busterbuff61 Reviews

Strange Brew (1983)

Great white comedians

[7/10 · 10 January 2013]

There's no way you can describe the vibe of "SCTV" (TV series, 1977-84) to anyone who wasn't in on it to start with. It's like trying to describe how you felt when you saw the original cast of "Saturday Night Live." However, for the pop-culture-history-impaired, "SCTV" was set at an imaginary TV station that allowed for wacko "local" characters as well as dead-on parodies of any major film or TV show you've ever seen. Since the show was produced in Canada, Canadian TV decided they needed two minutes of Canadian content each week. Thus were born Bob and Doug MacKenzie (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas), two toque-wearing siblings who blathered on about the virtues of beer and back bacon.

"Bob and Doug Mackenzie" were like "SNL's" "Wayne's World" in the early '90s. The first time I saw them, I completely did not get them. After that, I couldn't wait for their next appearance.

All that is by way of saying that "Strange Brew" is about as funny a movie version of the Mackenzie Bros. sketches as you could ask for. The movie begins predictably (and hilariously) with Bob and Doug trying and failing miserably to move their "Great White North" TV segment into feature films. (The moment where Doug does the "movie theme" kills me every time.) From there, the movie goes on to a half-baked plot about the brothers uncovering espionage at the local brewery (run by Paul Dooley and Ingmar Bergman veteran Max von Sydow, neither of whom seems to have any idea how they got into this movie). Basically, it plays like a Cheech & Chong movie for the '80s, with beer taking the place of illicit drugs.

That said, it manages to come up with a fair number of laughs, as when the Mackenzies take brief digs at "Star Wars," or when their dog Hosehead unexpectedly saves the day at movie's end.

If you're unfamiliar with the Mackenzie milieu, the DVD of the movie will help you out. It has an old "SCTV" Mackenzie sketch, as well as a brief but funny animated version of the brothers.

Great comedy can never be properly explained to the uninitiated. On that basis, "Strange Brew" is a classic.

The Pink Panther (2006)

Pink?? More like blue in the face

[3/10 · 10 January 2013]

Moviegoers whose notion of physical comedy ends with Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler will probably roar with laughter over Steve Martin's new version of "The Pink Panther." Viewers with slightly longer memories will ponder just when Martin got so unfunny.

I can't think of any comedy series that is in less need of resurrection than the "Pink Panther" movies. The very first one (1964) is utterly hilarious, with Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, so obsessed with finding a jewel thief –- and so frustrated by the lack of affection from his wife, who turns out to be two-timing him with the thief –- that he falls all over himself in frustration.

Unfortunately, "Panther's" original sequel, "A Shot in the Dark" (1965), established the template for the rest of the Clouseau comedies: a clueless, accent-hindered incompetent who never wants to admit that he destroys everything in his path. Writer-director Blake Edwards beat the formula to death for a half-dozen more movies (some released long after Sellers' death). And now Martin does his best to revive a corpse one more time.

This is supposedly a prequel to the Edwards/Sellers movies, but it follows the same tired pattern. A famous pink diamond resembling a panther is stolen. French Chief Inspector Dreyfus (et tu, Kevin Kline?) hires Clouseau as a red herring to cover up his own detective work, but Clouseau unwittingly scores major points against his scheming boss.

So much for plot. The rest of the movie is the kind of tired physical comedy that endlessly unravels like so much cheap fabric. Once, there was the like of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, whose physical humor expressed their personalities and who took their own falls. By contrast, look at every single Clouseau pratfall in this movie. There's a shot of Martin starting to do harm to himself, a shot of a stuntman dressed up like Steve Martin and taking a tremendous fall, followed by a shot of Martin nonchalantly regaining his balance.

Has Martin forgotten his own movie-comedy history? Like the silent greats, his physical comedy used to be the expression of an otherworldly, ethereal comedian, culminating in what I thought was his finest movie, "L.A. Story" (1991). But over the years, he's been too busy making what one cynic has called "mansion comedies." You know -– Steve Martin needs another mansion, so he makes another dumb slapstick movie.

As for the rest of the new "Panther," poor Jean Reno plays Martin's unwilling sidekick as though he is wondering what happened to his own movie career. Only Beyonce Knowles –- in a surprising nod to modernity –- makes much of an impression as, natch, a sultry singer.

Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982)

Life in Concert, Part II

[8/10 · 10 January 2013]

How do you top your own legend? In Richard Pryor "Live on the Sunset Strip" (1982), Pryor doesn't quite make it -- but he comes awfully close.

A bit of background for the uninitiated: Pryor, already a huge success via his earthy 1970's comedy albums, made film history with "Richard Pryor Live in Concert." A modestly filmed recording of a 1979 concert he did in Long Beach, CA., it put many of that year's Hollywood blockbusters to shame with its rich characterizations and incisiveness; countless comics still cite it as their impetus for doing comedy.

Unfortunately, Pryor was a volatile man with a severe drug habit. About a year after the concert film was released, Pryor was freebasing and caught himself on fire. (He later acknowledged it as a suicide attempt.) Therapy and cosmetic surgery helped to restore him, but it left him with a quandary: How does a comic whose act was based on fear and hostility acknowledge the love and support of his audience? Unlike its ground-breaking predecessor, the '82 film takes a while to get going. The credits, as simple as they are (Pryor produced the film and wrote the material), seem to last forever. And there's more longeur when Pryor makes his way to the stage via the audience, who can't stop their standing ovation and glad-handing of him.

When he does finally reach the spotlight, Pryor appears a bit unsettled at first. The '79 film showed Pryor prowling the stage, his shirt visibly drenched in perspiration. In "Sunset Strip," he's dressed nattily in a flaming red suit -- ostensibly intended as a visual pun on his fire incident, but so spiffy that even he acknowledges that it ill-suits him. He initially throws out random observations, hoping something will stick.

He finally hits his stride in a riff about male-female relationships, both casual (his encounter with a Playboy Bunny who gets turned on when Pryor does kiddie voices) and emotional (he tearfully calls up a recently estranged girlfriend who coolly advises him, "Don't do this to yourself"). He also hits pay dirt with his account of filming the 1980 comedy "Stir Crazy" at the Arizona State Penitentiary; at first he is moved by the plight of his black "brothers" until he is apprised of their graphic crimes, at which point he declares, "Thank God...we got...penitentiaries!" He also does a great routine about a recent visit to Africa, in which he imitates jungle animals in the manner of the menagerie of impersonations in his '79 film. After this, he begins to soften, as he realizes that his homeland visit has caused him to forever negate his use of the notorious N-word. He follows this with what he claims is "the final appearance" of his street character Mudbone (Pryor lied; he revived the character in his third concert film), who chides his creator Pryor for his fire incident. Critic Pauline Kael was put off by these passages, saying in essence that Pryor was kissing up to his audience with these observations. She might have been on to something, but considering that this comic narrowly escaped death and found some lacerating revelations on the other side, perhaps he was entitled to a little self-indulgence.

All of this, naturally, leads to the movie's showpiece: Pryor's account of his 1980 immolation. He prefaces it with a joke about how it "really" happened: When he had milk and cookies in bed one night, he mixed whole milk with skim milk, "and the s*** blew up!" But when he launches into the true account of the events leading up to and following the fire, he pulls no punches. His gift for bringing inanimate objects to life gets downright eerie when he does the voice of his reassuring freebase pipe, which he came to regard as his only true friend. When I saw this movie upon its initial release, I sat open-mouthed at this routine, unable to laugh -- but not because it was poorly done. On the contrary, it was so forthright and honest that it went beyond comedy, to a point where you could imagine Pryor observing his self-destructive behavior from outside of himself. (Indeed, that was the approach Pryor took when he dramatized the incident in his autobiographical 1986 movie "Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling.") Pryor lived for over two decades after this movie, until multiple sclerosis permanently stilled his demons. But in 1982, "Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip" inspired well-earned laughter as well as gratitude that a rich talent such as Pryor was still with us. The movie still stands as a remarkable comedic document -- not quite as great as its '79 predecessor, but still head and shoulders above most of the brain-dead comedy from then and now.

The Gang's All Here (1943)

Yes, we have some bananas

[10/10 · 10 January 2013]

I'll get to the plot of Busby Berkeley's "The Gang's All Here" in a minute, because the plot isn't the most memorable part of this movie. The most memorable part is the bananas.

About 20 minutes into the movie, a towering hat of Technicolor fruit appears on the screen, followed by its owner--'40s "Brazilian bombshell" Carmen Miranda. She proceeds to do a number called "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat," accompanied by chorus girls who bear bananas. Six-foot-tall bananas that continuously droop and sprout until number's end, when the chorus girls, worn out by the burden of this mutated fruit, lay down for a long siesta on a stage dressed up like an island.

There's a reason this number occurs so early on: It takes you the rest of the movie to convince yourself you actually saw this in a 1943 movie.

But then, this is from Busby Berkeley, a director who staged his musical numbers as though he was declaring war. And next to kitsch, war is pretty much the motivator here.

The wafer-thin story involves Andy (James Ellison), a soldier who woos and wins Edie (Alice Faye), a canteen dancer, the night before Andy goes off to World War Two. In what seems an instant, Andy gets decorated and returned home to a victory party thrown by the family of Andy's childhood sweetheart and fiancée--who, unfortunately for Edie, is not Edie.

Will the heartbreak be resolved? Do you really care? The plot is mostly an excuse for some snappy repartee between major '40s stars (in particular, Eugene Palette and Edward Everett Horton are hilarious), and the kind of musical numbers that seem to drop out of thin air. (In a couple of scenes, Benny Goodman and his orchestra stroll by and do some songs just for the heck of it.) "The Gang's All Here" is really a 1943 time capsule, but an eye-popping rouser of one. They don't make 'em like this anymore. They didn't make 'em much like this back then, either.

Showgirls (1995)

Screech's revenge??

[3/10 · 10 January 2013]

"Who do you have to **** to get off this picture?" --attributed to Bette Davis

Who did Elizabeth Berkley have to **** to get starred in "Showgirls"? The movie seems intended as a love letter to her, though I don't recall anyone in the 1990's saying, "Remember Jessie from 'Saved by the Bell'? God, I wish they'd get her into a porno flick so we could see what she's got!"

What Berkley's got in "Showgirls" is a more explicit version of her petulance routine from that Saturday morning teen show. Berkley plays Nomi, a girl essentially from nowhere who wants to become a dancer. (And I do mean from nowhere. She has no family whatsoever, and later in the movie, another character has to explain to her what an M.B.A. is.)

For no good reason, Nomi decides that becoming a dancer involves hitchhiking to Las Vegas. From that point, the script goes into two major loops. One is that, in one form or another, all the major characters have an obsession with either Nomi's dancing or her breasts. Either Nomi's being told how beautiful her chest is, or she's being told how much raw talent she has as a dancer. I don't know from Las Vegas, but having seen a few dancers and a few breasts in my day, my frank assessment is that Berkley is not outstanding in either department.

The other loop is that Nomi is forever either showing off every inch of her lithe body or doing her best to simulate the sex act, only to go running off in anger every time somebody insinuates that she's a hooker. Now, where would anyone get that idea (other than her mentors requesting that she ice up her nipples before every show)?

The movie's main, er, thrust is that Nomi works her way up to being a dancer in a show featuring what we're told is Vegas' star attraction, Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon). Eventually, we're told that Cristal has designs on Nomi, mainly so that screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven (the same enlightened team behind "Basic Instinct") can indulge their lip-smackin' woman-on-woman fantasies.

From there, the movie goes into a hyper, NC-17 variation of "All About Eve," or what it would be if Bette Davis and Ann Baxter decided to get it on before they went into career damage control.

Despite this movie's seedy reputation, it's not fun enough to be a "good" bad movie. It does have some Ed Wood-like dialogue whoppers -- when Nomi's old boss sees her hit the big time, he blithely comments, "It must be strange not to have someone c*** on you" -- but not enough to sit through this slop. Mostly, the movie makes you wonder how it dragged in actors such as Kyle MacLachlan, "L.A. Law's" Alan Rachins, and most notoriously, Gina Gershon who, with her big breasts and monotone line readings, comes off like Adrienne Barbeau's big sister.

History of the World: Part I (1981)

Mel Brooks as the 20-million-year-old man

[8/10 · 10 January 2013]

This movie did middling box-office (as did all Mel Brooks movies from this point on), but for my money, it's one of Brooks's funniest. Having made his reputation with the 2000-Year-Old Man, it seems inevitable that Brooks would eventually take on the spectrum (or sphincter, as he might put it) of world history. And in the age of the Farrelly Brothers, Brooks' ideas about bad taste seem almost quaint.

It begins with a lot of black-out gags (the first such gag amounting to, Ape Man = Onan) and takes off from there. The first sustained sequence, The Roman Empire, probably goes on a bit too long, and it "introduced" a buxom actress named Mary-Margaret Humes who, justifiably, went right back to obscurity shortly after the film's release. But there are also many enjoyable moments: Gregory Hines's mellow film debut, Madeline Kahn's ecstatic song tribute to her well-endowed male slaves, and most of all, the Last Supper sequence at the end--completely messed up time-wise (it puts Jesus and Leonardo da Vinci in the same shot), but all the more hilarious because of it. (John Hurt plays Jesus, and as in Brooks' "Spaceballs," his straight-faced seriousness just makes the insanity around him that much funnier.) The next sequence is one of Brooks' best: The Spanish Inquisition as a Marx Brothers-style musical number, with Mel Brooks as a socko Torquemada, beating out a rhythm on his victim's shackled knees. This sequence alone justifies Brooks's existence as a comedy director.

The sequence depicting The French Revolution, has two main objectives in mind: show off as much of (1) British comedienne Pamela Stephenson's bust and (2) Brooks's wee-wee humor as humanly possible. Nevertheless, it has its moments, with Cloris Leachman as Madame Defarge, and Brooks as a randy king.

The final short sequence, a trailer for Brooks's non-existent "History Part II," is worth the bother just for one of those moments that makes me laugh for no discernible reason: a scene from "Hitler on Ice," showing Brooks' favorite nasty German as an Ice Capader. This ersatz trailer is enough to make me wish Brooks had really made a sequel. I doubt it would have turned out any worse than "Spaceballs."

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

The best (and most underrated) Disney cartoon ever

[10/10 · 10 January 2013]

I must be a movie-going anomaly, because I consider The Disney Studio's animated version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" the best animated feature ever made. Victor Hugo purists have complained about the movie's liberties (particularly with the comic relief of the three gargoyles, which I admit is a bit of a stretch for sidekicks). And the story, of course, is way too dark for anyone expecting a lighthearted Disney cartoon. But then, perhaps that's part of the point.

The movie was directed by Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. Those names are worth noting because they also directed Disney's "Beauty and the Beast," which was the first-ever animated film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Obviously that gave the duo some clout to make pretty much what they wanted. They certainly chose one of the darker stories to animate, and it showed at the box office when it grossed only (only?) $96 million. But it is a story superbly told on all levels.

The film's opening scene tells, in song, how the hunchback was stolen from a gypsy by Claude Frollo, an evil judge (changed from a priest in the original story) who has a huge hang-up about gypsies. Frollo sees that the child is physically deformed and intends to drop him down a well, until a priest shames him into keeping the child as his own. He condescendingly names the child "Quasimodo" (meaning half-formed) and keeps him locked in a bell tower where he learns to ring the bells for the city of Paris. And in that first ten minutes, you're thinking: These Disney guys are really serious.

From there, the movie introduces Esmeralda (voiced by Demi Moore) and Frollo's troubled officer Phoebus (Kevin Kline), both of whom come to befriend Quasimodo. Yet the movie doesn't go for easy answers, and when the movie (controversially) ends happily, it feels quite earned. Because along the way, Quasimodo certainly needs a friend or two. Voiced by Amadeus's Tom Hulce, he does a song called "Out There" in which Quasimodo expresses his longing to simply get out in the real world one day, and it beautifully lays the groundwork for everything that follows.

That song is part of an unjustly overlooked score by Disney vets Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, and it's only one element of the most underrated work you'll find in animation. There's an astounding scene where Frollo privately confesses his lust for Esmeralda, and as G-rated numbers go, it's a pretty hard G. But I found it refreshing that the Disney group was willing to take some chances here, unlike their much safer audience-pleasers, such as the politically correct "Pocahontas." For all of its happy ending, the movie doesn't cop out, either. Quasimodo doesn't get the girl, but he gets something much better--the acceptance he has always craved. Disney movies have offered a lot less palatable messages. And for those who think that a Disney cartoon shouldn't rattle anyone, I say: Remember what happened to Bambi's mom?

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Great spoofery, rock music, and Susan Sarandon's breasts

[10/10 · 10 January 2013]

The line for critical objectivity ends at "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Either you love this one, or you just don't get it. (Count me among the former.) The story centers around super-square high-schoolers Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon, most definitely in her pre-Oscar days). They get engaged and prepare to meet up with an old professors of theirs, when their car gets a flat tire. The only place for help is a nearby castle run by a demented doctor named Frank N. Furter (Tim Curry)--and brother, the kind of help he offers.

The movie's legend has long been part of modern film folklore: how rock impresario Lou Adler picked up an obscure stage show from L.A. and had it made into a movie; how the movie was considered a flop because it only attracted about 50 people per showing, until someone realized that it was always the *same* 50 people; how it was moved to midnight screenings and became an established cult classic.

And of course, part of the legend is the show-within-a-show, where moviegoers come dressed as their favorite "Rocky Horror" characters, bring their own props to the theater (such as waterguns to shoot during a storm scene in the movie), and shout dialogue cues at the screen. (When an audience member yells out, "What's white and sells hamburgers?", a screen character says, "Didn't we pass a castle down the road?") The movie is still best seen at a full-participation public theater. But if you strip away the midnight extras and watch it on DVD, the movie still has much to offer, such as: * Gloriously trashy sets and color--it's a treat just to look at.

* References to seemingly every movie ever made. Just for starters, check out all the sci-fi film reference in the movie's opening theme. And of course, there are the obvious references to "Frankenstein," with the spooky castle, the mad scientist, and his unique creation.

* A terrific soundtrack of rock songs, all composed by Richard O'Brien (who plays Frank's flunkie, Riff Raff, and who also wrote the original play and its screen version).

* Wonderful performances, from everyone from Bostwick and Sarandon to heavyweight rock star Meat Loaf (in an all-too-brief turn). And then there's Tim Curry, whose fishnet-stockinged Frank made an indelible mark upon pop culture with the first swish of his satin cape.

The DVD version includes the film's concluding song "Superheroes" (formerly available only in the British movie version) and an alternate soundtrack where you can learn the participation "script" without having to go out at midnight.

Whether you're a "virgin" (the cultists' term for "Rocky Horror" first-timers) or veteran, it's definitely worth the time warp.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

I'd go for the steak knives myself

[10/10 · 10 January 2013]

The next time your best friend whines about his job, slap on a DVD of "Glengarry Glen Ross." Believe me, he'll shut up fast.

The script's stage origins are obvious (David Mamet wrote the play and adapted it for the movie), but nobody will mistake this for just a photographed stage play. It involves some of the sorriest real-estate salesmen in Chicago, fully embodied by Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, and Kevin Spacey as the office manager. In a bravura opening sequence, Alec Baldwin, the downtown higher-up, brusquely issues the latest sales challenge for the month. First prize gets a Cadillac, second prize gets a set of steak knives, and third prize gets a pink slip.

As if that wasn't incentive enough, the sales guys are given "leads" (potential customers to call) that are like "I Love Lucy" reruns: decades old, and seen a thousand times before. With this minimum of exposition, we watch the guys at what could be called work--their suit coats dripping with flop sweat, varying their phone calls between telling loved ones that they'll be late again and pursuing old leads to share a "marvelous opportunity" with them.

Compounding the frustration are the "good leads" that Spacey keeps locked in his office, "for the sellers." Suddenly it dawns on a couple of the guys: What if the office was burglarized and the good leads stolen? Of course, the stupidity of this situation could be argued in a second: Wouldn't anyone who made a sale from the good leads be caught red-handed? But then again, the leads, like the MacGuffin in Hitchcock movies, are beside the point. It's really an excuse for David Mamet to throw a bunch of frantic old men together like cattle heading for slaughter, each not listening to the other guy, but waiting for that other guy to stop talking so that he can be heard. None of them exhibits the slightest joy in life. Even Spacey, the office manager with a loving family at home and an office full of great leads, can't even find it in himself to wallow in his superiority.

As simplistic as the movie's set-up is, it's some kind of career high point for everyone involved. (My only warning is to watch out for this R-rated movie's generous use of the F-word--when asked, Baldwin even claims it's his first name.) "Weepie" movies come with the advice to have your handkerchiefs ready. Anyone who watches "Glengarry Glen Ross" should be prepared with a good stiff drink in front of him.

Penthouse: Dream Girls (1994 Video)

Where did they find these women??

[9/10 · 10 January 2013]

Like most males who have grown up with the American sexual yin-yang standard, I am of two minds when I watch a Penthouse video. The first mind is that of the post-Women's Lib era, who wants to believe that he sees women as equals and does not want to regard them solely as sexual objects. The second mind is that of the typical stoop-jawed chauvinist who stares wide-eyed at his TV screen and thinks, "How do they get women to do this?" In particular, there is a woman in this video named Lynn Johnson, a generously endowed blonde who not only shows off her astounding physique, she relishes in it. The way in which she, er, shows appreciation for her ample self is undoubtedly the acid test for any couple watching this video. I'd imagine that most wives would leave the room in disgust, while their husbands were in the middle of giving the video a standing ovation.

I notice that, of the thousands of IMDb ratings of movies and videos, there are nearly no critiques of Penthouse videos. But I'll bet that doesn't mean that lots of Epinions male writers don't watch this stuff. Although it could be that a lot of men are ashamed to admit to that, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that such Epinions ratings are scarce because you can't judge Penthouse videos in the way you can review a movie. For one thing--and I say this to Penthouse's credit--they don't bother with any semblance of plot, unlike the X-rated videos that feel they have to justify their nudity with a pedestrian storyline. They just cut right to the chase--gorgeous women, erotic fantasies, and always a happy ending.

I confess to frequent pangs of guilt when I watch this stuff, because I guarantee that no video camera will ever catch *me* doing stuff like that in the nude. And yet if I'm typical of the millions of people, male and female, who watch these videos, they've certainly tapped into *somebody's* fantasies.

Lastly, there's the old argument that this is very "heightened" reality--that you never see physically ugly people having sex in these videos. Well, of course not--the operative word is "fantasy." Do most couples look like Richard Gere and Debra Winger in "An Officer and a Gentleman"? Of course not. And yet, when we see them acting out on screen, we'd like to *think* that we are those people. So forgive me for enjoying gorgeous women in lushly photographed fantasies. I promise I won't ask you to do the same.

Mother (II) (1996)

Sweet, hilarious comedy about one man's mother

[8/10 · 10 January 2013]

Albert Brooks is regarded by many in the know as one of the great comics of our generation. But his style is very personal and quirky, which is why he remains a "cult comedian" even after writing, directing, and/or appearing in movies for over 20 years. (His most famous role is probably his Oscar-nominated turn in James L. Brooks's BROADCAST NEWS, where he played a brilliant reporter who failed as an on-air newscaster because he perspired "more than Nixon.") Brooks's characters tend to be anti-heroes who are so obsessed with being politically correct and "doing the right thing" that it never occurs to them how obnoxious they are. (In Brooks's REAL LIFE [1979], he played a documentary filmmaker who nearly drove his subjects to nervous breakdowns.) But in MOTHER, Brooks has made a noble effort to meet his audience more than halfway, and he's definitely worth the trouble.

Brooks plays John Henderson, a science-fiction writer who begins the movie in the middle of arranging his second divorce. (Trying to look at the bright side, John says of his ex, "She brought great furniture to the marriage.") Doing some navel-gazing, John concludes that his problems with women stem from unresolved issues with his mother (Debbie Reynolds, in a welcome return to the movies). So he informs his mother that he wants to move back in with her as an "experiment." The experimental situation includes returning his old room to its 1970's splendor, complete with tacky posters and a stereo blasting at all hours of the night.

John's mother has been widowed and on her own for many years, and she doesn't take kindly to the thought of re-raising her son. But she gives as good as she gets, feeding John old food from her freezer (the freezer burn, she reasons, is a "protective coating"), and informing total strangers of John's failures with women. Adding to the mix is John's brother (Rob Morrow of TV's "Northern Exposure"), who thinks Mom likes him better but is in for a few surprises.

Jackie Gleason used to say that he did a "nudge act"--you could watch blustery Ralph Kramden, nudge your partner, and say, "That's my Uncle Charlie." I haven't known anyone who's seen MOTHER who didn't nudge me or anyone nearby and recognize themselves in the movie's relationships. The scene where John returns home is nothing but a prolonged take of John and his mother eating and squabbling in the kitchen, and it's probably the funniest piece of film that was shown in any theater in 1996.

I hope I haven't made MOTHER sound like a dark, brooding comedy or a sappy sitcom about a grown-up kid and his mom. It's the most intelligent sort of comedy--the kind that goes for truth instead of snappy one-liners. All of the performances are believable and some kind of wonderful, and Brooks's screenplay (co-written with his long-time partner, Monica Johnson) proves that Brooks continues to be a little-known national treasure.

Small Time Crooks (2000)

Small-time comedy from Woody Allen

[7/10 · 10 January 2013]

Woody Allen's "Small Time Crooks" begins hilariously and then spends its last half making us feel guilty for the laughs we had in the first half. Perhaps it had been so long since Allen has done an all-out comedy, he couldn't keep up the momentum until movie's end.

Allen plays Ray, one of the titular characters, as a variation on his schleppy booking agent in "Broadway Danny Rose." His clothing is only slightly louder than his complaining, and he gesticulates wildly, as though his hands have minds of their own. And Tracey Ullman, as Ray's social-climbing wife Frenchy, certainly seems a perfect match for him. (Allen doesn't have much originality in creating tacky characters--when in doubt, he throws on the plaids and has everyone screech their lines.) Ray, a reformed criminal, plots a scheme to return to his life of crime. There's a vacant building a couple of doors down from a bank, and he figures he can use the building as a front so he can tunnel to the bank and grab the bank's loot. The front will be a shop for Frenchy's homemade cookies, while Ray and his henchmen drill underneath the shop.

Comparisons to Allen's first feature, "Take the Money and Run", are inevitable and (for the first part of the movie, at least) worthy. Ray's blunders with his no-brain partners (Michael Rapaport and "Saturday Night Live" alumnus Jon Lovitz) are a slapstick delight. And when their (mis)fortunes take an unexpected turn for the richer, the movie seems meant to live up to its early promise.

But then, after a half-hour of making fun of these lowlifes, the movie asks us to take their plight seriously--if you can call getting unexpectedly rich a plight. Frenchy hires a stuffy art curator (Hugh Grant) in hopes of furthering her education (shades of "Annie Hall"). Ray, feeling Frenchy drifting away from him, starts to fall for her dimwitted cousin (Elaine May). And the movie audience suddenly feels the movie's sense of fun drifting away.

Why the movie suddenly dismisses the bungling bankrobber trio is a mystery, but dismiss them it does, as though they were a plot device which Allen quickly tired of. The cookie-shop front might have been funnier if Frenchy's creativity with cookies benefited everybody except for Ray. (A similar premise propelled Albert Brooks' "The Muse," and "Crooks" even borrows "Muse's" plot device of the wife finding unexpected success with making cookies.) Instead, the movie replaces its prime source of laughs with schlocky pathos. The camera closes in on Frenchy's face when she realizes her rich friends have been making fun of her, and suddenly the plot goes from the highs of "The Muse" to the lows of "The Flintstones." The cast wavers all over the place. Allen is in his slapstick element, doing physical schtick he hasn't attempted in ages and pulling it off. And Lovitz and Rapaport are delightfully dumb. On the other hand, Hugh Grant's role is underwritten, and Elaine May's is just plain *not* written. Allen seems to have a thing for dumb brunettes, and May adds nothing to the role except catatonia.

Allen is so fearful of being reminded of his "earlier, funnier movies" that each time he tries for purely funny, he seems a little more removed from the source. "Crooks" has its fair share of laughs (though more at the start than at the end), but finding comedy in silly characters and then asking us to feel unearned sympathy for them plays less like early Allen and more like latter-day Jerry Lewis.

They're Playing with Fire (1984)

Sybil Danning's bod; everything else bad

[5/10 · 10 January 2013]

I have what I call "The Adrienne Barbeau Theorem," which is as follows: Big breasts, in and of themselves, are not enough reason to watch a terrible movie. Ironically, there are two movies that strongly test my theorem, and one of them is Adrienne Barbeau's "Swamp Thing." The other is an abysmal '80s slasher flick titled "They're Playing with Fire." Sybil Danning plays an English professor (so much for realism) who seduces one of her young students (Eric Brown) in order to make him a patsy in a murder plot in which she's involved. Despite its familiar ring, this plot line is several generations (not to mention quality points) removed from "Double Indemnity" and its ilk. In fact, the movie's slasher motif is so sordid, even for this genre, that it's painful to watch. The movie would be deservedly forgotten, were it not for Danning's astounding sex scenes.

These scenes, particularly the first one, are as jaw-dropping as anything you're likely to see in a mainstream, R-rated movie. While not as anatomically graphic as your average porn video, Danning in the altogether amply displays enough, er, enthusiasm to get her point across. In fact, she's so enthusiastic, you lose any sympathy for the kid she's seducing. Here's this gorgeous, buxom blonde twisting the night away on top of him, and he can't think of anything better to do than *make conversation* with her! Obviously, the kid needs an education in more than English.

Other than the all-too-brief scenes in which Danning demonstrates why a date with her would fetch a small fortune on an auction block, the movie's only element of interest is in seeing Alvy Moore, who played Hooterville county agent Hank Kimball on TV's "Green Acres," hitting a career low as a gas-station manager who's dumb enough to hire and re-hire the kid as an attendant even after he's dumped the job on the promise of some loot from Danning's English professor. The only thing that could have made this movie more bad-memorable would be to pair Danning with fluttery Hank Kimball: "Welcome to Hootersville, I mean Hooterville! Sorry, I was blinded by your headlights, I mean my car headlights. The car is strangely stacked, I mean built, I mean..."

Swamp Thing (1982)

"Swamp Thing" is a bust - Adrienne Barbeau's, specifically

[8/10 · 10 January 2013]

Usually when I write a review, I try to make it as professional as possible. But when it comes to Adrienne Barbeau, all decorum goes out the window, and I reach for the drool bucket.

Purists will tell you that SWAMP THING is based on a DC comic, it's about a scientist who accidentally gets a potent chemical spilled on him and he becomes the title character, etc., etc. But look at the cover photo for this movie. Is the Swamp Thing the first thing your eyes are drawn to? Admittedly, the movie is kind of fun on its own terms. It's rated PG, so the violence and language isn't terribly off-putting. And the romance between Alice Cable (Barbeau) and the Swamp Thing is actually kind of sweet.

But all that aside, writer-director Wes Craven realized that when you're shooting on a minimal budget, you go for whatever special effects you can muster. And in this case, he had the mother lode of natural special effects. In the pre-cable-TV 1970's, how many teenagers got through puberty via their weekly viewing of Adrienne Barbeau bouncing across the set on "Maude"? Lest you think I have lapsed into tastelessness, be warned that I am not the only one to ga-ga over La Barbeau. Twenty years after the movie's premiere, I still recall The Village Voice raving, "Adrienne sloshes through the swamp, arms flailing, wet T-shirted breasts bouncing." And Joe Bob Briggs devoted an entire evening to his comments about Adrienne's pneumatic qualities when he showed the movie on TNT.

So let's cut to the chase. Adrienne spends most of the movie in tight-fitting T-shirts (wet whenever possible), a low-cut evening gown, and even, in a lingering but discreet shot (again, this is PG), topless.(If you're lucky enough to rent the European version, Barbeau's uncovered bosom is displayed on-screen for about a minute.) Her natural assets (and that includes her acting) have never been shown to such advantage in any movie since this one.

So dads, rent the movie for your kids. It's harmless enough that they'll think it's mindless sci-fi. Only you will know the truth.

King Kong (1976)

Kong for the Nixon era

[4/10 · 10 January 2013]

The most unfortunate line of dialogue in the 1976 version of "King Kong" is when Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges), as proof of Kong's existence, points to jungle debris and says, "Who do you think made that mess – some guy in an ape suit?" Unfortunately, that's *exactly* what I think.

In between the original 1933 version of "King Kong" (a classic and the best version –- no arguments allowed) and Peter Jackson's 2005 version (which put me off but obviously has its fans), there came producer Dino De Laurentiis' version –- which, to cop a much-used phrase from Roger Ebert, knew the words but not the music.

The movie attempts to "modernize" the story with a plot line that, surprisingly, is halfway serviceable. Fred Wilson (Charles Grodin), a greedy executive of an oil company named Petrox ("Pet Rocks," isn't that cute?), is sailing his crew to an uncharted island that promises hoards of oil that will help Petrox lead the way during the '70s energy crisis. It's kind of sad that the original movie's Jack Denham, a happy-go-lucky adventurer who wanted the island for an exotic movie setting, is here transmogrified into a villain. But Grodin does such a great job as the chop-licking bad guy, you're willing to settle.

Stowing away on the Petrox ship is Prescott, an "environmentalist professor" who tries to show Wilson the political incorrectness of his greedy ways. But Wilson cares only to exact his pound of flesh from Prescott; the price Prescott must pay for illegally boarding the ship is to be the trip's photographer. Prescott acquiesces to this gesture surprisingly quickly.

But even before we see Kong, the plot point that sinks this movie is when a would-be actress named Dwan (an unfortunate film debut for Jessica Lange) is recovered from a raft at sea. It seems that a moviemaker on an ocean liner had promised her stardom just before a fateful wave washed away the ship and everyone on it except for Dwan. But when Dwan starts spouting hippie-girl talk and predicting everyone's astrological sign, one wishes Dwan had gone down with the ship.

The story proceeds very quickly to the island and through the native's ritual of sacrificing a goddess (who, of course, eventually turns out to be Dwan) to Kong. It's when Kong shows up that the movie's street cred sinks for good. After seeing an inanimate clay figure brought to astounding life in the 1933 version, it's obvious and disappointing that the long shots depict only a man in a gorilla suit (special effects artist Rick Baker) –- although even he does a better job than the Carlo Rimbaldi-designed Kong robot, which was much ballyhooed at the time but was usable only for a few shots. (Rimbaldi went on to better things with Steven Spielberg, for whom he designed the iconic extra-terrestrial creature "E.T." But even if Kong had been more convincing, poor Jessica Lange couldn't be less convincing. You'll never realize what a fine job Fay Wray did in the original until –- in the movie's other prize-winning howler –- you hear Dwan shouting, "Put me down, you g****** chauvinist pig ape!" The movie's last great debit is that it looks and sounds like a 1970s TV-movie, not even a theatrical one. Despite its padded budget, the movie is so gun-shy that the exotic and scary jungle animals of the first movie are reduced here to a single, slithering snake that battles Kong. John Guillermin's direction is very pedestrian –- no sense of dread or fun to mar the movie's workmanlike march to its inevitable conclusion. And John Barry's generic score is hardly a shadow of Max Steiner's groundbreaking work in the original.

The part that should have worked better was the climax's re-imagining from the Empire State Building to the then-timely (now tragic, of course) World Trade Center. At movie's end, Lange finally starts to suggest the vulnerability that was Naomi Watts' forte in the 2005 version. But by then, it is all too little, too late.

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Buster Keaton is his own best special effect

[10/10 · 10 January 2013]

"Sherlock Jr." is a glorious 44 minutes in the history of silent film. It is Buster Keaton taking to the absolute limit the fun you can have with a movie camera, and the movie's viewers are the lucky recipients of Keaton's over-indulgence.

As with most Keaton comedies, the premise is fairly simple. Buster is a movie projectionist vying for the hand of a local girl (Kathryn McGuire). But Buster's romantic rival (Ward Crane) steals a valuable watch from the girl's father (Joe Keaton) and gets the rap pinned on Buster. Defeated, Buster returns to his job, where he falls asleep and "projects" himself (as "crime-busting criminologist Sherlock Jr.") into the melodrama he is projecting on the screen.

The set-up is funny enough, with Keaton involved in a number of very funny gags. (One of them included his getting caught in a geyser erupting from a water tower. For years afterward, Keaton suffered blinding headaches for which he had no explanation. Eventually, he discovered he had broken his neck via the water gag.) But once the dream sequence begins, all stops are out. Buster starts by trying to intervene in the melodrama into which he has inserted himself, only to find the scenery changing with his every move. In his book "The Silent Clowns," Walter Kerr reports that movie makers boasted of going to see the movie several times and never being able to discern how Keaton pulled off his photographic stunts. Keaton eventually admitted his secrets to biographer Rudi Blesh, but I have no desire to repeat them here, any more than one would want to divulge how a brilliant magician succeeded in his trickery. Don't try to look for the seams; just glory in the fun.

As if that weren't enough, Keaton eventually does one of his most grandiose chase scenes, in which he rides on the handlebars of a driverless motorcycle, resulting in some gasp-inducing shots.

(One of the scenes - where Buster narrowly misses getting hit by a train - looks a bit fake; and it is faked, but not in the way you'd expect. Keaton simply filmed the scene in reverse, so that he was in no danger; but Keaton wasn't quite clever enough to make it look un-faked, with the result that the train looks like it's on a rear-projection screen. Still, try to see where else he faked this spectacular chase, and you'll be looking for years.) The final scene, in which the "real" Buster wins the girl and then looks to the on-screen movie for romantic guidance, is a perfect closer.

Amazingly, "Sherlock Jr.," which has inspired countless filmmakers and was selected for the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1991, got only a mixed reception when it was first released. Variety said it was about as funny as "a hospital operating room." It was only with the "Keaton revival" in the 1950's and '60s that the movie got the acclaim it deserved and has received ever since.

For decades, Freudian reviewers have had a field day deconstructing the movie as an exploration of film, the unconscious mind, and just about any psychological topic you can whip up. If that's your idea of a good time, go to town on the movie. Anyone else can simply savor it as a superbly eye-popping comedy.

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004 TV Movie)

Murder Most Foul

[9/10 · 10 January 2013]

It's a bit disconcerting when you personally know the subject of a documentary. It's even stranger when that subject was a murder victim.

"Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession" chronicles the ups and (many) downs of a deceased Los Angeles film buff named Jerry Harvey. If you think you're obsessed with movies, you have nothing on Harvey. In the movie, Harvey's ex-wife tells how he once literally spoke of nothing but Stanley Kubrick's movie "Dr. Strangelove" for 24 hours.

Harvey began as a programmer for a movie theater but made L.A. history when he joined The Z Channel, an independent cable-TV channel that began broadcasting in 1974. In the prehistoric days of cable before HBO, Z gained its reputation and cache by showing uncut movies of all kinds, 24 hours a day.

After Harvey wrote several letters of complaint to Z about their informational errors and lack of range, Z decided to hire him as a full-time programmer. Harvey went to town on movies, showing everything from obscure European art films to "Star Wars." In the movie, several major filmmakers and stars, including Robert Altman and James Woods, rave about how their more obscure movies received a second life via broadcast on Z. (Although Woody Allen's long-time producer Charles Joffe is interviewed, strangely unmentioned is how it's believed that Z's frequent broadcasts of "Annie Hall" helped to win the unsung comedy several Oscars, including Best Picture.) Along with Harvey's successes, the movie chronicles his checkered family history and his life-long battle with depression. When cable channels such as HBO muscled in on Z's territory, Z's owners looked more to the bottom line and decided to run sports events along with movies. The movie's final half-hour covers the sad decline of both Z and Harvey, whose depression finally moved him to shoot and kill his second wife and then himself.

The documentary is well-done and extremely engrossing. Yet it almost serves as a cautionary tale, a "Taxi Driver" for movie buffs, showing how a singular obsession–-even with something as artistically worthwhile as film–-can have negative consequences.

(My personal connection with the story: Harvey's murdered wife, Deri Rudulph, was my employer for the brief time that I lived in L.A. She was one of the most generous, wonderful people I've ever met. Ten days after I returned to Jacksonville, I received the sad news about her murder. I was asked to be interviewed for this movie but could not make it to L.A. in time.)

King Kong (1933)

Who couldn't love the big ape?

[10/10 · 10 January 2013]

Like most baby-boomers, I fell in love with the 1933 "King Kong" after viewing it on local TV. In 2005, I put off buying the deluxe DVD version so that my family would have a gift to get for me at Christmastime. I was dying to pass the legend of this movie on to my then-nine-year-old son, but such are latter-day attention spans that I actually had to make him promise me an afternoon where he'd sit and watch it with me. He's now seen it three times since then.

Sure, the movie has flaws. I'll tick some off for you. Some of the dialogue is stilted in a way that only 1930s scripting can be. ("Why...I guess I love you!" declares sailor Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) to "bothersome" female passenger Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), with all the passion of a shipman who's discovered an extra bottle of hootch on board.) As befits the movie's then-revolutionary stop-motion animation technique, monster ape King Kong's fur often wavers from frame to frame, in much the same way as Gromit's doggie features hardly stand still from one frame to the next in the clay-animated "Wallace and Gromit" feature movie.

But you just gotta love the movie's fearlessness. Without an ounce of irony, the non-real Kong gets his own movie credit as "the eighth wonder of the world." There's no question that, as movie impresario Carl Denham, Robert Armstrong is whole ham –- yet that's what makes the character so wonderful. Most "fearless" movie heroes these days (paging Bruce Willis!) have only a steel chin and a sneer to offer the movie camera. Denham is not only fearless, he's enthusiastic about it, as if he just can't help putting his entire crew in peril just to get a good close-up.

Fay Wray, of course, immortalized herself as a scream queen in her role as Kong's temptress Ann Darrow. But even her screams are fun, because they're so genuine. It's a role that she could have conceivably turned into a camp classic (much as poor Jessica Lange did in the 1976 version); after all, in the end we know she's caterwauling to a clay model just a few feet tall. But Wray really is sincere enough to convince us she's getting manhandled by a perilous monster. My only regret is that she didn't end up showing just a little emotion for this overgrown kid who eventually lays down his life for her (which, thanks to Naomi Watts, was one of the few elements that Peter Jackson's 2005 version did get right).

Even the deaths in the movie aren't terribly painful. When Kong shakes a huge log where some of his would-be captors are clinging for dear life, and many of them fall to the gorge below, it's more like the roller-coaster ride the movie was intended to be; the poor fellas are merely the 30s predecessors to all those nameless extras who got evaporated on the original "Star Trek." Contrast that with the endless emphasis on graphic violence and death in Peter Jackson's version (which traumatized my son so much that we had to exit the movie after it was only one-third finished).

Finally, there's Max Steiner's ground-breaking musical score. At the advent of talkies, it was unheard of for an entire orchestral score to accompany a movie's story, and if you doubt the staying power of Steiner's music (he went on to score classics as diverse as "Gone with the Wind" and "Casablanca"), listen to one of the latter-day music-only CDs of Kong's soundtrack. It holds up as well as any movie score of the 1930's and beyond; it's like an old-time radio show in itself.

The DVD version only exponentially adds to the fun, with extras such as a documentary on Kong co-writer and -director Merian C. Cooper, who was the obvious inspiration for Carl Denham – and who, with co-creator Ernest B. Schoedsack, "piloted" one of the planes that gunned down Kong from the Empire State Building in the movie's legendary climax). And even Peter Jackson's detractors (myself among them, if you haven't guessed) will enjoy the DVD segment in which Jackson and his "King Kong" crew painstakingly recreate an entire sequence – the "extras'" fall into the gorge, which held the added peril of a giant spider – that was ruthlessly edited out of the movie somewhere along the way.

"King Kong" inspired generations of filmmakers as the ultimate example of how a movie could breathe life (and terror) into an inanimate object. Ironically, until "Star Wars" came along, most Hollywood movies had forgotten how to combine thrills and fun without gore –- a lesson that "King Kong" should have taught them long ago.

The Palm Beach Story (1942)

A comedic gem from Preston Sturges

[10/10 · 9 January 2013]

Writer-director Preston Sturges' "The Palm Beach Story" (1942) posits that people are so unused to good fortune that when it's dropped right into their laps, they have no idea what to do with it. And those people include the movie's audience.

The movie begins with a whirlwind sequence of exposition (set to a cockeyed version of "The William Tell Overture") which seems to explain absolutely nothing. It's Sturges' nose-thumbing at movies which have nothing *but* exposition. He seems to be saying, "Must we explain everything from the get-go? Have some patience on this trip, and I'll get you there."

Soon enough, we meet Tom (Joel McCrea), a frustrated construction designer, and Gerry (Claudette Colbert), his equally frustrated wife. They live in a posh apartment but are constantly dodging bill collectors, until Gerry's chance run-in with a meat mogul known as "The Weenie King." (You think that's flouting the censors? Wait until you see Sturges' The Miracle of Morgan's Creek [1944].) Gerry tells The Weenie King of her financial plight, and he gives her a wad of money to help her, just because she's so darned cute. (Once you see Claudette Colbert, this will seem a little more plausible.)

Far from feeling relieved, Tom is displeased that Gerry can solve their financial woes with only a little flirting. Gerry counters that everything in life is "about sex" (Note to censors: Flout-flout),and eventually she leaves Tom to set out on her own, solely to prove that she can get whatever she needs whatever she needs in life just by being a woman.

It's never shown whether Gerry proves this to herself or not. But along the way, she meets some memorable characters: the members of The Ale and Quail Club (headed by Sturges veteran William Demarest); an oft-married millionairess (delightful Mary Astor) and her foreign-speaking boyfriend of the moment; and a soft-spoken yachtsman (Rudy Vallee), who patiently endures Gerry's systematic breaking of his every pair of pince-nez's. All of these people love to talk, and Sturges obliges them with enough epigrams for a swank New Year's bash.

And for those who think Sturges couldn't direct as well as he wrote, I recommend the scene where a tipsy Tom and Gerry discuss their impending divorce. The scene begins with Tom trying to unzip the back of Gerry's dress for her, and it ends as one of the swooniest love scenes it has ever been my pleasure to witness.

And just when you think the movie has run out of steam, Sturges pulls a happy ending out of his hat that has you laughing through the closing credits. Smart and smarter--now, *there's* a trend Hollywood should have pursued.

Django Unchained (2012)

Quentin Tarantino's answer to GONE WITH THE WIND

[10/10 · 30 December 2012]

Review of DJANGO UNCHAINED By STEVE BAILEY I've never been a huge fan of Westerns – traditional, spaghetti, or otherwise. So I have no yoke to bear when I say that Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" is the best Western I've ever seen.

The title character is a pre-Civil War slave (Jamie Foxx) freed by a conniving bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz (Christopher Waltz), so that Schultz can hunt down three outlaws only Django can identify. In the midst of this task, Schultz discovers that Django is married to Broomhilda (Kerri Washington), a slave trapped on an infamously brutal plantation named Candieland. Schultz then sets about freeing Broomhilda and reuniting her with Django.

Writer-director Tarantino's calling card is his lack of political correctness, and that's on full display here. Tarantino merges two way-out-there genres, the spaghetti Western and the blaxploitation flick, to depict ignorant white slave-owners getting what's coming to them.

Violence-wise, the movie is bathed in blood. The movie also pulls no punches language-wise, dotting its dialogue with the infamous N-word as much as possible. Because of this, many feel that "Django's" treats its raw subject matter – brutal slavery in the South – too lightly and gratuitously.

I don't agree. "Django Unchained" is no "Blazing Saddles." Look at the character of Stephen, a Candieland slave who is all Uncle Tom on the surface but is actually the brains behind the plantation. Samuel L. Jackson goes all-out to show Stephen as a slave who has triumphed over his Deep South origins and isn't about to let anyone, white or black, upset the status quo.

I think Tarantino is getting at something here. By showing the ignorance and evil of all who willingly let slavery continue, "Django" is giving us the flip side of ultra-reverent Southern epics such as "Gone with the Wind" – and about time, too. "Django Unchained" is surely not historically accurate, but when it shows moronic slave-owners getting their just desserts, it's deliciously satisfying.

Laurel & Hardy: Their Lives and Magic (2011 TV Movie)

Lovely documentary on Laurel & Hardy

[9/10 · 30 December 2012]

Laurel and Hardy: Their Lives and Magic is a loving, often moving documentary on the famous comedy duo. Its title is obviously meant to evoke comparison with Randy Skretvedt's written history Laurel & Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies, and for the most part, it is quite worthy of comparison with that excellent book.

German filmmaker Andreas Baum has painstakingly brought L&H's personal and paired history to life. The movie features much rare footage from L&H's music-hall period, as well as the last known footage of Stan Laurel shortly before his death. Much of this footage seems almost predestined to move L&H buffs to tears. Also, scenes from many L&H/Hal Roach movies are used to "punctuate" much of the doc's facts, and while that could have been too cutesy a method for linking scenes, here it is done most tastefully.

Baum's interviews are beyond reproach. He gets great insights from contemporary L&H buffs such as Richard Bann, Tyler St. Mark, and Rene Riva, as well as a rare interview with Stan's daughter Lois. He also interviews an astonishing number of L&H's peers. When notables from L&H's period are not available, Baum nicely weaves in chats from previous film work (much of it from the British documentary Cuckoo, where film clips with Jerry Lewis and Babe Hardy's widow Lucille are intercut nicely).

My only quibble with the movie is that there are a few strange gaps here and there, factual and otherwise. (Editorial gripe: Why does every attempt at documenting L&H on film including so many factual bloopers? The otherwise wonderful Cuckoo suffers from the same defect. These documentaries always seem to have blunders that any average member of Sons of the Desert could detect and correct instantly.) L&H's war-related short The Tree in a Test Tube is discussed as though it was made before L&H's Fox films, where film history tells us it was actually shot on the Fox lot. (Strangely, too, clips from that film are presented silently, minus Pete Smith's narration.) Also, a few of the mentioned dates are off by about a year, as when the Sons of the Desert is referenced as having begun in 1964, when it could have easily been verified that the group began in 1965.

The strangest of all omissions occurs with footage of Stan Laurel's funeral. Throughout the documentary, interviewees are identified every time they appear on the screen. Yet with the footage of Stan's funeral, entertainment legends including Buster Keaton and Dick Van Dyke go unheralded. Listing their names would surely have been helpful to viewers who are just beginning on their "journey" with Laurel & Hardy.

However, these relatively minor defects are not enough to spoil any viewer's enjoyment of this fine documentary. In addition, a 70-minute bonus disc includes some lovely extras, such as rare footage of Stan in his later years. The documentary is a superb introduction to L&H for those unfamiliar with them, and a touching trip down Memory Lane for hard-core L&H buffs.