Too much mojo

AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME (1999)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The original "Austin Powers" was no great shakes but it was more fun than this monotonous, joyless sequel. That is not to say that this is a bad film - there are moments of great black humor - but it is too long, disjointed, gross, and silly to make me want to get involved in any future Austin Powers adventures.

The film starts off well with hairy-chested, 60's reject Austin (Mike Myers) having a romp in the hay with a beautiful Elizabeth Hurley. It turns out she is a Fem-Robot and fires bullets from her nipples!!! Then we are treated to a hysterical, off-the-wall dance number with Austin's derriere serving as the butt of jokes, no pun intended. Then there is the mysterious Dr. Evil (Mike Myers, again) who is soft-spoken and fights with a Ku Klux Klan member at a Jerry Springer show. His dastardly plans are to go back in time to the 1960's and steal Austin's mojo - his forceful sexual prowess in liquid form! Why Dr. Evil wants it, and plans on destroying Washington, D.C. with a death ray from a "Death Star," I am not sure.

Austin's shenanigans with the beautiful and sexy spy Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham) make up for some of the film's dead spots. There is an uncomfortably unfunny Scottish henchman named Fat Bastard (an unrecognizable Mike Myers) who smells and humps and thumps like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The joke involving his feces is as grossly underimagined as you might think, but this character quickly grows tiresome and has none of the spark of Myer's Scottish father in the underrated "So I Married an Axe Murderer."

Heather Graham seems to have been on a slump since her success with "Boogie Nights," and here she is bland and seemingly unfit for the crazy universe she is in. She looks bored each time she shares a scene with Austin. When Graham dulls my senses in a movie, you know you are in cinematic trouble.

"Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" works best when Dr. Evil appears and his counterpart, Mini-Me, and thus I enjoyed their conference scenes. I also liked Seth Green as Dr. Evil's spoiled son, and it is a pleasure to see a cameo by Tim Robbins as the President of the United States. But Myers unfolds his bag of tricks and jokes prematurely and his one-note persona ("Crazy, baby, yeah" or "Shall we shag?") grows repetitious. I was ready to say to Austin, "Zip it." Save for some brilliantly funny gags and one-liners, "Austin Powers" is too dependable on his mojo to really work.

A S#*t Shift

NIGHT SHIFT (1982)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

 

"Night Shift" has great comic ideas but it never fully realizes them. It is the kind of comedy that believes its ideas are good enough for laughs by definition, yet it never proves why.

Henry Winkler is Chuck Lumley, a quiet morgue attendant who reluctantly works a night shift. He needs his peace and quiet until he gets a new partner named Bill (Michael Keaton, in his debut performance). Bill is the kind of incessant pain-in-the-neck who's always talking about harebrained ideas, like feeding tuna to fish! To make matters worse, Bill uses their hearse for his limousine service. Chuck's home life is no big improvement, including living with a fiancee who thinks she is too fat and suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder (in the days before such a term was coined). Finally, there is Belinda (Shelley Long), a hooker with a heart of gold, who no longer has a pimp since he's been murdered. So Chuck and Bill decide to be her pimp, as well as service a bunch of other hookers with a benefits package! The pimping business and the limousine service are run at the morgue, including indulging in wild parties.

"Night Shift" sports a certain ingenuity in its setting and wild comic premise. The end result, however, doesn't elicit much in the way of a comedy or a black comedy. The fault lies with the screenplay, which hardly milks any laughs out of its plot or characters. Director Ron Howard often shows sincerity in a plot that doesn't require it. And a subplot about a pair of pimp killers (one of them is played by stand-up comic and "Law and Order" star Richard Belzer) who want a piece of the action seems to come from another movie altogether.

Henry Winkler is no real help either, showing indifference to the situations around him. Except for a hysterically funny scene involving Keaton with a tape recorder, there are no big laughs to be had. Michael Keaton reaches high but never fully delivers - being terminally annoying is not funny. Same with the miscasting of Shelley Long as the TOO NICE hooker - so nice that she is hardly credible as a New York streetwalker. Meg Ryan would have been a better choice.

The movie picks up some pace towards the end when Chuck suddenly goes ballistic as everything around him crumbles. It is the smartest move in a movie that is fatally inert at its core with indifference being the key word. My advice: sleep it off during the graveyard shift.

Patents: The first real WAR in movies

NICKELODEON (1976)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Nickelodeon" looks and feels like a warmed-over nostalgia piece. It is suffused with a sepia-toned glow and it reminds us of a different time and place when movies were just mere entertainments you could watch for a nickle. Peter Bogdanovich, a master craftsman, is the right director for this type of film, but the spirit and joy are missing.

Set in the 1910's, Ryan O'Neal is Leo Harrigan, an attorney who is close to losing a case involving assault. He somehow stumbles into a movie producer (Brian Keith) who urges him to write a film about a Texas Ranger (how this happens is part of the fun of the movie's few contrivances). After working in the film industry for many years, O'Neal turns from writer to director. Over some unfortunate mishaps (some of which are funny), O'Neal's luggage gets switched with a movie stuntman and horse rider's luggage, Buck Greenway (Burt Reynolds), and both men vie for the same breathless beauty, Kathleen Cooke (Jane Hitchcock) who has one pratfall after another because she is nearsighted. Meanwhile, slasptick ensues and we get a klansman on stage that gets cheers from the audience (times have changed); a tough little girl with a rattlesnake (Tatum O'Neal); more misplaced luggage scenes; the premiere of D. W. Griffith's notorious "Birth of a Nation"; actors putting on blackface, and not a heck of a lot more.

"Nickelodeon" is mostly aimless and inert, despite a game cast that includes John Ritter and Stella Stevens. Burt Reynolds comes off best, showing ample Southern charm that illustrates what a colorful character actor he might have become. Ryan O'Neal is so transparent that you could throw him through a sieve and he'd still be intact. Tatum O'Neal mostly recedes in the background, occasionally yelling so we know she is there. And Jane Hitchcock is radiant to look at but the underwritten screenplay dissolves her before the end credits.

Bogdanovich has misdirected "Nickelodeon," shifting tone and rhythm without any regards to the thin story involving patents, the first "real war in movies." There is one clever long take where we see several tents strung together with a different movie made in each one. It is such a good scene that I'd almost recommend it, but it is hardly enough.

Teabagging Pecker is more fun than watching Pecker

PECKER (1998)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 1999)

There are always films that you are better off renting on video than seeing at a theater. "Pink Flamingos" is one of those films that I wish I had seen in a theater - it's designed for the midnight movie circuit. "Pecker" is one of those films designed for the Staten Island trash circuit. It is not meant to be seen in any cinematic form. It is so thoroughly revolting and unfunny that I have to hold my breath to remind myself that director John Waters made it. Revolting may not be the best term to use for "Pecker," since John Waters used to be the king of bad taste (hence "Pink Flamingos"). I am more astonished by how putrid the writing and directing are in "Pecker" - it has no redeeming value whatsoever.

This trash concerns a kid named Pecker (Edward Furlong), who works at a sandwich store in the run-down section of Baltimore. He constantly snaps photos of everything he sees, including steaks; his girlfriend's breasts; his sugar freak sister; a group of men "teabagging" customers at a local club; his best friend (Brendan Sexton III) posing before shoplifting from supermarkets; his grandmother's Virgin Mary statue, and on and on...but is any of this funny or remotely engaging? No.

Before you know it, Pecker is discovered by a New York art dealer (Lili Taylor) and becomes a media sensation, as does his whole family. He appears on the cover of Vogue magazine, invites comparisons to Diane Arbus, and attracts the attention of the famous photographer Cindy Sherman! But this story of how fame and fortune can be more damaging than staying true to yourself is a theme that has been done to death, and Waters does nothing to keep it new, fresh or interesting.

The actors are embarrassingly bland and uninvolving, including the always sprightly Lili Taylor. Furlong exudes little charisma or depth, and Christina Ricci as Pecker's girlfriend - an expert on stains - is needlessly over-the-top and unintelligible at times. The only actor that delivers an ounce of wit is Waters regular Mink Stole, as a voting booth attendant - she makes the screen sparkle for the few seconds she appears.

"Pecker" is brainless, unrewarding junk that will make you wince at how shockingly bad it is. Almost every scene is flatly staged and acted. Along with "Cry-Baby," this is Waters at the extreme bottom-of-the-barrel level.

Spike Lee's Kickstarter campaign!

Spike Lee's Kickstarter campaign!

By Jerry Saravia

Spike Lee recently started a Kickstarter campaign to receive completion funds (1.25 million) to finance his new film, "Da Blood of Jesus," a film about people addicted to blood (this may or may not be a vampire film). Check out my thoughts below on Lee's campaign and other notable Kickstarter campaigns, some which may make your hair curl!

Radically dull John Waters

CECIL B. DEMENTED (2000)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
(originally written in 2001)

I am not sure what to make of John Waters at this point. The witty Baltimore trash director who opened the world's eyes with the fabulously disgusting "Pink Flamingos" has followed that hit with more lows than highs. For every "Hairspray" and "Serial Mom," there were travesties to cinematic decency such as "Cry-Baby" and "Pecker." "Cecil B. Demented" shows me a director who is sinking to such a low extreme that I found myself trying to come up for air repeatedly.

Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorff) is a no-budget film director/cult leader who along with his crew, known as the "Sprocket Holes," kidnap a famous movie star, Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith), and force her to star in their own demented production. Cecil's intent is to shoot a film titled "Raging Beauty" about outlaw filmmakers who bust in and out of multiplexes, production meetings and more multiplexes to proclaim their rant that Hollywood, basically, sucks! Their hostage, Honey with a peroxide hairdo, will help them fight their cause by threatening everyone with a gun and ranting their philosophies such as "Death to those who support mainstream cinema!"

"The Sprocket Holes" are a motley crew of punkish, insufferably smug character types that include Cherish (Alicia Witt), an incest victim who is also a former porno star; a drug addict named Lyle (Adrienne Grenier) who consumes all substances and plays the leading man in Demented's film, and Rodney (Jack Noseworthy), the hair stylist who hates being heterosexual. There is also a makeup artist, Raven (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a Satanic worshipper who adores Kenneth Anger and Aleister Crowley, and a butch female cinematographer and producer, and so on. None of these characters elicit much interest or inspiration. They come across as flat caricatures.

In the end, that may be the problem with John Waters. His last excruciating film, "Pecker", was so flatly staged that it induced boredom more than anything else. There is no drive, no energy, no real sense of movement in this film either. You get the sense that Waters only filmed one take of every scene with no punch or irony. Of course, none of that would matter if the film was funny but it is decidedly not. The fundamental question is: who is Waters really attacking in this film? It may seem like Hollywood but that is a moot point when you consider savagely funny satires such as "The Player", "Living in Oblivion" and "My Life's in Turnaround," to name but a few. Also consider how in the last few years, independent films have become almost as mainstream as Hollywood. Has Waters heard of Miramax, which is literally Hollywood in the East Coast, the same company that produced "The English Patient"? The term "indie" has been abused so often that the line between Hollywood and independent is very thin. And what company has produced Waters latest? Well, it is Artisan Entertainment, the same company that puts its label on a new video edition of Schwarzeneger's "The Terminator"!

"Cecil B. Demented" is simply not demented enough or savage enough to really attack its targets and so as satire, it fails miserably. The actors shout and rant but with little purpose or ingenuity. The film ends with a crowd forming around the drive-in showing of Honey's last Hollywood opus while Cecil and his demented group go around having sex with each other while the cops shoot at them. It may seem radical but I would call it desperate at best.

J Lost in her own Ghost World

MY FIRST MISTER (2001)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Leelee Sobieski has an earthy, ethereal presence that makes you fall in love with her. She has narrowly shaped-eyes that can see what you are really thinking, and you feel wrong to tell her anything but the truth. Sobieski is perfectly cast in "My First Mister," and yet she is miscast. How can this be? I am not sure but the last thing I'd ever expect her to play is a Goth chick who scribbles endless versions of her own eulogy. She is not Goth the way that Fairuza Balk would be and has been. There is something deeply disturbing and irksome about Sobieski in this film and yet something soulful and serene about her. Putting it midly, she is the star of the show.

Sobieski plays Jennifer, or "J" as she prefers, a cynical, misunderstood and misunderstanding teenage girl who listens to punk rock music, writes poetic phrases about death (and pricks her finger to make bloody marks on the pages), dresses in black, has dozens of piercings (though not on any private parts), and wears her hair in shades of black and purple. She despises her mother (Carol Kane) for being so blandly happy, dismisses her stepfather (Michael McKean), hates her real father, a stoner (John Goodman), and basically feels alienated from her high school peers and teachers (she even imagines a teacher with fangs snarling at her). Who can this girl relate to?

One fine day, after getting fired from her job, she meets a meek, anal retentive man named Randall (Albert Brooks) who owns a clothing store at the local mall. She tries to get a job at the store and he dismisses her. Slowly, though, after making crude remarks about his beer belly, they develop an unusual friendship based on mutual needs. Both of them are loners and they begin to know each other intimately. Randall sees a forlorn teenager who needs someone to listen to her. Jennifer sees Randall as a man who cannot relate to anyone based on fear of people, and who would rather settle for an evening reading a magazine than having a conversation. They open their eyes to each other's faults and misgivings about people in their lives, including lovers, ex-wives, and crazy parents.

"My First Mister" is nothing new but it has a stunningly good premise. A punk rock teenager who could get her "eyeballs pierced" sharing small talk with a straight-as-an-arrow store manager is ripe for good laughs, and I do mean as comedic material. Of course, opposites do attract but, in the real world, it is unlikely such a union could take place (or maybe I do not get out much at the local malls). I had a hard time believing that this could develop into a relationship beyond sharing small talk, and I think I was right. First-time director Christine Lahti (who won an Academy Award for a short film she directed) directs everything in the first hour with ease and just enough pizazz to make us wonder where this strange relationship will go. Unfortunately, as with most similar tales, it takes a route headed into that deadly maudlin road where forgiveness is possible and people can change 180 degrees from their initial behavior. Let's consider Jennifer for a moment - she talks about killing herself and she wounds herself with sharp objects. Randall notices all this so the logical solution would be that Jennifer needs help, or is merely crying for help. Or she is just a rebel without a cause? A goth chick who makes a mockery out of any and everyone suddenly warms up to Randall because he is so lonely? Something doesn't quite click here. Either A.) Make Jennifer just a hopeless rebel goth chick who has a talent for poetry and needs to belong to something or B.) Make her a mental case who needs help fast. Both ideas coincide uneasily and the problem with this kind of screenwriting is that it assumes the audience has amnesia. The Jennifer at the start of the film and at the end of the film seem to be two different people.

And surprisingly enough, "My First Mister" warrants a viewing because of Leelee Sobieski. No matter how many left turns the script takes, Leelee stole my heart and made me wish her character would better her life (the scene where she reconciles with her mother, though, left a lot to be desired). I would have eliminated the character of Randall's son completely, and focused on other aspects of Randall (like his relationship with the nurse played by Mary Kay Place). Anything but the son which seems to come from a different movie. Lovely Leelee and Albert Brooks make it worthwile in the long run. Still, for a movie that begins like the phenomenal "Ghost World" only to end up as a Lifetime special is pushing credibility a little too far.