Comedy

The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film

By / / 1950s, 1959 / Leave a Comment

This past week was our short-film week, and I was surprised to see that our film club had never watched Richard Lester‘s and Peter Sellers‘ The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film. That had to be my pick for our interstitial week.

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The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film

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Rather than critique the short, I want to explain why I chose it.

Okay, I’m a sucker for droll British humor. I fell in love with Monty Python’s Flying Circus back in the 1970s, tracked down LPs of The Goon Show in the 1980s, and can rewatch Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night and two Musketeer films — The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers — anytime and thoroughly enjoy them.

Unlike many short films we’ve watched, this one wasn’t an early attempt to break into the business. Pretty much everyone involved in Running — Lester, Sellers, Dick Bentley, Spike Milligan, Leo McKern, Mario Fabrizi, and David Lodge — was an industry veteran, mostly in television and radio, but in a few films, too. If they weren’t already familiar — if not famous — names or faces when the short was made, they would become so later on.

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Chameleon Street

By / / 1980s, 1989 / Leave a Comment

This week’s pick for our Criterion film club was Chameleon Street, a 1989 independent film about an imposter who poses as a reporter, a doctor, and a lawyer, among other roles.

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Chameleon Street

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I thought this would be a film like Catch Me If You Can, the 2002 film about con artist Frank Abagnale Jr., or similar films. But that was completely wrong.

Wendell B. Harris Jr. wrote, directed, and starred in Chameleon Street, his first — and as of now his only — feature film. It’s an impressive debut. But everyone in the club was surprised that Harris hadn’t been able to turn it into a thriving film career, either as an actor, voice actor, or filmmaker.

The film is based on real-life con artist William Douglas Street Jr., with a bit of Erik Dupin mixed in. It’s so much more than just a con artist film.

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It Happens Every Spring

By / / 1940s, 1949 / Leave a Comment

Film critic Leonard Maltin called It Happens Every Spring “a most enjoyable, unpretentious picture.”

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It Happens Every Spring

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That pretty much sums it up.

Back in my teen years, one of our local TV stations ran old movies on weekday afternoons, just in time for me to tune in after school. I watched a lot of second-tier movies, particularly when the weather wasn’t conducive to being outside. This week’s pick was one of those movies.

I hadn’t watched it since and turned it on this time as background while I cleaned up the house. But after about 15 or 20 minutes, it pulled in me. I sat and watched the rest of the film, mostly because of Paul Douglas.

Douglas plays Monk Lanigan, a (somewhat old) baseball catcher, who’s tasked with keeping an eye on his team’s new and mysterious pitcher, King Kelly (played by Ray Milland).

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Blue Collar

By / / 1970s, 1978 / Leave a Comment

Sorry not to have posted the past couple of weeks. Things have been crazy. I missed the movie (Mississippi Masala) and film club two weeks ago. I watched last week’s pick (Hedwig and the Angry Inch — which was terrific, btw), but just didn’t have time to do much thinking about it or posting on it.

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Blue Collar

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Things haven’t slowed down this week (maybe just the opposite). So I thought I would be brief about this week’s movie, Blue Collar.

I thought that I saw it when it came out in 1978. While elements were familiar, I can’t say that was the case.

Blue Collar stars Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto. If you expect this to be a comedy because of Pryor, think again. The casting signals the film’s mix of humor, drama, and violence.

Director Paul Schrader‘s film — three autoworker buddies, put upon by their bosses and taken advantage of by their union officials, break into the union’s safe where they find just a handful of cash, but a ledger detailing union corruption — is humorous at times, rough at times, and ultimately bleak. The trio tries to stick it to the man but ends up stuck by the system instead.

Thematically, Blue Collar has many similarities to film noir: It’s gritty, its characters are marginalized, and it ends in hopelessness.

Blue Collar is a bit uneven and unpolished, but still makes its point.

Bernie

By / / 2010s, 2011 / Leave a Comment

Bernie didn’t ring a bell when I heard it was this week’s pick for film club, but after looking it up, I recognized the poster for this 2011 movie.

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Bernie

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I assume that after the previous year’s abysmal Gulliver’s Travels, I immediately disregarded Bernie when I saw that it starred Jack Black. I should have paid attention to the other two headliners in the cast (Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey) and to the director (Richard Linklater).

Black could easily have overplayed real-life mortician Bernie Tiede, but his restraint endears you to the character, even after he’s shot wealthy widow Margie Nugent (MacLaine) and hidden her body in a Deepfreeze. It’s a sympathetic portrayal, yet has touches of humor (such as when Black cheerfully — maybe a bit too cheerfully — sings “Love Lifted Me” as he drives along as the opening credits roll).

MacLaine is equally restrained, but maybe too much, as the hard-hearted Margie, who slowly grows fond of Bernie until she becomes overly possessive of him and his time.

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Smokey and the Bandit II

By / / 1980, 1980s, Re-Released Review / Leave a Comment

Originally published: Sept. 2, 1980

Movie sequels (or remakes of old movies) are swiftly joining death and taxes as an inevitable and not always pleasant) part of American life. The latest entry in the sequel sweepstakes is Smokey and the Bandit II (or The Sheriff Strikes Back), starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jerry Reed, Jackie Gleason, and Dom DeLuise.

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Smokey and the Bandit II

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SATB II picks up about year after Smokey and Bandit. Bandit (Reynolds) has been driven to drink by the break-up with Frog (Field), who has gone back to Texas to marry son of Sheriff Buford T. Justice. The old team is brought back together when Snowman (Jerry Reed) is offered $400,000 to transport a pregnant elephant from Miami to Dallas in four days.

The film is pretty familiar Burt Reynolds’ fare, i.e. lots of car chases, gorgeous girls, and good one-liners. Reynolds, Field, and Reed work together well as always, and DeLuise is an excellent addition to the troupe. Gleason isn’t quite as high-handed in his role of Sheriff Justice in this film but makes up for it somewhat by playing a triple role (Justice and his brothers, Reginald of the Mounties and Gaylord of the Texas Highway Patrol).

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Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

By / / 1980s, 1986, Re-Released Review / Leave a Comment

Originally published: June 14, 1986

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off may turn out to be the hit of the summer.

From when the alarm clock wakes Ferris up on his “day off” until after the last closing credit, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off proves to be the funniest movie since 1984’s Ghostbusters.

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Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

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Matthew Broderick (who you may remember from WarGames and Ladyhawke) plays Ferris Bueller, a high-school senior who appears to be majoring in cunning, persuasion, and charm rather than the usual college-prep courses. With only weeks left before graduation, Bueller decides to play sick and enjoy a holiday.

After successfully faking off his parents (explaining how to do just that in an aside to the audience), Bueller wrangles away two friends (played by Mia Sara and Alan Ruck) from their suburban Chicago school and sets off for a day in the big city. They visit the Chicago stock exchange, a Cubs baseball game, a posh restaurant, a German heritage parade, and the Chicago Museum of Art.

Lots of fun and no problems, right? Fun, yes. No problems, no.

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Charade (1963)

By / / 1960s, 1963 / Leave a Comment

Charade is the perfect movie for a relaxing evening. Stir up a cocktail, settle into your comfy seat, and be swept away on a romantic adventure in Paris. And who better to join you there than Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, and rubber-faced Walter Matthau.

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"Charade" (1963)

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It’s not the least bit realistic (particularly James Coburn‘s accent). But who cares?

The cast (aside from that accent) is strong; the photography is lush, both in the studio and on location in Paris; and the story moves along briskly, with just enough mystery to keep you guessing.

I know it sounds cliche, but I’ll say it anyway: They don’t make movies like this anymore.

Just before watching Charade, I had finished up what you might consider a present-day equivalent: Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard. But Bodyguard (like its shorter-named predecessor) is violent, vulgar, and vastly over-the-top, with action from start to finish.

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Cobra

By / / 1980s, 1986 / Leave a Comment

Originally published: June 14, 1986

In Cobra, Sylvester Stallone stoops to a new, silly low.

It was bad enough having a semi-coherent Rambo roaming the screens, but now we’ve got Marlon Cobretti, a.k.a. “Cobra,” who speaks even less and when he does it’s just stupid

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Cobra

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Example: In the first sequence of the film, Cobra confronts a crazed gunman who threatens to blow up a supermarket, along with its shoppers. Cobra responds, “Go ahead. I don’t shop here,” in his best deadpan, growling voice. Then rumbles, “You’re a disease, and I’m the cure.”

Fine.

If that’s not enough. Cobra’s out to wipe off the map a legion of axe-clanking slashers who want to create their own society. Conveniently, Cobra’s police bosses won’t believe the legion exists, and Cobra doesn’t have the smarts to prove it exists without slaughtering the whole gang and destroying a large part of a small town in doing so.

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The Cocoanuts

By / / 1920s, 1929 / Leave a Comment

It was my pick for film club. We hadn’t watched a comedy in a while, so I picked the Marx Brothers’ The Cocoanuts.

The Cocoanuts came out in 1929, just over a year after the first all-talking movie, Lights of New York, and less than two years after the first part-talkie, The Jazz Singer. The film reworked (for better or worse) their hit Broadway show for the silver screen.

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"The Cocoanuts"

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It’s groundbreaking by being the brothers’ first feature film and for pushing the boundaries of sound. But apart from Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, I can easily do without the rest of the film. (Oh, and Zeppo, whose role is almost non-existent.)

The Cocoanuts‘ plot — a robbery scheme set at a resort during the Florida real-estate bubble of the 1920s — is a thin filament upon which the Marx Brothers’ routines and several show-stopping songs and dances are hung. And by show-stopping, I mean the show comes to a grinding halt for most of the songs and the overly long dance numbers.

The musical numbers in the brothers’ later movies — particularly when they sang them — added laughs and kept the movies moving.

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