Valentine's Day

So, Saturday...Valentine's Day on Monday. 

 

Do I write up Al Capone or Valentine's Day?  I'll embrace the "better angels."

 

Written at the time of the film's release

 

"Love, American Style: The Movie"

A movie top-heavy with stars given a limited time-frame in a limited locale (Los Angeles) where lives intersect and the sub-strata of conflicts are put to the test through the separation of instincts and rational thought.

No, that was Crash. But the set-up is the same with less fighting and more clinches. Call it "Squish."

 

Or better yet, "Smoosh.

 

This is Valentine's Day directed by Garry Marshall, whose television career took him from "Love, American Style" through the "Happy Days" Dynasty (or as it's referred, "ABC-TV during the '80's") and into motion pictures, which were usually light comedies. This is a light comedy, too, but with several intersecting stories cross-populated by the stars guesting in other people's stories other than their own, with interstitial vignettes of a comical nature inserted at various places, especially if the ad-libbing gets a little dicey for the editor's sake.

 

By God, it is "Love, American Style."

The cast is...amazing, frankly. So much so that a superb actor like Joe Mantegna has a mere cameo of a few seconds (as does the director). Probably just as well, this isn't Mamet material. But there's Alba and Garner and Hathaway and Biel and Roberts and Latifah for the guys. For the girls, there's Dempsey and Dane and Cooper and Foxx and Grace and Kutcher (if L,AS had lasted four more seasons all of these kids would have been on it!).

For the oldsters there's George Lopez and Hector Elizondo (he's a requirement of all Garry Marshall movies) and Shirley MacLaine—the one moment I couldn't resist was MacLaine playing a love scene in front of her own projected image (The movie is 1958's Hot Spell). For the kids, there's Taylors Swift and Lautner, who are both charming and she has a fine comedienne's willingness to make herself look foolish.

It's as frothy as a watered down meringue, but with the occasional sour lemon bite that keeps it from getting too sticky and could lead to puckering...the good kind. Suffice it to say that everything ties up nicely, with a couple of mild surprises along the way. It is supposed to be cute, and all the actors have the presence to dance around the material with their own peculiar rhythms to make it seem fresher than it is, if not better than it is.

Bewitched

It's still Hallowe'en Season, but things got so dark this week, I felt the need to lighten up with this one.

But, be warned: Saturday is "Take Out the Trash" Day (a spot easy to fill with sub-par Horror movies), so one should take caution. I can watch an old early episode of "Bewitched" and be amazed at how solid it is as entertainment. Nicely written, too. But, the movie version...makes me want to twitch my nose if only to make it go away in a puff. So much potential with a good cast. Better to watch I Married a Witch, I think. Or the old television series. 

This was written at the time of the film's conjuring.

Bewitched (Nora Ephron, 2005) The all-star movie version of the TV classic "Bewitched" left me bothered and bewildered.

Yeah, yeah. Cute line and all that, but essentially true; How on God's green Earth could Ephron and her sister-conspirator in this crime have screwed up a sure thing like "Bewitched?"
The show, which debuted on ABC in the early 60's was fairly inspired for the first four years, then ran on auto-broom for the rest of its run, largely on the spell of star Elizabeth Montgomery's spunkiness, and an ever-decreasing number (due to age and death) of eccentric co-stars. It may seem like stretching the social point a bit, but "Bewitched" was a flighty, goofy examination of the trials of a "mixed" marriage (she's a witch from a long lineage of witches and he's just a normal guy)...without risking the wrath of any of the Southern States!*

And on top of that, despite piggish (more like ape-ish) husband Darrin's constant attempts to repress her heritage, house-witch Samantha Stevens always managed to display female empowerment, while being blithely supportive of her wage-slave husband. Like she couldn't "twitch" herself a mink coat whenever she wanted. I know an awful lot of women, who, as little girls, looked up to Samantha as a symbol of power under wise restraint, superior in all things man-world, and only able to be "super-mom" because she had what all mom's have...a touch of magic. These girls wanted to be Samantha: charming, but flinty, capable of holding all the power in the world, but only when necessary—holding the Power, but dispensing it with Wisdom.

So, with all that going for it, why did the Ephron sisters have the effrontery to completely ignore what worked about "Bewitched," and toss it in favor of a complicated scenario in which a real-live witch (Nicole Kidman, playing her second witch after Practical Magic) wants to live in the "muggle" world, free of witchcraft (rebelling, in other words), and, despite this, manages to get herself cast in a real-life return to television of a "Bewitched" TV show (live action, with an audience? With all those effects?!!), which stars two perfectly awful co-stars (Will Farrell and Shirley MacLaine, playing, respectively, "the guy who plays Darrin" and "the old bat who plays Endora"), with conjured-up egos who are stark contrasts to Kidman's magical neophyte actress. Of course, the lead actors are fire and brimstone, but somehow manage to "fall in deep" with each other, simultaneously scraping the edge off Ferrell's blow-hard egocentric actor, and completely nullifying any respect the audience might have been feeling for Kidman's good little witch. The scenario, frankly, makes her look like an emotional moron, nose-twitch or no.**

The movie is off-balanced anyway, with more attention payed to Ferrell's narcissistic actor than to Kidman's character.*** And the revelations about certain characters are too easy and too pat. Some hipster-cred is afforded by the casting of "The Daily Show's" two Steve's: Stephen Colbert as a too-full-of-himself tv scripter, and Steve Carell as a hyper-intense Uncle Arthur (played on the series by Paul Lynde)—a part that feels like a desperation-move.

It is only at the end, when art-imitating-life-imitating art comes full-circle and begins chomping on it's own lizard-tail, and witch and human settle in for wedded bliss in the backlot-house from the series, that the potential nears the target, aided immeasurably by the casting of Richard Kind and Amy Sedaris as the prying neighbors, the Kravitz's. Then, the movie seems comfortably familiar...and funny.  You know, like, if you're going to remake a TV show, why not actually re-make the TV show—only better? This movie is such a mis-fire one wonders if the series' bumbling Aunt Clara (played by the perpetually befuddled Marion Lorne) had a hand in its conjuring.

Rather than being released, this one should have been torched in the village square.

"Sam, is there some sorta hex you can put on that movie?"
"We-ell..."

*Actually, it did.  ABC was wary of how elements of the "occult" would go down in the Bible Belt.  Fortunately, they had on their side the very religiously conservative Agnes Moorehead, who had no problems playing a satanic mother-in-law of a witch...to the hilt of her broom-handle.

** Kidman practiced the Samantha nose-twitch until she was expert at it.  The secret?  Montgomery never twitched her nose—she twitched her upper lip. 

*** Why?  The script was extensively re-written to court the actor considered to be a natural Darrin, Jim Carrey. But despite beefing up the character's worth, and providing a transformative character arc from man-child to human adult—the only substantial character arc in the movie—Carrey passed. Smart move on his part.  Bad move on the producer's part, then, to keep the Carrey part as written and shoe-horn Farrell into it. They should have just rewritten the script and returned the focus to witchcraft rather than the making of a television show. Total mis-calculation. And, while we're at it, they could have made a bold move and cast a couple of their already-appearing lesser-known actors (who had yet to break out of their "Daily Show" stints) in the "Darren" part even though they didn't have any box-office cache...yet...that being Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell (Colbert was cast as a "Bewitched" crew-member and Carell played the "Paul Lynde" role of Uncle Arthur).

The Apartment (1960)

The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960) I went to a party the other night and a friend upbraided me, saying "Irony is so passé!"

Gosh, I hope not. That'd mean I can't enjoy Billy Wilder films anymore.

Wilder came to Hollywood as a writer* and had great success with his scripts for Ninotchka, Ball of Fire and graduated to directing with The Major and the Minor and Double Indemnity. Talk about a valedictorian. With the start of his directing career, Wilder concentrated on dramas with a biting humor (winning a Best Director Oscar in the process**), but with the failure of Ace in the Hole in 1951 shifted his course slightly to make more comedies with dramatic overtones, the most acclaimed being The Apartment, one of the many collaborations between Wilder and actor Jack Lemmon.*** 

The Apartment tells the story of C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Lemmon), working for a major insurance company as one of the many drones stranded behind desk and adding machine—the mammoth working pool set, a miracle of forced perspective looks like it covers several city blocks and feels like you should pack a lunch just to cross it. Crossing it is uppermost in Baxter's calculating skull. And to that end, he uses everything at his disposal, including lending his apartment as a love-nest for the married executives to pursue...outside interests. That apartment should have a revolving door on it, as Baxter must keep a scheduler as well as a well-stocked liquor cabinet. The arrangement helps him get ahead and the personal recommendations brings him to the peaked attention of the company's personnel director Mr. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray****) who has need of the Apartment himself.

Baxter is climbing the ladder now, but it's one of the elevator operators, Miss Francine Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) that gets a rise out of him. They start a flirty relationship that Kubelik is a little cool to pursue, seeing as she is on a downward spiral in a relationship with Sheldrake. For Baxter, it will become a case of clashing ambitions.

The situation drips with irony: an insurance company, where the exec's juggle statistics and mistresses with no moral compasses. And the hierarchy of executive structure is paralleled to the status of folks in their private lives: the mistresses are treated with contempt if they begin to interfere with the home turf. And Baxter is literally left out in the cold every night, as the executives hedonistically burn through relationships that Baxter doesn't have the roots to start. It's only when a crisis occurs that Baxter begins to grow a conscience over the moral compromises he's making and providing.

The crisis sparks something Baxter's superiors (in everything but morals) never slow down enough to experience—a caring relationship, centered around (ironically) Kubelik in Baxter's bed. Schedules get shuffled, promises broken, and complications loom that the usually organized Baxter can barely manage all in an effort to create a recuperating stillness in a hectic personal life that comes crashing into his business-life. Conscientiousness ensues.

It seems like a fairy-tale today with current rubber-board rooms of the business-world filled with sociopaths. But, at the tail end of the 50's and the concerns of the world moving away from our boys in khaki to the boys in grey-flannel, it was a cautionary tale. Revolutions of all sorts in the '60's and plagues, both sexual and financial, in the 70's have made the film seem...one shudders at the word... "quaint."

But, that doesn't affect its wit, its insight, its charm, or high entertainment quotient. As a film it's a perfectly built comedic construction, a bon-bon exquisitely made and wrapped, with just a hint of bitterness at its core. And in the running gag that permeates the conversation of the film, it delivers its bellyful of laughs with no disconnect to the head, on its way to the heart, intellectually-wise. 

* Wilder liked to tell the story of escaping Nazi Germany and entering the United States through Mexico. When asked his occupation by the immigration official, Wilder tremulously answered, "I write movies." The Fed looked him up and down, then said "Write good ones" and stamped his papers.

** For the The Lost Weekend, Ray Milland won the Oscar for Best Actor for that film.

*** Those being Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), Irma la Douce (1963), The Fortune Cookie (1966), Avanti! (1972), The Front Page (1974), Buddy Buddy (1981).

**** I had MacMurray's daughter for a client once, and I had to tell her, "Ya know, your dad could play terrific bastards!" She fairly sparkled, and thanked me.