casper-12 Reviews

Breaking the Rules (1992)

badness

[3 December 2005]

I have to say I'm pretty shocked at the number of positive reviews of this "movie". I stumbled across it today on free TV and was stunned at how awful it was. I pity anyone who sat through this 15 times. I have a deep and embarrassing soft spot for anything mildly sappy but come on, this was atrocious. The scene where C. Thomas is insulting Annie Potts and the guys are "arguing" over her was horrendously written and acted. Nothing felt true or real or honest in this programmed maudlin mess. I wonder if this was the movie that sent C.T. to drinking.

The cast is all very capable and have been good elsewhere but god, I was just cringing for Annie Potts having to spit out tasteless dialogue while mauling Jonathan Silverman as Bateman and Howell watch from the bed. And the cancer makeup on Bateman was terribly done. Didn't buy it for a second.

Summer Catch (2001)

badness on just about every level

[12 April 2004]

Badness, badness, badness.

I can't stop laughing from all the hilarious comments from people thrashing this disposable excuse for teen entertainment. From the guy who shut it off three minutes before the end to the transcription of the final scene, these reviews are just killing me.

Was Freddie Prinze hypnotized to play baseball for this movie? I've never seen anyone with such a vacant a stare. Every one of his closeups he looks like he's dreaming about cashing Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy residual checks. Doesn't it bother anyone that Freddie's problem is supposed to be that he got kicked off his college team cause he has a "temper" but he doesn't get in a single fight with anyone or anything? And what's with Freddie calling his dad and brother failures? It's not like his dad or brother wanted to be baseball players and flunked out, right? They never say that his dad and brother aren't happy doing their jobs? It's honest work, right? What the hell's wrong with running a landscaping business or managing a bar? It's shocking how lazily this was thrown together.

I feel bad for the people who like this movie, because whether you realize it or not, you deserve better. Believe it or not, it is possible to make formula teen movies with Tiger Beat coverboys and TV actresses that aren't this lame.

Shampoo (1975)

The Country Wife

[25 July 2003]

Beatty says he approached Towne to do a modern version of the classic restoration comedy called The Country Wife (hilarious by the way). In the original play, the hero beds all the wives by confessing to their husbands that he's impotent so the husbands make fun of him and think nothing of leaving their frustrated and underappreciated wives in his care.

Here in the updated "Shampoo", Beatty and Towne make the hero an assumed-to-be-gay hairdresser (instead of impotent)and the results are inspired bedroom farce mixed with social satire.

Younger viewers may find the film a little dated but it was a "period" film when it was made (set in 68 when it was shot in 74) so Ashby consciously gave it that dated look. For me this and Heaven Can Wait are Beatty's best work. Walks a fine comic/tragic line. And this really feels like the closest character to Beatty's heart. It was after this that I went back and saw Splendor in the Grass and began to appreciate Beatty as an actor rather than just a gigolo celebrity.

Great dialogue by Towne, Jack Warden's hilarious and Julie Christie is stunning.

The Great Adventure (1953)

beautiful and surprisingly timeless

[3 June 2003]

I saw this film twenty years ago in a documentary film class at Cleveland State U. and never forgot it.

I recently ordered from a distributor here in LA and was very surprised to see that the film still holds some incredible dramatic power. I put the tape on without saying a word while my five year old daughter played. She was soon drawn into the story (at first by the fox cubs and their life and death struggle with the farmer). She was more emotionally invested in the film than she had been in Finding Nemo the day before.

I've never seen it available for rent but well worth the 35 bucks to own the VHS.