What’s it about?
When Frenchy Hercules disappears through a door in her family home’s basement into the freakish Sixth Dimension, her young brother (played by an old vaudeville comedian) enlists their grandfather (a retired Jewish wrestler) to enter the portal and get her back. Meanwhile, Frenchy finds love with the King Fausto of the Sixth Dimension (played by Herve Villechaize).
But trouble arises when the jealous Queen Doris (played by Susan Tyrrell) gets word of her husband’s “peccadilloes”. Others soon find their way into the Sixth Dimension, and they encounter weirdos like a frog-headed butler, a constantly topless princess, and Satan himself (played by Danny Elfman). Numerous musical numbers featuring vintage big band recordings interrupt the proceedings with additional craziness.
Is it any good?
Heck if I know. I first saw this movie as an impressionable youngster while at a weeklong art camp at Miami University in Ohio. I was probably fifteen at the time, and I wandered over during a movie night to see what the college-aged camp counselors were watching. They had rented FORBIDDEN ZONE (and not for the first time, it seems). The movie left me confused, excited, and disturbed in equal measure -- but I admit primarily I was mesmerized by the constantly topless princess.
Like FANTASTIC PLANET (1973), this movie has continued to exist in my memory as a collage of strange, unconnected images. (Is it coincidence that they both prominently feature toplessness? Who can say?) Even though it’s practically impossible to defend it as science fiction (the journey to the Sixth Dimension is more THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS or THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE than it is, say, A WRINKLE IN TIME), I knew I would have to watch it again anyway just to see what it is really about. But even though I am less distracted now by naked breasts than I was as a teenager, I am still not sure I understand what it is really about.
A brief aside here. I watched this with my girlfriend, and we both agreed that the naked breasts in FORBIDDEN ZONE are incredibly distracting. It is impossible not to be entranced when they are onscreen -- the main difference between now and 1995 is that I didn’t spend the scenes without the breasts impatiently waiting for them to come back. But whenever they were there, it became very difficult to focus on anything else. In fact, the girlfriend believes that the quality of the breasts in the movie exceeds the quality of anything else it has to offer.
Something I didn’t know until after I watched FORBIDDEN ZONE again recently is that the movie was created primarily to capture on film some of the stage show of The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. This is the band that evolved into Oingo Boingo in the early 1980s, but FORBIDDEN ZONE was a record of an earlier incarnation when they were a quasi-theatrical troupe obsessed with old songs and vaudeville acts. In some ways, it is exactly what I had hoped SPACE IS THE PLACE (1974) might be -- a document of an offbeat musical group. But Sun Ra’s Afrofuturist cosmic jazz is explicitly sci-fi in some ways, whereas The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo recontextualized historical curiosities into even weirder packages.
But like SPACE IS THE PLACE, the non-musical portions of FORBIDDEN ZONE dominate the movie, and that’s too bad. Some of the performers in the movie are members of The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, and their imagination shines brightest when they are choreographing weird accompaniments to weird old songs. My favorite is a scene of absurd factory work set to “Pico and Sepulveda”. (Look up that song if you can -- it totally rules.) The scene includes a catchy curiosity from the 1940s, an amusing dance number, elements of both the distinctive production design and animation that pepper the movie, and an imaginative (and funny) interpretation of the song. It’s delightfully weird, but (unlike much of the movie) it doesn’t feel like it’s designed to be off-putting or bizarre for its own sake.
There are a few more moments like this in the movie, and it’s occasionally a trippy good time as a result of it. For example, there’s an otherwise totally unnecessary alphabet song inspired by the Three Stooges that still manages to incorporate some pretty cool early breakdancing. But too often, it’s more like weirdness without a point or weirdness that’s designed to offend. (There are some extremely uncomfortable blackface moments in FORBIDDEN ZONE, as well as several other ethnic caricatures, for instance.) It is clear that this movie is the product of a few imaginative folks who had nobody to tell them “no” -- and that is always kind of appealing, at least in theory. If I knew more about the kinds of things The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo were into in the late 1970s (like big band music, Max Fleischer cartoons, and vaudeville comedians), I would probably understand more of what they were trying to do. As it is, I can only make guesses -- and unless I want to do a lot of research, there’s no way for me to really find out whether their references are witty and well-informed, or if they are simply unnecessarily bizarre and occasionally offensive.
FORBIDDEN ZONE is also the kind of movie that couldn't exist without pop culture. It references almost entirely pop culture from the 1950s and earlier, but its still nonetheless very much what you might call a postmodern pastiche. A little bit of cabaret singing, a little bit of the Three Stooges, a little bit of greaser movies, a little bit of minstrel shows, a little bit of German expressionistic set design, and so on -- all mixed together in a chaotic stew.
Beyond the weirdness of the thing, FORBIDDEN ZONE is pretty impenetrable -- and I’m not even totally sure there is much to penetrate in the end. There is a plot of sort, but it’s not a very interesting one. (See the description above.) There are no actual characters -- just caricatures and stereotypes. Originally, the intention of The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo was to present lost entertainments that were no longer being performed live -- in other words, to bring vaudeville and the cabarets to people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to experience them in a live setting. (And then to add a unique Oingo Boingo flair of weirdness.) FORBIDDEN ZONE isn’t a live performance, so it’s a valid question exactly what is the point of the movie. Why watch a recording of Danny Elfman singing a modified version of “Minnie the Moocher” when you could listen to a recording of Cab Calloway himself? If the references and songs were better curated -- if they were identified or explained in some way -- there might be a case for FORBIDDEN ZONE as an educational movie. But as it is, it’s a catalog of weird things that you will enjoy only so much as your sensibility is aligned with those of The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo.
Ultimately, FORBIDDEN ZONE is 73 minutes of your life that you will never get back. So whether it’s worth your time or not probably depends on how much you value 73 minutes of your life. It seems unlikely that most people would enjoy the entire movie -- though I have no doubt that those folks are out there. For me, I’d say there are ten or fifteen minutes of the movie that are a good time. Much of the rest is mostly just waiting for a funny joke, a neat bit of animation, a cool dance, or a catchy song, but there are also times when I got uncomfortable or annoyed. The movie’s too weird and unpredictable to ever be boring, but it’s also definitely not trying to be your friend. Look -- if you want to watch it, go ahead and watch it. If you’re not sure, skip it.
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Monday, March 8, 2010
Thursday, September 3, 2009
BONUS BLOG -- 1973: IVAN VASILIEVICH: BACK TO THE FUTURE
What’s it about?
A Soviet scientist working on a time machine in his apartment gets in trouble with his local party representative when he keeps tripping the fuses in the building. While demonstrating his time machine to the official, he temporarily opens up the wall to the next apartment, where a burglar is in the middle of a raid. Immediately seeing the practical application of such a machine to the burglary industry, the thief joins the two others for a real test.
However, the real test of the time machine only results in chaos as the bumbling party official and the thief are stranded in the court of Ivan the Terrible, while the historical czar ends up in modern Moscow. The scientist must then race to fix the damaged machine to set things right before the displaced people are discovered and things get complicated. But then he wakes up and we learn it was all just a dream.
Is it any good?
This is another movie that I am not going to talk about too much specifically -- partly because it’s been a few weeks since I watched it and the details have mostly faded. But I did want to bring it up because it’s a Soviet flick, and I don’t think I’ve written about any of those yet. It’s also a Soviet comedy, which is something I don’t think I have ever seen before in my life.
I find that whenever I watch a movie from a communist country, I usually approach it with a different mindset than I do a movie from the west. I end up spending most of the running time playing “spot the propaganda” and searching for collectivist themes. But the more movies I see from Soviet bloc countries, the less I feel like that kind of thing is really as much of a defining feature of their cinema as I have been led to expect. (Led by whom? I’m not sure. Maybe it is purely my own prejudices that have made me think that way.)
This is not to say that IVAN VASILIEVICH seems subversive at all. It’s primarily a slapstick comedy, with lots of misunderstandings and switched identities and Benny Hill-style high speed chases through hallways. The characters are all very self-centered as well. Even the scientist (the ostensible protagonist) is largely a passive lump who is devoted entirely to his time machine. When his wife leaves him for a movie director at the beginning of the movie, she is offended at how philosophically he takes the news. Other characters covet expensive imported bourgeois goods from the west like tape recorders and leather jackets, and everyone disrespects and ignores the overly officious party representative.
That party official is also the one who falls most rapidly and deeply in love with the czarist world when they travel back in time -- no doubt largely because he is at first mistaken for the czar himself. Ivan the Terrible, meanwhile, actually seems fairly effective in the twentieth century as he applies his “might is right” philosophy to minor domestic situations. Of course, he shortly ends up being dragged off to an insane asylum, but he really is one of the more likeable characters in the movie.
And then, as I mentioned above, the scientist wakes up and we realize the entire movie has been a dream. His wife hasn’t left him, his time machine doesn’t work, and nobody has been stranded in the past or future. On the one hand, the it’s-all-a-dream ending is always a let down. On the other hand, the movie is so slight and goofy that there’s really no sense of loss at being robbed of a real ending. It’s an earlier Soviet version of BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (1989), and the enjoyment really comes more from the performances, the gags, and a couple of zany dance sequences than from the story itself.
A Soviet scientist working on a time machine in his apartment gets in trouble with his local party representative when he keeps tripping the fuses in the building. While demonstrating his time machine to the official, he temporarily opens up the wall to the next apartment, where a burglar is in the middle of a raid. Immediately seeing the practical application of such a machine to the burglary industry, the thief joins the two others for a real test.
However, the real test of the time machine only results in chaos as the bumbling party official and the thief are stranded in the court of Ivan the Terrible, while the historical czar ends up in modern Moscow. The scientist must then race to fix the damaged machine to set things right before the displaced people are discovered and things get complicated. But then he wakes up and we learn it was all just a dream.
Is it any good?
This is another movie that I am not going to talk about too much specifically -- partly because it’s been a few weeks since I watched it and the details have mostly faded. But I did want to bring it up because it’s a Soviet flick, and I don’t think I’ve written about any of those yet. It’s also a Soviet comedy, which is something I don’t think I have ever seen before in my life.
I find that whenever I watch a movie from a communist country, I usually approach it with a different mindset than I do a movie from the west. I end up spending most of the running time playing “spot the propaganda” and searching for collectivist themes. But the more movies I see from Soviet bloc countries, the less I feel like that kind of thing is really as much of a defining feature of their cinema as I have been led to expect. (Led by whom? I’m not sure. Maybe it is purely my own prejudices that have made me think that way.)
This is not to say that IVAN VASILIEVICH seems subversive at all. It’s primarily a slapstick comedy, with lots of misunderstandings and switched identities and Benny Hill-style high speed chases through hallways. The characters are all very self-centered as well. Even the scientist (the ostensible protagonist) is largely a passive lump who is devoted entirely to his time machine. When his wife leaves him for a movie director at the beginning of the movie, she is offended at how philosophically he takes the news. Other characters covet expensive imported bourgeois goods from the west like tape recorders and leather jackets, and everyone disrespects and ignores the overly officious party representative.
That party official is also the one who falls most rapidly and deeply in love with the czarist world when they travel back in time -- no doubt largely because he is at first mistaken for the czar himself. Ivan the Terrible, meanwhile, actually seems fairly effective in the twentieth century as he applies his “might is right” philosophy to minor domestic situations. Of course, he shortly ends up being dragged off to an insane asylum, but he really is one of the more likeable characters in the movie.
And then, as I mentioned above, the scientist wakes up and we realize the entire movie has been a dream. His wife hasn’t left him, his time machine doesn’t work, and nobody has been stranded in the past or future. On the one hand, the it’s-all-a-dream ending is always a let down. On the other hand, the movie is so slight and goofy that there’s really no sense of loss at being robbed of a real ending. It’s an earlier Soviet version of BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (1989), and the enjoyment really comes more from the performances, the gags, and a couple of zany dance sequences than from the story itself.
Monday, May 25, 2009
1968: BARBARELLA
What’s it about?
When an inventor in possession of a powerful weapon goes missing, the president of the world fears for the continuance of the universe-wide peace that has persisted for centuries. So he calls on Barbarella (played by Jane Fonda) who is in some mysterious way the person best equipped to deal with such a crisis. She sets off immediately for last known location of the missing inventor -- a backward and barbarous planet where violence and other evils still exist.
An accident forces Barbarella to land unexpectedly on the planet’s surface, where she is almost instantly captured by murderous feral children and given over as a sacrifice to their sharp-toothed mechanical dolls. After being rescued by a rugged and hairy mercenary, she sets off again to complete her mission and ends up deep underneath the city in a labyrinth where deviants (in this world, those who are not evil enough) are exiled. There she meets a blind angel who flies her to the city where further dangerous, trippy, and sexually suggestive adventures await. Eventually she must face off against the inventor and the sadistic woman who rules the city to stop the weapon from wreaking more destruction.
Is it any good?
From the very first scene of BARBARELLA -- in which Jane Fonda performs a zero-gravity striptease aboard her shag-carpeted spaceship -- it feels very much like a campy sci-fi spoof. But as I watched, I had a hard time putting my finger on what exactly the movie could possibly have been spoofing back in 1968. With only a handful of exceptions, sci-fi movies even in the late sixties were still very conservative, Earth-bound, and relatively unambitious with their speculations. Bizarre cultures on far-flung planets in unrecognizable futures just weren’t that common.
But then I remembered that there was also science fiction on television in the 1960s. Although it’s hard to imagine BARBARELLA emerging fully-formed from the giant insect, alien invasion, and lost civilization movies of the 1950s and 1960s, it makes far more sense in the context of shows like STAR TREK, LOST IN SPACE, DOCTOR WHO, or even THE PRISONER. In fact, it makes me wish I knew a lot more about those shows. There’s probably an earlier influence as well -- although I know even less about this kind of thing, it also seems likely that old movie serials like BUCK ROGERS, FLASH GORDON, and ROCKY JONES could have contributed to BARBARELLA’s genetic make-up.
All if this is a long way of saying that BARBARELLA is a feature-length version of the “planet of the week” style of science fiction. On her mission to retrieve the missing inventor and his weapon, Barbarella finds herself on a planet with a strange social structure, a couple of different alien races, pockets of bizarre subcultures, a dark secret that gives power to its authoritarian rulers, and otherworldly fashions and architecture. (By the way, have I mentioned yet that the inventor’s name is Durand-Durand -- the inspiration for a certain English rock band’s name.)
But the crazy alien world and its crazy alien society are not really the main appeal of BARBARELLA. If I’m honest, the main appeal is probably actually Jane Fonda. Before watching this movie, I wasn’t familiar with anything she’d been involved with (except for workout records and the fall of Saigon) so I had no idea what to expect from her. I still don’t know if she’s a great actor or not, but she is definitely great in this role. A lot of what she has to do is look good in space age clothes (or the lack thereof), and she definitely aces that part of the exam. As an aside, I should mention that despite the five-minute striptease that opens the movie and the several sexual encounters throughout, there is very little in the way of prurient thrills. All of the sex takes place entirely off screen (and very matter-of-factly, I might add) except for a long scene of pill-assisted futuristic coupling experienced entirely through the palms of the hand.
But even better than the ability to look good in a spacesuit, Jane Fonda also apparently has a hilarious arsenal of facial expressions to fit any occasion. The dialogue is all delivered very breezily and professionally, but it seemed to me that most of the real acting happened in facial expressions and body language. In fact, Marcel Marceau has a supporting role as some kind of gnome-like sage-cum-mechanic, and even a legendary mime can’t overtop Jane Fonda when it comes to reaction shots. Of course, how much you’ll enjoy all of this probably depends on how much patience you have for mugging.
Anyway, the kind of story that BARBARELLA is most similar to is probably something like THE WIZARD OF OZ or ALICE IN WONDERLAND. She’s a woman on an episodic adventure through a strange world full of stranger characters and customs. Despite the rampant sex, Barbarella even has a lot of the same un-self-conscious innocence as Dorothy and Alice -- she mostly takes things as they come, except when she doesn’t, and she doesn’t spend too much time thinking about why. It’s campy and lighthearted, but it’s also enjoyable and creative and sometimes pretty funny too.
What else happened this year?
Stick around and find out over the next week!
When an inventor in possession of a powerful weapon goes missing, the president of the world fears for the continuance of the universe-wide peace that has persisted for centuries. So he calls on Barbarella (played by Jane Fonda) who is in some mysterious way the person best equipped to deal with such a crisis. She sets off immediately for last known location of the missing inventor -- a backward and barbarous planet where violence and other evils still exist.
An accident forces Barbarella to land unexpectedly on the planet’s surface, where she is almost instantly captured by murderous feral children and given over as a sacrifice to their sharp-toothed mechanical dolls. After being rescued by a rugged and hairy mercenary, she sets off again to complete her mission and ends up deep underneath the city in a labyrinth where deviants (in this world, those who are not evil enough) are exiled. There she meets a blind angel who flies her to the city where further dangerous, trippy, and sexually suggestive adventures await. Eventually she must face off against the inventor and the sadistic woman who rules the city to stop the weapon from wreaking more destruction.
Is it any good?
From the very first scene of BARBARELLA -- in which Jane Fonda performs a zero-gravity striptease aboard her shag-carpeted spaceship -- it feels very much like a campy sci-fi spoof. But as I watched, I had a hard time putting my finger on what exactly the movie could possibly have been spoofing back in 1968. With only a handful of exceptions, sci-fi movies even in the late sixties were still very conservative, Earth-bound, and relatively unambitious with their speculations. Bizarre cultures on far-flung planets in unrecognizable futures just weren’t that common.
But then I remembered that there was also science fiction on television in the 1960s. Although it’s hard to imagine BARBARELLA emerging fully-formed from the giant insect, alien invasion, and lost civilization movies of the 1950s and 1960s, it makes far more sense in the context of shows like STAR TREK, LOST IN SPACE, DOCTOR WHO, or even THE PRISONER. In fact, it makes me wish I knew a lot more about those shows. There’s probably an earlier influence as well -- although I know even less about this kind of thing, it also seems likely that old movie serials like BUCK ROGERS, FLASH GORDON, and ROCKY JONES could have contributed to BARBARELLA’s genetic make-up.
All if this is a long way of saying that BARBARELLA is a feature-length version of the “planet of the week” style of science fiction. On her mission to retrieve the missing inventor and his weapon, Barbarella finds herself on a planet with a strange social structure, a couple of different alien races, pockets of bizarre subcultures, a dark secret that gives power to its authoritarian rulers, and otherworldly fashions and architecture. (By the way, have I mentioned yet that the inventor’s name is Durand-Durand -- the inspiration for a certain English rock band’s name.)
But the crazy alien world and its crazy alien society are not really the main appeal of BARBARELLA. If I’m honest, the main appeal is probably actually Jane Fonda. Before watching this movie, I wasn’t familiar with anything she’d been involved with (except for workout records and the fall of Saigon) so I had no idea what to expect from her. I still don’t know if she’s a great actor or not, but she is definitely great in this role. A lot of what she has to do is look good in space age clothes (or the lack thereof), and she definitely aces that part of the exam. As an aside, I should mention that despite the five-minute striptease that opens the movie and the several sexual encounters throughout, there is very little in the way of prurient thrills. All of the sex takes place entirely off screen (and very matter-of-factly, I might add) except for a long scene of pill-assisted futuristic coupling experienced entirely through the palms of the hand.
But even better than the ability to look good in a spacesuit, Jane Fonda also apparently has a hilarious arsenal of facial expressions to fit any occasion. The dialogue is all delivered very breezily and professionally, but it seemed to me that most of the real acting happened in facial expressions and body language. In fact, Marcel Marceau has a supporting role as some kind of gnome-like sage-cum-mechanic, and even a legendary mime can’t overtop Jane Fonda when it comes to reaction shots. Of course, how much you’ll enjoy all of this probably depends on how much patience you have for mugging.
Anyway, the kind of story that BARBARELLA is most similar to is probably something like THE WIZARD OF OZ or ALICE IN WONDERLAND. She’s a woman on an episodic adventure through a strange world full of stranger characters and customs. Despite the rampant sex, Barbarella even has a lot of the same un-self-conscious innocence as Dorothy and Alice -- she mostly takes things as they come, except when she doesn’t, and she doesn’t spend too much time thinking about why. It’s campy and lighthearted, but it’s also enjoyable and creative and sometimes pretty funny too.
What else happened this year?
Stick around and find out over the next week!
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
BONUS BLOG -- 1965: SHREEMAN FUNTOOSH
What’s it about?
An unemployed ne’er-do-well nicknamed Shreeman Funtoosh goes out looking for a job with a friend. But before they get too far they literally bump into two beautiful women while stopping to pray for good fortune at a temple. The job interview goes badly, and so does the wooing -- at first anyway. But persistence soon pays off with the ladies, which earns the boys the wrath of the powerful family of one of their intended husbands.
The wrath takes the form of a complicated frame-up for theft that involves too many moving parts to mention here. But the nefarious schemes gang agley (as aft happens) when Shreeman Funtoosh evades the hoodlums sent to waylay him, and instead gets zapped by malfunctioning lab equipment. As a result, he is turned into an indestructible iron man, with disastrous consequences for everybody he comes into contact with. An interrupted attempt to restore him to his normal state simply makes things worse by shrinking him to a tiny size. Meanwhile, the woman that Shreeman Funtoosh loves is being forced into a marriage with a real jerk, and it looks pretty hopeless that he’ll be able to stop things.
Is it any good?
Apart from a few movies by Satyajit Ray, I know practically nothing about Indian cinema, so I was pretty interested to see what this flick would be like. It’s a Hindi language movie that was filmed in Mumbai (or Bombay, if you prefer), so based on my limited understanding of such things it seems that it would qualify as an honest-to-gosh Bollywood movie. But since I’ve never seen a Bollywood movie before, I have no idea if SHREEMAN FUNTOOSH is typical or not.
The first surprise was when I checked out the movie’s running time and discovered that it was two and a half hours long. There’s nothing in the story that requires the movie to be that long, but it seems content to take its time and stroll along leisurely from start to finish. The cast of characters isn’t especially big, but the main players are all tightly bound together by a series of coincidences so the outcome of the love story bears directly on the experiments that provide the sci-fi bits and also the fates of three families. (For example, the man that Shreeman Funtoosh tries to get a job from in the beginning is BOTH the guy who is bankrolling the scientist whose lab equipment malfunctions AND the guy who ends up trying to force the heroine into a loveless marriage with his jerky son. The other character relations are all just about as involved as that.)
The second surprise was that the movie is pretty funny. I’m never sure if I’m grading comedies from other countries on a curve -- at the very least, with foreign movies it’s less likely that I’ll recognize if all the jokes are stolen. So I don’t know if SHREEMAN FUNTOOSH is funny compared to other Bollywood movies, but the lead actors are all pretty likeable and amusing. I did end up watching the movie over the course of two days, so it’s not as though I was transfixed from start to finish. But it was much easier going than I expected from a two and a half hour Hindi-language musical. And speaking of the musical elements, the third surprise was that there were only six songs in the whole movie. I’m no fan of movie musicals, so I wasn’t too disappointed that there weren’t more songs. Though I will say that a couple of the songs were good enough that I went back and watched them again -- not for the lyrics (which were pretty trite) but for the dancing and costumes and humor, which all had a different flavor than in western musicals.
Several of the songs are integrated into the story fairly naturally as performances that the characters are staging that just happen to mimic their emotions. (Only two of the songs are really people spontaneously breaking out into song.) This one is pretty typical -- in it, Shreeman Funtoosh has tied up his jerky rival so he can take his part in a song-and-dance number with the heroine, thus wooing her more effectively with his moves.
But my favorite song is a much more restrained one that takes place when Shreeman Funtoosh has just found out that the girl he loves (and who he thought loved him) has been engaged to this same jerky guy. I just really like the way the heartbroken Shreeman Funtoosh floats around over the shoulders of the two other characters while simultaneously expressing his woes and providing the music for them to dance to.
So, uh, I guess I should talk about the sci-fi parts. They are mostly just kind of funny, but barely even serve any purpose in the story. I mean, the fact that Shreeman Funtoosh is first indestructible and then tiny creates some small obstacles to the love story. But really the sci-fi bits are an afterthought and could be completely dropped with barely any change to the main plot. (I guess the only thing that would have to change is there would need to be a different reason for Shreeman Funtoosh to be delayed showing up at the climactic wedding besides “being restored to normal height by a shower of rays scratched onto the film with a paperclip”.) For the most part, the iron man segment seemed to be an excuse to make some jokes about what it would be like if Superman were clumsy. I’m not sure why exactly the Shrunken Funtoosh bits are there, but it’s as good a reason as any for him to be late to breaking up the wedding.
Anyway, I have no idea if this is a good Bollywood movie, or just an okay one. But it’s the only Indian sci-fi flick I could find, so if you are (like me) watching a lot of science fiction movies all in a row then it’s not a bad diversion.
An unemployed ne’er-do-well nicknamed Shreeman Funtoosh goes out looking for a job with a friend. But before they get too far they literally bump into two beautiful women while stopping to pray for good fortune at a temple. The job interview goes badly, and so does the wooing -- at first anyway. But persistence soon pays off with the ladies, which earns the boys the wrath of the powerful family of one of their intended husbands.
The wrath takes the form of a complicated frame-up for theft that involves too many moving parts to mention here. But the nefarious schemes gang agley (as aft happens) when Shreeman Funtoosh evades the hoodlums sent to waylay him, and instead gets zapped by malfunctioning lab equipment. As a result, he is turned into an indestructible iron man, with disastrous consequences for everybody he comes into contact with. An interrupted attempt to restore him to his normal state simply makes things worse by shrinking him to a tiny size. Meanwhile, the woman that Shreeman Funtoosh loves is being forced into a marriage with a real jerk, and it looks pretty hopeless that he’ll be able to stop things.
 |  |
Is it any good?
Apart from a few movies by Satyajit Ray, I know practically nothing about Indian cinema, so I was pretty interested to see what this flick would be like. It’s a Hindi language movie that was filmed in Mumbai (or Bombay, if you prefer), so based on my limited understanding of such things it seems that it would qualify as an honest-to-gosh Bollywood movie. But since I’ve never seen a Bollywood movie before, I have no idea if SHREEMAN FUNTOOSH is typical or not.
The first surprise was when I checked out the movie’s running time and discovered that it was two and a half hours long. There’s nothing in the story that requires the movie to be that long, but it seems content to take its time and stroll along leisurely from start to finish. The cast of characters isn’t especially big, but the main players are all tightly bound together by a series of coincidences so the outcome of the love story bears directly on the experiments that provide the sci-fi bits and also the fates of three families. (For example, the man that Shreeman Funtoosh tries to get a job from in the beginning is BOTH the guy who is bankrolling the scientist whose lab equipment malfunctions AND the guy who ends up trying to force the heroine into a loveless marriage with his jerky son. The other character relations are all just about as involved as that.)
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The second surprise was that the movie is pretty funny. I’m never sure if I’m grading comedies from other countries on a curve -- at the very least, with foreign movies it’s less likely that I’ll recognize if all the jokes are stolen. So I don’t know if SHREEMAN FUNTOOSH is funny compared to other Bollywood movies, but the lead actors are all pretty likeable and amusing. I did end up watching the movie over the course of two days, so it’s not as though I was transfixed from start to finish. But it was much easier going than I expected from a two and a half hour Hindi-language musical. And speaking of the musical elements, the third surprise was that there were only six songs in the whole movie. I’m no fan of movie musicals, so I wasn’t too disappointed that there weren’t more songs. Though I will say that a couple of the songs were good enough that I went back and watched them again -- not for the lyrics (which were pretty trite) but for the dancing and costumes and humor, which all had a different flavor than in western musicals.
Several of the songs are integrated into the story fairly naturally as performances that the characters are staging that just happen to mimic their emotions. (Only two of the songs are really people spontaneously breaking out into song.) This one is pretty typical -- in it, Shreeman Funtoosh has tied up his jerky rival so he can take his part in a song-and-dance number with the heroine, thus wooing her more effectively with his moves.
But my favorite song is a much more restrained one that takes place when Shreeman Funtoosh has just found out that the girl he loves (and who he thought loved him) has been engaged to this same jerky guy. I just really like the way the heartbroken Shreeman Funtoosh floats around over the shoulders of the two other characters while simultaneously expressing his woes and providing the music for them to dance to.
So, uh, I guess I should talk about the sci-fi parts. They are mostly just kind of funny, but barely even serve any purpose in the story. I mean, the fact that Shreeman Funtoosh is first indestructible and then tiny creates some small obstacles to the love story. But really the sci-fi bits are an afterthought and could be completely dropped with barely any change to the main plot. (I guess the only thing that would have to change is there would need to be a different reason for Shreeman Funtoosh to be delayed showing up at the climactic wedding besides “being restored to normal height by a shower of rays scratched onto the film with a paperclip”.) For the most part, the iron man segment seemed to be an excuse to make some jokes about what it would be like if Superman were clumsy. I’m not sure why exactly the Shrunken Funtoosh bits are there, but it’s as good a reason as any for him to be late to breaking up the wedding.
Anyway, I have no idea if this is a good Bollywood movie, or just an okay one. But it’s the only Indian sci-fi flick I could find, so if you are (like me) watching a lot of science fiction movies all in a row then it’s not a bad diversion.
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009
BONUS BLOG -- 1963: THE NUTTY PROFESSOR
What’s it about?
After being bullied by jocks once too often, nerdy science professor Jerry Lewis resolves to beef himself up. When bodybuilding doesn’t work, he turns to chemicals to get the job done. But instead of making him strong, the formula he concocts turns him into the ultra-hip swinger Buddy Love -- a cool, confident cat who also happens to be a pretty big jerk.
As Buddy Love, Lewis woos pretty coed Stella Stevens, who is alternately attracted and repelled by his egotistical attitude. Adding to the difficulties is the fact that the formula is unpredictable, kicking in and wearing off at inopportune times. Soon the effects are wreaking havoc with both of Lewis’s personalities, and the whole situation inevitably comes to a head when both the klutzy professor and Buddy Love are expected to be at the same place at the same time.
Is it any good?
I know next to nothing about Jerry Lewis and even less about the old Martin and Lewis comedy team, so unfortunately I can only write about THE NUTTY PROFESSOR from a place of supreme ignorance. I do know that Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis had broken up their act several years before this movie was made and Lewis had already become a bankable star on his own, but the character of Buddy Love is clearly a riff on the cool Rat Packers that Dean Martin was hanging with. Without any context, it’s hard to know whether Lewis was skewering his one-time partner or whether he was simply goofing on a persona that even the Rat Pack didn’t take all that seriously. But whatever the origins, Buddy Love is a magnificent creation and a truly charismatic jerk.
The genius in the movie lies in the unpredictability of Buddy Love. During his first appearance, he’s aggressive and egotistical, but always charming. He has an exciting carpe diem philosophy, and ultimately melts Stella’s objections by making her see how much he really digs her. But on Buddy Love’s second appearance, the mix of personality is slightly off. He’s just ever so slightly less charming, and suddenly his whole act looks boorish and pathetic. Whether from personal experience or close observation, Jerry Lewis apparently knew exactly where the dividing line lay between charming and obnoxious.
The nerdy professor character is a bit harder to swallow -- he’s a complete stereotype and it’s hard to see exactly what Stella Stevens is supposed to see in him. (She goes back and forth between the two throughout the movie.) Besides a battery of annoying tics, the biggest problem with the professor is that he has no spine whatsoever. This is resolved a bit at the very end when he gives up the Buddy Love personality for good, but still one imagines that Stella Stevens must be one forgiving gal to even consider him romantically.
All in all, this is a pretty awesome movie, and as reluctant as I am to agree with the French about anything I do think they may be on to something with this Jerry Lewis guy. If nothing else, this movie will hopefully continue to help future generations of “nice guys” better understand why ladies sometimes prefer “charming, exciting, but jerky” over “nice but always boring”.
After being bullied by jocks once too often, nerdy science professor Jerry Lewis resolves to beef himself up. When bodybuilding doesn’t work, he turns to chemicals to get the job done. But instead of making him strong, the formula he concocts turns him into the ultra-hip swinger Buddy Love -- a cool, confident cat who also happens to be a pretty big jerk.
As Buddy Love, Lewis woos pretty coed Stella Stevens, who is alternately attracted and repelled by his egotistical attitude. Adding to the difficulties is the fact that the formula is unpredictable, kicking in and wearing off at inopportune times. Soon the effects are wreaking havoc with both of Lewis’s personalities, and the whole situation inevitably comes to a head when both the klutzy professor and Buddy Love are expected to be at the same place at the same time.
Is it any good?
I know next to nothing about Jerry Lewis and even less about the old Martin and Lewis comedy team, so unfortunately I can only write about THE NUTTY PROFESSOR from a place of supreme ignorance. I do know that Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis had broken up their act several years before this movie was made and Lewis had already become a bankable star on his own, but the character of Buddy Love is clearly a riff on the cool Rat Packers that Dean Martin was hanging with. Without any context, it’s hard to know whether Lewis was skewering his one-time partner or whether he was simply goofing on a persona that even the Rat Pack didn’t take all that seriously. But whatever the origins, Buddy Love is a magnificent creation and a truly charismatic jerk.
The genius in the movie lies in the unpredictability of Buddy Love. During his first appearance, he’s aggressive and egotistical, but always charming. He has an exciting carpe diem philosophy, and ultimately melts Stella’s objections by making her see how much he really digs her. But on Buddy Love’s second appearance, the mix of personality is slightly off. He’s just ever so slightly less charming, and suddenly his whole act looks boorish and pathetic. Whether from personal experience or close observation, Jerry Lewis apparently knew exactly where the dividing line lay between charming and obnoxious.
The nerdy professor character is a bit harder to swallow -- he’s a complete stereotype and it’s hard to see exactly what Stella Stevens is supposed to see in him. (She goes back and forth between the two throughout the movie.) Besides a battery of annoying tics, the biggest problem with the professor is that he has no spine whatsoever. This is resolved a bit at the very end when he gives up the Buddy Love personality for good, but still one imagines that Stella Stevens must be one forgiving gal to even consider him romantically.
All in all, this is a pretty awesome movie, and as reluctant as I am to agree with the French about anything I do think they may be on to something with this Jerry Lewis guy. If nothing else, this movie will hopefully continue to help future generations of “nice guys” better understand why ladies sometimes prefer “charming, exciting, but jerky” over “nice but always boring”.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
BONUS BLOG -- 1960: THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
What’s it about?
A klutzy delivery boy at a flower shop is on the verge of being fired when he convinces his employer to give him one more chance -- but only if a rare plant he’s been growing at home becomes an attraction for the shop within a week. At first the plant (named “Audrey Jr” in honor of a pretty shop assistant the delivery boy has a crush on) looks small and sickly. But while sitting up and caring for Audrey Jr during the night, the delivery boy accidentally discovers that it perks up as soon as it gets a taste of blood. He feeds it first by pricking his fingers, but the plant quickly grows too big to be satisfied by mere drips and drops.
The nutrition problem is temporarily solved when the delivery boy inadvertently causes a man’s gruesome death at a train yard. Searching for a way to dispose of the body, he takes it back to the flower shop and feeds the dismembered pieces to Audrey Jr. Nourished by so much food, the plant quickly grows to an enormous size and becomes a prize attraction at the shop -- but each night it craves more and more human blood and the delivery boy is driven to increasingly desperate means to keep it alive.
Is it any good?
Produced and directed by Roger Corman, THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is unlike any other sci-fi movie that I’ve seen from the years leading up to 1960. First and foremost, it’s a black comedy fueled by a mix of oddball characters, ethnic humor, deadpan jokes, and goofy sight gags. The horror is practically nonexistent -- partly because it’s constantly undercut by the humor, and partly because plants are just not that scary no matter how many people they eat. Despite the central presence of a carnivorous talking plant named Audrey Jr, the movie doesn’t feel very much like a sci-fi flick either. In fact, the movie it most reminded me of is another Roger Corman picture -- A BUCKET OF BLOOD from 1959, in which a hapless beatnik wannabe discovers the fame he seeks only when he accidentally encases a cat in plaster of Paris. Like the delivery boy in THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, he too soon graduates to cheerily sacrificing humans to keep the fires of his success burning.
Weirdly, it’s impossible to feel anything but sympathy for either of Roger Corman’s murderous protagonists because they are both come off as such well-meaning (and borderline idiotic) innocents propelled to their acts by forces greater than themselves. To the extent that this is intentional satire, it’s more pointed in A BUCKET OF BLOOD, but there is still something strangely compelling (and, at least to my mind, hilarious) about following the exploits of a good-hearted murderer in THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. Even when the hero is feeding chunks of an undercover cop to his pet plant, I can’t help but root for him.
It’s also worth noting that the entire movie (except for a few exterior shots) was reportedly filmed in two days on existing sets for only $30,000. Yet, even though it’s clearly a low-budget B-movie, THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS still feels far more like a visionary labor of love than the cheap-and-dirty quickie effort that it apparently was. (Roger Corman himself considered the final product so inconsequential that he didn’t even bother registering the copyright, which ultimately led to the movie falling into the public domain.) Although the ending is pretty weak, the rest of the script is efficient, funny, and sometimes even satirical. The special effects are not really all that special, but the homemade absurdity of Audrey Jr only adds to the humor -- especially once it starts talking in a hilariously un-plantlike voice. The oddball characters aren’t especially deep or well-developed, but they are almost always interesting. And one of them is played by a very young and exuberant Jack Nicholson. In other words, there are plenty of reasons to watch THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS even despite its many, many ragged edges.
Epilogue: No doubt as a result of being in the public domain, the movie was often shown on TV in the 1960s and 1970s (see also: IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE) and eventually became popular enough to inspire a stage musical in the early 1980s. This was then made into another film in 1986, starring Rick Moranis and Steve Martin -- probably one of the first examples of the now increasingly common movie-based-on-a-musical-based-on-a-movie phenomenon.
A klutzy delivery boy at a flower shop is on the verge of being fired when he convinces his employer to give him one more chance -- but only if a rare plant he’s been growing at home becomes an attraction for the shop within a week. At first the plant (named “Audrey Jr” in honor of a pretty shop assistant the delivery boy has a crush on) looks small and sickly. But while sitting up and caring for Audrey Jr during the night, the delivery boy accidentally discovers that it perks up as soon as it gets a taste of blood. He feeds it first by pricking his fingers, but the plant quickly grows too big to be satisfied by mere drips and drops.
The nutrition problem is temporarily solved when the delivery boy inadvertently causes a man’s gruesome death at a train yard. Searching for a way to dispose of the body, he takes it back to the flower shop and feeds the dismembered pieces to Audrey Jr. Nourished by so much food, the plant quickly grows to an enormous size and becomes a prize attraction at the shop -- but each night it craves more and more human blood and the delivery boy is driven to increasingly desperate means to keep it alive.
 |  |
Is it any good?
Produced and directed by Roger Corman, THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is unlike any other sci-fi movie that I’ve seen from the years leading up to 1960. First and foremost, it’s a black comedy fueled by a mix of oddball characters, ethnic humor, deadpan jokes, and goofy sight gags. The horror is practically nonexistent -- partly because it’s constantly undercut by the humor, and partly because plants are just not that scary no matter how many people they eat. Despite the central presence of a carnivorous talking plant named Audrey Jr, the movie doesn’t feel very much like a sci-fi flick either. In fact, the movie it most reminded me of is another Roger Corman picture -- A BUCKET OF BLOOD from 1959, in which a hapless beatnik wannabe discovers the fame he seeks only when he accidentally encases a cat in plaster of Paris. Like the delivery boy in THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, he too soon graduates to cheerily sacrificing humans to keep the fires of his success burning.
Weirdly, it’s impossible to feel anything but sympathy for either of Roger Corman’s murderous protagonists because they are both come off as such well-meaning (and borderline idiotic) innocents propelled to their acts by forces greater than themselves. To the extent that this is intentional satire, it’s more pointed in A BUCKET OF BLOOD, but there is still something strangely compelling (and, at least to my mind, hilarious) about following the exploits of a good-hearted murderer in THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. Even when the hero is feeding chunks of an undercover cop to his pet plant, I can’t help but root for him.
 |  |
It’s also worth noting that the entire movie (except for a few exterior shots) was reportedly filmed in two days on existing sets for only $30,000. Yet, even though it’s clearly a low-budget B-movie, THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS still feels far more like a visionary labor of love than the cheap-and-dirty quickie effort that it apparently was. (Roger Corman himself considered the final product so inconsequential that he didn’t even bother registering the copyright, which ultimately led to the movie falling into the public domain.) Although the ending is pretty weak, the rest of the script is efficient, funny, and sometimes even satirical. The special effects are not really all that special, but the homemade absurdity of Audrey Jr only adds to the humor -- especially once it starts talking in a hilariously un-plantlike voice. The oddball characters aren’t especially deep or well-developed, but they are almost always interesting. And one of them is played by a very young and exuberant Jack Nicholson. In other words, there are plenty of reasons to watch THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS even despite its many, many ragged edges.
Epilogue: No doubt as a result of being in the public domain, the movie was often shown on TV in the 1960s and 1970s (see also: IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE) and eventually became popular enough to inspire a stage musical in the early 1980s. This was then made into another film in 1986, starring Rick Moranis and Steve Martin -- probably one of the first examples of the now increasingly common movie-based-on-a-musical-based-on-a-movie phenomenon.
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