"The Ladies Man" - 2000
Dir. by Reginald Hudlin - 1 hr. 24 min.
Original Trailer
by Clayton Hollifield
Some movies aren't meant to be waxed eloquently about. That's not to say that compliments aren't in order, but sometimes it's enough to just say that I liked something, I've watched it a number of times, and it serves as the comedic equivalent of comfort food. "The Ladies Man" is like that.
Obligatory plot summary: Leon Phelps (Tim Meadows) is a radio DJ, who likes to love up women. Some of which aren't single. And because Leon has a one-track mind with no filter (and because this was about a decade before podcasting), he loses his job. And there's a bunch of jilted husbands after Leon, led by Lance DeLune (Will Ferrell), who spends a good amount of time wearing a wrestling singlet.
Here are some of the things that I liked about "The Ladies Man." Tim Meadows is funny. Especially when offering to buy strange women in bars fish sandwiches. Pina Colada butt lotion. A houseboat called "The Skanktary." Will Ferrell as an amateur wrestling enthusiast. Did I mention Tim Meadows is really funny? Especially when he gets to do an R-rated comedy. Those chairs that look like a giant hand that you sit in. Julianne Moore as a horny clown. Yeah, you read that right. And maybe most of all, Leon's poem:
"What Is Love?" by Leon Phelps
I dunno, man, I just like "The Ladies Man." I've been troubled for years as to whether the title is punctuated correctly (I feel like "ladies" should be a possessive, and thus the title should read "The Ladies' Man"), but I have never been plagued by a lack of laughter when watching this film. I know this is a pretty light review here, but at the same time, why flog a dead horse? I like this movie, it's funny, and if you enjoyed Leon's poem, you might feel the same way. Are more words necessary to get that across?
I'm not going to represent "Gone in Sixty Seconds" as any kind of good movie. Having said that, I've probably watched it half a dozen times, and I've been wanting to watch it again for a few months now. Considering all of the actors involved here, this film underachieves. But then again, there's sometimes comfort in a paint-by-numbers story, like the comfort in repeating rituals. Plus, goofball Nicolas Cage.
Memphis Raines (Nicolas Cage) runs a go-kart park in the middle of nowhere, but is pulled back into his previous life of crime through his younger brother's errors. Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston), a British woodworker/criminal boss, hired Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) to steal some cars, and he didn't deliver. Since obviously the price for failure is death, only Memphis can save Kip, by finishing the job. The job? Stealing fifty cars in three days. That means Memphis is going to need a crew. And then they steal some cars, with the clock ticking.
"Gone in Sixty Seconds" is like the gearhead version of "Ocean's Eleven." Not in quality, of course. There are no elegantly-planned heists, this isn't a crew of fashionably-dressed rogues. It's Nic Cage and a team of neuroses leading a bunch of stereotype-filling weirdos on a mission of brute force: steal everything, and drive fast while doing it. For Kip. And I have absolutely no problem with any of that. I'm not sure that one could make the case that having better dialogue, or more well-rounded characters, or really anything other than what's already on the screen would have improved the end result. I mean, I wouldn't have dressed the one woman in the movie, Angelina Jolie, in a series of potato sacks, and I wouldn't have given her pseudo-bleached blonde dreadlocks, either. I might have made the enemies of the Raines brothers (that would be the police on his trail, played by Delroy Lindo and Timothy Olyphant, and the aforementioned evil British woodworker) a little more formidable, but it's not that kind of movie.
For a car movie, there's an awful lot of oohing and aahing over the vehicles, and there are some pretty sweet whips here, but director Dominic Sena never seems to take any visual delight in the machines that all of these gearheads are driving around. There are no loving shots of classic cars, no emphasis on them at all. The chase scenes are all rapid-cut monstrosities, with no real attention paid to what's involved. If you're showing a lion chasing a zebra in the jungle, at least give us the opportunity to appreciate what a lion and a zebra are. And again, this doesn't really matter much to the end product. "Gone in Sixty Seconds" delivers exactly what it promises - Nic Cage being a little weird while trying to get one over on the man. But it's also morally defensible, because he's doing it for his kid brother. And also, screw that British guy and his silly benches.
Even with all of these things being provable facts, "Gone in Sixty Seconds" is still pretty fun. This kind of story gets told over and over again, and it doesn't seem to get old. There's a kind of comfort in watching the reluctant hero having to reassemble his army of misfits. Then we get to watch this army accomplish what seems impossible, until something goes wrong near the end. And usually, then success. And all of this while we have to endure the quirks of the man himself.
That story works. You can plug in any batch of actors, and as long as the goal is action-oriented, you've pretty much got a functional movie. Sometimes you can add in bits and twists, but that's not that important. "Gone in Sixty Seconds" is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. And the same way that I'll more than likely eat another PB&J, I'll probably end up watching this silly movie again, too.
"The Tao of Steve" - 2000
Dir. by Jenniphr Goodman - 1 hr. 27 min.
Red Band Trailer
by Clayton Hollifield
In the 1990's, before the internet was the depository for all kinds of DIY filmmaking, there was a boom of talky, frequently elliptical, low-budget indie films that came from people who didn't ordinarily get to direct feature films (or at least weren't interested in big budget explody nonsense). You could track it back to the 1980's, if you want to include Steven Soderbergh's early work, or Richard Linklater's "Slacker": that's where the unbroken string of films in that vein began. Jenniphr Goodman's "The Tao of Steve" is at the end of that string, having been released in 2000. It bears a lot of similarities to other films in it's vein; unconventional lead actors (in the aesthetic sense, although it's definitely part of the plot here), lots of talk about big ideas from people who aren't necessarily doing big things (or slackers, as you might otherwise know them), and tortured love stories (possibly fall-out from a decade coping with the AIDS epidemic). This is also a very sharply-written film with excellent performances from the leads, offering a lot of easy charm and heady talk.
Dex (Donal Logue) goes to his college reunion, where one of the points of emphasis is that he's packed on more than a couple pounds over the years. Despite this, Dex is charming, underachieving, way too smart for his own good, and has unlikely success with beautiful women. As is explained to one of his more inexperienced friends over the course of the film, Dex owes this success to his strategy for seducing women. A "Steve" is the epitome of cool - Steve Austin or Steve McQueen. In channeling these Steves, his three step method works like a charm. And that's fine, until he sees a girl that he's interested in having more than a fling with, Syd (Greer Goodman). Or maybe Syd inadvertently Steves Dex. Either way, they end up having to share a truck when Dex's motorcycle breaks down, and Dex has to fight an uphill battle to get Syd's interest.
At one point in this film, Dex quotes Lao Tzu to Ed (John Hines), "When a foolish man hears of the Tao, he laughs out loud." This is an appropriate quote for any film that deals with philosophical matters: the knee-jerk reaction to any discussion of philosophical matters in the arts seems to be to dismiss it as Philosophy 101 stoned musings. And that's fine. If you're the sort of person prone to that reaction, skip "The Tao of Steve." There is wall-to-wall casual discussion on this topic (and on religion, a subject frequently intertwined with philosophy). But if that's not you, the discussions serve to offer insight into the characters in the film. So, you know, pay attention. It's not a coincidence that pretty much the only time that Dex shuts up in the whole film is during a discussion with Syd about "Don Giovanni" and Kierkegaard, where Syd interprets Don Giovanni as being about a man sleeping with one-thousand women because was afraid of being rejected by one. It's a relevant observation, particular considering Dex's womanizing, particularly from the woman that Dex is pursuing. In the context of this film, the literary and philosophical references are presented not only to offer deeper insight into the characters that we're watching, they're also there for the characters to react to when they're painfully relevant to their lives.
In terms of the story itself, it's a low-key relationship film. It's a romantic comedy that you won't hate yourself for watching when you're done. Dex's pursuit of Syd doesn't go as smoothly as he'd like (for spoiler reasons - the reveal sure doesn't make Dex come off like a good guy), and even after they take steps toward one another, Dex's history keeps rearing it's ugly head. It's easy to want to root for Dex; Donal Logue gives off an easy charm (there's no other way to put it) via intelligent patter and not taking himself as seriously as you might expect a serious philosophical guy to be. Anything less and you'd want to kill the guy by about an hour in; between his womanizing, loose grasp of time, and looser grasp of the truth, he's written nearly as a psychopathic conman. At least that's how it would come off acted differently. And it helps that Syd is both intelligent and not a push-over, and that Greer Goodman is able to hold her own here. Syd is smart, capable, and unconventionally beautiful, and can hold her own in the intellectual conversations that Dex usually uses to dazzle more "weak-minded women," as he admits. The film doesn't exactly address it, but Syd kinds pulls a Steve on Dex, which might be part of her appeal. As he quotes, "we pursue that which retreats from us."
I really dig "The Tao of Steve." I've watched it a number of times, and it holds up well. If I was making a short-list of 90's indie films (yes, I know it came out in 2000, but I'm referring to the style), "Tao" would make that list every time. The actors have chemistry, the writing's dead-on and very smart, and I even enjoy the use of the southwest as a setting - it's effective and beautiful in transition shots, and even is just presented for it's own beauty at times. The only disappointment is that director Jenniphr Goodman seems not to have done another film in the passing years (this was her first film). If this is the only film she ever does, it's a good one, and she's one-for-one.
Let me be clear about one thing: I know that there's nothing I can say that would sway anyone from their opinion about a movie like this. And I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Either you already think that it's just plain stupid (which it is), or you laughed like a little girl being tickled while a unicorn peed a rainbow on you. Nothing in-between, and that's entirely fair.
And seeing as how the critics have largely weighed in on the "stupid" side, I'm just here to offer a little balance. Yes, it's stupid, but that's not really a dig on a comedy. I mean, if you didn't take offense at the stupidity of "Dumb & Dumber" or "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" or "Meatballs" or "Up in Smoke" or Jerry Lewis' entire career, there's no reason to start getting bent out of shape starting with "Dude." I understand if it's not really your cup of tea, but it's a valid, time-tested approach to comedy, and it's fairer to just admit that it really is you and not the movie that has a problem. And if we're going to judge this film, it must be on whether it's funny within that realm of comedy, and not whether or not it's a talky, biting satire that you can pat yourself on the back for having watched.
It definitely is funny, and while I'll excuse you if you think that it's due to a bunch of seemingly random wacky occurances, that's not the reason. "Dude, Where's My Car?" is not an episode of "Family Guy," where things come and go to no lasting effect, there is a consistent internal logic (and a narrative that unravels over the course of the film). Things that don't make sense at the time are eventually explained, which might be why it held up a little better than I was expecting. Also helping: Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott throw themselves into their roles as Jesse and Chester (respectively). Sure, Kutcher's "That 70's Show" pedigree helped his credibility here, and I wouldn't hazard a guess as to whether the duo were method actors here, but they do a good job with what they've got.
My only gripe is that it seems like they weren't given all that they could have been. A note on the IMDB page mentions that some of the language in the screenplay with the Hot Alien Chicks was toned down to get a PG-13 rating, and there may very well have been more material that fell into that same pitfall. We have a movie with characters that are constantly referred to as stoners, but the only drug use in the entire movie is by a small dog who is pretty territorial about his pipe. While that approach worked in the "Bill & Ted" movies (the behavior is telling enough, even without anything going on on-screen), it seems like a decision that wasn't motivated by making the best movie possible. Having said that, none of the best "classic" scenes (the dude/sweet tattoo reveal, the "and then" drive-thru sequence being the kings) would have been improved by inclusion of such material, so it might be a moot point.
So yeah. See it if you want, I don't care. I liked it and laughed all the way through, and found it to hold up a little better than some of the other popular then-contemporary comedies (like the "American Pie" series, for instance). I won't hold it against you if you don't like it you don't hold it against me that I did.
