Reviews

A word of advice to any movie producer: if you have a big-budgeted production that you hope will become a hit, don't hire a director whose only previous experience is on TV. Director Robert Greenwald had directed only TV movie dramas before being assigned to this job, and it shows painfully. The camera either stays still or moves slowly and gracefully, when they should have flung it around and experimented with camera angles to create some oomph for the movie-going audience to feast upon. The only department that really tried here was the art department that created the arty scene-shifts with the accompanying sound effects, and the neon-colored special effects flashing around Kira and the other muses. Don Bluth also provided an animated sequence that offers the only magical moment in the whole film - makes you wish the whole movie had been made in the same style. That would have had so many advantages: the whole superficial story would have been easier to take for instance. Michael Beck would have had a movie career, and we would have been spared from watching "Oh-I'm-so-cute-but-so-poor-at-moving-my-legs-around" Olivia in a second film (or maybe not).

That said, I'm particularly ashamed to admit that I actually like "Xanadu". Very much. The music is the main reason - years before I had seen this film or even heard of it, I had heard "Magic" in the radio, and managed to get a two-minute snippet of it on tape, thinking it was an Abba song I hadn't heard before (no, I'm not an Abba fan - they have a few good songs, but I hate their albums). One day years later, "Xanadu" was on TV in the hotel room I stayed at during a holiday in Sweden - and I happened upon the very scene where "Magic" is heard, where Sonny meets Kira for the first time. Sadly, I couldn't stay to watch the rest, but I immediately wanted to catch the film from beginning to end. Now I have it on tape, and I regularly pop it on my VCR and enjoy the pretty photography, beautiful music, and the irresistibly corny 1980 kitsch "Xanadu" is so chock-full of. A guilty pleasure of the highest magnitude - after all, I'm a nostalgia freak and always will be one.

I saw this film for the first time in 1994 in a small town where I happened to study for a year, in the local movie theater for a ridiculously low sum of money. A school class had organized a screening of the film to help finance a class trip or something. The print was in rather bad shape, and the audience a bit too loud, but I had a great time. This film became my favorite along with "Hatari!" and "Father of the Bride" (the Steve Martin remake). Everything in this film is just right:

The attitude: Jake and Elwood manage to keep their coolness no matter what obstacles come their way. With cops in hot pursuit, they totally demolish a shopping center, while calmly discussing everything that's sold there (check out the worker who accidentally bumps into the camera while trying to run to safety). A mysterious woman (Carrie Fisher!) destroys a seedy hotel where Elwood lives, but that doesn't seem to bother the brothers, who climb out of the pile of debris, wipe the dirt off their suits and carry on walking.

The music: James Brown's enthusiastic Soul Preacher engaging a whole churchgoing audience (including Belushi and Aykroyd) into a wild gospel number where everyone starts singing and swinging on the floor (some even jumping high up close to the roof, defying the laws of gravity). Aretha Franklin shows she has a way with words and tells Matt Murphy to "Think about what you're trying to do to me". Ray Charles displays his talents by "Shaking the Tailfeather" in a music shop, with the whole street joining in the fun. The funniest scene in the country bar, where the audience, irritated by "Gimme Some Lovin'", has to be calmed down by renditions of "Rawhide" and the sure-fire tearjerker "Stand by Your Man". Not to forget Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" and the titular band's takes on "Everybody Needs Somebody" and "Sweet Home Chicago".

The humor: Just see the Quotes section for this one, there are plenty of memorable lines in this movie.

The faces: Landis puts in his usual assortment of film directors and other familiar faces in cameo roles: Frank Oz as a prison officer at the beginning, Steven Spielberg young and unrecognizable to those who know only his bearded mug shots of today, and Landis himself as a policeman joining his colleagues in the shopping center chase scene. Paul "Pee-Wee Herman" Reubens as the waiter who takes the brothers' dinner orders in the restaurant, and Twiggy as a girl whom Elwood asks for a date. And don't blink or you'll miss long-haired and mustachioed rock singer and brief The Eagles member Joe Walsh during the closing "Jailhouse Rock" number.

Stock up on dry white bread and whole fried chickens, invite your friends to join in, and have a good time together with a movie filled with SOUL!

The Pink Panther sits in the attic reading his old letters. One of them is from his old friend Loud Mouth Louie, who reminds about the panther's past life, with all the mishaps and memorable events he has experienced. This frame-tale takes us to scenes from earlier Pink Panther cartoons, including G.I. Pink (1968), Pink in the Clink (1968), Pink Pajamas (1964), Pickled Pink (1965) and The Pink Package Plot (1968). This means the cartoon is nothing but a paste-up job, but the old scenes are at least funny, so if you're not familiar with the originals, this one provides a guaranteed amount of laughs. If you have seen all five aforementioned cartoons, then naturally this is just one to turn your nose up at. Another gripe: the totally unnecessary use of a laugh track. As if that wasn't bad enough, we hear laughter even when there's nothing funny happening.

The Pink Panther's food supply is empty, so he goes to the supermarket. There he causes constant trouble by knocking a worker into a box of bananas, repeatedly knocking down a huge pyramid of food cans, arguing with a taste tester about which drink - A or B - is better, and flinging a live lobster into a man's hat.

This short was the last one in the series of short Pink Panther cartoons. The whole series had already run its course, and it shows painfully here. The gags here are tired and predictable, and the whole premise of this short is boring. How could you get any interesting ideas and original gags from a visit to a supermarket? The end gag is a little better, but still not good enough.

I'm a regular customer of a local movie theater that shows old films, and six years ago they screened Can't Stop the Music - I went to see it, and found it an absolute hoot in campy humor! No-holds-barred, super-fast direction, flashy sets and special effects, glitzy musical numbers (the YMCA scene is awe-inducing!) and actors that really looked like they had a lot of fun cooking the whole thing up! It was the best cinematic experience I ever had. Never once did I glance at my watch, which for me is rather amazing. After gobbling up the whole enchilada, I started wishing I could find a copy of it somewhere. Alas, I still haven't.

A few months ago, the same theater showed the film again. I usually don't see a movie twice in a theater, but my memory needed refreshment, and my soul some cheering up. I went, and had just as much fun as I did the first time.

What's most amazing about CSTM is that although the director (whom I recognize as the deaf-and-dumb maid in the equally enjoyable Murder By Death) makes the actors rush through their lines and behave like over-energized hyperactive brats, and narrates the story so fast there's not even time to develop moments of crisis that last longer than a few seconds, the movie actually clocks in at two hours! Be grateful to the director and the screenwriters - a third hour would just have been asking too much of the audience.

CSTM contains some of the most pointless attempts at comedy I've ever seen, and probably ever will see (Bobo Lewis's bread woman - um, huh??), and the only clever line I found was uttered by Perrine when she says bye to Paul Sand's Steve the Record Producer - it's made up almost entirely of song titles. But the actors' eagerness makes up for the lame humor, and salvages even the scenes where Jenner has to make a complete fool of himself (the trouser incident and everything that follows).

I fear that if I ever find CSTM on video or DVD, the small screen will terribly banalize the film, but I won't care. But all you out there - watch the film on the big screen if you get the chance!

In this version of the famous fairytale "Jack and the Beanstalk", the Pink Panther lives on the countryside and owns a cow who munches on the grass so loudly the panther can't sleep. He sells his cow to Honest Friz, who pays him with a handful of beans. The panther plants the beans outside his house, and overnight they grow into a beanstalk so huge it reaches far above the clouds, taking the house with it. Noticing a castle located on the cloud bank, the panther knocks on the door and soon confronts a vicious giant and his cat.

Very much plot crammed into just six minutes, so the story moves along very rapidly until we get to the giant's castle. However, the writer hasn't come up with a single original idea for this adaptation. Even the ending is poor. Forget it.

The Pink Panther, who has spent a night out in the woods, notices someone has stolen the chocolate cake he brought with him for breakfast. He dons a Sherlock Holmes-type hat and a magnifying glass, and starts investigating. He follows some car trails into a house inhabited by a mysterious little man dressed in black, but once inside the house, the panther realizes it's crammed with surreal surprises for him.

This short is one of my absolute favorites with the Pink Panther. Loaded with gags and surprises just too wild to describe, you have to wonder what the animators were on when they thought this one up. And the peculiarities hold up right to the very end. Guaranteed to make you gape in awe!

The Pink Panther is worried about him putting on weight lately, so he goes to a gym to get some exercise. He causes nothing but trouble to the little pointy-nosed man who also wants to keep fit.

This is one of my favorite Pink Panther cartoons. Having seen it countless times, it still cracks me up. The boxing ball episode is particularly absurd and hilarious, and even the old shadow boxing gag ends with a funny (and disaster-causing) punchline. It doesn't matter that a couple of gags (the one leading to the basketball scene, for instance) feel a bit forced, they're funny nonetheless. If you're a fan of this character, don't miss this one!

This cartoon is actually Rocky Pink (1976) with one new sequence added. When the panther tries to get rid of the rock, he makes it fall down a cliff. A telephone line bounces the rock back up - in the added sequence, it continues bouncing frantically in a small town, from one building to another. This scene is loaded with pinball-related sight gags - I had to watch it frame by frame to catch all the little details! The added sequence continues with the rock bouncing through a park, with more sight gags following. All in all, a worthy addition to an already funny Pink Panther cartoon, but it's still a little suspect releasing the same cartoon twice.

A very worried short, pointy-nosed man goes to a psychiatrist. Beginning with his infantry and childhood, he finally gets to tell about a pink panther that turns up everywhere he goes and causes trouble. We see scenes from Rock-A-Bye Pinky (1966), The Pink Blueprint (1966) and Pink Posies (1967).

Along with the earlier Pink-In (1971), this is a needless paste-up job with a predictable and silly punch line. It's sad to see animators, short on ideas, recycle old material. At least the old scenes are long enough to provide some enjoyment, at least if you haven't seen the original cartoons.

For years, I had wanted to see this film (not badly, but anyway), but not once had I located a copy of it in any shop or rental store, or even read about a theater or TV screening I could catch. After all, I'm a fan of everything Eddie Murphy did in the 80's, and RAW was one of the few holes still left unfilled. Then, lo and behold, yesterday it turned up on Finnish TV, and I sat down to watch it.

I wasn't expecting too much, so I didn't feel disappointed. Eddie doesn't talk about as many subjects as you'd expect from a 90 minute film, so mostly he just drones on and on about something that wasn't too funny in the first place. I concentrated more on his mimicry and timing than the actual jokes, and they were really spot-on. A comedian without those assets pulling off the same stories Eddie did would just have bored his or her audience to death, but with Eddie, the time rushed on surprisingly quickly. And he sure loves to entertain - you can tell that from the sudden ending, which almost seemed like Eddie was interrupting himself.

On the downside, the flashback scene at the beginning was a little unnecessary, during the actual stand-up performance the camera was too close - we missed out on Eddie's attempts to do the Moonwalk - and I felt no particular urge to watch RAW a second time. But as a one-time experience, it was memorable. Best bits: Eddie's impersonation of Bill Cosby and his idol, Richard Pryor, and the story about the wife alone in the Bahamas (Man, I loved that microphone-swinging!).

Now, how about screening Delirious as well?

The first time I saw Stalag 17, I mainly saw it as a comedy with serious undertones. I laughed myself silly at the scene where all the POWs do a nasty take-off on Hitler (that scene is still my favorite) and got a great deal of amusement from Animal's obsession with Betty Grable. When I watched the movie again after a year or so, I felt almost disappointed since I noticed how the humor wears out midway through and gritty realism gets the upper hand. The plot about finding the right stoolie and escaping the harsh conditions of the camp had me strongly rooting for the POWs, but after the film I felt a little depressed.

I just saw Stalag 17 a third time, and only now did I realize how well balanced the drama and humor were. We get the comedy relief first, and when it's time to concentrate on the actual storyline, the humor is shoved away (except for one last funny bit with Animal and Shapiro) and it's time to really start rooting for the prisoners.

I've seen nearly all movies Wilder directed, and, along with such later films as Some Like It Hot, One Two Three and Irma La Douce, Stalag 17 ranks among my favorites (I still need another viewing of Sunset Boulevard). And Holden - yes, he deserved that Oscar!