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Review of THE CANTERVILLE GHOST (2023) (DVD)

February 14, 2024

James Plath, Family Home Theater Action-Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Entire Family, PG rated Leave a comment

Grade:  B

Animation

Rated PG

In the year of Barbenheimer, The Canterville Ghost—animated in a style similar to but more accomplished than the popular Barbie direct-to-video movies for youngsters—offers a strong female character that girls can identify with in a life-or-death adventure that prominently features science and progress. Think Scooby-Do! mysteries, but with a real ghost that, despite having a history of haunting people for hundreds of years, meets his match when an American family visits and isn’t a bit scared. In fact, they torment him.

Has he lost it, or are these Americans something quite different from Brits? And will this ghost sink into depression or be lifted up by the family’s brave and compassionate daughter?

Though aimed at children, this Shout! Studios release holds appeal for adults as well, since it’s a fairly close adaptation of an Oscar Wilde story.

Out of the 30 Canterville Ghost films and TV movies/episodes that have been made since 1944, only a literal handful have been animated. This entry is one of the best because it offers a more hardened and hearty version of the teenage daughter that drives the narrative, but softens the crime that’s at the center of Wilde’s 1887 story. In the original and in other film/TV versions, the genial and hapless ghost, Sir Simon, is doomed to haunt his mansion, Canterville Chase, because he killed his wife. In this UK version, he’s deeply in love with his wife, and related circumstances caused him to forever wander the grounds until someone like Virginia came along.

This animated version features distinctive characters and rich nonverbal depictions. Crisply paced, it holds no-scare appeal for all ages because the ghost encounters are played for laughs. It’s only toward the end of the film that the daughter, who has befriended the ghost, decides to fulfill the prophecy that will allow the Canterville ghost to rest in peace.

To tell the story, director Kim Burdon and co-director Robert Chandler enlisted top voice talent Stephen Fry (The Morning Show, Danger Mouse) to follow in the footsteps of such actors as Charles Laughton, Patrick Stewart, and David Niven in playing Sir Simon. Emily Carey (House of the Dragon) voices the other main role of Virginia, while additional voice talents include Imelda Staunton (The Crown, Harry Potter films), Hugh Laurie (House), and Freddie Highmore (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

Released for Valentine’s Day, while laughs and mischief predominate, The Canterville Ghost does have a little romance in it:  Sir Simon’s centuries-old love for his wife, and a blossoming love between Virginia and the heir of Sir Simon’s rival.

Female characters in children’s movies have come a long ways, and Virginia emerges as a strong character who isn’t artificially so. Her actions and attitudes are a reflection of today’s young girls and teens who, at the very least, are the equal sex.

Entire family:  Yes

Run time:  94 min., Color

Studio/Distributor:  Shout! Studios

Aspect ratio:  1.85:1 widescreen

Featured audio:  Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround

Bonus features:  n/a

Trailer

Walmart link

Rated PG for thematic elements, peril and some violence

Language:  1/10—I didn’t catch anything offensive

Sex:  1/10—Nothing here kids can’t see

Violence:  3/10—Comic for the first two-thirds, after which there’s one party scene where guests are genuinely terrified and a third-act sequence where Virginia confronts Death personified; some swordfighting, objects hurled, etc.

Adult situations:  2/10—Some drinking in a social situation, the discovery of a skeleton, and a scene in which Virginia and Sir Simon both appear to be doomed

Takeaway:  The Canterville Ghost 2023 is a solid animated film that should get plenty of replays. Though not available on Blu-ray, you can get it at Walmart and other retailers and purchase/rent from digital platforms like AppleTV, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, Vudu, Microsoft, DirecTV, DISH, et alia

Review of DOUBLE TROUBLE (1967) (Blu-ray)

February 13, 2024

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Musical, PG rated Leave a comment

Grade:  C–

Comedy-Musical

Not rated (would be PG)

Elvis Presley made 31 movies between 1956-69, and 16 of them are currently available on Blu-ray from U.S. or European distributors (the latter via eBay).

Of those films currently on Blu-ray, King Creole has been broadly acclaimed as the best of the bunch, followed by Follow That Dream. After that there’s disagreement, but I would rank the rest currently available in this order: Jailhouse Rock, Viva Las Vegas, Blue Hawaii, Flaming Star, Love Me Tender, Kid Galahad, Spinout, Clambake, Charro!, Tickle Me, It Happened at the World’s Fair, Change of Habit, and Frankie and Johnny. The best films yet to be released in high definition are The Trouble with Girls, Girl Happy, Girls! Girls! Girls!, Loving You, Wild in the Country, G.I. Blues, Roustabout, Fun in Acapulco, and Live a Little Love a Little.

You may have noticed that Double Trouble hasn’t been mentioned yet. That’s because along with Easy Come Easy Go, Kissin’ Cousins, Harum Scarum, and Stay Away Joe, this 1967 film ranks as one of the worst that Elvis made. It’s for hardcore fans only. And even those fans might feel a little uneasy watching it.

Double Trouble is about an American performer in London who dates a girl who he thought was “legal” but is actually still months shy of her 18th birthday. He goes to Brussels and she pursues him. He doesn’t put up much of a fight, instead vacillating between rejecting this “little girl” and embracing her. It’s not just the groupie thing. Further discomfort comes from knowing Elvis’s own story. Double Trouble was released in April 1967, just one month before Elvis married Priscilla Beaulieu—whom he was drawn to and dated intermittently (albeit with chaperones) since meeting her at a party at his rented house in Germany. He was 24; she was 14.

So yeah, while it’s a little creepy watching Elvis romance a fictional underage girl, it’s even more unsettling when you know the story of his relationship with Priscilla. Yes, it was chaperoned . . . but still.

Even if the character played by 19-year-old Annette Day were 18, Double Trouble would still be one of the worst Presley films. Though it’s helmed by frequent Elvis formula pic director Norman Taurog, the screenplay itself is a bomb. The writing is sillier and the gags are cornier than usual. Scenes with three bumbling policemen—echoes of The Three Stooges—are even painful to watch.

Elvis plays Guy Lambert, a small-time touring musician playing London who is dating a young woman named Jill (Day) and pursued by an older, more sophisticated woman (Claire Dunham). While the opening credits visually announce that Elvis is in Austin Powers Land and while many of the characters dress the Carnaby Street part, Elvis sports the same hair and look that he’s had in all his films set in contemporary times. In short order we learn that Jill, who continues to pusue Guy, is not only underage, but she comes from a wealthy family. Her uncle forbids her to see Guy, and thinks he’s solved the problem by sending her away to Brussels. Unbeknownst to him (but knownst to us), that’s exactly where Guy’s next gig is. But someone keeps trying to kill one of them, with Bond-era spy types lurking and the police also involved . . . somehow.

As for the songs, it doesn’t help the underage thing to have Elvis sing “Old MacDonald” to Jill as they ride on the back of a hay wagon—the kind of song parents everywhere sing with their children to get them to make different animal sounds. It also doesn’t help that they ruin a perfectly good song—“I Love Only One Girl”—by dragging it out and having Elvis prance around a festival singing to costumed women from different countries. That leaves “Long Legged Girl (With The Short Dress On)” and the title song as the upbeat songs worth mentioning.

Entire family:  No (though theoretically, yes)

Studio/Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Aspect ratio:  2.35:1 widescreen, Color

Featured audio:  DTS-HDMA 2.0 Mono

Bonus features:  two cartoons and a trailer

Trailer

Amazon link

Not rated (would be PG for some peril and adult situations)

Language:  1/10—Maybe something slipped past me, but I doubt it; Elvis flicks are pretty clean-cut affairs

Sex:  2/10—As always, nothing explicit or even highly suggestive; here, it’s just the awkwardness of a 17-year-old groupie in pursuit of an older man who doesn’t really fight her off

Violence:  2/10—Everything is done with a certain level of campiness, not unlike the pianos that would be dropped on cartoon characters

Adult situations:  2/10—Some smoking and drinking in club settings, and the 17-year-old thing

Takeaway:  You have to wonder what goes into a decision to release an Elvis flick on Blu-ray, and how a stinker like this got to the front of the line when more entertaining films are still only available on DVD; Girl Happy or The Trouble with Girls ought to be next up

Review: SPINOUT (1966) (Blu-ray)

December 8, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Musical, PG rated Leave a comment

Grade:  C+/C

Comedy-musical

Not rated (would be PG)

The “formula” Elvis Presley picture was a thinly plotted, quickly filmed excuse to string a few new equally slapdash songs together so audiences hungry for All Things Elvis could get their fix at a time when “The King” wasn’t touring. Elvis movies were a phenomenon in the sixties—a part of the cultural milieu before Vietnam and Civil Rights demonstrations rocked the American landscape so much that wholesome light and fluffy escapist fare like these instantly became extinct.

But back in the day, rare were the teens that didn’t go to movie theaters to see Elvis, although (or perhaps because) they knew what they were going to see:  a number of songs (some good, some not so good), at least two pretty women pursuing Elvis, lots of silly-to-watch-now dancing, and a light tone that was an important part of the formula.

Elvis made 31 movies between 1956 and 1969, with the first “formula” picture coming in 1960 with G.I. Blues. Spinout was released in 1966, when the Elvis films were already steering toward self-parody, with more silliness, overused running gags, and minor characters leaning closer to caricatures.

Spinout was the second of three movies that Presley made opposite former teen star Shelley Fabares, who played daughter Mary on the popular TV series The Donna Reed Show and scored a #1 hit in 1962 with her song “Johnny Angel.” Fabares actually plays well off Presley, so it’s easy to see why producer Joe Pasternak went to that well more than once. Onscreen she has a wholesome perkiness tempered by impertinence. In this one she plays a spoiled rich girl who flat-out tells racecar driver Mike McCoy (Elvis) that she always gets what she wants, and she’s set her sights on him. So has an older woman (Una Merkel, in her last film) who does undercover research for how-to tell-all books about understanding American males. And he’s the intended subject of her next book.

Fans of Westerns will recognize the former star of Sugarfoot, Will Hutchins, who plays a cop with a food fetish and also turns up in a more major role in Clambake in a Prince and the Pauper variation as a rich Texan who trades places with poor water skiing instructor Presley.

The formula had been getting so old and obvious that the filmmakers felt compelled to throw in a third love interest:  the band’s tomboy drummer Les (Deborah Walley, of Gidget Goes Hawaiian fame). Figuratively speaking there’s even a fourth person who’s  after Mike:  the rich girl’s father (played by Fabares’ TV dad from Donna Reed) who wants him to drive the racecar he designed in an upcoming race—with nary a seatbelt that I could see.  

It didn’t matter how much they tried to freshen up the formula. Despite moments when Fabares and a couple of Presley songs brighten things up, Spinout isn’t in the same class as the best of the Fabares-Presley films, Girl Happy (1965), and isn’t even as good as Clambake (1967), a film that provoked mixed reactions. Maybe fans need to clamor a bit for Girl Happy, because MGM does seem to be listening. With this release they added a song index where fans can watch all the songs being performed, without having to try to guess the scene selection chapters.

Auto racing fans should enjoy seeing a Cobra, Cheetah, and McLaren Elva being put through their paces before CGI, and Elvis fans might relish seeing him play a twin-necked guitar. But Presley’s best racing film is Viva Las Vegas. 

Entire family: Yes (see below)

Studio/Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Aspect ratio:  2.35:1

Featured audio:  DTS-HDMA 2.0 Mono

Bonus features:  C

Trailer

Amazon link

Not rated (would be PG for implied adult themes)

Language:  1/10—Euphemistic swearwords if anything; Elvis movies were pretty clean and wholesome

Sex:  2/10—Elvis kisses a number of women and it’s implied that he spent each night with a different woman apart from the three who are after him in the film; there’s also a pool scene with lots of skin and bikinis and briefs

Violence:  0/10—Usually there was a fist fight in the typical Elvis picture, but not this one; just a few cars run off the road

Adult situations:  1/10—Some characters have champagne, and the whole idea of women scheming to marry Elvis is adult, though the situation now is dated and sexist

Takeaway:  Come on, Warner Bros. Put Girl Happy in your Elvis queue, and Girls! Girls! Girls!—both of which are more entertaining formula flicks than this one

Review: BARBIE (2023) (Blu-ray)

November 26, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Entire Family, Fantasy, PG-13 rated Leave a comment

Grade:  B+/B

Fantasy-Comedy

Rated PG-13

Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler, merited a chapter in the 2018 book Shapers of American Childhood, and why wouldn’t she? Barbie was a blank slate. For the first time, girls had a doll that wasn’t a baby who dictated pretend motherhood play. With Barbie, they had a doll who was ostensibly a teen or adult, and that invited them to pretend play in a totally different way. They could be more than nurturing mothers.

Sure, Hasbro coined the term “action figure” to apply to a similar sized doll—G.I. Joe—that would appeal to boys, but that was in 1964. Barbie debuted in 1959, and though Mattel marketed her originally as a “fashion doll” with multiple outfits to buy and rotate, she had moveable arms, legs, and head, same as the army doll. Girls could pose her to ride in her pink convertible or boat, surf at the beach, swim in her pool, shop at the stores, or work behind the desk as a business executive. So yeah, a case can also be made for Barbie being the first action figure.

But through four waves of feminist criticism, Barbie also has come under fire for everything from the unnatural “ideal” shape of her body and what it does to girls’ self-image, to some of the things that the talking Barbies said (“Math is hard”) and early attempts at diversity that still used the same body mold and Caucasian features.

Barbie the live-action film (not to be confused with the 42 animated and streaming TV films) celebrates the iconic nature of the doll and is chock full of allusions to the wardrobe and accessories of Barbies past. The thoughts behind Barbie’s creation—“A doll can help change the world” and  “You can be anything”—celebrate the creator’s intent and Barbie’s iconic status. But that’s offset by the campy Zoolander airheadedness of the various Barbies and Kens. Surprisingly, the criticisms are also taken into account, with plenty of jokes and allusions. The result is a rich assessment of a doll that was an important part of postwar American culture—a clever film that manages to have it both ways. For that, credit co-writers Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, as well as Gerwig’s direction.

Barbie, as the world knows by now, stars Margot Robbie as the title character, and Ryan Gosling as Ken, the doll who exists only in relation to Barbie as a kind of accessory.  Almost every other female is also named Barbie to reflect the different models and types that were produced over the decades, and there’s more than one Ken as well. The elevator pitch for this film could have been made between two floors: First Barbie, then Ken has an existential crisis.

Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling nail it as the main Barbie and Ken, the forever California beach-culture kids who never age and never seem to change in a sort of utopian alternate reality where all Barbies are successful businesswomen, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and elected officials, while Kens are just arm candy and perpetual beach boys with nothing to do but be “Ken.” That in itself makes for a clever construct of an inverted world.

There’s also something Elf-like about Barbie. Like Will Ferrell’s Buddy the Elf, a wide-eyed, naïve Barbie and Ken leave their highly stylized fantasy world full of bright colors for the industrial look of the real world. The result is a fish-out-of-water comedy. Buddy was on a mission to find his “naughty” father, while Barbie is told by “Weird Barbie” (Kate McKinnon) that she needs to travel to the real world to find the child who’s playing with her in order to get to the bottom of why she’s experiencing sudden concerns about mortality and discovering such human imperfections as cellulite, bad breath, and flat feet. Like Back to the Future, the reason for having to go back might be crucial to the plot, but it’s not the source of pleasure. Juxtapositions between the two worlds are, and Ken’s discovery that in the real world men (rhymes with Ken) are in charge. Suddenly he’s embracing “the patriarchy” and bringing those ideas back to Barbieland.

So far Barbie is the highest grossing film of 2023, and the film’s musical numbers received 11 Grammy nominations. Even if it wasn’t half of the pop-culture “Barbenheimer” phenomenon that saw post-COVID moviegoers flocking to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer because they were released about the same time, odds are that Barbie would have been a tremendous success because it appeals to both Barbie fans and critics. Throw in musical numbers and humor, and it expands the appreciative audience even more. And the soundtrack features Ava Max, Charli XCX, Dominic Fike, Fifty Fifty, Gayle, Haim, Ice Spice, Kali, Karol G, Khalid, Sam Smith, Lizzo, Nicki Minaj, Billie Eilish, Pink Pantheress, Tame Impala, the Kid Laroi, and cast members.

Because of its complexity and ideational juggling act, Barbie the movie ends up being as much of a blank slate as the dolls. People will see what they want to see in the film, and that’s almost as phenomenal as Barbie, whose creator, Ruth Handler, also is celebrated. And I mean celebrated. That’s the overall tone of this film, and the music makes it feel like somebody’s birthday—like Barbie’s 64th.

Entire family:  Yes (most of the PG-13 stuff will fly right over their heads)

Run time:  114 min., Color

Studio/Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Aspect ratio:  2.00:1

Featured audio: Dolby Atmos TrueHD

Bonus features:  B

Trailer

Amazon link

Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language

Language:  2/10—One censored f-bomb, references to “phallic”, and a few “bitches” that pop up in one soundtrack song

Sex:  2/10—Construction workers catcall Barbie, who responds that she has no vagina and Ken has no penis; Skipper’s breasts inflate to imitate the short-lived “Growing Up Skipper” doll; male cops and a man on the street sexualize Barbie, the latter by slapping her butt off camera; and Barbie showers, with nothing shown

Violence:  1/10—A comical big fight, with punches, kicks, and silly weapons applied here and occasionally elsewhere that seems clearly cartoonish

Adult situations:  1/10—The Kens drink beer though it’s only pretend beer, as with all Barbie and Ken actions to imitate pretend play of the dolls. 

Takeaway:  This is one film I hope isn’t followed by a sequel, for a sequel, I fear, would totally remove any have-it-both-ways ambiguity toward Barbie and Ken; Barbie works, but I’m not sure Barbie II would

Review of RIDE ON (2023) (Blu-ray)

October 21, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Action-Adventure, Comedy, Family, PG rated Leave a comment

Grade:  C+/C

Action comedy

Not rated (would be PG)

These days the media is full of stories about writers, artists, and people working the film industry who are worried that their livelihoods might be threatened by the new AI technology.  But stunt actors everywhere whose demand has been diminished by CGI work have got to be thinking, Welcome to MY world. While this Larry Yang film is yet another vehicle for the ageless Jackie Chan and his creative martial arts sequences, it’s also a loving tribute to the Kung Fu stuntmen from Asian films, and, in fact, is dedicated to them. Yang was said to have begun working on this film after being inspired by the Kung Fu Stuntmen documentary.

In Ride On, a sentimental action comedy in Mandarin with English subtitles (or dubbed English), Chan plays Lao Luo, a washed-up old stuntman who, along with his stunt horse from recent years, has been put out to pasture. He and the horse have been reduced to working studio lots trying to get tourists to pay money for a photo—money Luo needs to keep debt collectors from trying to break his legs. That’s only the tip of the manure pile that his life has become. Years earlier Luo lost custody of and contact with a daughter he hasn’t seen in forever. Now he’s in danger of losing the most important thing in his life:  the stunt horse he bought from his producer after the injury.  

A new businessman and his company have acquired Luo’s old studio and they’ve decided to auction off all of that studio’s assets—including Luo’s beloved Red Hare, a horse they say was owned by the studio since he has no paperwork to prove otherwise.

The X-factor in the film is Luo’s estranged college-age daughter, Bao (Liu Haocun), who with her boyfriend/fiancé (Guo Qilin) is studying law. Reluctantly she agrees to help her father, though she has all sorts of daddy issues, and understandably so. Things don’t get any better when her father has to meet her fiancé’s parents, nor when Lao battles a debt collector (Wu Jing) and talks him into helping him against the others. That fellow has a connection to a film in production that has need of a stuntman and stunt horse. We’ve already witnessed him putting the animal at risk because of his pride and his stuntman’s creed. And yes, some of his stunts involve the horse fighting with him. Will this end badly?

It does, if you ask me—and I don’t mean because of anything that happens to Lao or Bao or Red Hare. For me, what might have been a C+ all the way through loses at least a half-grade because of an ending that takes the sentimentalism running through the film and amplifies it in the third act so that you can’t help but think, Ok, stop tugging at the heartstrings, already.  

Perhaps it’s that sentimentality and the focus on rider-horse and father-daughter relationships that make Ride On feel like a family film. Aside from action that’s mostly comic, as has been the case with so many of Chan’s movies, this 2023 film is pretty tame and suitable for almost all ages.

In the end, just as Ride On pays tribute to Kung Fu stuntmen, it also honors the stunt-heavy career of Chan, and fans will revel in seeing people onscreen watching a compilation of “Lao’s” greatest stunts—all of which will be familiar to Chan buffs. It’s like watching an aging John Wayne play an aging gunfighter in The Shootist, where you realize that the actor and the character have much in common. There’s a poignancy to it all that would have been enough to create a powerful emotional reaction in viewers, even if Yang decided to dial back a bit on the sentimentality.

Entire family:  No (Age 8 and older?)

Run time:  126 min. 

Studio/Distributor:  Well Go USA

Aspect ratio:  16:9 widescreen

Featured audios:  Mandarin w/English subtitles, Dubbed English

Bonus features:  C-

Trailer

Best Buy link

Not rated (would be PG for fighting action and scenes of peril)

Language:  2/10—Mostly euphemistic

Sex:  0/10—Nada

Violence: 5/5—Mostly comic, as almost all recent Jackie Chan action movies have been

Adult situations:  4/10—Some drinking, but mostly moments of peril where youngsters with empathy might have a Dumbo’s mother moment

Takeaway:  Chan has had a remarkable career, and this film feels like a loving appreciation

Review of FINAL CUT (2022) Blu-ray

September 18, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Horror-thriller, PG-13 rated Leave a comment

Grade:  B-/C+

Horror comedy

Not rated (would be PG-13)

Final Cut is an onion of sorts, a 2022 French film with English subtitles that will vary in its appeal based on how much viewers know about (and appreciate) low-budget filmmaking, how much they like the tongue-in-cheek zombie subgenre of horror, and how many of the film’s subtle gags they happen to catch or find funny.

It’s entertaining in a heady sort of way—more clever than silly, and more silly than laugh-out-loud funny. For me, the gold standard for horror comedy remains the quirky Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, a hilarious parody of slasher films and all their familiar tropes. That one is both clever and laugh-out-loud funny. Final Cut is perhaps even cleverer, but funny in a way that makes you smile.

Final Cut, which opened for general release the same day it screened at the Cannes Film Festival, is part of a burgeoning subgenre of films in which the audience watches both a movie plot that unfolds as well as the behind-the-scenes action—a postmodern self-consciousness that directs the viewers’ attention to the process of filmmaking or theater production and the relationship between process and product. Think Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation or Synecdoche, New York, or Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).

Like I said, heady stuff that will nonetheless appeal to fans of the subgenre because it parts the curtain on low-budget guerilla filmmaking, and that can be more fascinating than the movie that they’re filming.

Directed by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), Final Cut is a remake/adaptation of a 2017 Japanese horror-comedy One Cut of the Dead, but you don’t have to have seen that film to appreciate this one. It just adds another layer to peel away and savor.

Hazanavicius said he wouldn’t have been surprised if some people at the Cannes screening “whistle or boo after 20 minutes.”  That’s because what we think we see for the first 20 minutes or so seems like a generically bad low-budget B-movie that’s chaotic, poorly cast, and shot on the cheap. I say “poorly cast” because the characters have Japanese names though they’re clearly European and speaking French.

There’s an explanation for that and everything else we see in those first 20 minutes, but I won’t spoil it by saying anything more. As I said, it’s a clever onion of a film that can be appreciated as an onion, but much more so if more of the layers can be perceived. I’ll give you one right now:  Yoshiro Takehara, who plays a producer that’s funding the film and has her own ideas about what her money should buy, had the same role in the 2017 original that this film partly spoofs and partly remakes.

In Final Cut, Romain Duris plays a passionate and slightly crazy director who normally directs infomercials and small documentaries and seems out-of-his-league making a film about cast and crew members that, one-by-one, turn into zombies. The character mix seems familiar enough: two daughters who have their own opinions about how the film  should be shot,  an egocentric prima donna of an actor, a crew member who drinks too much . . . on the job, and a bevy of producers to keep happy. As far as the audience goes, Final Cut will keep viewers happy as long as they appreciate the cleverness, but patience is definitely a virtue, for there are many lackluster stretches where you have to give Hazanavicius the benefit of the doubt and wait to see where he’s going with it all.

This gleefully gory, meta film with scatological humor might be played tongue-in-cheek, but even at that it’s only suitable for older teens and adults. In the end, I thought it was above-average, but couldn’t touch Tucker and Dale—even with its satisfying ending. Tucker and Dale grabs you from the very beginning, while Final Cut seems to start slow and gradually build momentum and interest. But as with Tucker and Dale you’ll find yourself thinking about the film later and realizing how clever it actually was. And young filmmaker wannabes will get the same sort of inspiration as they may have gotten from The Fabelmans.

In case you’re wondering, Final Cut didn’t make the cut for awards at Cannes, but it did win Best Motion Picture Score at the Fantasia Film Festival and Hazanavicius earned a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for a César, the French equivalent of the Oscars.

Entire family:  No (Age 10 and older)

Run time:  111 min., Color

Studio/Distributor:  Kino Lorber

Aspect ratio:  2.39:1

Featured audio:  French 5.1 DTS with English subtitles

Bonus features:  C

Trailer

Amazon link

Not rated (would be PG-13 for bloody violence and gore and brief nudity and scatological humor)

Language:  7/10—F-bombs and other language galore, but the act of reading subtitles while processing visual information somehow makes it seem less impactful

Sex:  3/10—One scene that’s fairly tame and nothing else major that I can remember; rather, anything sexual is mostly talk and allusions

Violence:  7/10—The violence here is intended to be gory and shocking in a campy sort of way; a head gets lopped off, another character takes an axe to the head, an arm gets ripped off, there’s projectile vomiting, but again, all in a campy sort of way

Adult situations:  5/10—One main character is an alcoholic, and there’s drinking and some smoking I think (hard to say because your focus is elsewhere)

Takeaway:  I can see why the director thought audiences might boo around the 20-minute mark, but that’s because of structural decisions the director made; filming it in another sequence or way ultimately wouldn’t have been as effective

Review: THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS (Blu-ray)

April 17, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Entire Family, PG rated Leave a comment

Grade:  B+/B

Comedy

Rated PG

People who grew up watching Pollyanna, The Parent Trap, In Search of the Castaways, Summer Magic, The Moon-Spinners and That Darn Cat! no doubt think of Hayley Mills as a Disney actress. But other than those early films and much later sequels to The Parent Trap, Mills made far more movies and TV shows with other studios. And the coming-of-age comedy The Trouble with Angels (Columbia, 1966) still stands as one of her best ‘tween and teen films.

Mills gets second billing behind Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday) in this story of students sent to live and study at the St. Francis Academy for girls, which is located in a convent and staffed by nuns. Russell plays the droll longsuffering Mother Superior, who, like Peter Pan’s shadow, seems to be everywhere the girls are, no matter what hijinks they’re trying to pull. And this is most certainly a hijinks film.

It opens on a train headed for St. Francis, with an openly rebellious Mary Clancy (Mills) lighting up a cigarette despite the no smoking rule. Onboard she meets Rachel Devery (June Harding), who seems “simpatico” and delighted to have found a friend. From that moment the two become inseparable . . . and insufferable as they begin their first year at St. Francis Academy.

The film documents their antics over the four years that they spend in the nunnery, whether it’s pranks and practical jokes, defiance of rules, or the kind of simple shenanigans that many teens pull when they haven’t prepared for class or are trying to get out of P.E. Mary and Rachel aren’t bad girls, mind you, but they behave more like hares than the tortoise approach Mother Superior seems to take, clearly hoping that over time she might make some difference in the girls’ lives. As a result, The Trouble with Angels has more depth than the typical light comedy, and viewers are encouraged to see things from both sides. It’s a surprisingly subtle transformational film in the Going My Way mold.

Columbia certainly picked the right director for the job. Not only was Ida Lupino one of the few female directors working in Hollywood, but she was also a bit of a rebel herself. She bucked the studio system by refusing roles and films she thought were not strong enough—so much so that she was frequently suspended by Warner Bros.

So how does a 1966 film about Catholic schoolgirls hold up today?

It’s still fun and entertaining becauseof the depth, the subtlety, the intelligent writing, and the crisp pacing. There’s also something inherently timeless about a wise adult who tries to mentor semi-resistant young people, whether we’re talking about Yoda and Luke Skywalker or a nun and a Catholic schoolgirl she identified as the ringleader. The pranks and antics keep it fun, while the relationship between the nuns and the girls keep it interesting.

In the irony department, famed stripper Gypsy Rose Lee turns up as an outside instructor that Mother Superior hired to teach the girls graceful movement. Russell had played Lee’s mother in the musical biopic Gypsy in the film she made immediately before this one, and film buffs will find such additional layers fun. Some familiar faces turn up, too, like Mary Wickes, who also donned a habit in the Sister Act films and played the secretary to TV’s mystery-solving priest, Father Dowling.

Collectively, this group of nuns is as entertaining as the ones from The Sound of Music, with individual personalities (eccentricities?) that shine through their habits—whether it’s teaching the girls how to swim, how to play an instrument, or any of the subjects that make school a beneficial burden.

Mills was 19 when Angels was shot, and perhaps the biggest surprise of the film is that the actress who plays Sundance to her Butch was 28 years old at the time—older than some of the actresses who played nuns. But the two work well together and are plenty convincing that they are in need of both maturity and understanding. The Trouble with Angels remains good fun and a great choice for family home theaters.

Entire family:  Yes

Run time:  111 min., Color

Studio/Distributor:  Columbia/Sony

Aspect ratio:  1.85:1

Featured audio:  DTS-HDMA 2.0

Bonus features:  D (only a trailer)

Barnes & Noble link

Trailer

Rated PG for mild thematic elements

Language: 0/1—Nothing here to report

Sex:  1/10—Some revealing band uniforms, girls en masse shopping for bras (and trying some on over their blouses) and brief allusion to one parent having an affair

Violence:  0/10—Nothing at all; you were expecting rulers across the knuckles?

Adult situations:  3/10—Several instances of juvenile smoking (cigarettes and cigars)

Takeaway:  The Trouble with Angels remains current because the Catholic church remains constant in so many ways, and the characters under Lupino’s direction aren’t caricatures

Review: LITTLE MISS MARKER (1934) (Blu-ray)

April 10, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Drama, Entire Family, G rated Leave a comment

Grade: B-/C+

Comedy-Drama

Not rated (would be PG)

Child actor Shirley Temple became a household name in the 1930s and was considered to be 20th Century-Fox’s greatest asset. When she was only seven years old, the studio assigned a team of 19 writers to develop original stories for her. Discovered at age three, she became the inspiration for stage mothers all across America who pushed their own small children to become singers and dancers. Her signature song (“On the Good Ship Lollipop”) sold 500,000 copies on sheet music—presumably to those same stage mothers—while her likeness was used to sell such merchandise as dolls, clothing, plates, and glassware. She even had a drink named for her, and was the first performer to receive a special Juvenile Oscar.

By the time a six-year-old (but looking younger) Temple appeared in Little Miss Marker (1934)—the film that established her as a star—she had already acted in 13 film shorts and nine feature films. By contrast, Dorothy Bell, the female lead who plays a nightclub singer in this Damon Runyon adaptation, had only one film short and a single feature to her credit.

Runyon was a journalist whose published short stories celebrated the denizens of Prohibition-era Broadway: hard-boiled newsmen, gamblers, bookies, singers, racketeers, reformers, and other colorful characters that inhabited his little corner of Brooklyn. They were people who frequented racetracks and clubs, had colorful nicknames, yet had a soft spot. If you’ve seen Guys and Dolls, you’ve seen the most famous adaptation of two of his short stories. But “Little Miss Marker” comes in second, having spawned this film and three remakes.

In Little Miss Marker, bookie Sorrowful Jones (Adolphe Menjou) accepts an unusual I.O.U. “marker”: the daughter of a desperate man looking to get back on track with a racing win. When the man never returns to get her and pay his debt, the bookie is forced to take the child home. Soon he, his associates, and everyone under the thumb of racketeer Big Steve (Charles Bickford) find themselves being charmed by her. That includes the racketeer’s girlfriend, club singer Bangles (Dell), who envisions a more respectable life when she looks at the orphan.

Of Temple films, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “It is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles.” But not everyone could forget their troubles. America wasn’t exactly equal, and films from this era, with their unfortunate racial stereotypes, are a reminder of that. Willie Best, like Stepin Fetchit, played a lazy, simpleminded, easily spooked character whose eyes bug out and words meander in a slow exaggerated drawl. But at least he received credit for his work, as did Wong Chung for a single walk-on line spoken again as an stereotypical caricature of what white America thought Asians sounded like when they spoke English. Mildred Gover, who plays the club singer’s maid, isn’t even credited . . . though at least her delivery seems less caricatured as the film progresses. At one point we even catch her having a drink and putting her feet up on the furniture when the missus isn’t home.

So yeah, a few unfortunate cultural stereotypes mar a film that otherwise is entertaining in a hokey sort of way. Hardened men and women become like putty in the hands of “Marky.” When they realize they’re having as much of a negative effect on her as the positive effect she’s having on them, they resolve to do something about it—even if it involves sabotaging Big Steve’s plan to use the girl as “owner” of a racehorse that they plan to use to fix a race, or holding an elaborate dress-up party to refuel the child’s belief in fairy tales. And even if it means kidnapping a doctor when, like Pollyanna, Marky needs emergency care.

Shirley Temple was America’s screen orphan and her movies were a mainstay on family-oriented TV movie series of the ‘50s and ‘60s. But these days the safest ones to watch with your small children remain those that are the least outdated and have the fewest unsavory characters in need of transformation.

Those would be Heidi (1937), The Little Princess (1939), Bright Eyes (1934, “The Good Ship Lollipop” film), and Captain January (1936), in that order. But Wee Willie Winkie (1937, Temple’s favorite) and Little Miss Marker aren’t far behind. While this Little Miss Marker might lose by a nose to Bob Hope’s Sorrowful Jones (1949), it remains far superior to the 1980 adaptation or looser remakes like Little Big Shot (1935) or Forty Pounds of Trouble (1962).

Entire family:  Yes

Run time:  80 min. Black & White

Studio/Distributor:  Universal/Kino Lorber

Aspect ratio:  1.37:1

Featured audio:  DTS 2.0 Mono

Bonus features:  C+

Amazon link

Clip (spoiler)

Rated “Passed” (would be G today)

Review of NEVER SAY DIE (1939) (Blu-ray)

April 5, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy Leave a comment

Grade:  B/B-

Comedy

Not rated (would be PG)

Bob Hope comedies have been entertaining families for generations, perhaps because Hope’s onscreen persona is a likable, somewhat bumbling and cowardly, non-threatening kid version of an adult. Before Hope took his vaudeville shtick on the road with Dorothy Lamour and Bing Crosby, he was paired with “Big Mouth” Martha Raye in a pair of screwball comedies. They had the leading roles in Give Me a Sailor (1938) and Never Say Die (1939), both of which involved multiple possible couples in a comedy where romance for the leads happened unexpectedly.

Never Say Die, which was based on a long-running Broadway play, is the better of the two. The writing is crisper and Raye and Hope (they were billed in that order) relate to each other so wholesomely and with a certain amount of naiveté that you begin to realize Universal might have been hoping they’d become the studio’s version of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. They’re not—probably because Raye and Hope don’t quite have the chemistry that Garland and Rooney did. But Never Say Die is still a fairly solid early comedy for both of them.

It’s a tale of two fortunes (and two fortune hunters), as wealthy hypochondriac John Kidley (Hope) gets a diagnosis intended for a dog and thinks he has only a month to live. He decides to put his fiancée, Juno (Gale Sondergaard) on hold while he runs off to the fabled spa of Bad Gaswasser, half hoping for a miracle but more practically wanting to go out in style.

Meanwhile, Texas heiress Mickey Hawkins (Raye) has her own problems. She’s in love with a bumpkin bus driver from home (Andy Devine) and wants nothing to do with Prince Smirnov (Alan Mowbray), to whom she’s been betrothed. Turns out the Prince, like Juno, is also a golddigger.

Screwball comedies from the late thirties and early forties often involved class clashes, disguises and mistaken identities, fast-clipped dialogue, romantic mix-ups, and farcical rotations of characters. This one works as well as it does partly because it was based on a successful play by William H. Post and William Collier Sr.— but also because one of the screenplay writers was none other than Preston Sturges, who elevated the screwball comedy to a sub-genre with his intelligent writing.

Never Say Die never reaches the same heights as the Sturges-directed The Lady Eve or The Palm Beach Story, though, because it doesn’t have the same level of sophistication. It’s a screwball comedy for the masses, without the subtly withering embedded commentary on the upper classes. While it’s also not quite as madcap as another Sturges comedy for the masses—the WWII-era The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek—Never Say Die does manage to do a lot with the cliché that “three’s a crowd.”

Never Say Die is directed by Elliott Nugent, whose best film might just be Nothing But the Truth (1941), another one in which he directed Hope, that time opposite Paulette Goddard. Nugent is a storyteller first and a satirist second, and that’s evident in Never Say Die. Though the film isn’t one of the great screwball comedies, it’s still fun enough and wholesome enough for the entire family to watch—if the kids are so inclined.

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Review of A MAN CALLED OTTO (Blu-ray)

April 3, 2023

James Plath, Family Home Theater Comedy, Drama, PG-13 rated Leave a comment

Grade:  B-

Drama-Comedy

Rated PG-13

A Man Called Otto (2022) offers another serving of a Hollywood trope we’ve seen many times over: the grumpy widower whose life is brightened somehow by a younger person.

In Finding Forrester the old man was a Salinger-like recluse dogged by a young wannabe writer. In Gran Torino it was a crusty racist war veteran softened by a teenage Lao Hmong refugee. In About Schmidt it was a still-numb and rudderless old coot that found some sense of purpose by corresponding with a Tanzanian boy through a Plan USA program. In Murphy’s Romance it was a widowed druggist who found an unlikely romance with a young single mom. And in Disney’s animated Up it was a gruff old codger with a cane who became stuck with an overly talkative boy scout insisting he help the elderly man in order to earn a merit badge.

There are many more examples to cite, but this Tom Hanks film tweaks the trope to make it both schmaltzier and darker. Otto (“O-T-T-O”) is so lost and depressed after losing his beloved wife to cancer that he tries to take his life onscreen—multiple times, and by multiple means. If this were a Taika Waititi film, those attempts would have been rendered more comically. But director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, The Kite Runner) goes for a deadpan blend of dark humor and pathos that doesn’t quite scream “Don’t try this at home,” the way broader humor might have done.

A Man Called Otto is a bit of a Hanks family affair, with Hanks’ wife, Rita Wilson, sharing a producing credit and son Truman playing a younger Otto in flashbacks. In the early going those flashbacks with Sonya (Rachel Keller) keep the film from being a total downer, like a film version of “Bolero” that plays over and over again because Forster tends to overstate Otto’s grumpiness, anger, and unexplained Barney Fife-like mission of guarding a gated cul-de-sac block of row houses in the Pittsburgh, Pa. area. The average viewer will, at some point, think, Okay, I get it. He’s an angry old bird. Move on. The film runs six minutes past two hours, so it could certainly have used a heavier hand in the editing room.

Though Hanks—like Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, James Garner, and Ed Asner before him—is the focal character and the one who grows and changes, the heart of the film belongs to a pregnant Mexican woman named Marisol (Mariana Treviño), her two young daughters, and her bumbling husband (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo). Without this family, Otto is a dead man, and without Treviño the film is a train wreck. Treviño has been acting for 10 years, but A Man Called Otto has to be considered her breakout role for U.S. audiences. She received no nominations for her performance, but Marisol’s exhuberance, honesty, and literal foot-in-the-door no-nonsense approach to life and relationships model the kind of virtues and values that parents might hope their children could attain. And her onscreen daughters Abbie (Alessandra Perez) and Luna (Christiana Montoya) get the assist. Scenes with them and Otto can seem cloying at times because they’re so purposefully intended to show Otto beginning to soften, but the young actresses channel their screen mother’s knowing enthusiasm along with their own characters’ innocence and naiveté to make those scenes funny.

Is it manipulative? Heck yeah. You’ll find yourself near tears one minute and laughing the next, and you know it’s because most of the scenes seem shot with the sole purpose of moving the audience. Some viewers will resent that, while others will appreciate a roller coaster ride that dips down for much of the first half and climbs throughout most of the second.

But if you give it any thought, Otto’s depression and anger would have been plenty to pull at audience’s heartstrings without the filmmakers adding a seemingly tacked-on side plot about a friendship that dissolved over automobile makes and a parallel sad medical situation. All of that feels like unnecessary piling on. The film would have been helped by fewer downer subplots, fewer trips to the cemetery, and more diverse characters like Malcolm (a transgender kid who had Otto’s wife for a teacher) and Jimmy (a neighbor whose fitness walking style will crack you up). There’s no happy ending here, only a happy transformation.

Is it family fare?  Perhaps, for families with tweens and older children. I’m a film critic, not a mental health professional, but a UCLA study reported that suicide is the second-leading cause of death among people age 15-24, with nearly 20 percent of high school students admitting that they’ve had serious thoughts of suicide. That’s a crazy statistic. Would it help them to watch a depressed and angry man who thinks he has nothing to live for find his way? Parents who know their children might have the answer. I don’t. I do know this: a film isn’t a substitute for professional evaluation and treatment, but it could very well be a starting point for a discussion that could lead to seeking outside help.

Entire family:  No

Run time:  126 min. Color

Studio/Distributor:  Columbia/Sony

Aspect ratio:  1.85:1

Featured audio:  DTS-HDMA 5.1

Bonus features:  C

Includes:  Blu-ray, Digital Copy

Amazon link

Trailer

Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving suicide and language

Language:  7/10—Some audience members seem to bristle at the mere mention of “transgender,” and that word is spoken, along with an f-bomb, a few profane God damns, shits, hell, SOB, etc.; turns out that angry old men have a potty mouth

Sex:  1/10—Nothing here, even in flashbacks, which are intended to be tender; just a few kisses

Violence:  3/10— Otto loses it with a honking driver, physically manhandling the guy and threatening him, and there are lesser examples of physicality

Adult situations:  7/10—Aside from the multiple suicide attempts, two of which have him experiencing a near-death vision of his wife, there’s some alcohol and smoking, and one death

Takeaway:  A Man Called Otto is based on a best-selling novel by German writer Fredrik Backman, so given the number of aging male actors in Hollywood I would say there’s a pretty big incentive for future novelists to keep feeding this trope

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