John Mahoney

  • The Manhattan Project (1986)

    The Manhattan Project (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, On TV, August 2020) If I’ve got my dates right, I first watched The Manhattan Project almost exactly thirty years ago, a few days before starting eleventh grade. I remember that because I met one of my favourite high school teachers a few days later, and he did look rather a lot like John Lithgow in the movie. Thinking back, it does feel as if The Manhattan Project was a suspiciously appropriate film for my teenage self: after all, it’s about this very arrogant, smart yet somewhat dumb kid who decides to steal some plutonium from a nearby secret lab and uses it to create a nuclear bomb with household equipment just to prove that he could. Now, I never stole plutonium nor tried building a nuclear bomb (I swear!), but there’s something about the protagonist’s flaws that reminds me of my own worst teenage traits… some of them persisting to this day. Three decades later, though, The Manhattan Project now strikes me as a teenage power techno-fantasy, with hazily sketched motives in the service of the set-pieces planned for late in the movie – wouldn’t it be cool if a teenager actually built a nuclear weapon and had to disarm it? It does work as a film, although it’s clearly aimed at a teenage audience. There’s a kinship here with Wargames from three years earlier. Lithgow is quite likable as the kind of eccentric academic ready to step in a surrogate father – John Mahoney also shows up toward the end of the film as a high-ranking military officer, and a young Cynthia Nixon has an ingrate role as a new girlfriend who seemingly doesn’t have any more common sense than our young protagonist. While my perspective on The Manhattan Project may be more detached than as a teenager, I still had quite a good time watching it – despite some less-than-convincing plotting, it moves fast, benefits from Lithgow in maximally sympathetic mode, and it builds up to a very nice climax. Even in contemporary terms of films aimed at teenage audiences, it’s a cut above the norm.

  • Reality Bites (1994)

    Reality Bites (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2020) It may seem strange for me to say that Reality Bites feels dated or that I found the characters insufferable considering that the film is supposed to capture the zeitgeist of my near-generation. But here’s the thing: I’m about five years younger than the characters here, and those five years, back in the mid-1990s, were significant enough. Then there is the fact that I wasn’t much into the whole Gen X slacker lifestyle, and that should explain the rest. (Once more for those in the back: Despite facile memes, you are not your generation.) (Although, hey, if we’re going to get into generational gabbing, let us point out that the reality-TV personal video recordings of 1994 are suspiciously a whole lot like post-2000s influencing—just sayin’.) Still, Reality Bites is certainly not completely unwatchable—in the hands of director Ben Stiller, there are many early appearances from known actors here, and bits of nice Houston scenery. The melodrama gets ridiculously overblown, but I suppose that no twentysomething romance would be complete without it. John Mahoney is surprisingly memorable in a handful of scenes, but the spotlight goes to a generation of actors who would all go on to bigger and better things: Let us mention Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn, and others, sometimes in one-scene cameos. I suppose Reality Bites is all right after all—but since the character with which I most identify is the designated yuppie villain, well, um.

  • Say Anything… (1989)

    Say Anything… (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2017) There are a few reasons to go back to Say Anything … and they’re not strictly limited to this being one of John Cusack’s first big role, or that this is Cameron Crowe’s first movie as a writer/director. Even today, Say Anything does have an off-beat quality that distinguishes it from so many other teen romance movies. Most of the characters defy easy characterizations (indeed, one of the film’s strengths is in undermining the stereotypes it starts with, all the way to an incarceration that feels wildly daring for a movie of this type), the dialogues are witty and the conclusion ends, as it is, in mid-air without being unsatisfying. Cusack’s charm is apparent even at a young age, while Ione Skye distinguishes herself as a teenage heroine and John Mahoney handles a difficult role fairly well. Surprisingly enough, the iconic boombox moment is a fleeting scene without much pomp associated with it. Decently comparable to the slew of John Hughes high school romantic comedies, Say Anything may not be a perfect examples of the form, but it’s readily watchable even today, and it still feels somewhat more sophisticated than many of its contemporaries.