Eugene Levy

Armed and Dangerous (1986)

Armed and Dangerous (1986)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, June 2019) As one of John Candy’s less-famous films in the middle of an extraordinarily productive decade, Armed and Dangerous often feels like mid-1980s comedy filmmaking at its laziest, with a workable premise battered through atonal development, fuzzy characterization, cheap plotting, and lazy writing. The premise does show some promise—as an ex-cop and a disbarred lawyer find themselves working as security guards, they come to discover a plot to embezzle union dues. Alas, the development of the premise feels off. I shouldn’t worry too much about the portrayal of a corrupt union, but I do—anti-union sentiment is symptomatic of 1980s Hollywood presumptions, and we now know where that path has led us. To be fair, Armed and Dangerous is dumb enough that it may not quite realize what it’s playing with, and does give equal credence to the idea of corrupt cops as well. The rest of the film isn’t much better—as the plot (already thin at 88 minutes) regularly stops to let Candy go on extended comic rants, it’s clear that the numerous screenwriters have no idea how to keep a consistent tone throughout the film: Candy’s character alone veers uncontrollably between incompetence, silliness and effectiveness in a way that suggests that Candy was allowed to run roughshod over what may have been a more coherent character. Other lazy plot shortcuts abound, including a final sequence with a truck driver blissfully unconcerned with the destruction of his rig—there’s a lot more comic mileage to be made out of this idea, but the film barely even tries. On and on it goes: Candy is up to his usual character, but the more interesting work is by Eugene Levy, turning in a character performance more interesting because it’s not quite part of his later persona. Meg Ryan looks cute, but that’s about it—anyone else could have done just as well. A welcome bit of vehicular mayhem does enliven the film’s last twenty minutes (albeit limited by the film’s average budget) but that’s not enough to make up for the rest of Armed and Dangerous.

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005)

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) I’m not sure there’s anything meaningful to say about Cheaper by the Dozen 2. It’s very much what it wants to be: a sequel to the 2003 Steve Martin version of Cheaper by the Dozen, a lowest-common-denominator family comedy working in the broadest possible comic register. While the result will be a hit for kids, anyone over the age of eight is likely to be bored by the obvious jokes you can see coming from miles away, the obvious plot threads and the complete lack of surprise. It is what it wants to be—an innocuous family comedy with a nostalgic bent, far too many characters to properly develop beyond a few gags, with a familiar soundtrack telling us what to feel if we’re not too sure. Martin himself seems to be daring himself to mug it up as widely as possible, perhaps in a kind of performance art piece echoing the kind of Dadaistic stand-up he did earlier in his career. It is fun to see Eugene Levy also hamming it up as an antagonist, and a few familiar names in smaller roles. Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is not much, but then again—if you start watching a sequel, you know what to expect, for better or for worse.

Splash (1984)

Splash (1984)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, April 2019) I know that a lot of people remember Splash fondly—on a surface level, what’s not to love? Perennial 1980s comedy young beau Tom Hanks falling in love with a Mermaid played by Daryl Hannah: isn’t that enough to many anyone happy? There’s a strong fairy-tale component to the result (despite a few moments with heightened threats) and it’s best to approach the film as such. Unfortunately, there’s a point where Splash doesn’t have a lot to differentiate it from other fish-out-of-water comedies, with a script that seems obvious and by the numbers. Fortunately, the execution isn’t bad (this being one of Ron Howard’s first efforts as a director and arguably his first big commercial success) and you can’t really ignore the mermaid aspect that still makes Splash a memorable film. Hanks is slightly subdued compared to some of his other comedies of that time, Darryl Hannah is fine as the mermaid that named thousands of Madisons and there’s an interesting Canadian connection with supporting roles given to John Candy and Eugene Levy. Still, I have a hard time getting enthusiastic about it all—there’s not a whole lot to say: it seems as if we’ve seen everything in there a few times since then.

Band Camp aka American Pie Presents: Band Camp (2005)

Band Camp aka American Pie Presents: Band Camp (2005)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Netflix Streaming, March 2017) Direct-to-video American Pie series spinoff Band Camp is not what we’d call good … but it does follow the basic elements of the series from which it’s inspired. Tad Hilgenbrink turns in a Stifleresque performance as, indeed, Stifler’s younger brother, proving just as mischievous as his role model and ending in Band Camp as punishment. What follows is a typically neutered version of an American sex comedy: heavy on juvenilia and humiliation, low on actual nudity or eroticism. It’s crude and innocuous at once, happy to wallow in low jokes and idiot plotting. As background noise while doing other work, it’s almost perfect—you just need to perk up once in a while whenever Eugene Levy shows up as a camp counselor or whenever something funny threatens to happen (it seldom does, but it’s important to give the film a chance). It may or may not be noteworthy to remark that twelve years after its release, you practically can’t find any known name in the cast—for all that I liked of Crystle Lightning’s presentation as an uncommon ideal of beauty, much of the film’s cast has since, at best, peaked in TV shows. But such is the life of a direct-to-video film—Band Camp wouldn’t have a tenth of its current awareness had it not been branded as part of the American Pie series. One the flip side, I’ve seen much, much worse before.

American Pie 2 (2001)

American Pie 2 (2001)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, May 2016) To its credit, this sequel to American Pie doesn’t take the easy way out of trying to do the same thing in college. Surprisingly enough, it returns to the same characters one year later and follows them as not much has changed in the interim. The action eventually moves to a beach house for even more rowdy fun, the same comedy engines powering this follow-up: one string of humiliation comic set pieces after another. (The fake-lesbian sequence is probably the film’s highlight, and it does manage a nice balance between lust and laughs.) Stifler’s back in an expanded role, Stifler’s mom’s return is highly anticipated, but most of the characters are back with various things to do. The standout actors are pretty much the same: Jason Biggs as the hapless protagonist, Eugene Levy as a well-meaning dad, Seann William Scott as the life of the parties. American Pie 2 isn’t quite as fresh as the first film, but it offers more of the same pleasures without too much fuss along the way.

American Pie (1999)

American Pie (1999)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, May 2016) Everyone has their list of movies that other people can’t believe they haven’t seen (“What, you haven’t seen Star Wars?!?”) and American Pie was high on mine. For years, I thought I didn’t need to see the film because I felt as if I had seen it all already: Hadn’t I heard enough pop-culture references, suffered through endless imitators? But there’s no substitute for the actual experience of watching the film itself, especially given how it still has a charm that has eluded many of its copycats. It remains one of the definitive teenage sex comedies of the past few decades, focusing on the pursuit of sex as a rite of passage, and the conclusion that it’s not that important compared to love. Despite then-cutting-edge Internet jokes (early streaming humour!), it has aged surprisingly well, largely because it’s so heartfelt. The structure is squarely built on embarrassment set pieces, with comic sequences strung one after another within a solid but unspectacular plot. I am far away from the target audience for this film now, but it’s refreshingly free of smirking in how it treats its characters. Despite being male-centric, American Pie isn’t cruel to its female characters—in fact, the males usually take up the brunt of the humiliation, while the women are too smart to embarrass themselves. Standout performances include Sean William Scott, Natasha Lyonne, Eugene Levy and Jason Biggs as the much-humiliated protagonist. Surprisingly enough, many of the pop-culture references about the film actually concern bits that took bigger importance in the sequels: I’m particularly thinking about Stifler’s character and his mom, not to mention Alyson Hannigan’s quasi-cameo considering her role in latter movies. (The MILF thing is the MILF thing, though, even though I was surprised to be reminded that John Cho is the one who made it mainstream.) Still, even more than fifteen years later, American Pie holds up relatively well … as long as you can stand the sex = humiliation comedy equation.