Amy Heckerling

  • Johnny Dangerously (1984)

    Johnny Dangerously (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2020) I’m not going to pretend that Johnny Dangerously is a great comedy. But I will say that it seems to have been unfairly forgotten over the decades. There are reasons for this, of course: This is Michael Keaton playing a mobster during his silliest era, and his run of 1980s comedies doesn’t get enough appreciation. Then this is a 1930s gangster film parody, and most people don’t remember those as clearly as they did even in the 1980s. (Although you could almost see Johnny Dangerously as a predictive parody of 1991’s Billy Bathgate.) It’s also quite uneven in matters of jokes – some witty bits are juxtaposed with broad dumb stuff, and the effect isn’t as much a film going for all kinds and levels of humour (something I usually respect and encourage) but a film that can’t quite find its own specific comic sensibility. This being said, there is some really funny stuff here, and some of the players (notably Peter Boyle, Joe Piscopo, Griffin Dunne and a younger Danny DeVito) carry their part really well. Keaton himself is charm and hilarity, while director Amy Heckerling can deliver a joke but often has trouble keeping some tonal unity over the entire thing. Johnny Dangerously may aspire to high-pace spoof comedy, but doesn’t quite stick the landing. Now, the best thing I could do to you would be to lower your expectations so that by the time you finally see the film, you would think that it’s better than you thought it would be. So here goes: Uneven but sporadically funny, Johnny Dangerously will do if you think you’ve seen the big comedies of the 1980s and are now making your way through the rest. It has a few funny surprises for you.

  • Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

    Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, November 2017) Fifteen minutes in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, I experienced a sudden and unexplainable feeling of nostalgia for malls as they existed in the nineties (with bookstores, record stores, movie theatres and other niceties that are being paved over by the march of digital progress) which is really weird considering that as a teenager in a small town, I spent nearly no time at all in malls until my twenties, and even then not that much. Such is the effectiveness of the film, given that it presents high schoolers as they navigate between school, home and the mall (usually as a workplace). It’s directed by Amy Heckerling, from Cameron Crowe’s first script (based on his own book as an undercover high-schooler) and it’s still a cutting, unflinching look at the teenage experience, even when bathed in movie magic. While billed as a comedy, it gets unexpectedly serious at times (such as with an abortion subplot that exemplifies a major betrayal between so-called friends) yet does not really dive deep into misery despite the protagonists’ reversals of fortune. The cast of the movie is amazing—not only does it feature solid performances by Sean Penn (as a stoner surfer hilarious far away from his current persona), Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, and Phoebe Cates, it also features near-cameos by then-newcomers Nicolas Cage and Forrest Whittaker. Good characters, organic plot developments, an interesting soundtrack, and a cheerful refusal to bow to conventions help make Fast Times at Ridgemont High still interesting today even after thirty-five more years of teenage high school comedies. No wonder it’s become a cultural touchstone—and now I know firsthand what everyone is talking about, including the infamous poolside scene.