Reviews

  • Erik the Viking (1989)

    Erik the Viking (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2018) This review will sound familiar because I have the same overwhelming impression to a very specific category of movies: Most of the live-action fantasy films of the 1980s feel deathly dull to me, and writer/director Terry Jones’ Erik the Viking is no exception. Despite the visual imagination and go-for-broke fantasy concepts in the film, I can’t be bothered to care about any of it. I spend my time nitpicking the special effects, and wondering if any adult who has never seen those movies as a kid can actually care about them now. They seem stuck in an impossible place, with imagination exceeding what the special effects could deliver, and constantly breaking my suspension of disbelief along the way. Time Bandits, Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Erik the Viking: joined at the hip as disappointing experiences. Maybe it’s mood, maybe it’s my imagination shutting down forever, maybe it’s depression (well, I don’t think so as I can still find joy in other areas of my life) but I have little to say about those movies, and even less about Erik the Viking specifically. I’m sorry if this was your favourite film growing up.

  • Ri¢hie Ri¢h (1994)

    Ri¢hie Ri¢h (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, December 2018) There is a lot about Ri¢hie Ri¢h that doesn’t make sense if you don’t already know that it’s from an older lower-profile comic book of the Casper stable. The setup, clearly, is grade-school wish fulfilment, what with the protagonist being the richest kid in the world, able to afford whatever he wants despite issues in being in the kiddie .0001%. The film adopts much of the comics mythology wholesale, even as ludicrous as it can sound in a live-action production. Alas, the plotting is obvious from the get-go: No friends, lost parents, expensive gadgets, greedy third party, trusty butler and so on. Macaulay Culkin stars as Richie Rich but seems so uninterested in the role (which, to be fair, requires some detachment but not that much!) and the rest of the actors don’t look all that invested either. The result is a humdrum movie: imaginative in moments, slightly obnoxious even when it claims that family is more important than wealth, and far from achieving its fullest potential. But then again 1990s comic book adaptations were still hit-and-miss affairs, being unwilling to deconstruct their own fundamentals and still treating the audience like idiots most of the time. There are much better choices than Ri¢hie Ri¢h no matter how you want to consider it.

  • Mr. Popper’s Penguins (2011)

    Mr. Popper’s Penguins (2011)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2018) It’s still far too early to start issuing definitive statements about Jim Carrey’s career, but with a bit of perspective it’s clear that by the early 2010s, he was still switching between the kinds of slapstick high-energy performances and more nuanced character work, not always comic. For old-school Carrey fans, the treat with Mr. Popper’s Penguins was seeing Carrey back in unapologetic slapstick form, even in a movie aimed at kids. The story here boils down to a workaholic Manhattanite realtor inheriting a few penguins in his high-rise apartments. Will it help him reconnect with his estranged ex-wife and kids? Well, of course it will. That’s not the point. The point are the penguins’ antics and how Carrey will react to them—or specifically how often he’ll slip on something and fall. While the CGI required to portray the penguins isn’t always convincing, it certainly gets the point across and lets the movie make its jokes. As usual for those kinds of comedies, the real fun of the film is to be found in the details: I was quite taken, for instance, by the protagonist’s assistant (played by Ophelia Lovibond) peppering her speeches with P-words. Carrey is almost up to form, while Carla Gugino does serviceable work in a rather dull role as the ex-wife. Rather amiable and conventional, Mr. Popper’s Penguins won’t be anyone’s idea of a great movie, but it does get us Carrey indulging in a lot of physical comedy, which is a good compensation.

  • Made in Romania (2010)

    Made in Romania (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2018) There are so many terrible low-budget movies on Cable TV channels that it’s easy to question why I still take a chance on lesser-known titles without much of a profile or track record. Part of the answer may be with films like Made in Romania, a satirical take on making-of movies that details the production of a Victoria-era drama made … in Romania. Written and directed by Guy J. Louthan, it takes aim at the state of the movie industry circa 2010, and cranks up the madness to 80%. As a very English story is sent packing to Romania for hazy tax purposes, the problems start piling up when actors, directors, financiers and eventually gangsters all have their say. Made in Romania is not a particularly good movie, but it does have its charms—starting with a surprising number of recognizable cameos, from Jennifer Tilly and Jason Flemyng as the leads of the movie-in-the-movie, as well as Elizabeth Hurley and Danny Huston in smaller roles. The potshots at the industry spend more time on the producing aspects than other similar movies more focused on shooting (Louthan is best known as a producer), but some of the jokes are decent enough, and the increasing nightmare of the production is often well rendered within the confines of the faux-reality style of the film. It’s often unexpectedly funny, and it does get a few audible laughs despite some lulls along the way. Some freeze-frame gags and in-jokes help a bit. I can’t say that I’ll defend Made in Romania as a must-see, but I do have a bit of a liking for underseen underdogs, and so I’ll suggest it at least to those viewers with an interest in filmmaking satires.

  • So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)

    So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2018) Being someone who really started watching movies in the 1990s, everything since that decade tends to blur into a single continuous timeline contiguous with my own personal history, meaning that I have a lot of trouble watching something from the 1990s and thinking ”wow, that’s dated”. Or so I thought before watching So I Married an Axe Murderer, which is indeed fixed in time in the early nineties. The soundtrack sure helps a lot in establishing the year, what with “There She Goes” and “Two Princes” in particular. Taking place in San Francisco with beat poetry doesn’t help either. Still, there is something about the style of comedy that makes it feel a bit more modern—this is a film filled with snark and genre awareness, as a genre-aware man comes to suspect that his newlywed wife is a serial killer. The film does expect a bit of movie literacy from its audience, which works perhaps better in the post-ironic now than in the early 1990s. So I Married an Axe Murderer is a rare Mike Myers comedy that’s not part of a series (à la Shrek, Austin Powers or Wayne’s World), but you can see here the early draft of some later Scottish characters in Austin Powers. A number of known comedy actors show up, sometimes for a moment or two—Myers himself is fine whenever he reins in his showboating antics, while Nancy Travis is not bad as the love interest/suspected killer. It’s worth noting that So I Married an Axe Murderer is early Movie Myers—After the first Wayne’s World but before everything else in his filmography. As a result, expect a (thankfully) more restrained but not yet fully formed comic persona. The film is decently amusing without being particularly striking—the thriller genre mechanics sometimes clash with the comedic instinct of the film, and the ending ultimately picks romance over suspense, which is a safe defendable choice but not a completely satisfying one. I still liked it, but not a lot.

  • The Out-of-Towners (1970)

    The Out-of-Towners (1970)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, December 2018) Considering the almost endless amount of trouble that New York City experienced between (roughly) 1965 and 1995, there would be something almost prescient in the urban hellscape portrait that 1970’s The Out-of-Towners gives to NYC. Except that most of the terrible things in the film were inspired by real-life events of the late 1960s—strikes, mountains of garbage, urban decay, rising crime rates, exploding manholes and so on. In that dystopian vision of Big Cities step in a couple of Midwesterners considering a job offer. The nightmarish events of the film do much to dissuade them, but not before propelling an entire film’s worth of humiliations and disastrous setbacks. Nothing goes right for those travellers as their luggage is lost, their hotel reservations cancelled, they experience dental emergencies, get mugged and other indignities. It’s also raining, of course. Jack Lemmon is not bad as the target of those humiliations, accompanied by the somewhat blander Sandy Dennis and his much more stoic wife. Part of The Out-of-Towners are amusing, many feel similar and the overall effect is a bit tiresome as there is nary a respite and a definite limit to the amount of misery that even comic characters should experience –screenwriter Neil Simon may have overplayed his hand here. I strongly suspect that film influenced a lot of attitudes toward big cities in the following years. It does work as a time capsule of a miserable era in NYC history, but as a comedy it’s hit-and-miss.

  • Fever Pitch (2005)

    Fever Pitch (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2018) As the legend goes, Fever Pitch was designed to be a bittersweet romantic comedy featuring Jimmy Fallon as a lifelong dedicated fan of the Boston Red Sox—who always lost in the playoffs. Except that, in shooting the movie … the Sox won the World Series, breaking a multi-decade curse drought. That’s kind of adorable (especially since the movie was shooting at some of those unexpectedly victorious playoff games), which is very much in-keeping with the tone of the film. As a romantic comedy focusing more than usual on the male character (shown to have issues with his sports fandom), it’s the kind of sweet and forgettable film that can be watched at any time with any kind of audience. It’s harmless, buoyant, not without its dramatic trials and coincidentally set against one of the most improbable events in American sports history. (Well, until 2016 rolled around with all kinds of freakish wins.) The portrait of an obsessed sports fan is not bad, as are the complications that come with it. The portrait of Boston is convincing, and the human leads don’t do poorly either: Fallon is not annoying here, and Drew Barrymore is surprisingly sympathetic. I’m not normally a fan of either actor, but the film does manage to give them likable roles. While I’m not going to put Fever Pitch on any best-of list (even as a Boston film, I can think of a few better choices), it’s harmless and fun and the unexpected win at the end of the movie where the plot and real-life events intersect is just the cherry on top of a tolerable romantic comedy.

  • Cruising Bar 2 (2008)

    Cruising Bar 2 (2008)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, December 2018) Michel Côté is once more back in the saddle playing four different characters in Cruising Bar 2, a sequel to the massively successful 1989 film that feel more money-driven than anything else, even though it does provide something like closure to the events of the first film. Again, the film clearly belongs to Côté, as he plays four very different characters all dealing with their own kind of relationship issues. No one else in the supporting cast comes close to making as clear an impression. Nearly twenty years after the events of the first film, the humiliation comedy once again annoyingly reigns supreme as the four characters haven’t evolved a lot. The subplots are far more scattered than the single-night-at-the-nightclub focus of the original, which may explain why the film doesn’t feel as satisfying. On the other hand, it does leave the characters with some closure, as painful as it can be for some and as comfortable as it can be for others. Cruising Bar 2 is… OK, but it’s definitely best watched as a coda to the first film.

  • Cruising Bar (1989)

    Cruising Bar (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, December 2018) The first Cruising Bar movie was a minor French-Canadian classic back in the 1990s—nearly everyone had seen it, and the film was a hit with many kinds of viewers, earning spectacular box-office results. It’s easy to see why, as French-Canadian big-screen legend Michel Côté (who also co-wrote the film) plays four very different characters all out for a night on the town. He sells all of them, from the nerdy bespectacled “Earthworm” to the drug-addled mullet-wearing “Lion” to the libidinous hairy “Stallion” to the sophisticated snobbish “Peacock”. They all have their own style, and the comedy that goes with it … although you have to be ready for some heavy doses of humiliation comedy in order to appreciate the result. Côté is nothing short of terrific in the four roles, and the film certainly depends on him. Among the supporting players, Louise Marleau looks spectacular as “The Divine”—the ultimate object of desire. Despite this being a comedy and going for a lot of laughs, Cruising Bar in itself is far more sombre than you’d expect—few of the characters get what they want, and the film’s overall take on bar-hopping is nothing short of soul-crushing. It does have its funny moments, though, even if the caricatures can be wearing and the film quickly shows where it’s going. Writer/director Robert Ménard knows what he’s doing, and the result has acquired a nice period patina over the past thirty years.

  • A Star is Born (1976)

    A Star is Born (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2018) I’m probably more bullish on the 1976 version of A Star is Born than most people, or even more than I should be. Oh, I can see the issues with the film—it doesn’t take a look at this tell-all article by the film’s own director Frank Pierson to realize the issues with the movie, whose unleashed self-worship of Barbra Streisand leads to an unbalanced whole. The good thing about Streisand (and then-husband producer Jon Peters)’s unbounded egocentrism is that the main female role is incredibly strong—and with Streisand being Streisand, it means that the vocal performance is as top-notch as the acting. (Alas, in a repeat of the 1954 version, her musical numbers drag on far longer than they should, overpowering the drama and cutting off the film’s energy at regular intervals.) Compared to her, you can see Kris Kristofferson’s role being kept in check by the producer’s need to showcase Barbra at every step. And yet, amazingly enough, he carries much of the film: his performance as an over-the-hill rocker is heartfelt, plunging us in the world of rock music and giving us a perfectly serviceable alternative to the Hollywood focus of previous versions. Being a film nerd, I do miss the movie-centric nature of the previous two movies—but the life of a rock star is exhilarating enough in its excesses that I don’t mind all that much. When you watch all versions of A Star is Born in rapid succession, the period feel of each instalment can become its own attraction, and so the trip back to 1970s music star mansion, big outdoor concerts and radio station appearances is quite a bit of fun. It all amounts to a flawed production, but one that remains fascinating in its own right.

  • A Star is Born (1954)

    A Star is Born (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2018) I know that many people consider the 1954 version of A Star is Born to be the definitive take on the story, Judy Garland elevating the material in a way that’s not harmed by the rough edges of the 1937 version or Streisand’s invasive influence on the 1976 remake. But… I beg to differ, largely on the strength of the argument that I don’t like Judy Garland all that much. Still, it’s worth acknowledging that this 1954 version, as directed by George Cukor, is a much slicker version of the previous take on the film—the budget is clearly there, and the film can be lavish in the way it shows the nature of stardom in the mid-1950s. Alas, this indulgence also makes the film longer and duller with every full-length musical number stopping the film dead in its track. The 1983 re-edit of the film, which attempts to incorporate cut sequences with a mixture of audio and still pictures, is not as good as it sounds—I probably would have liked the unaltered 1954 version a bit better. This being said, I quite liked James Mason in the male lead role, as he captures the mixture of arrogance and vulnerability that the part requires. Meanwhile, superstar Garland sings well, but looks twenty years older than she should. While the film leans heavily in its musical genre, it does keep enough of Hollywood to bridge the gap between the all-movies 1937 version and the all-music 1976/2018 versions—and the look at 1950s Hollywood is simply fascinating.

  • A Star is Born (1937)

    A Star is Born (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2018) I’m consciously watching all twentieth-century versions of A Star is Born back-to-back-to-back, and the first stop has to be the original 1937 film that codified it all. (Yes, I’m aware of What Price Hollywood? No, I don’t have it on hand.) The first shock is in the first frame—This A Star is Born is in colour, at a time when only a handful of Hollywood weren’t in black-and-white. Then comes the clichés: The young girl with a dream, going to Hollywood to strike it big. Even knowing a lot about 1930s films, it’s not clear to me what’s a cliché and what’s a then-witty attempt at openly poking fun as the Hollywood dream machine: Certainly, seeing a bus, a train and a plane arrive to “The City of Los Angeles” one after another suggests that the screenwriters were clearly aware, even in those early decades, about the satirical potential of their story. Still, it is a rough prototype of later version, sometimes delivering good scenes and at other times prototyping a basic idea to be developed in later remakes. I really liked the “switchboard” scene, which to my knowledge is unique to this version of the story (as is the strictly non-musical focus of the star’s skills). This first version of A Star is Born is a fascinating film in its own way, if only for the time-travel aspect of it. Alas, my viewing experience was marred by a muddy low-resolution picture from a TV channel largely indifferent to good presentation. This may have been a problem.(Second viewing, On Cable TV, June 2019) I decided to give this version of A Star is Born another shot when I was able to watch it in as good a high-definition version as possible on TCM rather than from a standard-definition channel of dubious fidelity to the original. The good news are that the picture and sound are quite a bit better without being spectacular—this is one of the earliest mass-market colour movies, and it’s not surprising if the image is rough (even TCM has a version scanned from a print that played in theatres—scratches, pops, discoloured spots, cigarette burns and all) and the colours are washed out. Still, this is far better than my first viewing and it helped a lot in staying immersed in the experience. Going back to the 1930s quasi-original (I’ve got What Price Hollywood? lined up next) after watching the 1950s, 1950s and 2010s version is interesting in that you can see some of the roots of the later versions. A lot more of the 2010s version is in the 1930s film than you’d think, for instance—including the “I just wanted to see you again” sequence in a slightly different format. This 1937 version has a lot more humour than you’d think considering the dramatic ending of all versions of the story—some of the dialogue is particularly snarky, which I’m tempted to attribute to Dorothy Parker as one of the credited screenwriters. Janet Gaynor and Fredric March are fine as the leads, but my attention this time around was more interested in Lionel Stander’s darkly hilarious turn as an exasperated publicist symbolizing early Hollywood’s hunger for celebrity spin. (A version of his character would pop up again in the 2018 version.) Speaking of which—the more I learn about classic Hollywood, the most interesting this sometimes-satire becomes. Still, it’s the scene-by-scene execution that remains the film’s biggest draw: it’s far more fun to watch than you’d imagine for a film more than eighty years old, and the fact that it’s in colour keeps it more accessible than many of its contemporaries.

  • Larry Gaye: Renegade Male Flight Attendant (2015)

    Larry Gaye: Renegade Male Flight Attendant (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2018) I mourn certain movie subgenres, and one of those nearest to my cinephile’s heart is the kind of rapid-fire spoof comedy that Zucker-Abrams-Zucker used to do so well in the 1980s. I’m not mourning the degenerate form of the subgenre that plagued the 2000s, but sometime I miss their sheer frantic pacing, aiming for a joke every ten seconds or so. Larry Gaye: Renegade Male Flight Attendant is far from being an ideal comedy, but it certainly has the right intentions. It attempts a joke every fifteen seconds—alas, only one in ten will land. That still gives viewers a laugh every few minutes, which is not that bad. Not spoofing any movie in particular, Larry Gaye focuses on the eponymous flight attendant and how he reacts when his airline announces plans to replace human attendants with robot ones. Of course, plot is merely pretext here for stringing along one silly gag after another. Most of them are unsuccessful, and the script is to blame: from the get-go, even the Larry Gaye character is ill-defined hovering between oblivious obnoxiousness and ultra-competence. For someone supposed to be the best flight attendant in the world, Gaye doesn’t achieve his full comic potential. It’s not lead actor Mark Feuerstein’s fault, though, as he does his best to wring every laugh out of the raw material. Speaking of casting, Larry Gaye features one a surprisingly good cast: In between various walk-on roles, we get Stanley Tucci, Taye Diggs, Danny Pudi, Henry Winkler, Rebecca Romijn and others. While the overall result is definitely more miss than hit, there’s an attempt in Larry Gaye at a silly comedy the likes of which we rarely get to see any more.

  • Total Frat Movie (2016)

    Total Frat Movie (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2018) I thought they didn’t make movies like this anymore. Feeling like the 1980s sent a time capsule to the 2010s, Total Frat Movie is a college sex comedy along the lines of, well, the 1980s college sex comedies featuring fraternities, copious female nudity and dubiously gross humour. The loose outlines of the plot have something about a frat going through the process of getting its charter reinstated three years after excessive partying. I’m told that the film comes from a web site of some sort, but don’t quote me on that—I’m so out of the loop on college fraternities (which generally don’t exist in any significant capacity in Canada) that I’m not even sure where the loop is. Total Frat Movie never has any illusion about its audience: it’s clearly made for white college-age boys who enjoy the party lifestyle. If you’re looking for questioning the idea of fraternities, racial diversity, sexual equality or any kind of progressive value beyond binge drinking, this is not the movie for you. Even by the notoriously Caucasian standards of mainstream American cinema, the film features a remarkable lack of diversity in its casting. It also has some seriously reprehensible moments in glossing over male rape. And it’s really not clever, witty or even all that funny. Still, there are a few upsides: There’s some basic filmmaking competency to the effort despite the visibly low budget—director Warren P. Sonoda handles the party sequences quite well. Tom Green is actually quite funny in hamming it up as the college dean. And I have to confess that I will never, ever really complain about wall-to-wall gratuitous coed nudity. Despite being in almost constant and acute disagreement with just about everything the film intends to do, I must have laughed a few times along the way. The evidence piles up: I probably have to consider Total Frat Movie as a guilty pleasure of some sort. (Surprisingly enough, the film doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page as of this writing. Maybe I’ll add one eventually.)

  • Blockers (2018)

    Blockers (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2018) In the pantheon of comedy characters, the icon of a parent trying to stop their daughters from getting in trouble (for euphemistic values of “trouble”) ranks highly enough that Blockers not only based its entire premise on it, but multiplies the parent/daughter pairing by three for good measure. The film’s success starts with a decent script, but is fully realized by great casting with none other than Ike Barinholtz, Leslie Mann and the ever-dependable John Cena as the parents, as well as newcomers Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan and Gideon Adlon are the daughters. (Viswanathan, in particular, makes an impression.) The plot itself goes back to the good old prom day premise, as the daughters plan on losing their virginities and the parents vow not to let that happen. The rest is one comic episode after another, punctuated by such things as a spectacular car crash, wild parties, and bonding between the parents chasing their daughters. It all ends on a surprisingly mature note (especially by notoriously juvenile sex comedy standards), reflecting contemporary morality rather than questionable old-fashioned standards. The fast pace helps, as does a script that seeks to go beyond the easiest answers. Expectations may count for much here, as the film is significantly better than expected. Still, a good movie is a good movie, and Blockers does have the advantage of feeling like a 2018 movie, and not a 1980s one dressed-up with cell phones and new car models.