Blast from the Past: Greenlee Gazette's Favorite Comedy Movies (Part 1)

There are so many, I can't narrow them down to just one batch. So here is the first in (at least) two parts!






#1 and #2-3/4 - Airplane! and The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (#1 - 3) - I'm combining these movies because the video I found does the same. In truth, Airplane! is at the top of the heap, and the Naked Gun series slots in slightly down the list. But I defy you to get any of these four movies, and not laugh. It's my litmus test for a sense of humor.

#3 - What's Up, Doc? - One of the funniest movies of the 70s starred (at their physical peaks) Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand, not to mention Madeline Kahn in her introductory role, Kenneth Mars, John Hillerman, Phyllis Albertson, Sorrell Brooke and Randy Quaid. It's a comic masterpiece, and if you don't think so, well. . .there's no hope for you. Represented here by one of the few embeddable videos I could find, a blooper reel.

#4 - Top Secret! - From the wonderful ZAZ! team (before David Zucker lost his ever-loving mind) was this under appreciated comic masterpiece, starring Val Kilmer at his absolute best. Not to be missed.

#5 - Ruthless People - Again, ZAZ! in one of their more straight-ahead comedies, produced this gem, starring Danny Devito and Bette Midler. It's one of the funniest movies of the 80s.

#6 - Young Frankenstein - Surely one of the most artistic and well-executed spoof movies of all time, Young Frankenstein marks the pinnacle (along with Blazing Saddles) of both Mel Brooks' and Gene Wilders' careers. Nothing short of perfection. Frau Blucher!!!

#7 - Blazing Saddles - Of course, with the last entry, I couldn't forget this one. Not only is this a spectacular spoof, an fantastic skewering of racism, and a masterful bit of film making. . .it's also a pop culture touchstone for its generation. Along with Young Frankenstein, this movie is so full of talent, so jam-packed with jokes and one-liners, the two films may have more quotable lines than any ten other movies.

DVD Review: Bug and Baghead

Today I decided to pull two movies from my over-stocked video library that I had not previously watched. I stopped at the Bs, selecting Baghead (an "official selection" of the Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals, whatever that means) and Bug starring Ashley Judd.  I expected Baghead to be odd, and Bug to be scary.  Both were just odd.

I wrote a DVD review earlier this weekend, and commented that no matter what two movies I watch, there is almost always a connecting link between the two. I searched for what it might be in these two disparate selections, and only found this: the blurbs and descriptions on the DVD boxes are woefully fiction-based.  Let's start with Baghead:

Images from Wikipedia

". . .a wildly funny parody of low-budget horror cinema. . ."--David D'Arcy SCREEN DAILY

Wildly funny? No, not one laugh to be had. Parody of low-budget? How about just low-budget. Horror cinema? Was this supposed to be scary?

"The funniest spoof of horror film of the year!"

I don't know what "horror film of the year" was in 2006, but if this is a spoof of it, they failed miserably.

"Beware of Baghead"

Yes, by all means, beware!

"A really, really good film."--Don R. Lewis, FILM THREAT

In what world? Baghead is a meandering, almost plotless film, ostensibly about a group of friends (two sort-of couples) who go to a cabin in the woods to write a feature film that they're all going to star in, and become famous.  The two men, chunky Steve Zissis and hunky Ross Partridge, are good enough actors but hardly A-list material. The two women, Greta Gerwig and Elise Muller, are just terrible.  While at the cabin, one of the girls has a dream of a stalker in a bag mask, and they decide to turn that into their movie idea. So apparently, a Friday the 13th ripoff is their ticket to fame! But maybe it wasn't a dream? It really doesn't matter, because finding out is a tedious, mind-numbing (and thanks to the camera work, dizzying) affair.  Baghead is credited as "A Duplass Brothers Movie," which leads me to wonder, is that bragging, or is it a warning?

Bug's blurbs aren't much better:

"Very possibly William Friedkin's best movie. A stunning performance by Ashley Judd!"--Richard Schickel, TIME.com

No, The Exorcist is very possibly Friedkin's best. This one is not.  And while Ashley Judd did give this performance her all, "stunning" wouldn't be my adjective. "Insane" or "screaming" would be good.

"One of the most disturbing horror movies imaginable"--Stephen Schaefer, BOSTON HERALD

Disturbing? No, confusing. Horror movie? It wasn't scary, not one bit.

"Searingly intense"--Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

I respect Ebert's opinion, and can only assume this one is taken out of context. It is intense in parts, but that tension comes at the expense of a very, very odd plot.

Bug is a much more mainstream film, at least from its actors (including Harry Connick, Jr.), its director, and such.  The talent behind and in front of the camera is not the problem in this one.  If the film were billed as a psychological drama, I may have gone in with a different mindset.  It was billed as a horror film by the director of The Exorcist, and blurbed as better than that!  No way, no how.  To review it much beyond what I've said would be to "spoil" it, were such a thing possible. Let's just say it doesn't go where you expect, there isn't much about it that is pleasant (beyond the nudity of the lead actors, though this sadly doesn't include Connick), and it will leave you rather unsatisfied at the end.

Another unifying theme between Baghead and Bug:  during both films, there was a point where I contemplated just ejecting the DVD part-way in. I should have.  Verdict:  Avoid both.

Frivolity Break: Iron Baby!

I'm not much for cute baby videos, but this one is better than most!

DVD Review: An American Carol

Let me start out by saying that some of my very favorite movies are those made by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker (known affectionately as ZAZ), together or separately. Airplane!, Top Secret!, Hot Shots! (Part I and Part Deux), The Naked Gun series and Ruthless People have held spots in my video library in VHS, LaserDisc and DVD versions. I've watched them all many, many times.

Later works have been a little less classic (Scary Movie 3 and 4). But there's still some good stuff in there. Something happened to parody movies over the last decade or so. First, it seems like anyone thinks they can do it. Second, movie makers somehow got the idea that just putting Leslie Nielsen into a film would automatically make it funny. And lastly, even the old hands (Mel Brooks, David Zucker) seem to have forgotten what is funny. Case in point is An American Carol.

Somewhere along the way, David Zucker not only became a conservative, he decided that he could make it funny. He was sooo wrong. Or actually, trying to make a conservative's idea of what liberals think just isn't funny. At least not to a liberal. There must be some nugget of truth in comedy for it to work, and that's a big problem with this film.

The film centers on a film maker modeled after Michael Moore, played by the late Chris Farley's brother Kevin. The film maker hates everything about America, and all the patriotic trappings. He hates the military, boy scouts, and the 4th of July. Moore himself, in real life, is none of those things. But conservatives think he is. So basically, this film is a parody of a perception, which is kind of strange.

Eventually, after much pointless (and not terribly funny) slapstick, the film segues into a take-off of A Christmas Carol. Transposing the idea to Independence Day from Christmas is sort of jarring. And honestly, the story has had so many takeoffs over the years--from other movies to just about every long-running TV series for the past 30 years--it's pretty worn-out territory. Farley is serviceable as Moore, and the acting in the film is not the problem. It's what they're given to work with that is the problem.

Cameos and larger parts are made by several recognizable actors, including almost every well-known conservative actor in Hollywood. Kelsey Grammar, Kevin Sorbo, Leslie Nielsen, Dennis Hopper, James Woods, Robert Davi, David Alan Grier, Jon Voit and many others turn up. None of them is bad in their part. But, not only does almost every joke land with a thud (and the subtlety of an anvil), the subject of the humor never rises above the late un-lamented 1/2-hour News Hour from FOX "News."

Leslie Nielsen--one of my all-time favorites in about half his films--may be getting a little too old for this kind of thing. He plays "Grandpa" but looks like "Great Grandpa"--at least. Grammar as Gen. George S. Patton (an actual relative of mine) is the closest thing to funny in the whole picture. That has a lot more to do with him being a pro, than it does with the material he's given. Farley's character is so nasty and vile, I'm surprised Moore didn't sue for defamation. And I was just embarrassed for Grier as a slave in a "what if Lincoln didn't fight the Civil War" present day.

A 1968 musical number could have been funny, but suffers from the central problem: it's centered around what conservatives imagine that liberals believe. Parody is all about exaggeration. But this doesn't exaggerate the truth, it exaggerates ideas that exist only in the minds of the far-right's fevered imaginations. The very premise of a prominent liberal wanting to abolish the 4th of July is completely out of right-wing world. I'm aware that the film is intended for conservative audiences, not for me. But do even conservatives find this funny?

I should mention that I bought this DVD in a three-for-$10 bin at Hollywood Video. $3.33 is more than the film is worth though, sadly. The film pulled in a dismal $7 million (though it had a budget of $20 million), so I guess I'm not alone. I'm not sure how well the DVD itself did, but as a graphic artist, I must say the cover sucks. And that's being generous. The blurbs don't quite sell it, and the lack of a major studio's name anywhere on the box makes me wonder how this thing even got to DVD.

An American Carol is worse than Date Movie or even Disaster Movie bad. It's The Happening bad.

My review: Don't even get it for $3 just to see how bad it is. Just take my word for it.