The hype: It's on a LOT of Top 10 lists, so curiosity got the best of Her Indoors.
The caveat: I don't hate animated movies per se, but I can't think of one off the top of my head where I just had to see it twice. I also don't have kids, so I don't have that "kids love it" sensibility when watching animated movies.
Marc Horton Plot Synopsis: Humans and/or large corporations and/or rampant consumerism have killed Earth. There's a robot that eats piles of garbage and shits it back out in cubes that can be used as, I dunno, building blocks. A space shuttle comes and drops off a more advanced robot. They get friendly. They end up back on the Mother Ship, which is a bunch of fat humans floating around in space thousands of years after abandoning Earth.
When the space humans attempt to return to Earth, the ship's auto-pilot, like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, tries to over-ride the mission. The cute robots and the fat humans co-operate, prevail over "HAL" and return to Earth.
Politically Incorrect Movie Review: To paraphrase Cartman on South Park: I don't hate robots, I fuckin' hate hippies.
Annie Hall: 1997 Romantic Comedy written, starring and directed by Woody Allen. Also stars Diane Keaton.
Movie opens with Woody, in quintessential Nerd mode, on the screen telling a Catskills joke. Then repeats a well-worn Groucho Marx quote: "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member." Neither would anyone else.
Into the movie. The "Woody" character as a kid, with his mom, at the shrink. Later on the bumper cars at Cony Island with Pops. This is intentional foreshadowing, as we'll see later.
Now in school. He's the adult Woody sitting in a Grade 3 class talking about dreaming about girls. Yuck. Inadvertent foreshadowing.
On The Dick Cavett Show. Tells an incomprehensible joke about dodging the draft. Guaranteed his own unit woulda fragged him.
Here's his mom, scolding him.
Adult Woody talking to his buddy about being sensitive about anti-Jewish sentiment. Painful. Less than 5 minutes in and it's already self-parody.
Woody meets a Teamster-type on the Manhattan street. The guy has seen him on the Tonight Show. Woody drops a Godfather joke. Hilarious. I spit up gabagoo through my nose.
Out of a cab pops Diane Keaton. They're bickering. I'm already praying for the terrorists to advance their plans by 26 years.
Famous scene at movie theatre:
Droll.
Woody gets into bed with Keaton discussing the Gestapo. Woody wants some, but there are no under-aged Asians so Keaton will have to do.
Flashback to when he met his first wife, Carol Kane, backstage at a dinner where he does his routine. The film wants us to believe he's charming her with his nebbishness. I'm surprised she doesn't have the FBI kill him. He makes another joke that is so inside, only the rabbi at Temple Ben Gurion would understand it.
Now he's in bed with Kane discussing the Kennedy assassination. "The Magic Lugie" episode of Seinfeld with Keith Hernandez was funny. This, not funny. Woody drops a "child molester" reference. Again, spookily prescient. Woody repeats that stupid Groucho Marx joke.
Back to the present with Diane Keaton wearing a hairdo reminiscent of Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo.
Keaton flashes back to her youthful love life. Doesn't prove anything except that the cost of film must have been relatively cheap in 1975.
Back to the present, Woody with a woman who's uglier than The Nanny. Now he's hiding in a bedroom watching a Knicks game, which gives him a chance to riff on the superiority of physical talent over intellectual talent. It's not funny and totally unnecessary to the plot. The Nanny's ragging on him. Woody wants to make out with her. They end up on a futon together talking about the Manson Family while she reaches for Valium.
Woody with his buddy at the tennis club discussing anti-Semitism. Foreskin reference. It appears this is the first time he's met Diane Keaton. There have already been more time-shifts than in the entire run of The English Patient.
After the match, Diane's wearing a Charlie Chaplin getup. They nervously work out whether they should drive home together. This is the point where I bailed last time. It was either that or suffer the fatal aneurysm.
But I'm nothing if not dedicated to my craft.
Diane drops off Woody. Drops a "Cossacks raped my grandmother" joke. Start talking about seeing shrinks. Up in the apartment, he discovers Keaton's sylvia plath book of poems. The Iron Man breaks through the roof of the apartment and crushes them both*
*not really.
Keaton relates a story about her grandfather dying in The Great War because he suffered from narcolepsy during the Battle of The Somme. Not sure whether it was a WWI punchline or a narcolepsy punchline.
Up on the rooftop drinking wine or bottled water. Keaton's giggling a lot. She must have been pounding a lot of colourful pills.
They make small talk. Subtitles show what they're really thinking. I know what I'm thinking: Would someone please murder the other so this movie could end.
Keaton invites Woody to the nightclub where she's onstage singing. She worries she sucks. Woody reassures her she doesn't.
Afterward, at the coffee shop. She orders a meal so boring that Woody raises his eyebrows. We all get what he means. She's a gentile. What a side-splitter.
They hop into bed, make out and smoke dope. Cutting edge stuff.
At the bookshop. He's focused on death. Shoulda focused on comedy.
In Central Park. Another mafia joke.
Under the lights of the Tri-Borough Bridge. They're in love. A guy wearing concrete galoshes floats by*
*not really.
Some time later they're in Woody's apartment. He's nervous because she's moving in. They bicker.
Now out in the countryside. Pointless. Back to the apartment. She's thinking about taking a college course. Woody drops a Beowulf reference. Francis Bacon is laughing his ass off at that reference. Keaton wants to smoke dope. Woody offers to give her a shot of sodium pentathol. No mention of Absinthe.
They try to make out. Keaton has an out-of-body experience.
In an office, some unknown Catskills comedian is hoping to hire a writer. He's pantomiming a horrible French cliche of a joke and asking Woody to write him some jokes along that line.
Now Woody's on stage telling more egghead jokes in front of a large auditorium. Existentialism. Mah-Jong. Suicide. He hits all the funny notes.
Dinner with Keaton's parents. Grandma looks Woody up and down and sees Fiddler on the Roof. OK, that was funny.
Woody breaks the barrier again, talking to the audience and then flashing back to his own family. Oy vey.
Back at Keaton's parents' house. Christopher Walken is Keaton's brother. He shows Woody his room. Holy shit, is he the creepiest/funniest man in show business, or what.
Walken stole the movie right there.
Daytime scene. Keaton and Woody are bickering. Biblical reference.
Keaton's talking about dreaming about Sinatra. I'm hoping the dream ends with Sinatra's friends making Keaton an offer she can't refuse.
Back to the street scene. Keaton jumps angrily into a cab. Woody starts talking to people on the street about their sex lives. Old man drops vibrator reference. Good-looking couple admits to being happily shallow.
Cut to cartoon where Woody's making moves on the Evil Queen in Snow White.
Back to the past where he's met Shelly Duval. They're at a Maharishi Yogi concert at MSG. Duval drops a Dylan and Stones reference. God she's ugly.
In bed with Duval. She uses the word, "Kafkaesque." I used to work with a guy and our running joke was to find a "Kafkaesque" reference in the media. Credit was also earned for finding "Dickensian" and bonus points for "Dickensian in scope." Reviews of John Irving novels were gold mines.
Woody and Keaton bickering again. Something about spiders. Woody grabs a tennis racket to kill it. Here comes some physical comedy. Buster Keaton is rolling over in his grave. He goes back to the bedroom and she's bawling. They promise never to break up. Movie goers all across America promise to never go see another Woody Allen movie.
Back to Woody's family in 1944. Pointless.
Keaton's birthday. Woody gives her lingerie. She hates it. Then he gives her a watch. Pointless.
Nightclub. Keaton singing again. Musical interlude. Let's me catch up on my spell-checking.
Oh, look who's here: Paul Simon. What a shmoe. Simon tries to "discover" Keaton. He introduces a couple of leggy broads, perhaps trying to establish his heterosexuality. Enormous credibility gap.
Spliced-in Nazi propaganda film. I don't get it.
Split screen, like The Thomas Crowne Affair, showing Keaton and Allen at their respective shrinks. This must have rung true with the Valium-popping 1975 crowd.
At a dinner party talking about snorting coke. Their pal cuts it on the mirror. Woody sneezes. HI-LARIOUS!
They go to California and drive around Beverly Hills. Because, everybody does that. Woody drops a "wheat germ" joke. I don't get it.
In post-production for a sitcom where they're adding the laugh track. Woody is dismissive. Now he's sick. Back at the hotel, he's still sick. Gordon Jump is the doctor. Turns out, Woody's faking so he can avoid having to tape the TV show.
They go to a swinging Hollywood bash, S.O.B.-style. Woody tells an energy-crisis joke. Gags ripped straight from the headlines.
Paul Simon's at the party. Or maybe it's his party. Are we supposed to believe that chick is his girlfriend? Come on.
Jeff Goldbloom's a guest at the party, talking on the phone. His walk-on line is, "I forgot my mantra."
The flight home. They aren't talking, but the audience hears their voices.
Back at the apartment. They're splitting up their shit.
On the street. He's talking to street people again. Kissinger joke. Shoulda bombed Manhattan instead of Cambodia.
Scene at a holiday house. Woody's wrestling with a lobster. The chick he's with doesn't get his joke, which is actually the only funny one so far: "I'm not myself since I quit smoking." "When did you quit smoking?" "Fifteen years ago."
Woody flies to L.A. to get Keaton, who moved there to spark her recording career. Woody trying to drive a 34-foot Cadillac. They meet for lunch at a vegetarian cafe. Keaton hits the mother lode: "You're like this island unto yourself." Full marks to Woody for writing such a self-aware line.
Keaton refuses to get back together with Woody. It's Grammy night. Woody drops an Adolph Hitler joke. Tries driving away. Bumper-cars a bunch of parked vehicles. Fumbles his license trying to hand it off to Ponch of the California Highway Patrol. Tasering would have been good right there.
His pal picks him up. He was in bed with 16-year-old twins. Another flashing red light.
Pal takes Woody to a rehearsal. Or maybe it's Woody flashing back. I dunno.
Flash forward. Woody runs into Keaton back in Manhattan. Bunch of cut-together scenes of their life together. I think we're supposed to look at them fondly. Romantic-like.
Woody tells another Catskills joke to explain his approach to relationships.
The end.
Proof that Oscar Doesn't Know Shit: Won 4 Academy Awards, including Best Actress, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film. By my count: 1 1/2 funny gags. That's either a 1 joke/hour rate, or 2.67 Oscars per funny gag. Considering some of the painfully unfunny lines, Mia Farrow should have used the script in her custody battle with Woody. I'm surprised he was ever allowed to make another film.
Politically Incorrect Movie Review: Too "New York Jewish intellectual" and self-indulgent to amuse anybody outside of Manhattan.
You want insecure Jewish comedian humour (I can't watch this clip enough):
Woman Of The Year: 1942 Comedy, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn.
Marc Horton Plot Synopsis: Tracy's a sports reporter. Hepburn's a political columnist. "Different worlds; unlikely match." Yah, like two people at a newspaper never get together. Eventually, they get married and, naturally, get bored with each other. They bicker. They adopt some refugee kid. They bicker some more. They reconcile.
The hype: This feminist manifesto was Tracy and Hepburn's first screen pairing. They made another 8 films together and knocked knees for nearly three decades in real life.
They "burn up the screen" with their chemistry; at least, as much chemistry as they could put on film in the days of the puritanical Hays Code. They not only sleep in separate beds, which was still a part of movies and TV well into the 60s, but they sleep in separate rooms.
Read this load of critic's tripe in the NYT and you'll look at Entertainment Tonight as hard-hitting journalism.
The Politically Incorrect Movie Review: Newlyweds. Separate rooms. Did people actually buy into this in the 40s or were they too scared by WWII to worry about being bored to death at the Bijou?
A Guy Named Joe: 1943 War Romance, Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne, Van Johnson.
Marc Horton Plot Synopsis: Tracy is a WWII flyboy. Improbably, Dunne is also a pilot. They're in love. Tracy dies on a bombing raid. Dunne feels bad. Johnson's a fresh recruit. Dunne falls in love. Tracy's ghost hovers over her.
Notables: Breakthrough film for Van Johnson, who became one of the Top 5 box office draws in the '40s. Production was interrupted by Johnson's car accident that left him with a plate in his head. Steven Spielberg remade it as Always in 1989. The original filmed ending had Dunne dying on her own bombing raid, but the Production Code said that implied she committed suicide, so a happier ending was shot.
Politically Incorrect Movie Review: If Van Johnson, who died Dec. 12, was a top box office draw, a lot of grandmas must have been going to the movies in the 40s.
The Soldier: 1998 Sci-Fi Action starring Kurt Russell.
The Marc Horton Plot Synopsis: All you'll ever need to know is in this trailer:
Politically Incorrect Movie Review: Every bit as bad as Kevin Costner's The Postman - released the previous year - except more starin', less preachin'.
Disturbing Element: Gary Busey actually looks embalmed.
Rebel Without A Cause: 1955 Drama, starring James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, directed by Nicholas Ray.
The Marc Horton plot synopsis: A high-school age Jim Stark (Dean) is drunk and picked up by the cops. At the police station, he meets his dumb parents who wonder why Jimmy got drunk when they've gone out and partied. Jimmy meets Judy (Wood) and Plato (Mineo), who are also young offenders, at the precinct. He meets them again later at school (surprise) where he's the new kid on the block. All the hoods (including a real young Dennis Hopper) are hot for Judy and naturally try to bully Jimmy and Plato. A game of eight-cylinder chicken ensues, tragedy strikes and let the melodrama begin. Jimmy, Judy and Plato wind up at some abandoned mansion (obviously after another one of those inconvenient financial meltdowns), where they try to create some sort of new-age family unit. Since they are a threat to their Republican neighborhood, the police are called. I'll spare you the ending.
The hype: Well, there's Jimmy Dean, who didn't get to see his career really take off after he pulled a Pelle Lindbergh. The film's also got a great title — what headline writer hasn't used "(blank) Without A (blank)." The film was nominated for three Oscars, picks up a nifty 7.9 stars out of 10 from imdb.com , is one of the top 100 movies of all-time according to the American Film Institute and is must-see viewing if you've ever had to endure an intro film studies course at university. I was so lucky that I had to suffer through it twice. Here's the trailer...:
and a tiny taste of one of the more famous scenes, with a couple of legendary sitcom supporting actors co-starring:
The Politically Incorrect Review: If you enjoy overacting and wish to find woeful 1950s solutions to age-old family problems and teen angst, this one's for you.
Woman of the Year: Did people actually buy into this in the 40s or were they too scared by WWII to worry about being bored to death at the Bijou?
A Guy Named Joe: If Van Johnson was a top box office draw, a lot of grandmas must have been going to the movies in the 40s.
The Soldier (1998): Every bit as bad as Kevin Costner's The Postman - released the previous year - except more starin', less preachin'.
Rebel Without a Cause: If you enjoy overacting and wish to find woeful 1950s solutions to age-old family problems and teen angst, this one's for you.
Shadow of a Doubt: Said to be Hitchcock's favorite, perhaps in the same way a mother refers to her ugliest kid as "her favorite." It's called over-compensating.
Casablanca: A bunch of people standin' around doin' a lot of talkin'.
Shadow of a Doubt: 1943 Suspense, starring Joseph Cotten, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
The Marc Horton plot synopsis: We learn in the opening scene that Joseph Cotten's on the lam. He ditches Capital City for his sister's family in The Sticks. Shows up at the bank with $40K cash and the banker barely bats an eye. Niece reads the local rag and our Nancy Drew wannabe figures out Uncle Charlie's a murderer. Homeland Security-style gumshoes show up, poking around, asking a lot of questions. And the family just gives them the run of the place. This is a world where the bad guy practically has blood on his hands, strangers wearing fancy suits pop up in town, and yet nobody ever puts 2 and 2 together.
The hype: The Video Hound's Golden Movie Retriever suggests it was Hitchcock's personal favorite. According to an entry in IMDb, Patrick McGilligan's book "Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light" (2003) notes: "...(Hitchcock) liked to call Shadow of a Doubt a 'most satifying picture'; more than once, he called it his favorite. But 'favorite' wasn't quite the same as best; and speaking for posterity, he pointedly told Francois Truffaunt it wasn't his favorite, and told Peter Bogdanovich it was merely "one of his favorites".
The Politically Incorrect Review: I think I understand. In the same way a mother refers to her ugliest kid as "her favorite." It's called over-compensating.
Casablanca: 1942, Directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, et al. Won the Best Picture Oscar, 1943.
The Hype: In 1998, The American Film Institute celebrated a century of movie-making by asking members of the film industry to vote on the 100 Greatest Films of all time.
For reasons that escape me, lots of people can't get enough of this tawdry soap opera. Harry Reasoner's last bit before retiring from 60 Minutes was his staking a claim that Casablanca was the greatest movie of all time.
The misquoted song request to Sam, the piano player:
The ending (Spoiler Alert to people new to the planet):
The reluctant acknowledgement: I recall years ago reading that the Stupid Movie Critic review of Casablanca would be: "Just a bunch of people standin' around doin' a lot of talkin'."
I remember that line because that's the impression I had of the movie when I was 19 or 20. I've caught bits and pieces of it over the years but 25 years later I caught it in its entirety on CBC's Saturday Night at the Movies.
The "Marc Horton"-style review (minus the extensive plot synopsis): The characters have no depth whatsoever; I wasn't invested in any of them other than the leads were movie stars. There's nothing remarkable about the cinematography and the tacked-on war footage is cheesy. For all the quotable lines, the dialogue feels forced and the story plays like it was cobbled together at a writer's retreat sponsored by the War Department. It's not very interesting as a political/war drama and it's not compelling as a romance (maybe to old ladies).
The reprieve: In a career that spanned dozens of films over 30 years, director Michael Curtiz directed Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Sea Hawk, Santa Fe Trail, and Yankee Doodle Dandy, all of which are eminently more watchable.
The Politically Incorrect Movie Review:It's a bunch of people standin' around doin' a lot of talkin'.
Ever see a movie and wonder, "What's all the fuss about?"
Could be a big-budget fiasco. Could be a stumble by a name director. Could have been an inexplicable box office hit or critic's darling. Could be a movie that broke new ground in its time but doesn't hold up for contemporary audiences. Or it could just be an all-out, all-time dog.
Politically Incorrect Movie Reviews is launched as a tribute to Marc Horton, The Edmonton Journal's movie reviewer in the 1980s, who was never afraid to call out a movie's flaws (and give away vast stretches of plot), regardless of pedigree, pretension or hype.
