Griffin Dunne

  • 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.

  • Tumbledown (2015)

    Tumbledown (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2020) Rebecca Hall and Jason Sudeikis make for an interesting pairing in romantic comedy Tumbledown, although the “comedy” here may be a bit more muted than you’d think considering that the story happens during the female lead’s final stages of grieving for her dead husband. The plot has to do with a writer (Sudeikis, in an unusually toned-down role) travelling from New York City to Maine in order to complete his biography of a dead singer. Alas, the singer’s widow (Hall, as beautiful as ever) is not a willing participant and the complex relationship they have eventually moves toward romance. It’s all a bit predictable in a good way, with Hall’s character moving on from her grief into something else. It’s perhaps a bit sweeter than usual for those kinds of films, considering the more dramatic aspect of a dead husband hanging over the romantic component of the film. The late-winter small-town setting echoes the larger thematic aspects of the script and the darker undertones of the backstory. There are a few issues with the script—Sudeikis’ character, who has elements of wish-fulfillment for the female audience, isn’t always written in the most believable ways. Elsewhere in the cast, I did enjoy seeing another late-career role for Blythe Danner –and Griffin Dunne too! While uneven and arguably a bit too wrapped in the conventions of romance (although, you know, those are likable characters and we want them to be happy), Tumbledown isn’t bad considering its slow pace.

  • After Hours (1985)

    After Hours (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2017) If anyone ever wonders what Martin Scorsese’s version of a comedy would look like, remind them of After Hours’ existence. It starts on a note familiar to countless teenage sex romp, as a young man heads to a strange woman’s apartment in hope of, well, you know. But the odds are against our hero as he loses his money, meets increasingly hostile people, suffers the worst luck imaginable and seemingly can’t manage to get himself out of trouble. It may be a comedy, but it’s shot like a horror thriller and written even more darkly. There are a number of deaths in the film, to the point where it’s the kind of film where you can comment “the murder was funnier than the suicide” and not feel like a complete psychopath. After Hours is a very strange film, compelling on the sole basis of seeing how bad things will get for the protagonist, yet repellent in content and unsatisfying in its abrupt conclusion. (To be clear: the last shot of the conclusion is just about perfect, but what leads to it seems arbitrary and far too quickly resolved to feel right.) Griffin Dunne is oddly sympathetic as the justifiably paranoid protagonist; meanwhile, Linda Fiorentino shows up in an early role as a kinky artist, Teri Garr is amusing as a vengeful waitress and Roseanna Arquette as a young woman with an entire newsstand of issues. (New York City also plays itself in its most alarming state, as a dark labyrinth in which everyone is out to get you.) If After Hours is Martin Scorsese goofing off, they maybe we should be thankful that he hasn’t made more pure comedies … or that his far funnier films usually belong to other genres.

  • An American Werewolf in London (1981)

    An American Werewolf in London (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2017) It’s a good thing that director John Landis knows how to have fun, because otherwise there really isn’t much to An American Werewolf in London in terms of plotting. Young man gets bitten; young man contemplates the horrors of turning into a werewolf; young man dies. There’s the plot right there, but don’t get angry at the spoilers because this is not a movie about plot. Thanks to jolting dream sequences, sympathetic characters, a good dose of off-beat humour and the kind of why-the-hell-not filmmaking that disappeared after the eighties, An American Werewolf in London is an experience more than a story. The pacing picks up considerably after the first half-hour, if only because the main character gets hallucinations and dream sequences that allow for Nazi werewolves and sustained conversations with a dead decomposing friend (Griffin Dunne, far more interesting than the rather dull protagonist). Jenny Agutter is cute as a British nurse with a thing for lost American tourists, but the true nature of her role is looking sad in the film’s last moments. Otherwise, An American Werewolf in London is about the kind of genre horror practised so joyously in the early eighties. The humour of the film is undercut by the downbeat (but inevitable) ending. The pre-CGI transformation effects remain mildly impressive even today, while the soundtrack has a not-so-sly succession of “Moon”-titled songs. The abrupt ending does feel unsatisfying, but so does the end of a roller-coaster—it’s not the point of the experience.