Coolio

  • Dracula 3000 (2004)

    Dracula 3000 (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2020) The notion of a bad movie is elastic—some will nominate big-budget Hollywood studio movies for “worst movie of the year” Razzies, even though there are several lower levels of hell on the way down to truly abominable movies. Dracula 3000 is fairly down on that ladder—wretched but not wretched enough to be completely unwatchable. Taking the Dracula story to set it aboard a spaceship in a premise clearly cribbed from Alien, it’s clearly from screenwriters who don’t understand science fiction, failed remedial physics and couldn’t be bothered writing more than a simplified third-generation copy of the Dracula story. Everything takes place in the year 3000, albeit with early-2000s movie clichés. The tin-eared dialogue seems almost parodic at times with its precise references to the 2950s, and I hope it was the French dub that introduced nonsense such as “Transylvania is a planet in the Carpathian Galaxy” (upon checking: no, that’s in the original) (Actually, looking over some quotes in their original version, it’s obvious that I missed much of the film’s charm by watching it in French—the dub may make a bit more sense, but it’s lacking the joyous inanity of the original). The writers use the same names as the public-domain Stoker novel, but other than having a character named van Helsing trace his genealogy all the way to 1800s Earth, don’t get your hopes up for anything as clever as even a remake of the original story. The villain is ridiculous, the story doesn’t make any sense and the staging is terrible—there’s really not much left to watch. The cast, however, is a surprising blend of C-grade celebrities, from Coolio to Casper Van Dien to Erika Eleniak and Tommy Tiny Lister. But as bad as the film is, there’s a specific kind of entertainment in watching it unfold. The raunchy dialogue (in a nudity-free film!) is in a class of its own, and the ending is essentially a big sex joke, certainly the most upbeat everybody-dies ending I’ve seen in a long while. Do I recommend Dracula 3000? Not to you, not in general, not to any unsuspecting soul—but I may share it with a few bad-movie enthusiasts and see what they think about it.

  • Dangerous Minds (1995)

    Dangerous Minds (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, September 2019) Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson didn’t become top Hollywood producers by being subtle, and so Dangerous Minds applies to the kindly-teacher narrative the lack of grace and complications that they brought to such hits as Flashdance and Top Gun. The story isn’t new, what with a teacher taking charge of an unruly bunch of students and whipping them into shape through unorthodox methods. Even Sydney Poitier did it fifty years ago in To Sir, With Love. Michelle Pfeiffer is about as far from Poitier as actors come, but the effect remains the same: A story either seen as an inspirational tribute to knowledge and education … or a paean to conformity, really not helped by the optics of a white teacher coming in to rescue non-white students. But those implications may not be readily apparent to many white audiences, who may focus a bit more on the script’s well-constructed scenes, its willingness to uphold expectations, or the reinforcement of conventional values. Dangerous Minds does benefit enormously from Pfeiffer’s performance as well, as she elevates some rote material into something semi-engaging. Coolio’s music also helps. The film is adapted from a true story, adding additional complications in trying to fairly assess the film—even more so when you know that the “real” story had a white teacher using rap songs (rather than Dylan!) to teach to mostly white students. Hmmm. It does work despite the obviousness, though, even with a weaker ending and a lack of dialogue as ambitious as its literary references—Dangerous Minds is easy enough to watch, even as you suspect that it’s a piece of feel-good cinema that’s not quite as fully engaged with its students as it is with their teacher.