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Reviews
The Best of Everything (1959)
Dontcha just love a soap opera?
That's a bad, raunchy, predictable, tacky, salacious soap opera? "The Best of Everything" is just such a guilty pleasure for me, something along the lines of "Valley of the Dolls". I mean, "Best" has everything. Somebody gets pregnant out of wedlock (when's the last time you heard THAT phrase?), there are affairs everywhere, drinking, backstabbing, jealousy, and even a tragic but not altogether unexpected death.
Caroline Bender (Hope Lange) and Mike Rice (the delicious Stephen Boyd) are the centerpieces of the goings-on. Their chemistry is immediate and is the glue that keeps this film from becoming too fragmented.
Suzy Parker, the off-the-chart gorgeous ex-fashion model, appears as Gregg Adams, an aspiring stage actress, a role that, according to any biography I've ever read about her, was apparently not much of a stretch. But Parker does a surprisingly credible job here, more than holding her own in a couple of scenes opposite Louis Jourdan who plays David Savage. Jourdan probably took this role for the money and the special screen credit because he was clearly headed down the aging star/has-been road.
Diane Baker is fine as naive, gullible April Morrison, Martha Hyer as Barbara Lemont has a particularly juicy storyline, and film legend Joan Crawford chews her usual serving of scenery as Amanda Farrow, another role, like Jourdan's Savage, that Crawford likely took for the paycheck.
There is some obviously dated dialog and plot devices (this IS 1959), and the predictability of the soap opera genre. But if you like a good soap as I do, "The Best of Everything" will more than satisfy you.
There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
There really IS no business like show business!
"There's No Business Like Show Business" was never intended to be great film-making or storytelling, so please do not watch it with those things in mind.
Sure, it was over-staged, over-produced, in some cases over-acted and any other "overs" you can think of, but it's just fun to relax and watch and listen to. I've seen the film maybe dozens of times (I own the DVD) and it's obvious to me that despite a few on screen gaffes and off-screen problems for at least a couple of the actors, Hollywood had a whale of a good time making it. Some of the characters are unrealistic and I'm sure if you could ask the actors, all would say it was by far not their best work.
Furthermore, if we didn't know it before, "Show Business" proved that Johnnie Ray, the part crooner, part rock belter of the era, couldn't act his way into or out of a paper bag. But so what?? This ain't Hamlet. Ray was cast to do here what he did best: sing the heck out of a couple of songs that were arranged precisely to suit his performing style. And he also just managed to pull off an unusual plot twist that I'm sure audiences of the era did not expect.
We're all asked to suspend temporarily all logic and reason when we turn on our TVs or go to the movies. Why stop with "There's No Business Like Show Business"? So grab the munchies, sit back and let Ethel Merman and Gang entertain you for a couple of harmless, gaudy hours.
Strong Medicine (2000)
Overlook the flaws and be entertained!
Yup, Strong Medicine does go "over the top" frequently, but what hospital show or courtroom or detective/police drama hasn't? And yes, it also flaunts a decidedly feminist perspective, but what else would you expect from Whoopi Goldberg on Lifetime TV?
Strong Medicine is not intended to reflect reality all the time, because if it did, it would either be too gory or too boring to have entertainment value. The acting is very credible, the writing is creative and sensitive and the direction is first-rate though not unusually clever for an emergency room show.
Rittenhouse Hospital doesn't exist (I did a quick search) and its characters and patients are fictitious. But the entertainment industry asks us to suspend our logic and common sense every day for the sake of, well...being entertained. And we do it gladly.
So sit back and relax and watch "Lu", "Andy Campbell" and the rest of the Rittenhouse staff tackle fascinating women's health issues with their usual confidence, expertise and sense of humor -- and OK, a bit more schmaltz and drama, just for fun.
The Haunting (1999)
The 1963 version was better
If you've read Shirley Jackson's story, "The Haunting of Hill House", you'll probably like the 1963 film, "The Haunting", fine. But this remake totally misses the point.
The whole idea of a horror film is to scare the audience. But director Jan de Bont completely dropped the ball here. Instead of staying true to Ms. Jackson's story and leaving most of the details to the viewer's imagination (i.e., you're more afraid of what you CAN'T see), he gives us far too much information, thereby taking away many of the story's most frightening moments.
Now don't get me wrong. The special effects in this version will knock you out of your seat. They are truly spectacular in and of themselves. But they are, for the most part, not scary. In fact, I actually laughed out loud at least twice.
The acting isn't particularly impressive either. Liam Neeson (Dr. David Marrow) and Catherina Zeta Jones (Theo) have done infinitely better work, and Lili Taylor (Nell Vance) probably has. But it's probably not fair to fault them entirely. After all, it has to be difficult to act scared at such overblown, occasionally cartoonish special effects.
But I did enjoy Bruce Dern's rendering of Mr. Dudley the caretaker. He played it to the hilt and I think he had fun with it.
My recommendation: don't waste two hours and three bucks on this. Read the book instead, and then if you really want to see the story on screen, rent the 1963 version.