Movie Review

  • The Plague (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) There’s an intriguing premise that gets The Plague going – what if all kids under nine (and any new babies being born) fell into a coma for a decade, and society had to adjust itself (through vast medical wards in high-school gymnasiums, for instance) in order to cope with the event and try to find a cure? So far so good, and you could imagine a great Children of Men-type science fiction drama trying to deal with the repercussions of such a mass social trauma. But here’s the thing: As a cheap nasty horror film, The Plague isn’t interested in any of that except making the kids-and-teenagers come out of their coma as ravenous hordes of zombies. At that point, it’s as if any interest in the film just pops to nothingness: Despite writer-director Hal Masonberg’s very occasional ability to find a striking image or two, The Plague soon and quickly disintegrates into yet another cheap zombie film, with very little to distinguish itself even when it thinks it’s trying to do something different (such as a group intelligence, for instance – it magnifies but does not change the problems facing the characters). Clive Barker’s name is prominently associated with the film as a producer, but he may have preferred remaining anonymous on this one. Humourless, witless and interest-free after a semi-promising first fifteen minutes, The Plague would ideally be avoided like its namesake – except that, seeing the way many Americans have embraced Covid, that expression doesn’t have the weight it once did.

  • Speedway (1929)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) If you needed any confirmation that fast cars and professional racing have been part of Hollywood’s DNA for a very long time, Speedway should be enough to convince you. Largely a silent film (although one shouldn’t underestimate the effectiveness of juicing up the soundtrack with racing noises), big chunks of it were filmed at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, lending it a quasi-documentary appeal at times. A good thing too, because the actual plotting of the film adheres closely to the kind of ridiculous melodrama that was deservedly left in the silent era. Our story revolves around an ace driver heading to Indianapolis, but then there are romantic complications: a foster father with a weak heart and one wildly unconvincing aerial sequence. The plotting is this close to atrocious (I won’t even mention those last moments of the film, so dumb do they feel to describe), but Speedway is far more interesting when it’s geeking out about the newness of fast cars and flying pilots, presenting historical footage of the Indy 500, and showing us that it wouldn’t take much to (cough, cough, Turbo) bring much of the same material to twenty-first century audiences. Sure, the technical production values are rough, and lead actor William Haines belongs to the silent era, but the spirit of racing lives on and the film is far more tolerable than less-distinctive silent-era dramas.

  • Saint Jack (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) In writer-director Peter Bogdanovich’s filmography, Saint Jack is often regarded as his comeback picture: After a well-regarded run of three movies in the early 1970s, his mid-to-late 1970s accumulated three flops, and it’s only with Saint Jack that Bogdanovich regained his confidence and the appreciation of critics. (To say that the obstinate Bogdanovich had a roller-coaster of a career is understating it – you can even say that Saint Jack was the first of many comeback pictures.)  It was also a film notable for how it seemed to present a looser, earthier Bogdanovich – less formal, less gimmicky and more willing to embrace sex and nudity. Much of it has to do with the setting: Adapting a novel that takes place in Singapore but wasn’t warmly greeted by local authorities, Bogdanovich shot the film almost guerilla-style, hopping from varied locations around the city while misdirecting the government about the film he was shooting. It leads to what remains the film’s most enduring strength: the amazing, almost tactile atmosphere of late-1970s Shanghai, with the humidity, smells, ethnic intermingling and very specific landscapes all perceptible through the screen. Compared to its setting, the plot becomes dull and almost inconsequential – suffice to say that it’s about an American expatriate trying to navigate between various requests and entanglements, whether it’s from business partners, a romantic interest or what’s probably a CIA officer (played by Bogdanovich himself) trying to get him to take specific actions. Still, it’s the sense of place and time that remains most memorable, all the way to some very unusual local casting at a time when Hollywood was not that open to that kind of thing: Ben Gazzara (who doesn’t look like a movie star) is integral to the film working as well as it does, while the gorgeous Monika Subramaniam still looks and feels like a different kind of actress. (Indeed, she was a local with little professional experience, whose relationship with the writer-director led to the breakup of his second marriage with Cybil Shepherd– Look, Bogdanovich’s life was wild, all right? And I haven’t even delved into the way Saint Jack landed in his lap through Playboy magazine and a legal settlement between Shepherd and Hugh Hefner.)  Saint Jack was not exactly a big commercial or critical success when it was released, but it was good enough to convince Bogdanovich that he still had it, and critics that he was still worth paying attention after a humbling period. Today, it remains a time capsule of 1970s Singapore, a fading echo of the porno-chic era and one of Bogdanovich’s most distinctive efforts.

  • Boiling Point (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Watching Boiling Point so soon after the very similar Canadian effort Nose to Tail is a powerful reminder about the importance of execution in giving life to a premise. Both films are time-compressed narratives about embattled (white male) chefs trying to juggle domestic problems, substance abuse, a failing restaurant, unruly clients, financiers and food critics. They both clearly draw their inspiration from the pressure-cooker environment of a restaurant kitchen being slammed with customers, and derive traits from a stereotype of difficult (culinary) men that are somehow revered rather than shunned. One takes place in Toronto, while the other takes place in London, but you could probably swap entire characters, plotlines and incidents from one film to the other without changing much to the result. But here is the thing: while Nose to Tail was fine without being delicious, Boiling Point feels like a far more urgent and compelling proposition due to one striking conceptual decision: capture the entire film in one shot. And by that, I mean the old-school one-shot ethos: No CGI tricks, no elegant pans upwards while hours pass, no sweeping across columns or backs to hide the cuts: Writer-director Philip Barantini goes for 92 minutes of real-time intensity as lead Stephen Graham roams around the restaurant trying to keep his business venture together, schmooze investors and reviewers, deal with personal problems and harangue staff in doing better. There’s a pent-up intensity to the way the camera is choreographed, along with the multiple subplots, large cast, small space and the feeling that everything is coming apart. It’s invigorating even when it covers familiar grounds. A few great supporting performances do help a lot – specifically Vinette Robinson as a sous-chef who gets a terrific scorched-earth speech late in the film and precipitates the ending with a much-delayed decision. Now, I won’t call Boiling Point a perfect or even a great movie – despite the dizzying dance between camera and actors, there are a few lulls along the way, and the ending falls flat, as it doesn’t seem to whip itself up to a satisfying climax. I expected more from the final five minutes than how the film slows itself down to a coma right at the moment where everything should be exploding, and the glum final moments seem to take a very easy way out that doesn’t actually resolve any of the film’s ongoing conflicts. While the one-shot shooting has its advantages in building energy, it’s not so good in releasing it – there’s a coda missing, a sense of bringing everything back together that’s stronger than the bus-hits-the-protagonist kind of ending it settles for. Still, it’s quite a ride: While one-shot movies aren’t exactly rare any more with digital cameras and the example set by many predecessors, Boiling Point manages to use the format to distinguish itself in a restaurateur subgenre that’s otherwise getting crowded and stale. I’m going to remember it much longer than Nose to Tail, for instance, and that’s despite being a cheerleader for Canadian content.

  • Colossal (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2022) Years after placing Colossal in my Netflix queue, I finally saw it… dubbed in French, off a DVR late-night recording interspaced with ads. Not the ideal circumstances, not the best timing, but sometimes a DVR-based workflow is easier than streaming marginal choices, especially on a less-than-impressive Internet connection. Still, a good movie should remain identifiable no matter the viewing situation, right? Well, I think so – and if Colossal isn’t necessarily a great movie, it’s quirky and fun enough to be worth a look in less-than-ideal conditions. Anne Hathaway stars as a bit of a loser – a young woman with big dreams of becoming a writer, but whose drinking problems get her kicked out of her job, relationship, apartment and New York City itself. Going back to the empty family house of her childhood town, she gets to rebuild everything… with the help of a past flame (Jason Sudeikis).   So far, so small-town romantic comedy, right? We’ve seen endless Hallmark movies with roughly the same premise. But none of them has ever done anything close to what Colossal does next, which is to take a flying leap into surreal fantasy as our protagonist realizes that stepping on a playground at a specific time of the day will create a gigantic monster in Seoul duplicating her gestures. It gets even wilder when another person (for reasons badly explained in a flashback) also enters the playground and manifests himself in Seoul. Fully exploring the possibilities of its premise, Colossal also delivers a better-than-average romantic drama talking about women encountering terrible men, flipping the usual small-town romance into something far darker. There are few tidy answers here: no real steady progress from addiction to recovery, and little comfort to be gained from romantic clichés. Yet it goes big in its imaginative conceits. The blend of dull realism with wild surrealism is remarkable enough – and it will keep you glued to the screen, wondering what’s going to happen next and how far writer-director Nacho Vigalondo will push things. I don’t quite like the way the film wraps up, but that’s not a big deal, considering what it can deliver on its way there. Colossal may still be in your own Netflix queue, but if that’s the case, don’t worry: even six years later, there hasn’t been anything quite like it.

  • Nine Days (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Sparse and cryptic to the point of obtuseness, Nine Days still manages to distinguish itself through a heady fantastic concept, some maybe-profound observations on human nature and some good performances from genre actors we’re used to seeing in less-challenging fare. Much of the story takes place in a small desert house, where a man both watches people’s lives through disparate TV screens of VHS quality, and interviews various candidates for a chance at being reborn. This bardo-set film takes after a specific kind of fantasy – allusive to bigger truths, but debating issues around a kitchen table. It’s odd and will probably frustrate viewers looking for a strictly mimetic, logical narrative. But Nine Days is not that – you have to let yourself go (much like the characters) into a lack of comprehension, logic or consistency in order to appreciate what’s going on here. Moral dilemmas are sometimes explicitly stated (as part of the interviews between our arbiter and the candidates for rebirth) and sometimes become part of the fabric of the film. Few will be surprised to realize that our figure of authority may be in need of some guidance himself – the climax becomes his rather than giving it to another character. Some of the material is frankly pretentious and less effective than planned – there’s a whole discussion about the semi-magical nature of having lived that seems like pure useless nonsense – but some of the rest of the material is lively enough. Nine Days is also effective as an actor’s showcase: not only for lead Winston Duke, but fellow superhero-movie alumni Benedict Wong and Zazie Beetz as well. Beetz quickly gains centre stage – not just because she’s a remarkable beauty, but because she gets to play the character that challenges the authority of the arbiter in ways that supplicant candidates never do. I can see how some may view Nine Days as a profound film tackling big questions in a quirky, approachable format. I wouldn’t go that far – I felt that the script often went all over the place, often being too literal to present the elusive nature of universal truths, and at times too willfully obtuse to be effective – and making use of Whitman quotes shouldn’t count as a climax. But I have to respect the attempt: there is indeed something haunting to the set-up of the film that carries long after the flaws of the execution have faded, and writer-director Edson Oda’s Nine Days does attempt something remarkable.

  • Creation Stories (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I almost liked Creation Stories. In many ways, it’s a film that should be in my wheelhouse – a snappy, stylishly directed epic of music-fuelled excesses (somewhat based on a true story, but don’t obsess about that) tracking a headstrong, devious music executive (Alan McGee, played with panache by Ewen Bremner) as he builds a company out of scraps and shady tactics. The framing device has the older McGee telling the story to an incredulous journalist, with flashbacks from the 1980s–1990s handling the bulk of the picture. There’s some good music, of course, but I have a feeling that I would have enjoyed the result more if I cared more about British rock music of the time, or if I had a better grasp of the Scottish accent (thank goodness for closed-captioning) or if the film was more focused in its approach. The problem here isn’t the raw elements of Creation Stories’ story – but director Nick Moran’s approach, or maybe the lack of narrative connecting tissue in the script. As a result, the film flies past but doesn’t quite stick – it multiplies tangents such as politics with Tony Blair and a visit to Jimmy Saville designed to be creepy before everyone knew that Saville was a terrible person. Some moments work, and others depend on extra-movie knowledge (Oasis fans will like this film more than others) and the frenetic pace calls attention to itself but, in the end, Creation Stories feels like a first draft of a better film.

  • The Night Watchmen (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) Cheap, unimaginative horror film are so numerous (especially as filler for cable-TV channels and streaming services) that jaded reviewers can get lulled into a sense of expected mediocrity – we come to expect such same clichés, monsters and repetitive characters that it can take a while for a more ambitious film to prove its distinction. So it is that The Night Watchmen can look and feel like a cheap vampire/zombie film in its setup, but it does finally distinguish itself the longer it goes on. The key here is the humour – not a terribly expensive special effect, but nonetheless an effective one in order to set the result apart from so many other “bunch of people fighting monsters in a closed-off environment.”  Here, our plucky heroes are security guards, a new hire and a journalist fighting vampire/zombie/clown creatures that are taking over a newspaper building. The horror gags and kills are serviceable, but the incredulous attitude and lively banter between characters make The Night Watchmen more interesting than many, many po-faced films going through roughly the same story in far less interesting fashion. Not overstaying its welcome at a mere 80 minutes, The Night Watchmen turns out to be a perfectly acceptable B-movie, a bit of a throwback to the glory days of 1980s horror/comedy with a bit of nudity to reinforce that lineage. Director Mitchell Altieri keeps things going at a good pace, and the result is unpretentious fun. I would have liked to see more of Diona Reasonover’s character and the security guards could have been differentiated more strongly (not to mention the rather dull opening minutes), but The Night Watchmen eventually reaches its goals and ends up with a surprisingly watchable film along the way. Although I suspect that approaching it with low expectations probably helped.

  • Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Amazon Streaming, April 2022) Considering my very mild appreciation of the first Venom, I’m as surprised as anyone to note that I liked sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage slightly more than the first one… at least in bits and pieces. Clearly leaning on the comedic elements of the first film and delivering plenty of winks and outright nods at the fannish shipping of Tom Hardy and his pet symbiote (all the way to couple-like bickering and a public coming-out declaration), Let There Be Carnage is looser and freer to play with established characters. The first half-hour of the film may be its best, as it goes for somewhat-imaginative odd-couple comedy, some good character moments and occasionally fulfills the innate craziness of its premise. Things get increasingly more conventional after that, ending not with a climax but a thud of an overextended gothic action sequence involving CGI characters fighting in a CGI cathedral with very little natural excitement emerging from its synthetic conclusion. Still – it’s snappier than its predecessor, Hardy is fine, Woody Harrelson doesn’t do too badly and Naomie Harris is suitably scary/sexy as a villain who ends up being a check on a worse villain. While Let There Be Carnage isn’t necessarily better than the good parts of the first film (nothing tops the wild chase sequence through the streets of San Francisco, for instance), it doesn’t have as many of the lows of its predecessor, and that explains part of why it’s an improvement, with the other part being going past the character’s origin story to become more comfortable with its own strengths. Much will be said about the mid-credit scene tying the series back into the all-consuming MCU, but really – did you expect anything different? Now let’s see where this goes.

  • Death on the Nile (2022)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, April 2022) Are we so starved for a murder mystery that even an average entry in the genre would earn attention and a mild recommendation? Well, yes – and while there’s plenty to say about Death on the Nile’s faults, the result is still a watchable, even occasionally charming piece of old-school mystery executed with lavish modern means. Second in a series of Hercules Poirot films from writer-director-star Kenneth Branagh adapting Agatha Christie’s novels, it takes Poirot and an ensemble cast of characters up and down the Nile for a series of murders on the honeymoon cruise of a rich couple. If you’re familiar with the 1970s version of the story, you may still have a few surprises here: An added framing device has been added to give more depth to Poirot (largely wasted, as it’s not really important, and the moustache bit stolen from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp doesn’t make visual sense); some characters have been combined and, most strikingly, the visual polish of the film has been boosted by near-omnipresent CGI effects. Branagh is still quite good as Poirot, but the ensemble cast has its ups and downs. Gal Gadot gets the aristocratic thing down pat and Sophie Okonedo is quite striking as a jazz singer, but the long delays between the film’s pre-Covid production and its post-peak-pandemic release mean that two performers had the time to get into dumb personal scandals along the way – While Armie Hammer’s role is small enough that we can ignore his cannibalistic fetish, I would have liked Letitia Wright’s performance had she not proven herself to be an anti-vax wackadoodle in the meantime. Still, even with its clunky moments and overlong running time, Death on the Nile at least gets the basics of an old-fashioned murder mystery right: the atmosphere (despite the unrealism of the CGI), the cast of interesting characters, the sense of a closed-off environment, the accumulating deaths, and the final confrontation with all the suspects (even if the film wrongly sees it as appropriate to have Poirot threaten everyone with a gun). Compared to the 1970s version, it’s both more visually interesting and more meandering. But in 2022, considering the regrettable death of murder mysteries (a hunger merely whetted by such successes as Knives Out and Murder on the Orient Express), even a mildly successful example of the genre such as Death on the Nile can be quite satisfying to watch. While there were doubts that such a film would lead to further sequels in the Disney portfolio, it now looks as if a third film is planned. Why not – especially if Branagh and Okonedo can be back for more.

  • The Hospital (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) There’s a mordant wit at play in The Hospital’s satirical take on big medicine that still resonates fifty years later. From the opening moments, where a night tryst between hospital employees leads to an accidental death, it’s clear that legendary screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky is after a very dark kind of comedy, voluble dialogue and world-weary tone. George C. Scott is the anchor of the film, as he plays a chief of medicine progressively dismayed at the dumb medical errors claiming the lives of several doctors. At least the escalating comedy of errors offers a respite from a personal life in shambles – perhaps the funniest joke of the film being that the investigation in so many deaths is the one thing postponing his own suicide. There’s an admirable craft in the way The Hospital’s script is put together, with very credible dialogue butting head with an incredible series of unlikely events, several character moments and dark humour often given form through narration. But I’d be careful in talking about The Hospital as being all that modern – you can see many bits and pieces of irritating Hollywood conventions poking here and there, most notably the cliché of the older protagonist being given a zest for life through an affair with a significantly younger woman. There are also a few lengthy sequences as the film struggles to keep a handle on its unwieldy tone, some showy self-conscious moments and a conclusion that doesn’t quite make everything click together. Still, it’s often a joy to listen to, and the irreverent way it portrays medical professionals feels in line with more recent takes on the fallibility of Big Medicine. The Hospital is perhaps a bit too scattered to be completely compelling, but it’s distinctive even today, and it still features a few chuckles of gallows humour.

  • Spinning Man (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2022) It’s perfectly acceptable to watch mediocre films if the cast is interesting, and in Spinning Man’s favour, you do get Guy Pearce and Pierce Brosnan sparring as (respectively) a man suspected of murder and a slightly-too-dogged detective. On the distaff side, you have both an evergreen favourite in Minnie Driver and a rising star in Alexandra Shipp. But casting may be the film’s best and sole asset, because the rest of the story (not very well adapted from a novel) is designed for frustration, but then goes on to compound its foundational issue with even more unforced problems. The situation, as we understand it, is that our protagonist (Pearce) is a philandering husband whose fondness for young women ideally fits his job as a philosophy teacher, with a resumé that consequently includes a suspicious transfer from one school to another. When an ex-student of his goes missing, the detective has plenty of clues to suggest he’s involved. But here’s the thing: Spinning Man isn’t really interested in a conventional murder mystery. It’s one of those films more interested in meditations about memory, guilt, truth and perception. It dumps a load of red herrings on the viewer, pulls the rug of conventional murder mysteries from under them, and makes a little victory dance of having fooled everyone. It’s one of those movies-as-elaborate-game things, which only works if the viewer is interested in playing. I’m sure someone, somewhere, gets where the film was going with its multiple false leads, denial of a crime and imaginary sequences – probably the novelist, maybe the screenwriter, not necessarily the director. By the end of it, Spinning Man is more likely to feel tedious than anything else—OK, so you lay out the groundwork for a murder mystery, but then proudly claim to not care about it? Fine, here’s me claiming that I don’t care about the results either. I’m not completely disappointed in the film – there’s a nice slightly-gloomy small-town college atmosphere, and the four main actors are well worth watching in their own way. But while I see Spinning Man make elaborate pretentious gestures, I’m not really invested enough to make even the slightest effort to go beyond a surface level read of the film, where it intentionally fails at satisfaction.

  • What Men Want (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) This is going to sound reactionary (and I’ll assume the consequences for it), but I find it striking that when telepathy comedy What Women Want came out back in 2000, it was seen as an attempt (however imperfect) to make the pressures imposed on modern women more understandable to men, effectively becoming a film about female empowerment. So, logically, a gender-flipped remake called What Men Want should take a look at the pressures affecting modern men and make them understandable to women, right, right? Haha, of course not – Even in following a woman who can hear men’s thoughts, the script has been rejigged so that the female protagonist gets everything she wants from overhearing evil men’s evil thoughts. There is no exploration of modern masculinity here – a few jokes about what men don’t want others to know (including a closeted gay male, naturally) but otherwise the deck is rigged against our female protagonist and the mind-reading thing is about her triumphing over the (misogynistic, discriminatory, racist, sexist, systematically oppressive, etc.) system. As usual in gender-flipping premises, there’s no real pretence at equality here – it’s blunt-force male critique without nuance, subtlety or even compassion. Maybe we’ll get to something looking like true equality in a few decades. Given that this review is so far right out of the reactionary right-wing playbook (I swear I’m progressive… but I get annoyed sometimes – in a world moving away from unipolar white maleness, equality is a multi-way street), you could be forgiven for assuming that I disliked What Men Want. But I actually didn’t – it’s hard to resist Taraji P. Henson when she’s in full outsized-personality mode, as she is here playing a sports agent with difficult clients. While What Men Want sports the broadcast-by-BET-channel stamp, this film is a full step above the (rather endearing) low-budget made-for-BET movies that regularly air on the channel – it’s got decent production values, an acceptable script (notwithstanding the previous 200 words of cranky kvetching), name actors and a sufficient budget to meet its ambitions. It’s rough on the edges, but the dialogue occasionally has a good quip or two. The pacing is controlled well, and even a few dumb script tendencies (such as over-explaining what’s happening, or being suspicious convenient as to when our protagonist can or can’t hear men’s thoughts) aren’t enough to extinguish the overall good fun of the exercise. This is meant to be a comedy, after all, and it nails the breezy tone essential for it. Erykah Badu seems to be having a ton of fun playing a psychic with some psychedelic assistance, while director Adam Shankman is an old hand at keeping it all under control even if some odd extraneous subplots still distract from the core of it. While I do have a lot to say about What Men Want’s shortcomings, it’s pleasant enough to watch – but don’t expect anything particularly memorable. Well, except for the wedding scene.

  • Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Some movies you almost like, such as Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round. A film that features James Coburn as a conman/thief in the middle of a mid-1960s caper is a hard proposal to refuse. But despite some promising elements and a great deal of charisma from Coburn (alongside co-stars such as Aldo Ray and Camilla Sparv), the film doesn’t rise up to its potential. Yes, there’s Coburn romancing several beautiful women (not necessarily a characteristic that has aged well), a heist that involves the visit of the Premier of the Soviet Union in Los Angeles and a wonderfully ironic finale, but it’s all a bit laborious and unfocused (the action moves from Boston to Los Angeles) and not quite as lighthearted as it could have been. Most modern reviews of the film don’t fail to mention Harrison Ford’s brief screen debut as a bellhop discussing phone matters with Coburn – it’s that kind of film ripe for a walk-on scene stealer. (To be clear: Harrison isn’t particularly remarkable, but neither is the film.)  Well-done heist movies feel as if they’re the easiest thing to put together, but a lot of work and wit are required to create something that flows gracefully, and writer-director Bernard Girard can’t quite get the mixture correctly: While the misogyny of the film now feels much worse than it must have back then, it betrays an unbalanced ratio between toughness and humour that simply keeps Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round on the ground when it should be flying away. No amount of Coburn charm and lovely actresses can compensate for that.

  • Playmates (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Alas, I’m getting to the end of the Kay Kyser filmography. Kyser was a most unlikely movie star – a bookish band leader who parlayed success as an entertaining radio show host into a short-lived but substantial movie career spanning thirteen titles (nine of them feature films) in merely six years, playing himself in all but one of those films. Kyser had a distinctive, almost underwhelming screen presence – an academician somehow presented as a leading man. One of Playmates’ biggest assets is how it plays on this dichotomy, overtly presenting Kyser as someone in need of acting lessons and positive news stories. The other asset of the film is his co-star – American acting legend John Barrymore in his last film, playing a bombastic caricature of himself as a puffed-up thespian reduced to giving acting lessons to Kyser. Their water-and-oil mixture powers much of the film as Barrymore chews scenery under Kyser’s amused stares. Additional entertainment comes both from Lupe Velez in her usual scene-stealing fiery persona and the usual Kyser acolytes (notably bowl-haired Ish Kabibble, accompanied by attractive Ginny Simms as his band’s assigned lead singer). But the more you know about the players involved, the more there’s a tragic undertone to Playmates – after all, both Barrymore and Velez would be dead a few years later (for different reasons) and Barrymore fans usually wince at the thought of his last film being spent playing second fiddle to Kyser and parodying his own tattered image. But on a surface level, Playmates does get a few laughs (as well as one impressive sequence, played completely straight, of Barrymore delivering the sole filmed version of his much-lauded rendition of Hamlet’s best-known soliloquy). It’s not high art, and it loses quite a bit of steam between the end of its first act and its conclusion, but it delivers what’s expected for Kyser fans and a certain kind of Barrymore devotee. For all of the finality of this being Barrymore’s last screen performance, I’m more concerned that I‘ve got only one more Kyser feature film to watch.