Popeye - 1980

"Popeye" - 1980
Dir. by Robert Altman - 1 hr. 54 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

When a beloved actor or director passes away, I'm hardly the only one who wants to delve back into more pleasant memories of their work.  But, hilariously, the move to cloud media means that you're never going to get to watch the movie that you really want to watch, in order to pay proper homage to the deceased.  Robin Williams was a ferociously talented comedian and dramatic actor, with probably half a dozen movies that instantly pop into mind.  But does Netflix or Hulu have "Good Will Hunting" available?  Or "Aladdin?"  "Good Morning, Vietnam?"  Even "The World According to Garp?"  "Popeye," however, was available, and that's what I decided to watch.

Popeye (Robin Williams), who is a deformed sailor with a speech impediment, has arrived in a coastal town called Sweethaven, in search of his father, who stepped out on him at a very young age.  So far, the search hasn't been going well, but Popeye stays upbeat.  Eventually, the townspeople stop cowering from the outsider, and Popeye is able to rent a room in a boarding house, where he meets Olive Oyl (Shelley Duvall), who looks like a pipe cleaner in a dress.  Olive's fella, Bluto (Paul L. Smith), is a huge, blustery sort prone to violence, and doesn't much like Popeye.  Eventually, a random baby pops up, and Olive and Popeye take responsibility for it, which also makes Bluto mad.

If you take this film completely out of any context, there's nearly nothing that makes any sense whatsoever.  Every single decision as to the creation of "Popeye" seems as if it was drawn out of a hat full of really bad ideas.  And it didn't have to be that way; watching the intro credits, and seeing names like director Robert Altman, screenwriter Jules Pfeiffer, and musician Harry Nilsson being involved, it's clear that it's not a bunch of bums who have cobbled together a movie.  And that doesn't even take into account Robin Williams (although he wasn't Robin Williams at this point) and Shelley Duvall.  There is genuine talent here, and it's invariably pointed in the wrongest direction possible, every single time.

I have a difficult time wrapping my head around the notion of making an adaptation of a comic strip (by E.C. Segar, to give due), and doing so in the one method that cartooning can't imply: a musical.  According to the WikiGodHead, "Popeye" was sort of a consolation prize after Paramount lost the bidding war to adapt a Broadway version of "Annie."  They already had the rights to "Popeye," and wanted to do something in the same vein (which is still psychotically stupid).  I am very aware that there wasn't a deep playbook on how to successfully adapt comics characters to the screen at this point in time, but turning comics into a musical...  I don't even know.  What's even more bizarre is that the characters are costumed like the strips were drawn.

Popeye (and all of the characters) have bell-bottomed legs and enormous shoes, a look the movie duplicated!

When comics fans want to complain about a somewhat unfaithful adaptation of their favorite characters, keep in mind that this is what can happen when you hew too closely to the original designs (and the quirks of whichever cartoonist created the stuff in the first place, which in this case would have to do with the "bigfoot" style of cartooning that quickly fell out of favor in the intervening years between the strips and the film).

There is also the issue of having a lead character that mumbles constantly, the heavy reliance of slapstick humor (although this was also faithful to the original, spirited comic strips), and Vaudeville-style verbal humor.  This is a mountain of weird decisions!!!  I will admit freely that I'm not much of a fan of musicals (at least ones that Trey Parker and Matt Stone aren't responsible for creating), but I also didn't care for most of the song and dance numbers.  There is one exception to this, the beautiful, charming, "He Needs Me."

That song captures the giddy silliness of being gobsmacked by love, and it's even better being performed by a character that's always trying to keep people at arm's length for the course of the film.  It's also the one triumph of the film, the one that makes me not want to judge the rest of it so harshly.

But all in all, "Popeye" is just weird.  It doesn't make any sense, even when you can make sense of the dialogue, it's not that funny, the songs are mostly not that great.  It seems like the product of a conscious decision on the part of the film-makers' to screw everything up as hard as they possibly can.  I couldn't make heads nor tails of the vast majority of it.  Robin Williams worked very hard to pull off something that was doomed to failure (possibly in spite of that fact), and his energy (along with the "He Needs Me" segment) are the sole reasons I can think of to recommend "Popeye."  Otherwise, I think literally everyone involved here did drastically better work, and if Netflix or Hulu had been more cooperative, that's the stuff I would have been watching instead.

1.5 / 5 - Streaming

Rockshow - 1980

"Rockshow" - 1980
Dir. by Paul McCartney - 1 hr. 42 min.

Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

This review is going to be very much a statement of when I'm writing this.  Five years ago, or ten, things probably would have looked very different.  But in 2013, Paul McCartney seems to be taking a well-earned victory lap.  He's got a pretty darned good new album (titled "New"), the re-issue campaign of the Beatles catalog a few years back rekindled a lot of interest in that material.  People are finally remembering that they liked Paul (and by that, I mean he's more visible than he's been in years, even if he's been consistently recording and touring for pretty much forever).  His recent concert on Jimmy Fallon's show was a joyous romp through his history, and into the future.  But a subtext to all of this is that he's doing amazing things and looking pretty spry, considering his age.

Now, the Beatles stopped touring before too long (and they were sometimes playing 15 minute concerts when they were still playing live), so there's not much extended footage of them from the sixties.  If your curiosity has been piqued by Macca's recent resurgence, you might start to wonder what a show of his might have looked like when you didn't have to add a qualifier to your enjoyment of his performances.  "Rockshow" is one such answer to that; it was recorded during Paul McCartney & Wings' tours during 1975 and 1976 (this film is a composite of four different concerts).  This is a full-length show (just how full-length kind of depends on which version you're watching, I caught a TV airing of it that included commercials (that I fast-forwarded through), so I couldn't tell you exactly what the run time was), an arena show at that, not a gimmicky "intimate" performance.  It includes songs from both the Beatles and Wings; and other than wanting more Beatles songs, there's probably not that many songs missing if one was to compile an ideal Macca setlist.

So, when you turn back the clock and watch "Rockshow," the thing that's probably most striking is how energetic and at-ease Paul seems playing his songs.  The arrangements aren't strikingly different from what you already know, this is simply a document of a time and place.  I've always preferred entire shows instead of compiling together a handful; the warts-and-all approach is more fascinating than cherry-picking performances for whatever is closest to the studio versions.  There doesn't feel like there's any of that kind of shagginess allowed to show here; I don't know if that's simply due to the professionalism and polish of the performances, or if it's been left on the cutting room floor.

Then, you're left with a few things to judge this concert film by.  First, it sounds pretty good.  You're probably going to keep reaching for your remote to crank it up when one of your faves pops up; I sure did.  Secondly, there's not a ton in the way of stage presentation, which is entirely appropriate for the era this was filmed in.  When concertgoers bought a ticket, they were expecting to see a band that could play their instruments and their songs live, and play them well, and that what you get here.  There's a brief laser thingy towards the end, but there are no dancers, or elaborate stage set-ups.  "Rockshow" is, literally, a straight-forward concert film.  Thirdly, the song selection is pretty good.

If you're expecting more than those three things, this might be depressingly straight-forward for you.  "Rockshow" is good, but I can't imagine watching it more than once or twice.  It's most interesting as a document of a particular point in the career of one of the finest composers of the 20th century, when he was at the peak of his powers and packing out football stadiums (part of this was filmed at the late, not-so-great Kingdome, a Tupperware bowl of a stadium that could hold upwards of sixty thousand people).  I'm glad this document exists; it's useful to be able to go back and see what the real deal looked like, without having to peer through the haze of nostalgia and knighthoods.

3 / 5 - TV (HD)

The Empire Strikes Back - 1980

"The Empire Strikes Back" - 1980
Dir. by Irvin Kershner - 2 hrs. 4 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I'm not even sure what the point of writing about any of the Star Wars films is.  I'm also not even sure what the point of watching any of them is, either.  At this point, watching any of them fills me with a feeling of familiarity, and not in a good way.  Since the 1990's, creative folk have been systematically strip-mining the series for off-hand references, jokes explicitly about the series in the name of homage, and eventually, just plugging their characters into the Star Wars plots ("Family Guy" and "Robot Chicken," I'm looking in your direction) so that there's nothing left at all of the source material but a withered husk, every quirk turned into a big deal and every stone turned over, digested, and ruined for anyone who is unfortunate enough to see the movies afterwards.

"The Empire Strikes Back" is the one with the AT-ATs on Hoth, where Luke goes back to the woodshed with Yoda,  where Lando turns on Han Solo, who is then encased in carbonite, and where Luke has a most unfortunate turn of events (starring in the worst episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" ever, and being turned into half of a Transformer).  Got it?  Good.

At this point, I can't even begin to judge any of these films as movies.  It's like trying to deal with a song that you liked until it got played to death on the radio, and then everyone kept playing it and making references to it (thinking that they were being super clever the whole time), and then having it jammed down your throat one more time just for kicks.  It's past iconic (by about twenty years) and deep into "go away" territory for me.  There are plenty of cool visuals, but I had to fight the urge to just turn it off and give up on it for good.  As it stands, it took me two sessions to get through the entire film.  I'll finish off the series, if only for the slave Leia outfit, but I think this is probably the last time I'll ever sit through any of these films.

UGH / 5 - DVD

Airplane! - 1980

"Airplane!" - 1980
Dir. by Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker - 1 hr. 28 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

It's so unbelievably rare that a comedy ages well.  There are a million reasons for that: topical humor, changing humor tastes and trends (have you tried watching one of Jim Carrey's 90's comedies recently?), targets that lose relevance, etc.  "Airplane!" doesn't entirely dodge all of those pitfalls, but it pioneered a particular style of comedy that no one has managed to do quite as well (it's hard to imagine any of the Wayans brothers movie spoofs in a universe without this film).

The script is heavily based on 50's movie ("Zero Hour!"), and it centers around the pilots and passengers of a commercial flight getting food poisoning from the in-flight meal.  Only one man on the flight can fly a plane AND didn't have fish for dinner, Ted Striker (Robert Hays).  But he's still hung up on a mission gone wrong during the war (time-wise, which would have occurred in the mid 70's - part of the humor of the movie), and hasn't flown since.  Like many good comedies, the plot serves somewhat as an excuse to keep things moving along, and provide new backdrops for gags.  And there are so many gags in this movie!  It's the movie equivalent of Will Elder's "chicken fat" drawing style from Mad Magazine - jokes layered on top of jokes on top of jokes.  It's a relentless parade of gags for an hour and a half, and the jokes don't even end when the credits roll.

It's really difficult to get into why something like this works.  Part of it is the relentless pacing, which helps when a gag falls flat (and some of the humor is dated).  But for every bit that doesn't work now, there's a steady flow of absolute classic bits.  For the most part, the actors play things deadly serious, even when something absurd happens right in front of them.  I think that it's that level of stone-faced commitment that elevates the material (witness Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, or Peter Graves here).  And while most of the gags fly by, there are a couple of continuing gags that run through the course of the movie.  The first, an abandoned taxi-cab passenger waiting for Ted to return (while the meter runs, of course), the other is how characters who arrive at the airport handle the religious glad-handers (as it turns out, Stack's Rex Kramer is a martial arts practitioner).  Those gags, stretched out over the course of the movie, help keep "Airplane!" from coming off as a slightly more focused version of ZAZ's scattershot (yet also very funny) earlier movie, "Kentucky Fried Movie."  It's a small step in the direction of storytelling, but an important one.

For all the things that come off as anachronistic (religious zealots harassing people at the airport (!), a "Saturday Night Fever" spoof sequence, suicide as a running joke), it's just a classic comedy.  Thirty-plus years out, and it's still one of the funniest movies that I've ever seen.  It launched Leslie Nielsen's comedy career (during a college anthropology class, I remember sitting through a National Geographic film he narrated probably in the 70's, waiting for the gags to kick in), which is worth something on it's own.  I don't necessarily think it's the greatest comedy ever, but it's on the short list.

4 / 5 - NF Streaming

Cheech & Chong's Next Movie - 1980

"Cheech & Chong's Next Movie" - 1980
Dir. by Tommy Chong - 1 hr. 39 min.

Official Trailer

It's really hard to hold incoherence and a meandering pace against this movie, especially since you may or may not be in an incoherent and meandering state of mind when you enjoy it.  I also can't really explain much of the plot, as it's not even secondary here.  Instead, it's a series of connected skits (sort of) that exist just to be funny and entertaining, and definitely do not advance plot or story.  It's Cheech and Chong, man!

So what's the good side to "Cheech & Chong's Next Movie?"  There are some, actually.  First, I was impressed with the fact that Cheech and Chong managed to stretch out a minimal story over 99 minutes.  Seriously, there's not a lot going on, but it doesn't exactly drag as you might expect.  Part of the reason for that is that they seem willing to let others get some.  There's a scene at the welfare office that has Michael Winslow (that guy from the "Police Academy" movies that makes noises) doing his thing while Cheech tries to get frisky with a girl in the behind him, and Chong just sits and enjoys the show.  It's a funny sequence, and despite it being somewhat of a non-sequitur, it makes sense in the context of a bunch of guys with nothing better to do than pass time at the welfare office.  This movie also introduces Edie McClurg (whom you should know from a lot of stuff, but probably as the secretary from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off").  Yes, Cheech and Chong get her stoned, and they get a lot of mileage out of that, as well.

But the biggest secondary part belongs to Paul Reubens.  Yes, Pee-Wee Herman is a character in this movie, years before he'd get his own movies and TV show.  Reubens plays a hotel clerk, naturally at odds with Cheech (playing a second role, a cousin of Cheech's normal character) and Chong.  At one point, frustrated with the fact that the police won't help him out, he claims that they look like Iranians (this, on the heels of the Iranian hostage crisis), which seemingly brings out the entire police force.  They end up hauling Reubens in, though.  Later in the film, Reubens does Pee-Wee in a comedy club scene.  He gets frustrated at Cheech & Chong's heckling, which leads to impromptu comedy bits from Cheech, Chong, and McClurg.  So, credit where credit is due - Cheech & Chong do let other comedians have their moments, which adds to the finished product.

I did kind of enjoy this one, although it's not on par with "Up in Smoke."  Part of it may be that there's not a level of freshness to the characters, but that's what happens over time.  On the other hand, they do know their audience, and deliver exactly what their fans want.  I respect that; hitting your nail squarely on the head is nothing to be ashamed of.

2.5 / 5 - NF Streaming

The Blues Brothers - 1980

"The Blues Brothers (Collector's Edition)" - 1980
Dir. by John Landis - 2 hrs. 28 min.

25th Anniversary DVD Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

One of the things that strikes me about "The Blues Brothers" is that the entire thing is about teasing a reveal.  The opening sequence in the extended version (released on DVD in 2005, it's 18 minutes longer than the theatrical cut) runs for a full 7 minutes before you even get a clear shot of John Belushi's face.  I'm not quite sure, but it also seems that you never even see Belushi's eyes until after they've played their big concert, and the brothers are fleeing in a tunnel.  That's something like an hour forty-five into the movie!

There are other examples of this - Carrie Fisher's character repeatedly attempting to attack Joliet Jake with heavy armament with no explanation.  Even the other characters in the movie don't even seem to react, as if it's a daily occurrence to be shot at with a bazooka.  The police, even when buried in rubble from an attack, don't even acknowledge it.  The explanation comes right before Belushi finally takes off his Ray-Bans.

In contrast, there are moments where things are taken to excess; not one, but two police chases ending in dozens of wrecked cruisers, a car containing Nazis dropped literally from a mile in the sky, seemingly full armies chasing down the brothers.

The whole thing sounds pretty simple - get a couple of comedians at the top of their game, stack the movie with great musicians and let them do their thing.  Drop in a couple of car chases to keep people's attention.  But if that could work, a movie like "The New Guy" (also littered with musician cameos) would be an instant classic.  It's just as easy to see why "The Blues Brothers" is a classic, but the reason that sticks with me is that the movie doesn't look like a comedy, and the actors don't act like they're in a comedy.  Again, if this was easy to pull off, everyone would be doing it.  Characters have a clearly defined motivation, and act towards that goal.  When there's a new setting, director John Landis makes sure that you see it and understand where they are.  He keeps the camera at a distance (no tight shots for mugging at the camera) because it's more important how the other characters in the movie react to Jake and Elwood than them tossing off lines and making faces.  Even the performance scenes keep their distance a bit - as a viewer, you need to believe that the Blues Brothers can command a 5,000 seat venue, so Landis lets them.

I know that sounds revolutionary, to actually let performers do what they do best, and maybe it is.  But when you get the right talent in place, it's as much of a skill to know when to get the hell out of the way.

Even though the extended cut of the movie runs nearly two and a half hours, it doesn't feel that long because of the musical interludes.  I don't think there's that many people now who would have debated the greatness of Aretha Franklin or James Brown, but my mind boggles as to how a disco-crazy audience might have reacted at the time.  Heresy, likely.

So yeah, this one is pretty funny, and you might want to check it out.

5 / 5 - DVD