Then begins the movie Chan fans have come to expect, with fantastic stunts, fights and chase sequences. In this movie it is a case of too MUCH, to late. The over the top action Chan is famous for seems here to be ridiculously out-of-place in contrast to the slow moving, "tear-jerker" attitude of the preceding two-thirds of the film. Add to this mish-mash an annoyingly repetitive musical score and not one, but TWO separate scenes of Hung's naked buttocks, and you have the makings of the "must NOT see" film of the year.