Tony-Papard Reviews

Great Balls of Fire! (1989)

The best thing about this movie is Jerry's fantastic soundtrack!

[7/10 · 4 December 2005]

As a Jerry Lee fan since 1964, this movie, when it finally came out, was something of a disappointment. Dennis Quaid's over-acting turned Jerry Lee into a two-dimensional cartoon character.

There is enough material in Jerry Lee's life for a dozen films, so it was disappointing this movie stopped short soon after his disastrous tour to England in 1958, when news of his marriage to his 13-year old cousin Myra leaked out. This was nothing unusual in the Deep South at the time - practically everyone married young. The scene where Elvis is in bed with the young Priscilla (aged not more than 14) was meant to allude to that fact, but was probably too subtle for some people to grasp.

The film has good and bad things going for it. The best thing is the fantastic soundtrack, which Jerry recorded especially for the film. It is amazing that a man then in his 50s could better some of his original hits, and still sound like a 21 year old! Jerry is STILL rocking in 2005 at 70, and has a new CD out soon with other legends duetting with him, called The Pilgrim.

The film should have at least have covered up to the early 1970s, when Jerry was one of the hottest stars in Country Music. He climbed back into the charts in 1968 with Another Place Another Time and a non-stop string of hits followed into the 1980s. Controversy has stalked Jerry Lee all his life, but all we get in this movie is a cartoon depiction of about 2 years of his life.

There should definitely be a remake or a sequel, but to do the subject justice a 20-part TV series would be needed at least. Just look at the material - all his hits from 1957 thru to the 1980s, the tragedies (deaths of two sons, two wives, his elder brother, his parents), the scandals (cousin Jimmy Swaggart's fall from grace, Jerry accidentally shooting his bass player in the chest, run-ins with the law and the IRS, etc.).

But the other thing in the movie's favor is it won Jerry a whole new younger generation of fans. Only trouble is, some people see Dennis Quaid and think that is the real Jerry Lee. It's not - look at the DVDs/videos of Jerry Lee Lewis on Shindig! in the mid-1960s if you want to see the real thing.

But I still like the movie, because it's all we've got at the moment as a biopic of the greatest musician of the 20th and 21st centuries.

L'Eclisse (1962)

L'Eclisse is about emptiness, meaningless capitalism and the nuclear threat.

[7/10 · 1 July 2005]

Antonioni's 'L'Eclisse' depicts the emptiness and and meaningless of life in the post-Second World War world under the shadow of the nuclear threat. This is represented by the mushroom shaped water-tower looming outside the window in the film's early sequences, and is referred to again in newspaper headlines towards the end of the film. This film was made in 1962, a year after the Berlin crisis, and in the year of the Cuba crisis when we came very close to nuclear war between the USA and the USSR.

The film also depicts the greed of capitalism, as shown in the mad, chaotic scenes in the Rome Stock Exchange and the obsessive gambling of the mother character.

The location, with distant shots of Benito Mussolini's EUR buildings on the outskirts of Rome, also suggest a meaningless, empty, soulless Brave New World all overshadowed by the nuclear threat, where people suffer loneliness and depression and feel unable to make long-term commitments.