Parenthood + The Rocketeer + Moving Violations

PARENTHOOD
(PG-13, Universal Pictures, 124 mins., theatrical release date: May 26, 1989)

Gil Buckman seems like a former latchkey kid frantically seeking out the door for his own young son. In his head, he still feels the disappointment of his own paterfamilias taking him to baseball games without the added element of bonding, except for when dad has paid off a stranger to talk to him. Decades later, and close to his own family in ways his father never was, Gil is happier, more confident and surprisingly well-adjusted, and he wants things to pan out similarly for nine-year-old Kevin, whom he coaches on the Little League team and who is exhibiting signs of abnormal psychology which Gil and his wife Karen cannot rationalize.

This is but one of several generational anxieties which unfold in Ron Howard's Parenthood, where well-meaning adults butt heads with the inevitable dysfunction practically hereditary in nature. Gil, not unlike his father (as well as Mr. Howard), has a family of four to his credit and his three siblings are also at loggerheads with responsibility. The youngest, Larry, is black sheep cloth all the way, chasing after easy money through schemes and wagers but with an illegitimate child whom he brings to Thanksgiving dinner as a sign of his supposed well-being. The two sisters, Helen and Susan, haven't run from their crises, whether it's concern over grooming a three-year-old as a hyper-intelligent prodigy or facing loneliness when son and daughter alike discover sex.

"It never, never ends," says Frank Buckman about the ties that bind. Luckily for Howard, Parenthood is far breezier and good-humored than the retiring head of the bustling Buckmans. Nowadays, Steve Martin has parlayed Gil Buckman into a new life as family movie figurehead and Ron Howard's done his own dirty work with the novels of Dan Brown. In 1989, Parenthood was a sign of growth for both these showbiz stalwarts. The young star of American Graffiti and Happy Days was at his peak a few films deep into his career as director, which began under Roger Corman's auspices (Grand Theft Auto) and encapsulated Night Shift, Splash, Cocoon, and Willow. Martin, meanwhile, saw his face-pulling legacy balloon into genuine stardom by 1987 thanks to Roxanne and Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

But Parenthood is an ensemble piece, with as much proven talent as well as rising newcomers across the board. Oscar-winners Mary Steenburgen and Dianne Wiest under the same roof as SCTV's mega-talented Rick Moranis and Tom (Amadeus) Hulce. Goonies standout Martha Plimpton acting opposite her Running on Empty co-star's kid brother Leaf (Joaquin) Phoenix as well as Keanu Reeves. Jason Robards on one end, Harley Jane Kozak at the other. Child actors who'd go on to the likes of 1990's excellent The Witches, John Hughes' final directorial effort and...erm, Problem Child 2. There's also Dennis Dugan and Clint Howard, for what it's worth, too.

Reeves is the most interesting of the bunch, his performance as "That Tod" (whom Wiest's Helen refers to derogatorily) completing the trio of hilarious breakout roles Reeves launched himself with. At first, Tod comes off like another cad boyfriend who can't balance allegiance to Helen's daughter Julie (Ms. Plimpton) and ambitions of stock car racing. He inspires a particularly blunt mother-daughter exchange due to his negligence, but turns out to have more noble qualities than even the supremely disappointing Larry (Mr. Hulce). Tod even breaks the shell of Helen's moody young son Garry (Phoenix), whose rebellious pastime is coveting porno tapes in defiance of both his eager, distressed mom and the absentee dentist dad who wants nothing to do with him. He's hep to the same spiritual awareness as Gil, but in his own recklessly youthful way.

Harley Kozak had previously done walk-on parts (Clean and Sober) as well as one vintage slasher effort (The House on Sorority Row), but proves to be a find herself as Susan. She's paired with Moranis' Nathan Huffner, an orderly intellectual who has taken to child rearing with scientific madness. "They're like sponges just waiting to absorb," he tells Gil after wee Patty (Ivyann Schwan) demonstrates her precocious mathematical skills. Nathan fills his pint-sized vessel with all manner of intellectual and cultural delicacies at the expense of his wife's restlessness over having a second child as well as training the firstborn to be more sociable. Nathan, like his wisecracking brother-in-law, is chasing blindly after his own ideals of parental perfection.

Parenthood in Parenthood is a game of extremes. If Gil succeeds in his own affections toward Kevin (Jasen Fisher), he grows up as a model college graduate ready to take on the world. Should Gil fail, Kevin is tomorrow's terrorist, shouting "You made me play second base!" as he picks off another of his campus mates from the bell tower. Gil is so hung up on his pride that in both imagined outcomes, his doting wife Karen (Ms. Steenburgen) is nowhere to be found, let alone the adult analogues of his other children. Not that Gil is totally selfish, as he rescues Kevin's birthday party when the cowboy balloon artist they've hired is waylaid by a scheduling snafu. He genuinely loves Karen as well as Taylor (Alisan Porter) and Justin (Zachary Lavoy), but as the school psychiatrists have it in for Kevin, Gil sees Kevin's adolescence as a one-man crusade to avoid the failures of father Frank (Mr. Robards).

And then there's the phenomenal Dianne Wiest (nominated here for an Academy Award following her deserving win on Hannah and Her Sisters) as Helen, a bundle of nerves and repository of the script's most honest dialogue. A single mother who cannot hide the scars from her divorce, Helen puts on a brave face even as her children out-sophisticate her and the advice she tries to offer gets subverted. A romance with Garry's biology teacher Mr. Bowman (Paul Linke) hints at salvation and satisfaction not battery-powered, but she needs to find common ground with teenage Julie as well as grade schooler Garry. Wiest's droll realism rivals Martin's own sardonic humor, whether Helen's flipping through photos of Julie & Tod's bedroom antics or putting the odds to their impromptu wedding and pregnancy.

Much like Patty, Parenthood is itself a sponge which collects all the foibles and neuroses between Ron Howard, producer Brian Grazer and Howard's frequent writing partners, Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel, family men all. Their success with Parenthood is one which most MOR filmmakers have since had the hardest time trying to replicate, the union of broad comic vignettes with hard-earned emotional honesty. Howard's deft touch with light/heavy-hearted character interactions is on constant display, especially whenever Frank alternates between protecting his youngest son Larry, who is the true chip off the old block, and revealing his own guilt to Gil. Rich with one-liners as Parenthood is, many of those mingle with moments of devastation and cruelty, particularly in the scenes between Helen and her children.

Episodic and sitcom-sterile as it may look, Parenthood's storylines have more than enough bite to belie the size. An ambiguity hangs over the many strained relationships Howard and his crew depict. Larry is desperately trying to recoup overdue gambling debts to the point where he sneaks out his father's 1935 Ford DeLuxe to get it appraised. Both he and Frank share more quality time together than they are willing to spare for Larry's son Cool (Alex Burrall), whose mother was an ebony showgirl with whom Larry had a one-night stand. Frank tries to set his reckless son on the straight-and-narrow with a well-thought compromise, inducting Larry into his plumbing supplies business, but it turns out to be a bitter failure. The circular drama which finds Frank essentially adopting the fatherless Cool is understated but powerful.

There are many strands like these woven throughout. Gil is disgusted when he is passed over for a lucrative partnership to a man with shady child support practices, and he quits his job hoping for a righteous allegiance to family only to discover Karen is bearing his fourth child. "Women have choices, men have responsibilities," he protests in a tense moment, although he will have an epiphany that will let him concede in peace in a way Larry stubbornly denies. Susan will leave the supercilious Nathan feeling that romance is gone, and Nathan's sincerely embarrassing atonement is endearing though not a proper resolution. Helen and Julie stand by each other as Tod makes his disastrous racing debut, and contrary to Frank's negative philosophy, Kevin does something on the Little League field that allows Gil the opportunity to do the rare "happy dance."

Triumphs are where you can find them, often small but immensely gratifying, which is certainly a characterization of real adulthood. This culminates in a waiting room finale which is also a touch pat but is best taken as a warm victory for one of the many expecting mothers in the movie, including Karen and Julie (and the biologically anxious Susan, who pricks holes in her diaphragm). It also feels like one more group portrait of unified contentment before the pain and pleasure waves start crashing down all over again. "It never, never ends," indeed. If you are as invested in the characters as I, there's bound to be more squabbles and soul-searching to match the many bundles of joy.

Steve Martin would finally become a father in his 67th year, but he fits well in Ron Howard's suburban surroundings. A lot of it is the reflexive wit and outrage Martin brings out in Gil, but there is also his priceless Cowboy Gil routine, dressed up in modified rugs and boasting kitchen utensils for spurs. He's always been a marvelous physical goof, and that side of Martin gets to play regularly, but like in his Hughes collaboration, Martin calibrates it to the moods of his character. He bounces well off the beaming Steenburgen (the inspiration for Randy Newman's "I Love to See You Smile") and has one choice moment with Moranis, his Little Shop of Horrors/My Blue Heaven companion. If the picture lost something in order to fit it into two hours, one wonders if it was more time spent between Gil and Nathan, who share kindred woman troubles that a nice double date could fix. 

Parenthood is a film of constant interactivity which has been calibrated very exquisitely by Howard and his team. You get the "Diarrhea" sing-a-long, improper bedtime attire and vomit gag early on to ease you into the more potent adult-oriented comedy which immediately follows and the unabashed gem of a birthday party set piece. It works on a level of true cross-generational appeal which doesn't trivialize the subjects it condenses and embellishes, a testament to the skills of its large cast as well as its creative hub. No matter how desperate the characters become or how pressing the situations, Ron Howard loves to see them smile. And so do I.

THE ROCKETEER
(PG-13, Walt Disney Pictures, 108 mins., theatrical release date: June 21, 1991)

Clint Howard turns up in Parenthood as the archetypical ballgame loudmouth mocking Coach Buckman from behind the fence, but apparently he also appears in Joe Johnston's failed blockbuster The Rocketeer. Having watched the movie three times, I can't place Clint at all. Either he's the frustrated day player dressed in friar's robes storming off a movie set or the diminutive mobster on the right side of the frame during the final act showdown. He doesn't have a single line of dialogue and his unmistakable mug never commands the camera's attention. Still, when Clint Howard turned up to play the Ice Cream Man, what was the name of the preteen clique he tormented? It sure wasn't called the Rugheads.

Johnston, an ILM visual designer who graduated to associate producer for Ron Howard's Willow and finally director on Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, moulds The Rocketeer in the image of a Lucas/Spielberg adventure yarn. The time and place is southern California in 1938, taking off from the lavish recreation which kicked off Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom for feature length while incorporating tropes from Return of the Jedi and the inaugural Raiders of the Lost Ark. Cliff Secord, the Fearless Freep, tests the jet pack on his back in an attempt to rescue a drunken townie spinning out of control in the skies above only to skip across the pond once the device gets the better of him. When the forces of institutionalized evil come looking for Secord, the main threat turns out to be Nazis who covet the rocket for a marquee name spy.

Errol Flynn, W.C. Fields, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, and Rondo Hatton (cf. "Tiny Ron" Taylor as the slope-faced assassin Lothar) are all clearly evoked amongst its cast, but not Bettie Page. In the original Dave Stevens creation which premiered in 1982, a year after Raiders modernized our Republic Pictures past, Cliff Secord's girlfriend was modeled after the pre-Marilyn sex symbol who was in reality 15 years old in the era favored by Stevens. Not that the new model love interest Johnston's film subs in is any less achingly sexy: Jennifer Connelly, a former child actress turned 20-year-old knockout in Dennis Hopper's The Hot Spot, could've been the queen of pinups herself in 1991 on the strength of both The Rocketeer and the shrewdly/lewdly-marketed John Hughes throwaway Career Opportunities, had these two films performed better. 

The Rocketeer harkens back to the antiquated Commando Cody serials in which a tweak of the nipple knobs (thanks, J. Elvis Weinstein) allowed for a homegrown Superman changeover. No purple nurples or star-spangled tights for Cliff Secord, a gum-smacking model of boyish fearlessness who sees "borrowing" the experimental engine as a chance to revive his flagging fortunes as a pilot. In just the opening scene, his test run of a prize airplane, the Gee Bee, is rudely interrupted on the ground by one of the Cirrus X-3 rocket's gangster smugglers, who fires his tommy gun in the air and takes out one of the plane's legs. Secord, who can be self-absorbed and klutzy at odd intervals, listens to reason and even considers returning the Cirrus to the FBI before the jeopardy becomes expectedly personal.

Joe Johnston's hero caper, alas, was produced by Disney during an inter-company backlash dictated by Jeffrey Katzenberg in the wake of the faulty Dick Tracy blitzkrieg. The Rocketeer, which isn't as opulent as Warren Beatty's own pulp throwback, unravels on a small scale plotwise as opposed to budgetary. It operates on a strange kind of cult movie disposability where it looks sumptuous but tastes unfulfilling, and thrice have I watched it with rapt admiration but no lingering affection. The elements are all there for a transcendent if nostalgic crowd-pleaser on the order of the decade-old (at the time) Raiders of the Lost Ark, but they don't gel as craftily as they should.

Bill Campbell, who was romantically linked to Connelly off set and on, plays the hotdog stunt pilot Secord without setting off sparks in the manner of Harrison Ford or Mark Hamill (it's more a problem with the script than the capable performer). Timothy Dalton, fresh off his double 007 duty, gleefully sinks his teeth into the role of swashbuckling warmonger Neville Sinclair yet minus the humor he got to demonstrate a decade later in Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz. Paul Sorvino, who was also in Dick Tracy, is the all-American mobster who holds his own against the vain Sinclair. And as Howard Hughes, presented as the brain behind the rocket pack which lands in Secord's hangar, Terry (The Stepfather) O'Quinn is as commendable as ever. 

The Rocketeer's true marvels are of the visual kind, however. Johnston, who'd later launch the Captain America franchise during the modern comic book superhero boom, orchestrates a few pips of set pieces as grand as anything past its $40 million price tag. You can't deny the brilliance of the production design whether its the small town Bulldog Café which Secord and his mentor Peevy (Alan Arkin) frequent alongside ole reliable William Sanderson or the more ritzy South Seas Club which the devious Sinclair takes Secord's day player paramour Jenny Blake (Connelly) to upon overhearing the true identity of the famous Rocketeer (his headline-dominating name coined by Jon Polito as Bigelow). And I loved the animated newsreel of doom which lays out the Third Reich's plans of jet-propelled conquest more convincingly than all of the dialogue which involves Sinclair. It reminded me of Brad Bird's The Iron Giant, which was more confident in its Spielbergian heritage than The Rocketeer. 

MOVING VIOLATIONS
(PG-13, Twentieth Century Fox, 90 mins., theatrical release date: April 19, 1985)

Moving Violations, alas, confirms the nagging suspicion I had about the writing team of Neal Israel & Pat Proft plagiarizing the blockbuster legacy of producer Ivan Reitman. In just three examples: 1) they still can't write a role worthy of the real Bill Murray, so this time, they've caved into nepotism and hired Bill's younger brother John for a deliberate imitation; 2) not content to rehash their own Police Academy, which was already coasting on borrowed Stripes, the finale of Moving Violations is a direct steal from National Lampoon's Animal House (there's also a motivational speech from John Murray that is clearly a half-assed echo of John Belushi's legendary "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?!" spiel); 3) the Israel-directed Moving Violations demonstrates not only that the success of the same year's Real Genius was attributable to outsider Martha Coolidge, but that even Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment managed fresher comedy with a new creative hub as well as the unforgettable screen debut of Bobcat Goldthwait.

Bob Zemeckis regular Wendie Jo Sperber starred in the uproarious Used Cars five years prior to this, Sally Kellerman benefited as much as Rodney did by going Back to School the next summer and Fred Willard, who is the lone spark of comic life to be found in Moving Violations, was previously in This Is Spinal Tap. Brian Backer plays another lovesick dweeb as if to remind us that the worthier Fast Times at Ridgemont High would forever be his career highlight. Ned Eisenberg (who co-starred with Backer in 1981's The Burning) does the goofy gorehound shtick owned by Dean Cameron's Chainsaw in Summer School. James Keach was in Walter Hill's The Long Riders (opposite brother Stacy) and National Lampoon's Vacation. Jennifer Tilly would become a worthy comedienne on the basis of Let It Ride and Liar Liar.

I named all these actors and their past or future accomplishments to stress one simple point: You could see them all do much better than Moving Violations. I've already listed a dozen funnier movies, 13 if you want to be kind to Police Academy. At least that had some surefire R-rated set pieces, a more amiable batch of misfit stereotypes and the vocal talents of Michael Winslow as Larvell Jones, who I know can do a better Bill Murray impression than even his sibling can. I've read one reviewer compare the pudgy-cheeked John Murray to a teenage George Takei, but he's easily a dead ringer for a younger Bill Hicks, especially the one seen in Sane Man.

There. My baker's dozen of superior comedy is now officially complete. 

Moving Violations is a flunky starring James Keach as Deputy Halik, the bike cop responsible for busting John Murray's slobby Dana Cannon, who immediately retaliates by baiting Halik into a misdirected rage which costs the policeman a recent promotion. That particular punchline you notice in advance like a train you'd hear hurtling towards your stalling automobile perched atop the railroad tracks. Don't laugh (easy to do in regards to this film), but that very cliché turns up at one moment. Other hoary chestnuts include the inadvertent conjugation of jailbait, replete with mad dash out of the bedroom window, and a bumbling examination ride that doesn't even try to one-up a similar moment with Officer Hooks from the first Police Academy. And these happen to the same character, Brian Backer's hapless puppeteer Scott (Backer would go on to Police Academy 4 as a skater boy, opposite a pre-SNL David Spade). He, Dana and several others are thrown together in court-appointed traffic school taught by the disgraced Halik.

Wendie Jo Sperber is Joan , a dim hypochondriac who misconstrues the terminology of auto body doc Terrence Williams (Fred Willard, with a corn-cob pipe and seasoned straight man sincerity) as a regimen for physical wellness. Thus, when he advises Joan to lube up her rear end, it's not the Valvoline she reaches for. The joke is pushed further than Neal Israel can handle it when Joan turns up at his repair shop office and undresses for a supposed physical. Nadine van der Velde (Critters) plays the aforementioned underage love interest, closet punkette Stephanie. Nedra Volz (Lust in the Dust) is the requisite senior demolitionist who drives friend Clara Peller (of Wendy's commercial fame) onto an airport runway. Willard Pugh (The Color Purple) is on hand simply to say "My father's going to kill me!" Again, you could be watching Fast Times at Ridgemont High instead of this.

As for Jennifer Tilly, she is curiously unfunny as the requisite Stupid Smart Girl, known in this script as Amy. She looks like Julie Kavner and tries to sound like Julie Hagerty, and her love for Cannon is too much a placebo to even suggest Bad Medicine. There's one cute sight gag in an anti-gravity chamber, but the dialogue and performances don't justify it. Israel & Proft cram the movie with too many dud one-liners, musty innuendos and hackneyed anti-establishment sniggers. Sally Kellerman's Judge Nedra is an unflatteringly unsexy bondage case (seriously, I can't watch her leather-studded straw dog without hearing Fred Willard's Buck Laughlin) who conspires with the bitter Halik to deny the rejects their confiscated licenses as well as make a profit off their impounded vehicles.

Israel has effectively diluted the convivial anarchy of his forebears, thus resulting in a painfully episodic structure which emphasizes humiliation, banality and tangential dead ends. In his petty vengeance, Halik goes so far as to frame Cannon for a convenience store robbery, but at that point, throwing the book at the charmless jester is likely to be on the majority of people's minds. In any case, this development is worthless. A recurring joke is made about Halik's female partner, Deputy Morris (Lisa Hart Carroll: Terms of Endearment...really?!), being mistaken for a man because of her short, "butch" haircut (apparently, none of the manchildren has ever seen Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places). Wendie Jo Sperber and Brian Backer play characters who are nothing but objects of mean-spirited debasement, no different from the authority figures whom Israel & Proft code as authoritarian killjoys. Everything about Moving Violations tastes so much more curdled compared to not only Police Academy and Bachelor Party, but also Revenge of the Nerds and Ghostbusters.

And yet here I am reviewing it, having listened to charlatans and contrarians tell me it's some kind of discovery. That I'm supposed to overlook Neal Israel's pathetic direction, ripe with egregious continuity and ADR flubs, as well as the tired slapstick and tedious characters so as to appreciate it on the same level as Airplane! or Better Off Dead. I don't think so. If I had paid to see this theatrically, I'd have torn up my ticket like one would do any unfair writ. Even the Netflix DVD sleeve is steeling my hands for destruction: "Traffic school turns into a prison sentence in this comedy from Neal Israel, the director of Police Academy." If you're dumb enough to believe that, then Moving Violations is the perfect movie for you.

Cutting Class

CUTTING CLASS
(R, Vestron Pictures, 91 mins., limited release date: March 24, 1989)

Arriving far too late to capitalize on either the slasher or sex comedy cycles that were meant to amuse undiscriminating children of the 1980s, Cutting Class functions more like a remedial-friendly term paper on both of these genres. It's a tough sit for anyone with the slightest appreciation of what is a mostly overqualified cast, from luminous Jill Schoelen (cf: The Phantom of the Opera) on down to slumming vets Martin Mull and Roddy McDowall. One might be compelled to give it a spin on the basis of Brad Pitt in a prominent, pre-marquee supporting performance. But this isn't even on the same plane as rediscovering, say, Tom Hanks in He Knows You're Alone or Leonardo DiCaprio in Critters 3, as Cutting Class is to Pitt what Shadows Run Black was to Kevin Costner. George Clooney, all is forgiven.

It's also the kind of movie that made me appreciate more the things Pet Sematary Two got right, particularly the scene-stealing vigor of Clancy Brown, his sadistic one-liners having worked as comic relief based on his professionalism. Cutting Class is also peppered with smart-alecky dialogue: "I'm going to change my IQ. Is 300 too high?" and "I'm the custodian of your fucking destiny!" and "I was a murderer. It wasn't as prestigious as being a doctor or a lawyer, but the hours were good." The first is spoken apropos by the school exhibitionist (Brenda Lynne Klemme, who'd go on to James Gunn's superior Slither) while her friends are searching through the school files hoping to learn about a creepy kid. I guess this is meant to justify the unfounded Heathers comparisons some fools throw at Cutting Class, but this doesn't wash due to poor timing and performance.

The second quote comes from the janitor (Robert Glaudini), a nutty veteran who cleans up after the aforementioned girl's grisly demise. It would've worked better had the janitor not turned away from the students twice before saying it, because it does come off as desperate. I'll leave the third quote alone, as it easily the best of the bunch and the closest thing to successful humor Cutting Class nearly pulls off. But the point stands in that I've seen Friday the 13th sequels with more finesse than this, and there isn't a single funny line to compare with what you'd find in a cheesy Juan Piquer Simon bloodbath like Pieces or Slugs.

Wholesome Paula Carson (Schoelen) says goodbye to her father William (Mull), a district attorney off on a week's duck-hunting vacation which is sabotaged by a homicidal archer. The body count would seem to begin, but one lone arrow isn't enough to kill Mr. Carson, and Martin Mull spends the rest of the movie trudging along the marsh looking for unwilling help. Paula, meanwhile, rebuffs the advances of her boyfriend Dwight Ingalls (Pitt), a dim jock on the verge of failing out of school and blowing his basketball scholarship because of his mean streak. The bane of Dwight's ire is his former best friend Brian Woods (Donovan Leitch), who has returned to school after being institutionalized for the murder of his father and develops a spooky crush on Paula. Brian and Dwight in turn become the only tangible suspects when members of the faculty and a couple of Paula's friends get killed.

Rospo Pallenberg, in his sole directing credit after a career under John Boorman's mentorship, and writer Steve Slavkin (who transitioned to children's entertainment starting with Nickelodeon's Salute Your Shorts) lack the basic motor function which keeps their tongue inside cheek, so they instead blow raspberries at the target audience. You would expect a satiating supply of gore and nudity, but both these obligations are carried out half-heartedly. The art teacher is cooked alive in a kiln and the gym coach lands on the blunt end of a flagpole during trampoline exercises (Eli Roth was indeed paying attention). These are the only interesting set pieces, and they are both insufficiently nasty. Only at the end of the film is the splatter quota jacked up, but the resolution of the central murder mystery is as predictable as the flippant turn of the killer.

Excepting some mandatory locker room flesh (two breasts, as Joe Bob Briggs would point out), the camera leers at Jill Schoelen to such an overbearing degree that it makes her shower scene in The Stepfather a model of high class. Schoelen is well and truly sexy, but in the asinine context of Cutting Class, the peek-a-boo panty shots put you in the loafers of the opportunistically perverted principal (Roddy McDowall, losing all dignity on his way to Shakma). Not helping matters is the stultifying blandness of her character, who is both the only student aware of the missing persons as well as so desperate for her cocky squeeze's ring that she breaks into the school with him just to ridicule Brian. Again, this is the exact opposite of Jill's solid work in The Stepfather.

Schoelen is capable but squandered here, which is more than you can say of the male leads. Brian is meant to remind us of the Norman Bates of Psycho II, a reformed murderer nervously trying to preserve his dwindling sanity even as he's vilified by an angry mob who takes it on faith that he's no better even after being exposed to more shock therapy than any of Nurse Ratched's charges. But as played by Donovan Leitch (son of "Sunshine Superman" and brother to Ione Skye), Brian is an uninspiring mixture of Emilio Estevez's Kirbo from St. Elmo's Fire and Lawrence Monoson's Gary from The Last American Virgin, which is bad enough chemistry on its own. Brian's not even the Norman Bates of Psycho III. Brad Pitt's hothead stud is just as embarrassing, from a "cute" opening in which he nearly runs over a child ("Same time tomorrow?") to a horrendously simpering breakdown over a payphone (he's not the Norman Bates of Psycho IV). Paula's supposed moment of Final Girl triumph is utterly ridiculous given the reprehensibility of both Brian and Dwight. 

Cutting Class is absolutely needless, to say the least. There was only one real attempt at parodying slasher movies in the 1980s: Student Bodies, a hit-and-miss gagfest clearly inspired by Airplane! On the whole, though, horror comedies walked a very thin line back then, with An American Werewolf in London and Fright Night managing to work on both levels and others like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 or TerrorVision (and countless others, judging by your memory) coming across as just plain goofy. Cutting Class doesn't even fulfill that low standard. Even the soundtrack, with its original tunes by new wave has-beens Wall of Voodoo, cannot set a convincing tone. Never has a campus movie held itself back with such mechanical indifference as Cutting Class.

Collision Course (1989)

 COLLISION COURSE
(PG, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, 100 mins., video release date: May 6, 1992)

I have made passing references to Dino De Laurentiis in several of my reviews, twice in my Diane Franklin retrospective and once at the start of my Under the Cherry Moon review, when I listed off a bunch of his more Razzie-worthy releases of 1986. Dino's career managed to outlast Golan/Globus, who profiteered off the De Laurentiis-produced Death Wish, and he also began honorably in the Italian neorealist genre. He produced Fellini's La Strada and Nights of Cabiria. In the midst of all the James Bond knock-offs and barely-remembered war films he shepherded, Dino De Laurentiis was the mover and shaker behind a vast catalog of familiar flicks, including Barbarella, Serpico, Mandingo, Orca, Flash Gordon, Ragtime, Conan the Barbarian, The Dead Zone, Dune, and many others. He worked with Ingmar Bergman, Luchino Visconti, Mario Bava, Robert Altman, William Friedkin, Don Siegel, and John Huston.

What I'm saying is, Dino De Laurentiis, who passed on in 2010, maintains a healthy respectability which his peers did not. Or at least did until the mid-1980s, at which point financial, critical and commercial fortunes began to dwindle precipitously.

In 1984, Dino launched his own production/distribution label, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, which didn't begin putting out movies for a couple of years. Take that window of the company's inactivity as an omen. Which is a shame, because DEG released Manhunter, Blue Velvet, Near Dark, and Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn by the time DEG folded in 1989. You could even trace your nostalgic enjoyment of Transformers: The Movie to Uncle Dino. But Million Dollar Mystery, Date with an Angel, King Kong Lives and Maximum Overdrive (as well as, sadly, my beloved Near Dark) weren't turning huge enough profits. Dino may have had the better legacy, but his own company went bust faster than Cannon Films.

This meant naturally that several projects got abandoned in the wake of DEG's bankruptcy. One of them I've already talked about is, of course, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, which was scooped up by Orion Pictures (irony alert) by 1989 and went on to everlasting popular appeal. Another of these was completed the same year, but came off the shelf in 1992 only to get buried on home video and forgotten by the world at large...except for the fascination of people like Nathan Rabin, Jack Sommersby, Jerry Saravia, and now me.

I'm talking about Pat Morita and Jay Leno in Collision Course.

You read those names right, as in the same Pat Morita who was once Oscar-nominated for Mr. Miyagi, the sensai of the Karate Kid series, and the same Jay Leno, Boston-bred overbite and all, who went from stand-up comedy fame to carrying on after Johnny Carson's retirement from late-night NBC. How does a movie like this find itself in such a maze of obscurity?

Well, thanks to Google News, IMDb, and other reliable online sources, I can tell you that an interview with Jay Leno dated Jun 17, 1987 reported that filming began in Wilmington, NC (at DEG Studios) six weeks prior, but they had trouble keeping a director on the project. There was protest within the DGA, which would go on strike for 12 minutes in July 1987, but this was still a month later. Yet Collision Course reportedly blew through John Guillermin (who directed both of Dino's King Kong movies as well as The Towering Inferno), Bob Clark (who directed From the Hip for Dino before finally seeing through his own buddy cop caper with Hackman and Aykroyd in Loose Cannons), and Richard Fleischer (a regular for Dino from Mandingo to the career-ending Million Dollar Mystery) in its hastened production schedule. This information comes from one Greg Laughlin, a former DEG employee, who dishes further dirt on the Unknown Movies page.

Their final and credited choice of director was Lewis Teague, whose previous credits include Alligator, Cujo and Stephen King's Cat's Eye. The latter was another Dino De Laurentiis production made at the same time Teague was courted by the majors with The Jewel of the Nile, the sequel to Robert Zemeckis' Romancing the Stone. Unfortunately, Collision Course would go wildly over-budget to the point where they barely had enough money for the final day of shooting let alone the entire post-production process. When rising star Leno began promoting the film on national television throughout 1988, there was no flow for a wide American release from DEG. Since he was under contract to appear in two more vehicles but dismayed at the delay of his first starring role, Leno briefly sued DEG for $3 million before the company filed for Chapter 11.

Worse for Leno, nobody bought the distribution rights for Collision Course away from the floundering DEG. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was rescued. Earth Girls Are Easy was adopted by Vestron Pictures (again, irony alert). United Artists scooped up both Stan Winston's Pumpkinhead and Peter Bogdanovich's Illegally Yours. Miramax salvaged Bill Friedkin's Rampage, although Friedkin undertook some controversial alterations before it played theatrically. Collision Course, meanwhile, languished under ownership of Wells Fargo Bank until May 6, 1992, the day HBO Video finally premiered the film on the wave of publicity surrounding Leno's ascension to full-time host of The Tonight Show.

Nowadays, Collision Course is most infamous as the movie with which Steve Martin once pranked Jay Leno. In December 2005, Martin, who was promoting both Shopgirl and Cheaper by the Dozen 2, engaged Leno in a televised game of "Name That Clip," with Leno ponying up $20 if he guessed wrong differentiating each excerpt taken from the two Martin vehicles. The final round was a moment worthy of Paul Rudd's trolling of Conan O'Brien, as Martin snuck in a scene from Collision Course. Leno was embarrassed when he recognized the movie, but Martin insisted that, even though he was right, Leno would still have to pay for making the film.

For anyone who ever rented the tape back in 1992, Steve Martin's stunt resembles a vicarious act of long-awaited revenge.

Collision Course is clearly an attempt to cash in on the 1980s trend of comical cop movies, and I don't mean the Police Academy series. This is more aligned with 48 Hrs., Beverly Hills Cop, Armed & Dangerous, Red Heat, Alien Nation, Downtown, and a handful of other pre-Rush Hour touchstones in the odd couple sweepstakes. The Eddie Murphy movies, in particular, are most pivotal in understanding the career breakthrough Jay Leno likely wished Collision Course had generated back in 1988. Both 48 Hrs. and Beverly Hills Cop launched a beloved entertainer into Tinseltown royalty, playing on Murphy's defiantly vulgar, race-baiting, talking-at-120-wpm personality from the stand-up circuit. You remember those moments:

"[I've] never seen so many backwards-ass country f*cks in my life!"
"I'm your worst f*ckin' nightmare, man. I'm a n*gger with a badge, that mean I got permission to kick your f*ckin' ass whenever I feel like it!"
"Michael Jackson can sit on top of the world just as long as he doesn't sit in the Beverly Palm Hotel ‘cause there's no n*ggers allowed in there!"
 "Tell Victor that Ramon...I found out that I have herpes simplex 10, and I think Victor should go check himself out with his physician to make sure everything is fine before things start falling off on the man."

Surely, Leno wasn't as confrontational or blue as Murphy's patter was in the 1980s, and in that same 1987 interview with Leno I found, Leno wanted a movie that was hardly as R-rated as the edgier stuff Eddie made. Maybe he felt he could've done something closer to Chevy Chase in Fletch, instead. Which is bizarre, because Collision Course feels like a watered-down version of 48 Hrs., which was full of white cop vs. sarcastic minority anti-chemistry but in Walter Hill's film, Murphy and Nick Nolte were playing off each other with top-tier precision. But all the racial jibes hurled in Noriyuki "Pat" Morita's direction, despite his deadpan superiority to them, are spouted casually without being even the least bit transgressive or aggressive.

One-liners like "I ought to stir fry your face" and "Would you call a Jap a John Doe?" die on the screen in that patented way familiar to any handful of tone-deaf late-1980s would-be comedies. Maybe it's just a sign of the times the movie wants to capture, a blue-collar Detroit embittered by the rise of Japanese auto industry and the damages done to the economy. But there was an entertaining culture clash comedy about car manufacturers made two years before Collision Course started shooting, which starred Michael Keaton and Gedde Watanabe, and it was called Gung Ho.

 Morita plays Inspector Fujitsuka Natsuo, a Tokyo espionage agent sent by his commander Kitao (Soon-Teck Oh) to track down a rogue engineer, Oshima (Danny Kamekona), who has fled to Detroit with the prototype for a spectacular new turbocharger. Oshima plots to make a quick fortune selling it off to mobster Philip Madras (Chris Sarandon), but his goons Scully (Tom Noonan) and Kosnic (Randall "Tex" Cobb) accidentally kill him during a shakedown. In disposing of the body at the nearby junkyard, night watchman Mac (Jack Poggi) witnesses the deed, so Scully fires off a rocket gun to silence him. Turns out he has murdered the former partner of robbery-assigned Detective Tony Costas (Leno), which drives him into a fit of vengeful sleuthing upon which he encounters Natsuo.

Guess what? Costas thinks Natsuo is a criminal, and Natsuo thinks Costas is a thug! Can you imagine what would happen when they realize that they're really both lawmen and have to begrudgingly partner up to take down Madras? Well, it takes a while for the skeptical Costas to accept this, because he tails Natsuo to the one-hour-photo stand and the headquarters of unscrupulous automotive chairman Derek Jarryd (Dennis Holahan). When they finally do work together, the Eastman and the Westerner bungle their way through the investigation until they end up getting one over on Scully both without a warrant and with excessive force. Costas' superior, Lieutenant Ryerson (John Hancock) breaks the act up, orders them off the case and plots to send Natsuo back to his own hardheaded boss. Again, think about the possibilities if these two unlikely friends were to disobey direct orders and retrieve the prototype despite Madras' muscle. Aren't they exciting?

Well, save for a finale which is unexpectedly brutal for a PG movie (to wit: Natsuo doesn't know karate, but he knows ka-razy!), Collision Course is standard procedure for its genre. Even getting past the leaden xenophobia, there are so many clichés on parade (barroom brawling, inebriated bonding, chase-giving cars slamming into fruit carts and flower stands) that Siskel & Ebert could've fueled an entire "They'll Do It Everytime!" episode on just this movie. Costas is a slovenly bachelor for whom Natsuo is like a mail-order Felix Unger. He cuffs the foreigner to the steering wheel to pursue a purse-snatcher, but it's the bound outsmarting the blind. Scully is a God-fearing survivalist wacko who doesn't even graze the heroes despite his arsenal of rocket launchers, automatic rifles and hand grenades. Lewis Teague turns pedestrian on the action scenes, and it's not as if Leno and Morita's banter, written by Robert (The First Power) Resnikoff and Frank D. Namei, tries to compensate with fresh humor.

Morita, who was actually a comedian back when, is at his best when he's most bemused by his inner city surroundings, from the doorbells on front porches to the inequities of the justice system. Leno, meanwhile, may be just a little too low-key to command the screen. Meant to be a fast-talking rogue and ladies' man, his moony (and moon-shaped) face hits the sweet spot between George Clooney and Robert Z'Dar, and there's an unfortunate squeak in his voice that he mistakes for "dramatic." His métier is purely comedic, like when he calms a hysterical woman on a hotel elevator down by screaming, "Shut up, lady! You're not on a game show!" There isn't a solidly-written female in the cast, to be sure, as Leno is counted on to generate chemistry with either Pat Morita or Ernie Hudson (playing Costas' doormat sidekick, Shortcut).

And comic moments are to be found, if fleetingly and frustratingly undone by conventional punch lines. The aforementioned brawl involves Natsuo initially being accosted by a group of affluent bowling alley goons (including Mike Starr in a brief role) before Kosnic's disdain for diplomacy causes all hell to break loose. Indeed, given more dialogue here than in Raising Arizona, Cobb is an amusing lunkhead, while Tom (Manhunter) Noonan, who forever looks like a new age healer brainwashed by the Manson Family, puts a wisecracking touch on his perennially psychotic demeanor early on. But Chris Sarandon, saddled with a John Oates ‘stache, is powered entirely on whatever traces of snark he didn't burn as the delightfully cocky bloodsucker from Fright Night, coming across as a mediocre heavy. And the dismally broad material routinely lets down reliable talents like Morita and Hudson.

Collision Course seems like it should be an all-time stinker on the level of Leonard Part 6 or Mac & Me, but it seems as though this film has thoroughly evaporated since 1992. And rightfully so, as it didn't damage Leno's reputation and was shrugged off by Pat Morita for the next couple of Karate Kid sequels. Lewis Teague, however, had only one more mainstream project in him with Navy Seals before sticking to TV for the remainder of his career, kind of like Jay Leno. Despite the efforts on the internet to condense the film to adequate rubbernecking length, Collision Course is hardly Showdown in Little Tokyo let alone Another 48 Hrs.

It is so, how do the Japanese put it, "wasure rare-gachina."

The 'Burbs + Little Monsters

THE 'BURBS
(PG, Universal Pictures, 101 mins., theatrical release date: February 17, 1989)

LITTLE MONSTERS
(PG, United Artists, 100 mins., theatrical release date: August 25, 1989)

Rick Ducommun has passed on due to complications from diabetes at age 58 on June 12, 2015. This is the first time I have ever posted a review in tribute to the recently departed, but Ducommun was a familiar face throughout my movie-going childhood. And not just in the bit parts from movies such as Die Hard, Spaceballs, Groundhog Day, and Ghost in the Machine. Ducommun, a Canadian stand-up comic who first came to fame as co-host of Zig Zag, the other popular children's program from the Great White North that wasn't You Can't Do That on Television, proved himself a versatile actor in a number of mainstream projects.

Twice featured on HBO's half-hour live comedy blocks, Ducummon also made headway in the cinemas starting in 1989. Newly thin and imported to Hollywood by Alan Thicke, he appeared in two cult movies with spooky undercurrents.

The first of these black comedies was Joe Dante's The 'Burbs, released in February of that year, which was a minor success at the box office mainly due to the star power of Tom Hanks, fresh off his blockbuster turn in Penny Marshall's Big. The second arrived at the tail end of the summer, Richard Alan Greenberg's Little Monsters, and it fared even worse because of many post-production woes. Specifically, it was another project from the financially-strapped Vestron Pictures, who as I previously mentioned had shipped Bloodhounds of Broadway off to Sony where it, too, was a flop critically and commercially.

Ducommun was the kind of man who could found a skateboard equipment company with his brother Pete, crack a joke about missing gay men on Vaseline jars and then play the good-hearted limo driver in Disney's Blank Check from 1994. From the late 1980s until the mid-1990s, Ducommun was on a considerable roll in his career, but eventually settled down and cemented his career as a bit player. This isn't exactly on the level of Christopher Lee or Betsy Palmer, but I respect Ducommun's comic gifts and screen presence just the same. And it does hit me in the vulnerable area of my youth enough to start me thinking.

Unfortunately, thinking does not exactly enhance the minimal qualities of Little Monsters. The premise was interesting enough to be salvaged by Pixar a decade later for Monsters, Inc., but here the result is a sour and silly combination of Beetlejuice and The Monster Squad. Alongside the holiday release of The Wizard, you can blame both that and Little Monsters for trashing Fred Savage's ambitions to become a movie star based off his success on ABC-TV's The Wonder Years.

Savage plays Brian Stevenson, the lonely new sixth-grade student and eldest son of two combative parents, Holly (Margaret Whitton) and Glen (Daniel Stern). And yes...they not only cast Kevin Arnold, but also his older, wiser mouthpiece, too. Such awkwardness is the stuff of Nostalgia Critic videos. When his younger brother Eric (Ben Savage) is plagued by night terrors involving the monster under the bed, Brian accepts a wager to swap rooms in an attempt to calm his sibling's nerves. Besides, Brian could use the money since his irascible, jumping-to-conclusions Dad has cut off his allowance following a couple of pranks.

Scaredy-cat Eric turns out to be right and there is a monster waiting below until bedtime to make mischief and fright. Enter Maurice (Howie Mandel), a horned, wart-faced, blue-skinned freak whom Brian takes pity on as the daylight melts him into a smoky pile of denim. Maurice shows his gratitude by taking Brian on a guided tour of his grotesque underworld which the monsters call their kingdom, a kid-friendly paradise of junk food, arcade games and rampant destruction. And Brian is even allowed to tag along on many of Maurice's assigned hauntings, where the duo bond over a cavalcade of practical jokes not limited to placing saran wrap over toilet seats, peeing in apple juice bottles and smearing fudge on clean white kitchen surfaces.

The intriguing proposition of seeing Nightbreed pitched to the swing-set crowd is not fully realized, though. Too much time is taken up in the first half by the puerile comedy and Howie Mandel's purposefully, pitilessly overbearing mugging, so much so that subsequent developments and new characters all register as afterthoughts. This means that the Stevenson parents confiding their "trial separation" to their children comes across as ill-advisedly hokey, and that mopey Brian's social isolation is all for naught since he's got three willing companions (including the school bully, Ronnie Coleman, played by Devin "Buzz" Ratray) to help him rescue his abducted brother.

And oh yeah, the poorly-shoehorned antagonists who resent Brian for reasons undefined. One of them is Rick Ducommon's character, Snik, who looks uncannily like the X-Men's Beast as played by W.C. Fields and rages about the realm like a mountain-shaped Mafioso. He is the stooge for the shadow villain known as "Boy," who doesn't appear until the finale without any real set-up or motivation. When we finally see this Boy (Frank Whaley), he's dressed like an English schoolboy and acts like Frank Cotton (seriously, this movie should have been written by Clive Barker) pretending to be Pee-Wee Herman.

Screenwriting team Terry Rossio & Ted Elliott clearly have a yen for suburban anarchy and subverting adolescence, seeing as how they would later go on to Small Soldiers and Shrek. It's too bad their execution is constantly disappointing. There are as many hackneyed elements, particularly in terms of character and structure, about Little Monsters as there would later be in Small Soldiers, but at least that had a genuine loon at the helm to make it seem alive. Richard Greenberg, a titles and optical effects specialist, appears hopeless in trying to pass off a skeletal back lot of a setting as magical. Much like the creature designs and the overall quality of the visual effects, this supposed Neverland is cut-rate and aweless.

However, I would be lying if Howie Mandel didn't eke out a few snickers from his non-stop Michael Keaton imitation. The phrase "over-the-shoulder boulder holder" is exactly how a nitwit 12-year-old boy would categorize a brassiere. There is at least one humorous confrontation between Maurice and Snik, easily the best dialogue exchanges the movie has to offer, not to mention a chance for both Mandel and Ducommun to play funny naturally. And with a better script and direction, Mandel could've actually come across as endearing. But just like Fred Savage and Daniel Stern, Mandel seems to be coasting.

The only grace you'll find on an acting level is the frustratingly brief appearance by Frank Whaley as Boy, who is not to be confused with Guy, the vengeful lackey of vicious Kevin Spacey he played in Swimming with Sharks. Aside from his warm job as Father Mundy in Keith Gordon's A Midnight Clear (I forgot to mention that he went on to become another actor-turned-auteur), Whaley was also the simpering Brett from Pulp Fiction, the Target store janitor hero of Career Opportunities and Robby Krieger of The Doors in Oliver Stone's film. Barely hiding his malevolence behind a frozen visage of adolescent rejection, Whaley is devilishly fey and deserving of more than the script gives him.

The movie ends with Talking Heads' "Road to Nowhere," which is worthy of kudos, too. I also heard a cover of Nick Lowe's "(I Love the Sound of) Breaking Glass" and Buckwheat Zydeco's overplayed "Ooh Wow," which was actually supposed to be a cue for Bobby Day's "Little Bitty Pretty One," not to be confused with the smash hit cover by Thurston Harris. I better get my facts right in front of ol' Shrevie.

Little Monsters isn't even half as novel as The 'Burbs, which nobly tries to justify its genre-specific glory through Joe Dante's typically crackpot enthusiasm. Whereas the former boasts a clip from the fifties version of The Fly not used for any thematic good, Dante throws in simultaneous passages from Race with the Devil, The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and pays them off splendidly by showing you just how feverish and fearful the imagination is of Tom Hanks' neighborhood schmuck, Ray Peterson.

Ray is content to spend his week's vacation lazing around in his bathrobe instead of treating his wife Carol (straight-shooting Carrie Fisher) and son Dave (Cory Danziger). In his apathy, Ray is fixated on the next-door residency of the Klopeks, one of those decaying Gothic hell-houses which would be ideal for Macabre Homes & Gardens magazine. The Klopeks' peculiar habits of digging up their backyard, conducting electricity for a mysterious whirring furnace in the wee hours of the morning, setting front-door booby traps involving angry bees, and driving the short distance to dispose of their garbage provoke insane curiosity in the community's numb-skulled majority.

Enabling Ray's fanatical snooping are gabby slob Art Weingartner (Rick Ducommun), who has convinced himself the Slavic-sounding Klopeks are Satanists; patriotic wacko Lt. Mark Rumsfield (Bruce Dern), who turns every "How do you do?" into a recon mission; and teenage burnout Ricky Butler (Corey Feldman), who is so boundlessly amused and entertained by the weirdness on his block that he invites dates and friends to spectator parties on the patio.

And then elderly Walter Seznick (Gale Gordon) disappears leaving only his toupee, causing Ray and the gang to suspect the homicidal worst.

Ever since Bosom Buddies premiered at the start of the 1980s, Tom Hanks had a reputation throughout the decade as an affably arrested smart aleck. Since becoming the award-winning dramatic juggernaut with Philadelphia in 1993, nostalgia has crept in for a generation weaned on Hanks' boyish, hyperventilating persona cultivated in films like Splash, Bachelor Party, The Money Pit, Dragnet, and The 'Burbs. The closest they got was his voiceover work as Woody in the Toy Story franchise. Dare I say this, but Tom Hanks was the Adam Sandler of the 1980s, less abrasive and more accomplished but still.

So perhaps Big was Hanks' own Punch Drunk Love, a whimsical story which busted open Hanks' Everyman charms to the point where (for Hanks, at least) he got his very first Oscar nod. Unlike Sandler, Hanks' obligations to the mainstream turned out to be even quirkier than expected, including John Patrick Shanley's Joe vs. the Volcano and Brian De Palma's calamitous adaptation of The Bonfire of the Vanities. Only Turner & Hooch stunk of hardcore formula. And The 'Burbs may as well be the nuttiest of these interim films between the certified crowd-pleasers of Penny Marshall's Big and A League of Their Own.

A lot of that is down to Senor Dante more than scatterbrained screenwriter Dana Olsen, whose amusingly paranoid sense of humor (imagine "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" as a sitcom-my farce) is capped off in the most chickenshit, "I told you so" manner. A year later, Dante would top himself with Gremlins 2: The New Batch, but there are delirious moments of pop-culture allusions ranging from possession pics to Spaghetti westerns to be savored. His penchant for stunt-casting reaps more dividends in the self-parodying glee evident in Bruce Dern and the assemblage of actors playing the Klopeks, Laugh-In comic Henry Gibson (from Dante's previous Innerspace), Kraut cut-up Brother Theodore and ginger grotesque Courtney Gains (Hardbodies).

Dante regulars and good luck charms Dick Miller and Robert Picardo turn up as garbage men more belligerent than the ones from Creepshow. But this is Rick Ducommon's signature movie more than anybody else's, his every scene alive with cocky one-liners and conspiracy theories. Sure, Tom Hanks delivers a screed worthy of Kevin "You're Next!" McCarthy in the closing stretch, but it's Ducommun's oafish fast-talking and fear-mongering which gives the real momentum.

Another sharp tool in The 'Burbs' comedic shed is Jerry Goldsmith, who provides a maniacally colorful, organ-flavored score which often syncs up with chanted renditions of dialogue ("Satan is good, Satan is our pal") and what sounds like Fairlight samples of a dog barking when Walter's poodle Queenie first scampers on-screen.

If only 'The Burbs had a bit more clarity of purpose to keep it from ending like a John Landis movie. There is subtle hilarity in the way Dante and Olsen poke holes at the suburban haughtiness which relegates a famed doctor like Henry Gibson's character to predetermined quack status, and the performances by Hanks, Ducummon and Corey Feldman are infused with enough obnoxiousness so as not to truly relate to but rarely skimping on the laughs (which was what Howie Mandel couldn't overcome in Little Monsters).

So in essence, you have the kind of movie Rick Ducummon would actually make more of in the dreary Little Monsters, and the kind of movie he deserved in the flighty The 'Burbs. Regardless of how the dice landed, I would like to once again pay my final respects to the Duke of Prince Albert.

"Sleep tight."

Enchantéd, Pt. IX: How I Got Into College

Enchantéd: A Retrospective Tribute to Diane Franklin

IX. How I Got Into College (1989)

(PG-13, 20th Century Fox)

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Previously on Mind of Frames...

Planet Earth 1989 by way of 2015. A young movie reviewer has found his muse in the form of actress Diane Franklin. In a rush of encouragement, he decides to revisit her many movie roles in the 1980s. Watching Diane's resume gives the writer a productive first year and a sense of success. No matter what opinion is reached for each title, he feels elated to have made such progress and is genuinely thankful for Diane's support both in spirit and in flesh. The feedback she offers is ailment to his restless mind, and even after a complicated second year of writer's block and personal instability, the man renews his commitment with as much purpose and delight as ever.

However, in looking back to the past, the tributary scribe suddenly reaches the dawn of the next decade, and the possible end of his inspiration. Faced with the closing of the 1980s, Diane Franklin has given thought to the progress of her acting career, and, unable advance into a player of mature and multi-faceted characters, instead becomes an adult on her own terms. This means marriage, two children, a full-time gig as acting teacher in Agoura Hills, becoming an animal care-taker, branching out into children's book illustrations, and defining herself not simply as Diane Franklin, but as Diane DeLaurentis.

At this point in Enchantéd, I've reached a burning need for a grander context to make up for the absence of Diane in the 1990s and 2000s. But how do I begin?

Well, the most parallel observation I could make is that the kind of teen-oriented films Diane Franklin had been starring in since 1982 were gradually becoming less imbecilic and frivolous. There was a definite increase in quality scripts and thematic spice than back when young people in movies were defined solely by their hedonism. You had rising stars making legit names for themselves in the genre, whether it be Sean Penn, Tom Cruise, Molly Ringwald, John Cusack, Matthew Broderick, Mary Stuart Masterson, or River Phoenix. Writers and/or directors also demonstrated greater depth-of-perception towards the typical teen angst, which resulted in the rise of John Hughes and many exemplary films like Risky Business, Lucas, the Aussie import The Year My Voice Broke, and Running on Empty.

By 1989, the evolution of the teen flick culminated in not just the pure entertainment of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, but also the arrival of the biting Heathers and the benevolent Say Anything. The latter film demonstrated something most so-called "coming-of-age" films in the 1980s were too base to achieve: a genuine feeling of newly-minted maturity. I can't look back on the decade, what with all of its sub-Porky's, swinging-dick monotony, without hearing Lili Taylor's pitch-perfect statement of young adulthood: "The world is full of guys. Be a man."

Which brings me back to Savage Steve Holland, the writer/director of Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer. In terms of celluloid worth, he is in the middle of the auteur spectrum, not as bright as John Duigan (of The Year My Voice Broke and the equally bracing Flirting) but more bearable than Boaz Davidson (of those piss-flavored Lemon Popsicle movies). Holland's propensity for animation gave him a distinct personality which lasted for two movies, but at least that debut film was surrealistically sublime.

Alas, it soon proved that Holland was more suitable for kid's television, starting with Beans Baxter for Fox and Encyclopedia Brown for HBO. Nowadays, he's best known for the cult series Eek! the Cat as well as numerous Nickelodeon and Disney Channel sitcom credits. One of those projects, A Fairly Odd Christmas, boasts a story credit by Diane Franklin's husband Ray DeLaurentis, whereas Franklin herself made an appearance in Encyclopedia Brown & The Case of the Ghostly Rider, as did the late Taylor Negron.

Franklin did more TV guest appearances after 1985 than movies, including in episodes of Matlock, Charles in Charge and Murder, She Wrote. But she was good enough friends with Holland to appear briefly on the set of One Crazy Summer for an unused scene with John Cusack and to do a cameo role in what would become Holland's final major motion picture, How I Got Into College.

And as it turns out, Savage Steve Holland wasn't even the movie's original director, nor did he even write the screenplay!

Twentieth Century Fox had originally signed on a newcomer named Jan Eliasberg (Past Midnight), who brought a more unorthodox sense of style to the project. Her low-key approach scared the studio, who expected a film more interested in high jinks. Three days into the shoot, an audacious camera trick cost her the job and Fox chose to hire Holland in her place. You can read the full story about Eliasberg's unceremonious outing in this vintage Los Angeles Times article which connects her to other female directors like Martha Coolidge and Mary Lambert, all of whom were facing uphill battles against the Hollywood system.

Diane Franklin would have doubtlessly bowed out with Bill & Ted were Holland not involved, so as a fan, I should be grateful that he was Fox's back-up choice. Funnily enough, though, Franklin's character here is less Princess Joanna and more "Missy...I mean, Mom." Playing the icy stepmother of lead character Marlon Browne (opposite Richard Jenkins as Mr. Browne!), her Sharon (hey, that rhymes with Karen) looks as beaming as a recent college grad but desperately wishes Marlon would move out and free up valuable bedroom space. In one of Holland's usual embellishments, Sharon is introduced teaching advanced geometry to a tyke ("Find the tetrahedron! No, that's a hexagon, sweetie"), a joke on the academic inadequacy of our dopey hero.

High school junior Marlon Browne (Corey Parker) seems to be on the fast-track to a GED rather than the hallowed halls of higher education. Holland demonstrates this much with live-action variants on his usual cartoon tangents involving two SAT answer men who jeer on Marlon as he bungles various word problems. The performers in these interstitials are Bruce Wagner (the poison penman of Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills and Maps to the Stars) and Tom Kenny (the future voice of Spongebob Squarepants and sketch comedy star from Mr. Show). One of these uproarious moments has Marlon frenetically guessing to no avail the amount of water the two hypothetical dorks would need to shovel out of a sinking, shark-ravaged boat ("You're killing us!").

The only university Marlon is determined to enroll at is Ramsey College, which is where the girl he fancies is bucking for entry. She is Jessica Kailo (Lara Flynn Boyle), the gorgeous go-getter valedictorian who is more Diane Court than Tracy Flick in her poise. As she is campaigning for senior class presidency, Jessica parlays her honor roll credentials and summer student exchange residency (in Italy, where she got interested in saving the Frescoes) into a slot at the Pennsylvanian campus. The gawky Marlon bides his time in approaching his dream girl, pursuing her down the many prospective rituals involving recruitment fairs and open-house parties.

Writer Terrel Seltzer (Dim Sum, One Fine Day) thankfully broadens the movie's perspective beyond any syrupy expectations. There's plenty of acerbic wit in the discussions about tall tales of stressed-out interviewees and the conflicting values of the Ramsey admissions board. As Dean Patterson (Philip Baker Hall) is resigning after 17 years, there is competition between the laid-back, idealistic Kip Hammett (Anthony Edwards) and the smarmy, materialistic Leo Whitman (Charles Rocket), each vesting interest in their idea of a model student. Kip, who is dating the minority recruitment spokesperson Nina Saatchi (Finn Carter), offers his support to the lovesick Marlon.

Nina finds what she's looking for in Detroit via a spunky, book-smart "spud technician" and graduating senior named Vera Cook (Tichina Arnold). In her own way, Vera feels painfully aware of her own meager prospects as the main white kids in love. All three of them are groomed by their well-meaning but self-absorbed parents into fulfilling their planned social destinies, particularly Jessica, who doesn't want to be another sorority girl baking "ham pineapple surprise" in a modern nuclear family kitchen. To help leaven the mood, there are quirky best friends for the two leads in the presence of grungy Oliver (Christopher Rydell), who wants to experience the real world on his own terms (by hitchhiking with rogue game show hostesses and claiming surplus grand prizes), and the hyper-reactive Kelly (Annie Oringer), whose weepy anxiety is played entirely for chuckles.

Throughout it all, Savage Steve Holland finds several opportunities to detour the material into his oddball alternate dimension. When Oliver gets into argument over Marlon's infatuation with a girl who won't even give him the time of day, the room stops silent so Jessica can tell him the actual time. There's a running gag involving a gullible admissions staff member named Flutter (Bill Raymond) and his fear of pigs stemming from a practical joke. Jessica's fateful interview becomes a symphony of self-loathing and desperation; in effect, she becomes the neurotic urban legend she previously kidded her friends with (also, watch out for Dan "Ricky Smith" Schneider). And Taylor Negron returns to deliver the mail just like he did in Better Off Dead, only now he's crushing another teen boy's ego.

The tone is certainly much lighter and perfunctory through Holland's input than Jan Eliasberg would have demonstrated had she been kept aboard, especially by comparing their treatments of the college fair scene. Eliasberg, as previously mentioned, wanted to capture the chaos in a one-take scene wholly from Marlon's viewpoint. The footage of this was ruined due to a faulty camera when Holland took over, and in wanting to make the movie "cheerier," that scene in particular was ironed out by Holland, who gave the Fox the comforting coverage Eliasberg denied them. The reactions of Corey Parker and Chris Rydell register more broadly, there are snappy caricatures of Army recruiters and Asiatic nerds and, last but not least, a Curtis Armstrong cameo as the spokesman for bible-belt Arcadia College.

The fundamental difference between How I Got Into College and Holland's previous films is the pronounced levity of the young people's aspirations. In Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer, Holland was more hands-on creatively and the gags tended to overpower their admittedly flimsy premises. You may recall "I want my two dollars!" quicker than "Mercy buckets." Still, the creative and kooky personalities from earlier reaped victories romantic (the pairing of dejected Lane Meyer and delightful Monique Junet) and vengeful (Hoops McCann and his grotesque friends winning the regatta by literal hook and crook). In this case, Holland's lack of juvenile indulgence means that his sympathy for these teenage dreamers runs deeper than before.

If John Cusack's roles from Dead and Summer are explicit proxies for Holland, maybe the attitude Holland brings to How I Got Into College is best shared by Anthony Edwards' character, a dry-witted brother figure adamant on giving fair shakes to the "still-searching, doesn't-know-what-he-wants-to-do-with-his-life" teens whom Terry Seltzer also humanizes in her script. Identities are thrown into discomfiting disarray and futures are manifestly undermined by the closed-minded, crises which require more delicacy and virtue than a film about kids getting laid would demand. This isn't Porky's, whose perpetually-delayed, Howard Stern-produced remake was actually written by Savage Steve Holland.

With Cusack itching for serious acting vehicles and Diane Franklin nearing 30, it's up to Corey Parker and Lara Flynn Boyle to make for both credible teenagers and graceful performers. Parker looks like more of a geek than Cusack ever did, but he imbues Marlon Browne with a plucky dignity all his own, and a young, cherubic Lara Flynn Boyle is just as luminescent as Franklin was in Better Off Dead. Anthony Edwards is reliably charismatic in his last teen flick role, but his opposite number Finn Carter (who played the seismologist attracted to Kevin Bacon in Tremors) comes off brighter and livelier, and is perhaps the real standout in this cast. Also in peak form are Tichina Arnold (Crystal from the musical of Little Shop of Horrors), Charles Rocket, Brian Doyle-Murray (as Coach Evans, the hard-up football enthusiast), and Saturday Night Live alumni Nora Dunn & Phil Hartman as Bauer & Benedek, a pair of shameless bamboozlers operating as SAT consultants.

These check-cashing interlopers end up feeding Marlon the chutzpah he needs to make an impression beyond mere aptitude. That is the charm of Savage Steve Holland in a nutshell. How I Got Into College is not on the subversive level of Better Off Dead, which is going to rank high in my final rundown of Diane Franklin movies, but if her role here is deeply skeptical, at least Holland remains faithful in the ingenuity of his teenaged subjects. For all of his zaniness, maybe such all-encompassing empathy demonstrated Holland's edge throughout his sadly brief 1980s career.

The same could be said for Diane Franklin, who followed her heart away from show business and would not appear in a feature film until after more than a decade plus. Alas, the parts just keep on getting smaller...