Homeward Bound 2: Lost In San Francisco + Noises Off...

HOMEWARD BOUND 2: LOST IN SAN FRANCISCO
(G, Walt Disney Pictures, 89 mins., theatrical release date: Mar. 8, 1996)

Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey caught me by surprise all over again when I revisited it a month ago. The film's main ingredients provoked the same stimuli the 9-year-old version of myself received back in '93, from the perils of the Pacific Northwest to the pugnacity of the voice actors. I recalled every wisecrack, every ancillary critter, every moment wood beams gave out from under the animals. And it didn't wear out its welcome, even managing to restore the lump in my throat I once had when Peter Seaver waited for his aged but persistent golden retriever companion, Shadow. Realizing that it came from the man who cut both Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart was simply one of the perks of adulthood.

Fond memories of the original aside, it seems that remaking the live-action Disney movie of 20 years' past was perhaps its biggest coup. In the same year Homeward Bound premiered, Look Who's Talking Now! and Beethoven's 2nd demonstrated just how limited the concept of unleashed pets loose in wide metropolitan spaces was, what with their unavoidable debts to earlier Disney animated masterpieces Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians. Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco has a title/concept eerily similar to that of another, more high-profile kiddie flick sequel. And while it avoids the orange elephant which floats into the room whenever anybody now brings up Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (or The Little Rascals), the misadventures this time around are the very same classic Disney staples other studios nicked back in 1993.

Shadow, Chance the braggart bulldog & the aptly-named Sassy the cat are once again on a mission to reunite with the Seaver (nee Burnford) clan, who this time try to accommodate the pets by taking them on their vacation to Canada. With the exception of Ralph Waite, who ably fills in for the departed Don Ameche, the voices of Chance (Michael J. Fox) and Sassy (Sally Field) as well the entire principal cast (Robert Hays, Kim Greist, Benji Thall, Kevin Chevalia, and Veronica Lauren) are accounted for. This time it's Chance, still afraid of the dread pound (referred to here as "the bad place"), who instigates the pets' escape from their freight cages and away from the airport, their combined twelve paws leading them to the heart of San Francisco and in pursuit of the golden bridge that will safely maneuver them back home.

Their less-than-harrowing obstacles include sparring bands of street mutts, a friendly super-pack and a diabolical if dopey duo (voices of Jon Polito and Adam Goldberg), as well as the ever present danger of dog-snatchers prowling about in a "blood-red van" collecting lab specimens. The expanding roster of fur balls includes Riley (voiced by Sinbad), a crossbred canine less dependent on humans than Shadow; Delilah (voiced by Carla Gugino), a plucky stray Kuvasz who falls in love with mongrel-for-life Chance; and Bando (voiced by Stephen Tobolowsky), a coonhound swain. There is a rousing comeuppance or two as well as a heroic detour for Shadow and Sassy in the vein of the missing Molly from the last film, this time the result of a fire started by the two creeps in the red van.

With Caroline Thompson transitioning to director (Black Beauty, Buddy), Linda Woolverton riding the wave of success from The Lion King and Duwayne Dunham crossing back over into television (his last theatrical gig being Little Giants), the creative team of the original is missed. The belabored screenplay of Homeward Bound 2 instead falls to Julie Hickson, a Tim Burton collaborator from his embryonic career at Disney and of far less renown than Ms. Thompson, and Chris Hauty, whose claim to fame is as the writer of Never Back Down. Hickson and Hauty overwork the bickering which enlivened the first film to the detriment of both the story and the stars. Sally Field, regrettably, turns positively shrewish because of the pervasively arch inner dialogue Sassy is given. That the humble Shadow has to issue more than three exasperated ultimatums is indicative of the quality of writing here: thoroughly unimaginative in developing the conflict between the domesticated heroes and the mangier supporting pooches as well as the adorable Chance/Delilah courtship.

Just as the first film surprised me upon learning of Dunham's connection with David Lynch, Homeward Bound 2 is helmed by another peculiar candidate for a family film: the late David R. Ellis. This was actually his first film after a long career as stuntman, and Ellis kept active in second unit work even while making his bones with schlock horror, including two Final Destination sequels and the pre-Sharknado sensation that was Snakes on a Plane. As much as I want to be respectful of Mr. Ellis, who deserved better than to go out on Shark Night 3-D, he is a lesser breed of filmmaker than Dunham. Sentimentality is not his strong suit, as evidenced by a feeble subplot in which Chance is realizing that baseball buff Jamie is beginning to outgrow games of fetch. The human drama is deader weight here than before. And when I think of the increased voiceover work here, I find a director who has less confidence in balancing genuine animal acting with the spoken thoughts of the animals.

Not that there aren't some tasty bits in the kibble, like when Chance observes a mass of seals and takes it as proof of what happens when dogs stay in water for too long. The way he verbalizes heartbreak, combining three nightmare scenarios, is also commendable. And there is a sublime use of three actual sports commentators, weighing in as Chance sabotages one of Jamie's games. The entire roster of voice stars do, once you get past the script (which antes up the lame Schwarzenegger puns and hydrant-level scatology), come across as lively and cordial; even Shadow gets in a nice joke fitting for an old-timer such as himself. But take away the narration and Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco will have you asking "Are we there yet?" too early and too frequently, which isn't the way for anyone to rediscover their inner child.

NOISES OFF
(PG-13, Touchstone Pictures, 101 mins., theatrical release date: Mar. 20, 1992)

Annie Potts was the initial voice of Sassy when Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey "wrapped" in 1992, before Disney secured Sally Field as a replacement. But the Ghostbusters comedienne was also one of dozens of stars to be considered for the role Glenn Close immortalized in Fatal Attraction, and she was slated to reunite with Peter Bogdanovich a year after Texasville (the Last Picture Show sequel in which Potts played Jeff Bridges' wife) for the Amblin-produced film version of Michael Frayn's Broadway smash Noises Off. Alas, Potts was replaced by Marilu Henner and I haven't been able to find any reason as to why. 'Tis a pity, since Bogdanovich gathered the greatest comic dream team this side of 1985's Clue, even trading up in talent (Michael Caine > Martin Mull) when not finding adequate matches (Colleen Camp = Nicollette Sheridan).

That Bogdanovich puts his own ensemble through the same panicked, frantic and m-m-m-m-manic paces like Jonathan Lynn did in his overpraised board game spin-off is inevitable given his film's origin. Frayn's three-part deconstruction of a British sex farce, all slamming doors and swollen misunderstandings and polite innuendos, was informed by the unruly dynamics within its troupe of dysfunctional day players. First was a twilight-hour dress rehearsal before the premiere in which the stars are already on shaky ground and the director is driven to his wit's end. Then came a matinee performance aimed at the seniors wherein all involved are at each other's throats. Finally, an ad-libbed Armageddon of an evening show rife with defective props and irrevocable shifts away from character. "On we bloodily stagger," proclaims the show's irritable guv'nor, not immune to the bedlam he's brought upon himself and his clueless cast.

In Marty Kaplan's scripted adaptation, the setting shifts from the U.K. hinterland to the American heartland, beginning and ending on the Great White Way itself. Lloyd Fellowes (Michael Caine) recollects the three doomed stagings as he anticipates the worst in NYC. His perpetually aloof charges include aging star attraction Dotty Otley (Carol Burnett), who's gambling her retirement on the show's success while playing housekeeper Mrs. Clackett; Garry Lejeune (John Ritter), who is lascivious realtor Roger Tramplemain onstage and Dotty's possessive boy toy off of it; Frederick Dallas (Christopher Reeve), in the role of tax exile Philip Brent, who is pacifistic to the point of nosebleeds but naïve enough to end up a third wheel in Garry and Dotty's tempestuous affair; Belinda Blair/Flavia Brent (Marilu Henner), who dishes the dirt and proves an ineffectual if perky peacekeeper; Brooke Ashton (Nicollette Sheridan), a shortsighted bombshell who is dating her director whilst acting the part of Roger's ripe IRS secretary lover Vicki; and Selsdon Mowbray (Denholm Elliott), a showbiz friend of Dotty's whose performance as a doddering burglar is sabotaged by his own bottomless thirst for whiskey and short-term memory.

Lloyd tries to choreograph the melee of "Nothing On" but cannot handle dueling relationships with Brooke and stage manager/scapegoat Poppy Taylor (Julie Hagerty), whereas Poppy's assistant Tim Allgood (Mark Linn-Baker) is operating on little sleep and smaller reserves of capability. These nine personalities fall prey to the spiraling jealousies and deficiencies which obliterate whatever tenuous claims of professionalism they can claim.

Michael Frayn's Tony-certified Noises Off has the kind of bulletproof comic scenarios which are precise enough to survive even the lousiest revival. As the group rehearses in Des Moines, four of the actors stall the all-important farcical flow to question their motivation in the most imbecilic of ways, from Garry's mild-mannered vagueness (one of his more coherent gripes: "Lloyd, these damn sardines!") to Frederick's immaculately-sculpted timidity to Brooke's flighty tinge of doubt just as Act 1 is nearly complete. Hell breaks loose backstage two months later in Miami Beach, with the cuckolded Garry having regressed into a vengeful trickster, the self-absorbed Lloyd making an ass of himself every opportunity and everyone trying to prevent Selsdon from drifting off in a drunken stupor. By the time they get to Cleveland, every established flaw either takes its logical toll or comes back with a vengeance, from stuck doors to hazardous props to Dotty's full-fledged mental breakdown in front of a live theatre audience.

Peter Bogdanovich brings out the giddy worst in his all-star assemblage. John Ritter (of Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon and They All Laughed) does his sharpest variation on his man-overboard routine, tumbling down stairways and baiting his co-stars with tremendous energy. Ditto an equally game Christopher Reeve, his self-effacing matinee idol bearing the brunt of the many pants-down blunders. Julie Hagerty suffers smartly and Nicollette Sheridan stumbles sexily. Denholm Elliott, who sadly passed away from AIDS in 1992, makes a great wag and Carol Burnett, in a welcome cinematic return since owning Miss Hannigan for John Huston, burlesques as peerlessly as ever. Excepting the presence of two Brits and one Britt, Burnett's over-the-top Cockney accent comes closest to comic gold amongst her Anglo co-stars; and when it drops, she has the power to take the house along with it.

All that good stuff out of the way, however, Bogdanovich's and Kaplan's translation of Noises Off comes up short not unlike the dramaturgy Frayn lampooned. That rickety framing device centering on Michael Caine is overwhelmed by the star's cuddly lecherous charisma as Lloyd, and even that cannot fully mitigate his accountability in these blazing fiascos. Frayn had the good sense to paint Lloyd as one more bullheaded diva, his screaming complacency making him worthy of sinking along with the passengers of his own Titanic. The fluffier take Caine (and to be fair, the entire cast) is saddled with leads to a self-congratulatory and unconvincing curtain call which is more fitting with the legacy of Frayn's play rather than its content. "There's nowhere to go but up" is a Broadway Melody which doesn't mesh with the chaotic rhythm, the filmic equivalent of overlaying an Ignacio Herb Brown tune over a random snatch of Metal Machine Music.

Bogdanovich's fixed camera is willing, but the spirit is weak thanks to such nagging artificialities as canned laughter and reaction shots, which doesn't expand the material for the big screen so much as kowtow to its smaller competition. Faithful to Frayn's libretto as he and Kaplan are, the theatricality endemic to the material becomes the film in rather staid ways. It doesn't set one up for the victory lap to come nor provide these fine actors with enough material to invest us when said coda intrudes. Noises Off is the funnier, more together alternative to Clue due in no small part to what worked so exquisitely the first time, and I'd rather Bogdanovich than Chris Columbus, for damn sure. But more so than the loss of Annie Potts, I mourn having to slot Noises Off into Hollywood's same "It Was a Good Idea at the Time?" file as Rent.

Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey + Alive + Toy Soldiers + The Good Son

HOMEWARD BOUND: THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY
(G, Walt Disney Pictures, 84 mins., theatrical release date: Feb. 12, 1993)

Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey first roamed as a children's book by Sheila Burnford in 1961 before Disney commissioned a live-action adaptation two years later. Both Burnford's tome and Fletcher Markle's movie hew closer to something like The Journey of Natty Gann compared to the cutesier Homeward Bound, which shares more in common with The Adventures of Milo & Otis but with a Look Who's Talking! twist. Don Ameche, Sally Field and Michael J. Fox (reportedly recast from Donald Sutherland, Annie Potts and Jon Cryer) speak the animal characters' inner dialogue in this case, a trio of happy pets forced to traverse the Sierra Vistas to reunite with their young masters.

Bulldog Chance (Fox), in spite of being rescued by the Burnfords (the central family here named after the story's author, yes), isn't the least bit serious about loyalty and more interested in slobbering havoc. Golden retriever Shadow (Ameche) and Himalayan cat Sassy (Field) have their own solemn bonds to child companions Peter (Benji Thall) and Hope (Veronica Lauren) to uphold when they're not trying to keep rascally Chance in line. But when Peter, Hope and Jamie's (Kevin Chevalia) mother, Laura (Kim Griest), remarries to schoolteacher Bob Seaver (Robert Hays), the Burnfords have to uproot to San Francisco on business, leaving the animals behind at the ranch home of Kate (Jean Smart).

It isn't long before Shadow starts fearing the worst, and flees Kate's sanctuary with Chance and Sassy towing behind him. All of the all-natural wilderness pitfalls greet them, from grizzlies and porcupines to waterfalls and forest rangers, but the furry leads are steadfastly adorable and the name-brand voice stars taunt each other with glee, specifically the pugnacious Fox and prissy Field (Mr. Ameche, in his last hurrah, convinces us of Shadow's bountiful wisdom). Chance has been beefed up considerably from the original prototype in terms of breed (no longer the button-eyed Muffy the Bull Terrier) and presence, the screenplay from Linda (Beauty and the Beast) Woolverton and Caroline (The Addams Family) Thompson, with uncredited punch-up from Jonathan (The Sure Thing) Roberts, allowing Fox's hound to out-wisecrack Arnold Schwarzenegger, referenced in the presence of a mountain lion.

More surprising is the choice of director, Duwayne Dunham, a reliable editor for David Lynch who has momentum on his side as much as the locale and the cute animals. The movie can't help but lag whenever Dunham focuses on the humans, mostly because the writers simply trot them out for melodramatic relief. A late-inning stretch at an animal control center goes the other way just as roughly. But Dunham's knack for adversity does allow for a couple of raw heart-clenchers: Sassy is swept away by a raging salt river, and the aged Shadow suffers a crueler fate due to unstable woodworks.

By that point, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey does leave you whimpering like Chance for the prospect of a happy ending, which is delivered on pure family-oriented terms. Having spent a year in post-production repair, Homeward Bound is undemanding, to be true (this isn't a game-changer like Babe), but with a surefire paw up on Look Who's Talking Now! or any of the Benji films (watch out for Joe Camp's credit as "animal coordinator").

ALIVE
(R, Touchstone/Paramount Pictures, 120 mins., theatrical release date: Jan. 15, 1993)

Whereas the strays of Disney's Homeward Bound cure their hunger pains via a stream of fresh fish, the survivors in Touchstone's (and Paramount's) Alive dine on philosophical and primitive red meat. Piers Paul Read's literary document of the 1972 Andes flight disaster lends itself less to feel-good perseverance than The Incredible Journey, unless I missed the part where the golden retriever was devoured whole by the saucer-eyed kitty and the spotted mutt. Indeed, an ordeal like the one experienced by the Uruguayan rugby players, God-fearing alumni of Montevideo's Stella Maris, and their extended family would've been slightly improved by having Homeward Bound's critters scurry through the snow. Knowing my Touchstone Pictures, chances are they would've encountered Sidney Poitier and Tom Berenger instead.

Actually, the leveling of Flight 571 on Friday the 13th, October 1972, is more unsettling than any Jason kill. An unforgiving cloud blinds the pilots to craggy disaster, with both wings and the tail end clipped off on collision. The dismembered aircraft slides violently to a halt, all of the passengers' seats thrusting forward to suggest a flesh-and-blood highway accident. The aftermath doesn't skimp on visceral images of women's legs pinned down by metal rods or the accompanying mania brought on by "altitude sickness." By the time the food and drink supply is rationed, only 27 out of the initial 45 boarders remain, the pilots and a dozen-plus others dead. The mantle of leader eventually shifts from team captain Antonio Balbi (Vincent Spano) to the revived Nando Parrado (Ethan Hawke, embodying this very film's technical advisor) as the situation grows further desperate.

Indeed, it is Nando who declares his budding stewardship with the immortal line: "Well, then I'll cut some meat off the pilots. After all, they got us into this mess."

Director Frank (Arachnophobia) Marshall and writer John Patrick (Moonstruck) Shanley downplay grisly sensationalism in favor of a rousing emphasis on perilous endurance. When one poor hiker sinks into the snow and the ground falls away right in front of him, it's got a charge above and beyond the call of Rene Cardona. Alive doesn't hack it as a group portrait, given the cast is predominantly nondescript even while their numbers are thinning, but Marshall and Shanley do convey the plight tougher than most disaster movies have been known to muster. For a while at least...

...Because what they cannot do is reconcile the tactful horror of the situation with the pronounced spirituality of the characters. Portentous wraparounds featuring John Malkovich as one of the athletes (we're never clear who) speak of enlightenment in the eeriest of tones. Even though guilt and "innocence" are queried as sacrificial, the direct connotation made between cannibalism and the Communion has the effect of making those corpse cuts take on the significance of altar bread. As the lone female survivor, Illeana Douglas takes no place at this Donner Party until she whimsically decides to be fruitful, but given that the one agnostic of the bunch pays for his refusal to pray, tragedy is inevitable, and curiously weightless. Collapsing in on itself despite the technical finesse, Alive makes like an Outward Bound expedition convinced it's a vision quest.

TOY SOLDIERS
(R, Tri-Star Pictures, 111 mins., theatrical release date: Apr. 26, 1991)

Ethan Hawke may be nobody's image of South American machismo, but Andrew "The Djinn Genie" Divoff is a native Venezuelan with the same hot-blooded grit as Robert Davi's Sanchez from Licence to Kill. Toy Soldiers wants to position him as Hans Gruber in this particular hostage crisis, but first-time director Daniel Petrie Jr. is frustratingly adept at cannibalizing proven action flick tropes in as perfunctory a manner possible (cf: Shoot to Kill). Co-scripting this time with David Koepp, Petrie's own "triumph of the spirit" is a Red Dawn Reform School where the unruly sons of privilege outwit heavily-armed Latino and Aryan thugs under the volatile lead of Luis Cali (Divoff), whose biggest crime is loving his own cartel-kingpin daddy a bit too much.

Sean "Goonie 4 Life" Astin, Wil Wheaton (angstier here than he was in Stand by Me) and Keith Coogan (the twice-babysat misfit, inheriting Mikey's asthma) play a thrice-expelled discipline case, the bitter progeny of a Mafioso (Jerry Orbach) and the gawky offspring of a Republican figurehead. These self-described "rejects" of the Regis academy fall in line once Luis arrives; having arrived too late to single out a judge's son for vengeance in his father's imprisonment, he blockades the campus with remote-controlled plastic explosives, rooftop snipers and all manner of military-grade firepower. Cali also devotes hourly intervals to head counts where for one missing student, five are to be executed.

Billy Tepper (Astin) leads the kiddie insurgence and manages to deliver crucial information to the authorities within one recess period. But both parental attention and Special Forces tend to stifle (in this case, fatally) young minds, so Billy and his buds, as well as two preteen electronics whizzes, risk a do-or-die attempt to diffuse the bombs and defeat the terrorists. But the only real urgency resides in Michael Kahn's proficient editing, brisker than it was in the equally-lengthy Alive so as to be on the level of his Indiana Jones assignments. Despite the ventilation shafts, clandestine confrontations and adrenaline-fueled heroism, Die Hard, this movie's closest forebear, packed a meatier punch. The youthful hunks tend to spend their free time sans pants, and it apparently made no sense for Petrie & Koepp to damage the merchandise even slightly. 

Toy Soldiers, adapted from a novel by William P. Kennedy, bears no relation to the '84 film of the same name nor does it utilize Martika's hit ballad ("We all fall down...") as Eminem eventually would. Aside from Kahn and Divoff, the film's major assets include dependable supporting turns from Louis Gossett Jr. as the stern but lenient dean and Denholm Elliott's wryly funny headmaster. And I would be remiss if I didn't say that Sean Astin does the best he can with his overbearing delinquent hero, who in one moment is subjected to corporal punishment by Cali, once a private school attendee in his teens. Spare the rod, as they say, but spoil the child by seeking out Class of 1999. Lil' Petrie still needs to learn some discipline himself.

THE GOOD SON
(R, 20th Century Fox, 87 mins., theatrical release date: Sep. 24, 1993)

What's trashier than Toy Soldiers, grimmer than Alive and fraught with more behind-the-scenes turmoil than Homeward Bound? The Good Son. Novelist Ian McEwan whipped up the screenplay in 1986 as commissioned by 20th Century Fox, but the studio balked until 1991, during which time it reached pre-Blacklist levels of curiosity. With Michael (Heathers) Lehmann attached to direct and a cast including Jesse Bradford and Mary Steenburgen, McEwan watched with growing disillusionment as Kit Culkin blackmailed Fox into casting his golden boy son Macaulay in the titular role and Lehmann was traded for Joseph Ruben, no stranger to iconoclastic star vehicles thanks to Sleeping with the Enemy, who unceremoniously brought in a friend to rewrite McEwan's script. McEwan fought to claim sole writing credit, keeping distance from the finished product on his own terms.

His is not the only disgrace. The same Joseph Ruben who crafted 1987's low-budget creeper sleeper The Stepfather only has formalism going for him here; thus, he's prematurely interchangeable with John (Pacific Heights) Schlesinger. Cajoled into rewiring his endearingly bratty image, the distressingly humorless Macaulay Culkin doesn't seem to be having as much fun as his wicked Henry Evans suggests we should. So numbingly interested in death Henry is that he seems to have stumbled out of River's Edge rather than The Omen. The adults are mindless pushovers devoid of any psychological investment, cheating us out of a revelatory performance on a par with Terry O'Quinn, Margaret Colin (cf: True Believer) or Kevin Anderson. And no matter how effectively it is lensed, Maine is so synonymous with Stephen King as to invite unfair if educational contrast (watch out for Daniel Hugh Kelly, of the movie version of Cujo, as another father on a poorly-timed business trip).

Only Elijah Wood, who for all intents and purposes is the focal character, assures us of McEwan's sullied integrity. Cousin Mark's guilt-addled devotion to his deceased mother, which he projects onto the similarly mournful Aunt Susan (Wendy Crewson), is a solid hook for a psychological fable that declares a tyke war. The mind reels as to how Joseph Ruben could've handled the material back when The Stepfather showed he could deconstruct the idea of a nuclear family, resonantly pitting '50s idealism against '80s cynicism. Repackaged for Macaulay, whose burglar-bashing Home Alone fame could have been subverted in surer hands, every malevolent misdeed, spot of profanity and vindictive overture is patently calculated. The antagonism Mark endures from Henry and his blind protectors is ludicrously contrived. And the cliff top showdown is the only point where the film spills over with juicy camp.

More than any post-Bad Seed celebration of adolescent sadism in the first degree (or even the excellent Nick Cave song written sympathetically about Cain), The Good Son stirred within me memories of David Keith's The Curse. In it, Wil Wheaton acted alongside his own real-life sibling Anne, who in her only film credit is remembered for being attacked by a coop of homicidal chickens. Macaulay's sister Quinn Culkin experiences a similar fate, as Henry tries to dispose of his last biological rival, 8-year-old Connie, by tossing her onto thin ice. Had Joseph Ruben enjoyed himself in this case, the latent dysfunction would've made for some sprightly (or is that spritely?) mischief. Alas, that old adage of resignation sets in early and never gets lifted: "Playtime's over."

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS
(PG-13, Paramount Pictures/Nickelodeon Films, 112 mins., theatrical release date: June 3, 2016)

It must be just like the endtimes to see a Michael Bay production brought to the screen by Nickelodeon Films. The shock of Bay directing under Steven Spielberg's auspices for the Transformers assembly line is now a thing of the past, even if Platinum Dunes is still pillaging innocent memories of everything from Friday night to Saturday morning. Besides, any functional adult can now appreciate the riskier jokes from Animaniacs or Who Framed Roger Rabbit? they were once too young to comprehend. But Nickelodeon has long since been removed from gross subversion ever since Ren & Stimpy got the axe (I like Spongebob, but did you ever seen him whiz on the electric fence?), and Michael Bay's idea of family fun is to patronize every age bracket instead of just the manchild.

Granted, I am totally non-acquainted with the current Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon Nickelodeon does air, nor did I bother to watch the preceding live-action TMNT movie. Judging by the reactions to that 2014 moneymaker, I wouldn't care to remember even had I screened it. Apparently, the Jonathan Liebesman-helmed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a joyless experience that made the comparatively grittier Steve Barron prototype from 1990 look like Schumacher's Batman. But at least they weren't extraterrestrials, because then I genuinely would've had some post-Transformers stress disorder, a very real form of shell shock.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows suggests these turtle boys (the producers) have cut the diehards some slack. The tone of the sequel is closer in spirit to the Murakami-Wolf-Swenson animated series which defined the property in the late 1980s, going so far as to import the beloved theme song ("They're the world's most fearsome fighting team"), and the script incorporates several familiar-sounding characters. Casey Jones, the hockey-masked vigilante played by Elias Koteas in those ‘90s movies, debuts in Bay's universe here, as do mutant antagonists Bebop & Rocksteady, brain monster Krang and Baxter Stockman, who is represented here as a nefarious black scientist like in the original comics, but loses his prized creation, the Mousers, familiar to his backstory.

Baxter (Tyler Perry) mobilizes the Foot Clan to free the captured Shredder (Brian Tee) from armored transport, but the plan is intercepted by investigative journalist April O'Neil (Megan Fox) and relayed to the four half-shell heroes following a pizza-related blunder at a Knicks game. A freak transportation accident sends Shredder to Dimension X, where he is swayed by Krang (Brad Garrett) to retrieve the pieces of a portal which will allow the grotesque being world destruction. To ensure success, Krang spills the "secret of the ooze" so that Shredder may transform a pair of fugitive henchmen into, respectively, hybrid creatures Bebop (Gary Anthony Williams) and Rocksteady (Sheamus). It is up to Leonardo (Pete Ploszek), Raphael (Alan Ritchson), Michelangelo (Noel Fisher), and Donatello (Jeremy Howard), as well any willing human allies, to dismantle either the portal or Krang's mighty Technodrome.

The ever-endangered April is rescued from a scoop gone awry by the passenger of Shredder's prison van, renegade security officer Casey Jones (Stephen Amell). This time around, the goalie-masked crusader is less a sullen vigilante and more a beleaguered scrappy, a department underling with dreams of becoming a true detective. Casey poses no threat to Raphael's ego and is taken aboard as a partner fast due to April's solidarity with the Turtles. Casey's only real motive is validation for his fantastical story about that Tortugas van with the grill that shoots manhole covers and the robotic arms swinging nunchakus on the side, which he doesn't get from Police Chief Rebecca Vincent (Laura Linney).

The directing gig for TMNT: Out of the Shadows has somehow wound up in hands of a filmmaker more promising than the promo-centric hacks Bay's production company usually employs. That would be Dave Green, whose 2014 feature debut Earth to Echo paid direct homage to Spielberg, but here the only allusion to the maestro behind E.T. is when orange-coded party animal Mikey runs into Bumblebee at a costume party. Green is, as far as Michael Bay productions go, not a total stooge and doesn't redden your eyes during the all-important action sequences, dialing down on the over-editing and disorienting staging as opposed to what Bay typically accomplishes. It's paced briskly, too, and with a lot less of the jejune mogul's patented mean streak to stink the film up like eau d'égout.

Or at least as far as Green's work is concerned. The screenplay by returning scribes Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec, meanwhile, bears all the worst traits of working by committee. The movie's subtitle reflects the lip service paid to the friction within the four "brothers" to either carry on as concealed weapons at the beck and call of a capricious populace or exploit Baxter's synthetic experiments under the chance at normality. They could've more aptly titled it "There's No I in Turtle Power" given the more protracted but equally futile strain for de facto leader Leonardo to manage the conflicting personalities around him, especially the short-fused Raphael. Donatello is a witless expository technophile, and Michelangelo, the one with the potential for dim-witted good cheer on the scale of Bill & Ted, is shockingly unfunny.

For all they're given to work with, the flesh-and-bone actors may as well be CG-inserted to match their blocky, bulky co-stars. Megan Fox continues to give the impression of pouting plasticine, the spunk that once spurred her to rake Bay over the coals now so diluted that she'll forever inspire genuine reappraisals of Jessica Alba every time she's on screen. Poor Stephen Amell, meanwhile, never once convinced me that I wasn't watching the second coming of Chris O'Donnell. One can only pray Will Arnett's well-worn presence as the vaingloriously bogus hero, self-nicknamed "The Falcon," will inspire impressionable youth to seek out the complete Arrested Development so they may watch him be typecast properly. Ditto Tyler Perry in the role of Smart Brother once played by Bebop himself in Undercover Brother. In my mind, Perry's more of a burlesque performer than a comic genius, but that's a minor strength here among a predominantly flat cast.

As for Laura Linney, give her the Frances McDormand Honorary Award for Most Overqualified Supporting Actor and be on your way.

This MSG-enhanced sequel just feels so crushingly prefabricated from the self-referential dialogue (Mikey mourns over a planned hip-hop Christmas album), workhorse pop music cues (Lionel Richie's "Hello," Edwin Starr's "War," Elvis Presley's "Little Less Conversation," and Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" ALL need to be retired for a while) to the finale which blatantly rips from The Avengers, not to mention Star Wars, Ghostbusters, etc.. It's as if they started off with minimal inspiration despite the increased awareness of the franchise's history, resulting in a disposable act of obligation rather than entertainment, a cut-rate Franken-sequel as regrettably overbearing as the new iteration of these happy-go-lucky crime-fighters as the Incredible Hulk's droppings. I wish Dave Green all the luck in the world that he might someday gain a possible mentor in Steven Spielberg, so that he no longer has to bet on the Bay.

Vice Versa (1988)

VICE VERSA

(PG, Columbia Pictures, 98 mins., theatrical release date: March 11, 1988)

No sooner has thirty-something department store VP Marshall Seymour swapped minds with his 11-year-old son Charlie than the newly-transmogrified Marshall offers auto-critiquing reason from the mouths of babes: "Maybe this happened all over America. ‘Invasion of the Body Switchers!'" 

That was surely the only explanation behind a lot of family entertainment in the late 1980s, the New Wave of "I'd Like to Be You for a Day" tall tales in the mould of Freaky Friday. It began with the Tri-Star Pictures release of Like Father, Like Son, followed on close heels by Vice Versa from Tri-Star's parent company, Columbia Pictures. Both of these Sony properties as well as the lesser spawn from B-movie houses New World (18 Again!) and Vestron (Dream a Little Dream) all got creamed by the Oscar-nominated Big, which grossed more than the sum of all four pictures.

That Penny Marshall blockbuster had been kicking around Hollywood for a while, which can make sense on a basic exploitation angle in regards to such a craze. But in the case of Vice Versa, the producers/screenwriters looked even further backwards to the first well-known artifact of the switcheroo story, Thomas Anstey's 1882 novel of the same name. That tome had already been adapted multiple times in its native England, including a 1948 full-length from director Peter Ustinov which starred both a young Anthony Newley and future pop star Petula Clark.

Anstey's name was absent from the promotional materials for the film, however, so maybe creators Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais would be seem more inspired by Lorne Cameron's story idea for Like Father, Like Son. Cameron's not-so-original concept, which roped in The Sure Thing co-writer Steven Bloom, wasn't predominantly well-received in its final incarnation, directed by Rod Daniel (Teen Wolf) and starring Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron in the reversed roles. Dudley's star was waning so poorly at this time, he couldn't even justify Arthur 2: On the Rocks, and Kirk would effectively avalanche his film career with two words: Saving Christmas.

As down as I was on Little Monsters and The Wizard, at least Fred Savage grew up to better things, mainly as a high-profile TV director whose credits include It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Party Down, Modern Family, Garfunkel and Oates, and 2 Broke Girls. Released a month after The Wonder Years premiered on TV, Vice Versa stands up as the film which demonstrated Savage's potential the best, an infectious dual showcase for both him and adult co-star Judge Reinhold.

Reinhold, of course, became famous early on as hapless Brad Hamilton from Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982 and as Axel Foley's buddy in the Beverly Hills Cop series. Not too many people care to remember either Head Office (from the director of Grease 2 and Airplane 2) or Off Beat, which presented Reinhold as romantic leading man, although the later does boast Heaven Help Us director Michael Dinner as well as supporting roles for Meg Tilly and Harvey Keitel. Vice Versa, along with the Nic Cage notoriety Zandalee, were singled out as a hipster joke when Judge lived up to his stage name on an episode of Kevin Smith's animated version of Clerks.

Maybe the fact that I like Vice Versa ought to sentence me to watch Jersey Girl, but I'd rather plead insanity.

Anyway, Judge Reinhold is Marshall Seymour, an executive at Chicago's Stanford & Avery who specializes in buying overseas toys for distribution. The trouble is Marshall isn't a particularly playful man, more an overworked divorcee who never seems able to catch a break in trying to spend quality time with his son Charlie (Savage), a rock music enthusiast who favors the drums. Charlie is set to spend a week bunking with his dad at his tidied-up apartment, but first Marshall takes a business trip to Thailand with his girlfriend/co-worker Sam (Corrine Bohrer). While away, Marshall is duped by a shady pair of antiques collectors into smuggling a bejeweled skull of Buddhist black magic, which activates once a heated argument between Marshall and Charlie ends on the declaration of a wish to trade places.

Marshall is now a prissy, precocious tot negotiating the life of an elementary school shrimp, and Charlie enters his father's adult world of aggressive business deals and office romances.

Any synopsis of Vice Versa can pretty much end there. The film breezes along on a batch of scenarios that finds Marshall, now "6-foot-2, with the brain of an 11-year-old," winging it through conference calls at work and Charlie's school, whereas the hyper-mature Charlie becomes a wry stranger to his juvenile environment. Eventually, the bickering jewel thieves (Swoozie Kurtz, David Proval) scheme to get back the gold-studded trinket and further complicate matters.

Vice Versa, directed with plebian thrust by Brian Gilbert, is the Webster's definition of lightweight, bogged down by nothing which would compromise its lassez faire goofiness. When Marshall/Charlie deduces how much of a "Freudian nightmare" it would be to live another life pretending to be the son of his ex-wife Robyn (Jane Kaczmarek), the possibilities end there. Instead, his burgeoning courtship of Sam is plumbed as she and Charlie/Marshall go out on a date to see the boy's favorite metal band, Malice. The emotional complications of such, like the fact that it is Charlie's first kiss in an adult avatar and the reactionary jealousy of Marshall as acted out by a prepubescent boy, are never exploited and rather patched up with sitcom-friendly spackle.

It's all so inconsequential, right on down to the kidnapping of Charlie, whose calm reasoning boggles his captors ("Have you done this before?" asks Proval's henpecked henchman), and the resultant chase to catch their train and retrieve the idol. Short Circuit 2 has more grit than Vice Versa.

At least it's not insufferable, and a large part of the film's passing charms are due to the central performances by Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage. Reinhold has the most fun of the pair relishing his newfound big boy status, whether instigating a musical jam session on a sales floor (which proves a fluke of dumb luck in terms of business strategy), latching onto various innuendos like "unit" and "ball buster" or, in the film's uproarious highlight, putting the screws on a trio of bullying "barf bags" by posing as "Calhoun, high school patrol." Reinhold's physicality is as amusingly gangly as it is elastic, and he graces even the most incidental moments with a spark of good humor.

The young Mr. Savage also rises to the comedic challenge as a cynical tot slurping down gin and tonics and spitting rapid-fire commands at anyone within earshot. He gets a lion's share of the one-liners, like when he first returns to school with his father's soul inside him and is patronized by a teacher when asking for directions on where to go. "I asked a straightforward question," he retorts. "I'd appreciate a straightforward answer." As a result, Charlie gets led by the ear to the principal's office.

Writers Clement & La Frenais don't appear to make much of an effort in delineating Marshall and Charlie from the outset beyond the most basic of character strokes. Thus the double act of Reinhold and Savage playing well past/behind their years isn't so much a spectacle of specific impressions as much as archetypical vessels meant to be filled by the efforts of the performers. This creates yet another hindrance to the story, as Reinhold and Savage are given to generalizations, like when the former screams "No way!" upon the news that Charlie's dowdy instructor Mrs. Luttrell (Beverly Archer) misconstrues a love letter as directed towards her, or when the latter bungles his hockey practice by clumsily strolling along the ice and giving his coach a high stick to a low area.

Reinhold and Savage make wonders out of their every moment, though. Luckily, the supporting cast also includes future Malcom in the Middle materfamilias Jane Kaczmarek, a fleeting early appearance by a curl-lipped Jane Lynch (who would go on to MVP status in her own right), James Hong from Central Casting's Oriental Division, and a very nice, warm turn by Corrine Bohrer as the love interest Sam. Bohrer, for the record, had done more than her share of schlock by 1988, as credits like The Beach Girls, Zapped!, Joysticks, and Surf II demonstrate. It's refreshing to see her bounce off the game, energetic pair of Reinhold and Savage in this capacity.

There's nothing Gilbert and the writers/producers bring to the table in regards to father/son relationships that is either inventive or innocuous. Nor, as I said, to they really aim for subversion on the level of a Joe Dante or Bob Zemeckis. Vice Versa is simply ambling innocence personified. But as I reached the end of the movie, which is unfortunately capped by a Diane Warren-penned, Peter Wolf-produced (and no, not the J. Geils howler) tune by the dread Starship (it wasn't a hit, so they mercifully ended up stopping now), I decided that my smile was as good a recommendation as this film deserves.

Besides, who needs to overdo it when you've got the Honorable Judge Reinhold to make his stand? The defense rests.

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."

Ernest Saves Christmas

ERNEST SAVES CHRISTMAS
(PG, Touchstone Pictures, 95 mins., theatrical release date: November 11, 1988)

Ernest Saves Christmas is a film title of holly jolly irony. Even with all of the goodwill in the world, as befitting a simpleton who is "at one with the Yuletide, kno-wut-I-mean," it seems that throughout this second vehicle for the late Jim Varney's hayseed man-child, Christmas needs to be saved from Ernest. In rescuing a pine tree from the back of a truck, he causes a multiple-car collision. Taking the reins of Santa's reindeer-guided cart, Ernest is given the Jack Skellington treatment by Air Traffic Control. And his perennially overwhelmed neighbor Vern, seen as always through the camera eye, has his living room demolished by Ernest's mercenary party-planning. You feel like hiring Pee-Wee Herman for damage control.

In 1987, Ernest Goes to Camp was the first major spin-off for Varney's persona of Ernest P. Worrell, the rambling yokel who spent the better part of a decade filming one-take commercials out of Nashville for companies both regional and national, although primarily the former. Under the Disney Studio subsidiary Touchstone Pictures, the Ernest brand stretched out to four theatrical releases, the fifth being 1993's independently-released flop Ernest Rides Again. From thereon out, it was DTV all the way, with Disney's only affiliation being Slam Dunk Ernest (1995), co-starring Kareem Abdul-Jabbar during the short-lived craze for casting NBA heavyweights in family movies (Kazaam, Space Jam).

Varney found greater success in Disney's own Toy Story films as the voice of Slinky Dog, and was duly cast as Jed Clampett in Penelope Spheeris' early 1990s feature revival of The Beverly Hillbillies. Alas, Varney passed away from lung cancer in 2000 and never made it back on the marquee biz. But according to both Varney and directing partner John Cherry, Ernest Saves Christmas has held up as their favorite of the series, no doubt because of it being the most, well, earnest.

A lot of the film's benevolent gravity, however, is in the casting of stately Douglas Seale as the Santa Claus of this story. The twist herein, which surely lent itself to a future hot Dis-cember property, is that Santa's mythology and magic must be properly transferred to a willing mortal man. Like many an aging detective in a gritty cop thriller, even Santa gets too old for this stuff, although no policeman ever had to work the beat for almost an entire century.

Seale's Santa arrives in Orlando, where a businessman engages him in idle chatter, or mingle with the Kringle. Of course, the clues soar over him like a sleigh, whereas even the most jet-lagged tot is keen to the presence of their holiday hero. Santy Claus is away on business, though, and that is to christen children's entertainer Joe Caruthers (Oliver Clark) as his descendant. To get to him, Santa will have to hail a taxi and thus enters Ernest P. Worrell himself into the plot, having dropped off a catatonic passenger at the luggage conveyor belt.

En route to their destination, Ernest picks up the 1980s equivalent of a Dickensian street urchin, a teenage runaway nicknamed Harmony Starr (Noelle Parker) who takes in stride both the bad John Wayne impersonator behind the wheel and the genuine St. Nick riding shotgun. It doesn't end well for either men when Ernest is fired for giving Santa a free ride and Santa is diverted from his conversation with Joe by hotshot agent Marty Brock (Robert Lesser), who is grooming the unemployed Uncle Joey for the lead role in a movie and has his competitor, "Mr. Santos," arrested for vagrancy.

Ernest accidentally forgets to unload Santa's magic bag of toys, thus becoming enough of a believer to take Harmony along on a mission to rescue the imprisoned St. Nick before Christmas Eve, 7 p.m. But the complications snowball when Harmony keeps the sack for herself, Joe remains skeptical about his great promotion and a pair of helper elves arrive to gather up the reindeer only to end up chauffeured by the hapless Ernest, who commandeers the sleigh literally around the world and back.

Jim Varney, by all accounts, got taken at face value a lot by fans of the doltish Ernest character, when he was actually a very learned, gentle man away from his alter ego. There are intimations that Ernest himself is working on an intellectual level more cunning than his slapstick stupidity implies, especially when he disguises himself as a double-talking governor's aide or a mangy snake wrangler. Add this to his guileless warmth and self-confident malapropism, and it's clear that Ernest P. Worrell is deserving of his cult status and position in a Christmas fable.

It's just that Ernest Saves Christmas pitches itself so firmly in the middle ground, punching its weight with corny bathos and overeager farce. Ernest is such a live-action cartoon, with his elastic mandible and wide-eyed "Aw, shucks!" demeanor, that he thrusts himself into an alternate dimension that no one can keep up with, not even reliable supporting players Gailard Sartain & Bill Byrge doing their own bickering, rattled comic shtick as the weary warehouse watchers. Jerry Lewis and Jim Carrey each understood when to let their guard down even in the wildest abandon, whereas there isn't a barn door broad enough comparable to Varney's mugging.

The rampant sentimentality is just as wearying, with Harmony set up as such a sarcastic, selfish anti-foil that her dramatic turnaround could immediately prompt the kind of exaggerated eye-rolling Sartain is called upon for. Ditto Joe Carruthers' arc, where the good-mannered and genteel TV personality is shooed into a schlock horror film incorrectly referred to as "Christmas Sleigh." Although its childish wonder and innocence is a very noble ingredient to preserving the benevolence of the Christmas season, you can imagine less dancing sugarplums and more Ernest decking the hells with a sledgehammer way too easily.

Thank goodness Douglas Seale makes the best of his role, clearly demonstrating the right attitude akin to original Miracle on 34th Street actor Edmund Gwenn in his appealing characterization of Santa Claus. A lot of the comic moments involving Seale hint at a cleverness the rampant product tie-ins undermine, with particular bits involving a customs check-in and his carousing his cellmates into caroling seeming rictus-proof.

And yet what to make of a fleeting glance at a "Keep Christ in Christmas" dashboard sticker in Ernest's cab which is of less significance than the triangular advert for Bic's Metal Point Roller pens atop it? It kind of defeats the purity of your modest Christmas comedy to remind viewers of Ernest's commerce-minded origins, as if to give viewers the impression that Santa's jelly belly is actually beer gut resulting from too many bottles of Bud Light (although the Coke ad credits suggest otherwise).

Ernest Saves Christmas isn't the lumpen coal many have made it out to be since its release, but it rarely shines in the way you'd hope. There is as much goodwill as there is ineptness, as this is the kind of movie where Jim Varney desperately loops random one-liners over non-existent lip movements for that extra pinch of annoyance. And even though comedy is notoriously subjective no matter what the demographic, whether they involve sex, splatter or satire, Ernest P. Worrell still comes across as polarizing despite the valiant Varney. If both the actor and alter ego aren't as dumb as they look, though, then maybe Ernest Saves Christmas is pleasantly aware of its single best joke. It's a shame the rest of this caper wasn't let in on it.

Small Soldiers

SMALL SOLDIERS
(PG-13, DreamWorks SKG, 108 mins., theatrical release date: July 10, 1998)

Previously on Mind of Frames, I lauded the "Mega Madness" that was Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Joe Dante's poorly-received but uproarious sequel to the movie which gave him Hollywood clout. One of the things I forgot to mention was that Dante and screenwriter Charlie Haas reunited a few years later with the charming Matinee. Haas, you may recall, co-wrote the essential youth movies Over the Edge and Tex with Tim "River's Edge" Hunter, and in Haas, Dante found a worthy successor to John Sayles, who scripted Dante's inaugural Piranha and The Howling. It proved to be another two-picture wonder of a collaboration, though, as Gremlins 2 and Matinee each got poor box-office returns. Haas would never write another feature script again, and Dante was consigned to television projects for a spell.

Enter Steven Spielberg again to renew Dante's mainstream potential, having shifted studios from Amblin to DreamWorks and inciting direct competition with Disney/Pixar in several releases. The late 1990s, after all, was when DreamWorks' Antz and Pixar's A Bug's Life vied for the hearts of junior entomologists. Also on the DreamWorks slate was Small Soldiers, a live-action "send-up" of their rival's benchmark of a blockbuster, Toy Story.

As far as subversive hired guns go, Dante showed Spielberg twice that his aim was true. But whereas Gremlins 2 made a sacred cow of its beloved original and ground it up into a juicy burger, Small Soldiers is processed cheese all the way. The screenplay feels distressingly like a multiple cook crash since it credits three different sets of scribes, including Adam Rifkin (The Chase, Mouse Hunt) and the team of Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio (Aladdin, Shrek), which is all you need to know that this was punched-up to low places.

It could've been a hero on the same sardonic, satirically-gifted level as the Gremlins films. The premise is that a modest little toy company is now the subdivision of a military conglomerate called GloboTech, whose new family-friendly image juxtaposes bombers and babies. When transferring employees Larry Benson (Jay Mohr) and Irwin Wayfair (David Cross, who deserved a crack at this script given Mr. Show was airing on HBO about this time) pitch new toy ideas to GloboTech CEO Gil Mars (Denis Leary), Mars demands these playthings be able to play back. Coerced to oblige in a three-month pinch, the more go-getting Larry orders surplus units of the X-1000 microprocessor, a munitions chip, as hardware for both his G.I. Joe-style Army dolls, the Commando Elite, and Irwin's Gorgonites, who are their alien nemeses.

Meanwhile, in bucolic Winslow Corners, Ohio, teenager Alan Abernathy (Gregory Smith) is left to take care of his father's namby-pamby toy store, "The Inner Child," while he's attending a small business seminar. He strikes a deal with the delivery man (the requisite but reliable Dick Smith) to divert some of the inventory in his direction, figuring it would make some easy money to help keep the place open. Maybe it might even help bridge the divide between Alan, who has cultivated an exaggerated reputation as a delinquent, and his beleaguered daddy Stuart (Kevin Dunn, who would later essay an even dumber-downed version of this sitcom staple for the goddamn Transformers series).

Smith plays this Everydork to the best of his abilities though he looks way too milquetoast for all the underwritten teen angst he has to shoulder. Contrivances aside, Alan is more prodigal son than problem child, and whatever conflict he and his father have is utterly inconsequential. Just as preordained is the arrival of neighborly love interest Christy Fimple (Kirsten Dunst), a sassy, seasoned older girl looking for her kid brother's birthday gift. Their sputtering courtship revolves around a mutual dislike of "Family of Five" (that's Party of Five if you're an actual ‘90s kid and not some hacky archetype) and love for Led Zeppelin (which, as an ex junior high brat myself, I can fully relate to). But, of course, Christy is a footballer's squeeze and Alan is forced to play his romantic cards sparingly.

Love is secondary to war, however, once Commando Elite Major Chip Hazard (voiced by Tommy Lee Jones) punches out of his packaging and rallies his plastic brigade in destructive pursuit of the benign Gorgonites, whose leader Alan has taken home with him. Archer (voice of Frank Langella) makes a private connection with the kid and soon the Commandos are gunning after Alan. Since the Gorgonites have been programmed to cowardice, the remaining extraterrestrial exiles are scooped up from a dumpster by Alan, including a Daffy doppelganger named Insaniac and a cycloptic cutie named Oculus. The funniest movie reference in the film is when Alan's TV is airing 1958's The Crawling Eye, which the one-eyed wonder then glues itself to.

The rest of the cinephile pandering is caught between two extremes. Shrewd voice casting on the dolls' part means that the Commando Elites are performed by The Dirty Dozen veterans Ernest Borgnine, George Kennedy, Jim Brown, and Clint Walker, with Bruce Dern taking over for the deceased Richard Jaeckel. The principal Gorgonites are in turn spoken for by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, the legendary Spinal Tap trio. Their dialogue is ripe with pop culture allusions, encompassing everything from Patton to Titanic. The most subtle battalion of one-liners stems from how the Commando Elites take their war games dead seriously even for playthings, screaming "Medic!" when mortally wounded and getting noble eulogies: "His battery has run out, but his memory will keep going and going."

Major Hazard's increasing intelligence and adaptive skills spur his team onto more menacing and dangerous strategies, eventually involving taking Christy as a hostage and finally cornering both the Abernathy and Fimple clans under one besieged roof. And yet Dante's uncanny knack for making flesh-and-blood cartoon chaos isn't as potent here. The scorn many heaped at Dante for pushing disturbing images to children in the Gremlins films at least tempered by a giddy, inventive gusto in the staging, and there was better humor to them, too. Small Soldiers feels ‘roided up on cheap testosterone and let loose without much of a game plan other than the diminished novelty of little things causing big trouble in small towns.

The centerpiece of Small Soldiers is when Hazard tears the microchip from the brain of fallen soldier Nick Nitro and harnesses it to bring Frankenstein-style life to Christy's collection of Gwendies. Proud to be serving as cannon fodder, these Barbie surrogates are then stripped down to camo bikinis and attack with the kind of pun-damaged ditziness that made me genuinely fear Akiva Goldsman was ghost-writing this. Never mind the bizarrely fantastical choice to have Christy still in possession of underage toys whilst jamming to Led Zeppelin and Rush, there is a tonal dissonance in this device which is downright numbing, not to mention serious misjudgment in regards to the satire.

Christy's Gwendy dolls are each given specific accessories and costumes to make them look like Greek soldiers, Cleopatra, Jackie Onassis, Sally Ride, the Swiss Miss mascot, etc. You'd think there would be more ingenuity once they come to life than to just reduce them to condescending Valley Girl accents, giggly sadism and fetishistic objectification, but that's all they do after they're activated. They tie down Christy, pounce upon her useless boyfriend and make lame quip after lame quip, all the while half-naked and deformed. The pint-sized antagonists of Small Soldiers barely stack up against the memorably unhinged Gremlins who once mauled Santa Claus impersonators and rocketed an old lady out of her house. The worst that happens here is that the boyfriend gets his pants leg torched and Benedict Arnolds his way out of the plot.

For all of its middling attempts to be madcap and macabre, Small Soldiers, like Gremlins 2: The New Batch, has the advanced sophistication of mechanical effects on its side. Whereas Rick Baker proved invaluable in building upon the puppetry and conceptions of the creatures in the 1990 film, here Stan Winston and his team mix computer graphics and radio-controlled animatronics to make an impressive illusion of lifelike figurines. And once again, all credit to the likes of Tommy Lee Jones, Frank "Skeletor" Langella and the great vocal talents I mentioned before for giving them fairly amusing personalities. Jones, in particular, doesn't ham it up as insufferably like he did with his Harvey Dent from Batman Forever and is more welcome with his wryly macho patois.

Alas, there are many clear casualties in terms of wasted talent. Aside from the two young leads, a visibly typecast Denis Leary and the rakish Joe Dante, himself, I neglected to mention one Phil Hartman, in his cinematic epitaph here as Christy's tech-savvy daddy Phil (seriously?!), because I watch him and all I can hear is Troy McClure egotistically reminding audiences to remember him from this mediocrity. The only real comic chemistry to be found is between MVPs/POWs Jay Mohr and David Cross as the rival toymakers, whose research into the dangers of the X-1000 microchip brings them to its creator Ralph, played by Dante repertoire scene-stealer Robert Picardo as a disgraced inventor turned quarantine manager who used to work under the Pentagon.

Once Ralph designed these microchips to grant "actual intelligence" to smart bombs, now they spur on "psychological warfare" involving Spice Girls songs. Talk about a defective product; you know, wouldn't it have been much funnier and apt if the Commandos blared Aqua's "Barbie Girl," instead? Speaking of a Cheap Trick not done right, I watched the film again knowing that "Surrender" was on the soundtrack listing, and they didn't even use that power-pop gem for laughs. The only songs you hear in the movie with real clarity are mostly re-purposed at the end in trendy hip-hop remixes, such as "War," "Love Is a Battlefield" and "Another One Bites the Dust." I'm confused as to whether I'm being sold a movie, a compilation album (which is better off skipped in favor of Jerry Goldsmith's proper film score), a collection of Chip Hazard-centered tie-in merchandise, or a flame-broiled Rodeo Burger.

Small Soldiers is a sad, strange little film, and it has my pity.