I LOVE YOU TO DEATH
(PG-13, Tri-Star Pictures, 97 mins., theatrical release date: Apr. 6, 1990)
Aside from Marisa Tomei, Kevin Kline is one of the last Oscar recipients I can think of to be rewarded for his comedic prowess. In 1989, he won Best Supporting Actor as the blustery Otto from A Fish Called Wanda, where he breathed lustily from Jamie Lee Curtis' boot, insulted the "so superior" British every opportunity he could and gulped down Michael Palin's beloved aquarium, fin by fin. An impulsive, imperialist cad whose self-delusional claims of great intellect where debunked by his shapely partner-in-crime Curtis, Kline's portrayal of Otto remains the high mark for unctuous invention in the farcical game.
Kline's first role since nabbing that trophy doubles down on Otto's buffoonish machismo. I Love You to Death, which reunited him with director Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill, Silverado) and paired him with River Phoenix (whose performance in Running on Empty was also in the running when Kline won), casts him as Joey Boca, a swarthy pizzeria owner who is introduced confessing to a priest his sin of adultery, committed twice in one week. Or was it four times with two women? But what about the four women last week? Best to round it off at a dozen give or take a couple of times, which he makes up promptly by bedding both Victoria Jackson and Phoebe Cates (Kline's wife in an uncredited cameo).
Joey Boca sees neither harm nor foul in his indiscretions, simply an extension of the American dream which finds him at one point a good-natured family man and the next a lusty hedonist. "I'm a man," he tells Jackson's Lacey in a post-coital rationalization, "I got a lotta hormones in my body." His wife, Rosalie (Tracey Ullman), is dutiful and headstrong in her own way, but in denial herself. To her, Joey's merely flirting, despite the concern of smitten pizzeria co-worker Devo Nod (Phoenix), who catches Joey on the phone with a mistress, fondling pizza dough with all the sensuality he reserves for female flesh.
That Rosalie will discover the truth about Joey's routine plumbing excursions is unavoidable, but her thirst for revenge in the aftermath, deciding on murder as a suitable punishment on the advice of her tabloid junkie of a Mama Nadja (Joan Plowright), is a little less predictable. Joey is too full of life and marinara sauce for a first-degree consummation of "'til death do us part."
As scripted by John Kostmayer, I Love You to Death was inspired by the well-publicized case of Frances Toto from Allentown, PA, whose five unsuccessful attempts on her oafish hubby Tony's life were quickly forgiven by the husband, who went so far as to raise the $50,000 bail money to keep his family together. Though Frances was prosecuted and jailed for four years, they stuck together after her release and remain, to this day, a happy couple.
Kostmayer and Kasdan translate this incredible true story as a combination of ethnic comedy and black comic farce which could be pitched as "Moonstruck on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." But the result is far shaggier than either Jewison or Almodovar demonstrated, the zippy energy expected of screwball comedies traded in for the appeal of the various characters and their respective performances. Luckily for Kasdan, he's assembled a surplus of talent to keep the picture going even when the proceedings threaten to peter out.
Opposite the physically robust and carefully caricatured Kline, the equally talented Tracey Ullman opts for a warmer characterization of the cuckolded Rosalie. It's a valiantly humanized effort on her part, as there's nothing particularly funny about the epiphany Rosalie experiences while stopping at the library and her subsequent breakdown in a restroom. She's also an effective median given that Ullman is flanked by the loud presences of clown Kline and joker Joan, and not just in a particularly funny bilingual argument between Joey and Nadja during a public dinner.
Ullman's dedicated personification teases out the black comedy with ease. As scorned as she is, she hopelessly loves Joey enough to opt for a painless way out for her paramour.
Joan Plowright, meanwhile, lives up to her surname as Rosalie's mom, a feisty crone who just has to listen to Johnny Mathis when asked to put on a record to drown out a gunshot and inaugurates the first attempted hit on Joey with a family friend, paying him in cookies and speaking like the Serbian Marla Brando. The favor is accepted by the reluctant assassin, who bumbles into Joey's backyard with a baseball bat and ill-fitting Abe Lincoln mask and just as swiftly chickens out.
Just as inept in their services are Devo, too sensitive to fire a pistol despite having a brother in the Marines, and the supposed pros he hires to finish the job, lowlife cousins Harlan and Marlon James. While River Phoenix is comically spacey as Devo, William Hurt (another of Kasdan's good luck charms) and Keanu Reeves go even farther out there as the druggie James boys, dimwitted and amusingly unkempt casualties of their respective generations. Their banter is marked with pregnant pauses, slow-on-the-uptake realizations and general imbecility. They can't even locate Joey's heart without remembering, and then butchering, the Pledge of Allegiance.
Even Miriam Margolyes, who as Mama Boca arrives late in the game to beat Joey into shame, makes her single minute onscreen an uproarious delight.
The combined talents of this ensemble, all of whom are precise players (even Keanu Reeves, who is as smart being stupid here as Ted Logan), works strange magic onto the screenplay, which draws out the madcap murder games like it was simmering a pot full of spaghetti sauce to a roiling bubble, with Kline stumbling in as flesh-and-blood punchline. It's not particularly accommodating to certain character motivations, and the somnolent pacing isn't rewarded by much of a finale, which departs drastically from the facts of the Toto case for a rousing reconciliation.
And yet Kline remains sublime even when Joey is dosed with two bottles of barbiturates and takes a bullet clear through his chest. It just makes him all the more genial, in a bizarre way, as he offers Harlan & Marlon cheese and crackers with a pale, bleary face. Even when his Italian accent is laid on so thick that you'd expect him to suggest breadsticks, Kline is a physical marvel throughout the movie. Just the way he acts with his hinder is enough to put Jim Carrey to shame.
Kasdan and Kostmayer go lax with the pacing in ways that grossly simplify what should have been a crackerjack comedy of unreliable manners, their conclusion aiming too hard at achieving audience goodwill. If you don't get as much of a kick out of Hurt and Reeves like I do, their shenanigans will slow the procession down even as Ullman's and Plowright's energies barrel on. I Love You to Death has a piping hot ensemble yet a curiously undercooked slab of dough supporting them. Still, it got zestier laughs out of me than most of the retro comedies I've endured, so maybe it will come full circle in the future. Mama Nadja says it best: “I like you once. Maybe someday I like you again."
PRIVATE SCHOOL
(R, Universal Pictures, 89 mins., theatrical release date: July 29, 1983)
In my review of Mischief, a passing reference was made to a movie called Private School. For some godforsaken reason, I chose to revisit it in the hopes that I didn't have to use a two-word review that could sum up whatever appeal the movie had, which in '80s teen sex comedies tend to be as flimsy as the women's garments. And now I feel safe in dispatching this one with my original blunt, no-frills description:
Privates, Cool!
Thanks for your time, I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip the concierge and happy trails.
Maybe Mischief really was a passion project for Noel Black, because nothing in Privates, Cool...I'm sorry, Private School indicates a genuine filmmaking effort from all involved. Based on what I read in old newspaper clippings, this isn't even Noel Black's baby at all. Instead, you can place/blame whatever auteur tendencies are to be gleaned on the producer, Tel Aviv-born R. Ben Efraim. After making a mint on Private Lessons, this one-man Golan-Globus wannabe reportedly market-researched the hell out of his follow-up, going so far as to cater to "live teenage audiences" directly. To quote Universal Pictures' press kit, as relayed by Skip Sheffield of the Boca Raton News, Efraim deployed "the most sophisticated principles of testing and evaluation in all phases of production."
Yeah, right. Fancy terms for condescension aren't endearing to me even if I want nothing more than a 50-minute sizzle reel of T&A padded out for box-office legitimacy. Hardbodies had more of a sense of humor in its advertising blitz than this, not to mention better dialogue and direction.
For all I know, the motherfucker who produced Mitchell may as well have been influenced by his fellow Israelis when Lemon Popsicle was breaking big in Hebrew Land, which of course led to The Last American Virgin. Private School is a retread of that low landmark rather than the Sylvia Kristel-is-My Tutor antics of Efraim's previous smash, only without the clinical attention paid to the act of intercourse, not to mention the subsequent abortion and betrayal. Efraim apparently willed into being a transparent ogling party, and based on the high volume of female flesh on show, I doubt he reached out to adolescent girls one whit.
All you need to know about Efraim's legitimacy can be summed up by his three most outstanding credits which followed: Private Resort, Private Lessons 2, Private Lessons: Another Story. I'm sure a scientific cross-section of Skinemax viewers helped him fulfill that potential.
The only thing Privates...Private School has going for it is song which heralds the opening credits, Harry Nilsson's "You're Breaking My Heart." Ten years prior, the rakish iconoclast who popularized such couplets as "Everybody's talkin' at me/I don't hear a word they're sayin,'" "I can't live/If living is without you" and "You put de lime in de coconut/You drank 'em bot' up" reacted to romantic disappointment in a decidedly profane yet pithy act of subversion, with George Harrison's slide guitar egging him on. Such a gloriously rude anthem makes an ideal choice to kick off some Animal House-worthy antics, but Private School never proves as inspired as that one solitary musical cue.
(Rick Springfield, The Stray Cats, Bow Wow Wow, Trio, and Vanity 6 are the other name attractions on the soundtrack, with Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs' "Li'l Red Riding Hood" the sole oldie.)
Instead, we get a trite series of conflicts between boys and girls, young and old, all of them tedious louts. The female students of Cherryvale Academy defy their repressed headmistress, get peeped at by the male students of Freemount Academy and everyone unites for a PTA pool party where a limousine loudspeaker broadcasts some salacious distraction. Alleged scribes Dan Greenburg & Suzanne O'Malley rehash way too many exhausted clichés under the pompous notion of "fun" (the one hurdle these prurient '80s teen romps constantly trip over). The imbecilic anarchy unwittingly becomes its own form of fascism.
There's a sex education class presided over by a listless Sylvia Kristel, whose juvenile name is the only designation of any laughter, not that it delivers. There's Ray Walston making a fool of himself in ways Amy Heckerling deigned not to do. There's the unbilled Martin Mull as a jabbering drugstore clerk who complicates a routine over-the-counter request for condoms (they were available on the shelves in the early '80s, for Christ's sake!). There's lanky Matthew Modine as Jim in love with Phoebe Cates' Christine, plotting out a romantic weekend of virginal conjugation (Cates gets to play innocent and sing, but her presence is just another bust). And, of course, there's Betsy Russell as Jordan, the class exhibitionist out to wreck things for the happy couple when she's not being pestered by Jim's buddy, Bubba (Michael Zorek), who appears to be hitting it off nicely with Christine's rebellious friend Betsy (Kathleen Wilhoite) whenever he's not sating his excruciating voyeurism.
Yes, the spank-tacular sight of Betsy Russell on horseback with her blouse open is meant to be an act of sabotage, an attempt to lure Jim all for herself with those teacup nipples. But what to make of a scene later when Jordan corners loverboy himself after he turns up as part of a drag-dressing stunt with Bubba and dork Roy (Jonathan Prince)? Vamping and undressing and raising the thermostat to drive him crazy, you'd think she'd make the most of what would appear to be having Jim delivered on a silver platter. Nah, it never gets amusingly bitchy or erotic, just leery and lame. Jordan's a dim bimbo in such a constant state of undress that when she's supposed to be truly humiliated, it never registers.
Good for sales of Vaseline, though!
Porky's and Mischief sure look like perfect 10s compared to the mindless, endless, useless peek-a-boo of Privates, Cool. Flunk this shit.
GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH
(PG-13, Warner Bros. Pictures, 106 mins., theatrical release date: June 15, 1990)
In the 35 years since his solo directorial debut with 1978's Piranha, Joe Dante proved himself to be one of the most lovable anarchists in the cinema biz. His imagination is the product of both a garrulous, genuine love of film and the puckish, feverish invention of a Warner Bros. studio animator. Under Roger Corman's employment and Allan Arkush's partnership, he proved he could sell New World Pictures' line of B-movies with shrewd, demented glee. Even better was when Dante got the chance to make his own independent, irreverent fan favorites like Piranha and The Howling. And then Steven Spielberg, the man Dante was once tasked to rip off, saw his potential and started him small with a segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, which finally led him to the blockbuster promised land that was 1984's Gremlins.
Naturally, the sadistic suburban chaos of that anti-Christmas classic proved a tough act to commodify. Neither Dante nor Spielberg were satisfied with the many half-baked treatments sent their way, not that Dante expressed much interest in a sequel to begin with. Desperation caused Warner Bros. to approach Dante with the ultimate enticement for any artist, the lure of total "creative control." I can only imagine the great, Grinch-y grin which graced Dante's mug, as that same mischievous smile was what I got numerous times watching that long-delayed sequel, 1990's Gremlins 2: The New Batch.
The studio was angling for a summer hit to compete with Disney and Dick Tracy, but Dante's flick wasn't the underdog success story you wished it would be. Gremlins 2 grossed merely a third of the original's profits, while Gremlins screenwriter Chris Columbus cornered the family market later that year with the massive, $476 million take from Home Alone. Dante had no interest in hackneyed sentimentality and bumbling slapstick, so once again, whatever Dante glory gleaned from the experience was purely archaeological.
1990 was the year Warner Bros. celebrated Bugs Bunny's 50th anniversary on the backs of two flop sequels, the second being The Never Ending Story II: The Next Chapter, and that one was preceded by an actual cartoon short, Box-Office Bunny. But it was the wraparound animation in Gremlins 2 which had the input of the legendary Chuck Jones himself, after Dante had him in a cameo for the original Gremlins. The movie even begins with the classic Warner logo as presented in the vintage Bugs toons, perched wabbit and all, instead of their reliable blue sky bumper. And sure enough, egotistical Daffy Duck storms in to steal the spotlight only to suffer a fruitfully embarrassing comeuppance.
The next 100 minutes of live-action antics only get much, much Loonier from here.
Gizmo, the cuddly Mogwai mascot/failed household pet, is back at Mr. Wing's (Keye Luke) Chinatown antiques emporium, but New York City's gentrification trickles down like water to start the chaos anew. The trouble begins when tycoon Daniel Clamp, glimpsed only via pre-recorded videocassette delivered by chief assistant Forster (Robert Picardo), wants to buy out Wing's property to build his own version of Little China. The answer again is a direct "No," but it's not like old Wing sounds fit enough to continue fighting. Six weeks later, Wing passes on, and a dozer duly levels his shop, with Gizmo scrambling to escape the wreckage. But the creature won't be homeless for long, as Clamp's tower has men in low places, namely the Splice of Life genetics lab technicians who seize him for study.
Also in Clamp's service are Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) and Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates), the Kingston Falls lovebirds now seeking upward mobility at the billionaire mogul's high-tech, sky-scraping office block. Billy overhears a mailman humming a familiar melody in his design department cubicle, which is enough to spur him to rescue Gizmo from the surgical clutches of laboratory head Dr. Catheter (Christopher Lee). Despite Billy's command to keep out of sight until Kate arrives to pick him up, Gizmo ventures out and in the path of a faulty water fountain, which inevitably yet accidentally breeds another clutch of rogue Mogwai not ready to play nice.
The first rule officially re-broken, then naturally comes the dreaded prospect of them eating after midnight. Luckily, the yogurt and salad bars are open all night, and when Kate brings home not Gizmo but a cross-eyed, cackling impostor, he pigs out on chicken and throws the rest of dinner back in the couple's faces. Freshly cocooned, it isn't long before the Gremlins hatch, and, of course, you realize this means war.
And not just in the Bugs Bunny sense, but a battle worthy of Rambo as the introductory scenes tease out.
The battleground are the many floors of the Clamp Center, already a subject of Tati-style satire from the moment it's introduced given the corporation's sign has the world squashed in a vise. This "smart building" is equipped with revolving doors which travel at 100 mph, inconvenient eco-sensors that go off when menial workers sit inactive for too long and an overbearing PA system possessed of eerie intelligence. In greeting you upon entrance, the announcement is that you "Have a powerful day." Should you enter the executive washroom, it knows if you forgot to wash your hands. Parked in a restricted area? It will straight-up insult your taste in automobiles. And the fire alarm? Well, you need to hear that one for yourself.
Dante and screenwriter Charlie Haas establish this larger-than-life locale as a narcissistic totem to a character modeled trenchantly on both Donald Trump and Ted Turner. Somehow, it not only feels fresher than the original's Capra-esque winter town, but more expansive and ripest for ruination. Daniel Clamp is the entrepreneur to end them all; his self-made empire, already recounted in a best-selling autobiography, corners the market on cable television, construction, sports, finance, jams, and jellies. Filmed on location in Clamp Tower are such niche programs as: "Microwaving with Marge," hosted by the titular soused chef (Kathleen Freeman); "The Movie Police" with Leonard Maltin, who wasn't a fan of the first Gremlins; and whatever is airing on The Archery Channel, where the current Robin Hood actor has snapped his bow in protest.
Having established all these facetious facets, I hope you are duly prepared for the madness once those Gremlin pods melt away. This is undiscovered territory far from what Chris Columbus and, for that matter, FX master Chris Walas ever dreamed of. Let's not forget to clap our clamps and claws for Rick Baker, another in the movie's roster of MVPs, for supervising the creation of this new and improved batch. Thanks to Dr. Catheter's crimes against nature, the Gremlin menace evolves to the degree where the building's occupants are terrorized by an arachnid Gremlin, an electrical current Gremlin, a bat gremlin, the Brain Gremlin who injects the latter with "genetic sunblock" (granting it immunity against bright light, that third no-no in the protection manual), and the Miss Piggy/Bugs-in-drag creation that is the Lady Gremlin, who gets the vapors near the pompous Forster.
Lucky for us, also, is the human defense team which proves equally clever in regards to performances. Zach Galligan is made a more active and honorary foil than before, especially amusing when he makes a wrong turn at Albuquerque and into a Marathon Man reference, and Phoebe Cates gets to flex comedic muscle in a couple of meta moments. There's even the welcome return of Billy's former neighbors and snowplow attack survivors, Murray and Sheila Futterman, played by the no-nonsense Dick Miller and the jovial Jackie Joseph. And Baker has given Gizmo an animatronic overhaul, not just an adorable miniature puppet but an expressive creature able to command the tightest of close-ups.
John Glover, previously having provided eccentric flourishes to his must-see roles in 52 Pick-Up and The Chocolate War, plays Daniel Clamp impeccably against type and emphasizes a child-like wonder which elevates the character from mere yuppie caricature. Haviland Morris, a severely undervalued comedienne who started in Sixteen Candles and whom many feel should've taken Madonna's lead in Who's That Girl, gets a juicy character with the name of Marla, a name solidified in Charlie Haas' 1989 final draft before the Maples/Trump headlines broke wide open. With her loud mane of orange hair, hysterical Brooklyn accent and jittery, chain-smoking poise, Morris is a ball of fire made flesh.
As a late-night horror movie host and aspiring newscaster boasting an uncanny resemblance to Grandpa Munster, Robert Prosky makes a witty impression. Ditto Kathleen Freeman as the dubious cooking expert who adds sherry by the dollop whilst ingesting it by the trowel. Gedde Watanabe, the 1980s precursor to Ken Jeong who was also in Sixteen Candles with Morris, is his reliably hyperactive self as an overzealous shutterbug. Real life identical twins Don & Dan Stanton, of Good Morning, Vietnam and T2: Judgment Day, play Martin & Lewis, the quirky assistants of Dr. Catheter, the disease-obsessed mad doctor played with exquisitely creepy camp by Christopher Lee.
Look, I could go on about the subtle in-jokes and cameos, including many of Dante's friends since the New World years and a couple of WTF surprises which others have spoiled for me. I could talk about how the movie includes any number of offbeat gags involving serene nature videos heralding the apocalypse, characters openly poking holes at the nature of the three rules and the (in)correct uses of microwaves, paper shredders and wet cement. I could geek out over Tony Randall's hilariously haughty voice work as the Brain Gremlin, which culminates in a joyous performance of "New York, New York" which is sublime beyond words. I can applaud the movie for disarming us with more than enough delicious black comedy, as appetizing as the Chocolate Moose served up in that Clamp Canadian-themed restaurant, but doesn't forget the scares and the slime where it counts.
Gremlins 2: The New Batch is fondly remembered among Dante aficionados not just because it was so undiluted and unconventional, but also hilarious enough that the hits outweighed the misses. The film's reception and cult legacy kind of reminds me of Savage Steve Holland's Better Off Dead, another film which used a familiar plot as an excuse to dream up surreal situations and comic set pieces. And if Holland saw himself in the John Cusack role, Dante imagines himself a Gremlin in the machine, a pop culture prankster of minimal pretension and maximum destruction. This is my Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and it freaks me out. It's a legitimately sardonic, side-splitting and sanity-proof take-off from Dante's biggest hit, which cannot be said about the next film I will cover...
Aside from Marisa Tomei, Kevin Kline is one of the last Oscar recipients I can think of to be rewarded for his comedic prowess. In 1989, he won Best Supporting Actor as the blustery Otto from A Fish Called Wanda, where he breathed lustily from Jamie Lee Curtis' boot, insulted the "so superior" British every opportunity he could and gulped down Michael Palin's beloved aquarium, fin by fin. An impulsive, imperialist cad whose self-delusional claims of great intellect where debunked by his shapely partner-in-crime Curtis, Kline's portrayal of Otto remains the high mark for unctuous invention in the farcical game.
Joey Boca sees neither harm nor foul in his indiscretions, simply an extension of the American dream which finds him at one point a good-natured family man and the next a lusty hedonist. "I'm a man," he tells Jackson's Lacey in a post-coital rationalization, "I got a lotta hormones in my body." His wife, Rosalie (Tracey Ullman), is dutiful and headstrong in her own way, but in denial herself. To her, Joey's merely flirting, despite the concern of smitten pizzeria co-worker Devo Nod (Phoenix), who catches Joey on the phone with a mistress, fondling pizza dough with all the sensuality he reserves for female flesh.
