They All Laughed (1981)

They All Laughed (Peter Bogdanovich, 1981) There's something sweet and low-down about Peter Bogdanovich's They All Laughed, a mid-summer night's urban romance-a-thon set to country music in the heart of New York City. Part detective story, part romance, part Altman-esque roundelay, part screwball comedy, it's another of those Bogdanovich love-letters to the style of old movies that reflected life through a rose-colored filter. 

It isn't life as it is, or life as it should be, but life as you'd want it to be, suffused with the pangs and dangers that new love energizes into life and makes it crisp. New York has never looked better, because it's seen through the eyes of a hopeless romantic—all of the excitement with none of the hassles. Would that the same were true of the various trysts and liaisons zipping through the movie.

They All Laughed also has a fresh feel to it, with a mix of movie veterans and spry new-comers (and some of the production crew) all intermingling and bringing some zing to the proceedings. Ben Gazzara proves himself the best heir to Bogart for portraying tough guys with a tarnished heart of gold, and Audrey Hepburn is indescribably Audrey Hepburn, coquettishness shimmering through the worry-lines of experience. John Ritter fulfills the promise of a leading man capable of grace and ungraceful slapstick that was only hinted at in the leering farce of "Three's Company." Then there's the trio of model-actresses in various stages of crossing that dash--Colleen Camp, Patti Hansen, and the doomed Dorothy Stratten. Of the production staff, Blaine Novak, the film's co-screenwriter makes for an entertaining odd-ball/voice of reason, and producer George Morfogen plays, appropriately, a harried boss.

Gazzara, Ritter and Novak are all investigators for a Big Apple detective agency, and the first two are sent to trail two supposedly errant wives in the city, and before you can sing "Laura is the face in the misty light," the stalking has turned to love...completely the opposite from what you'd expect in New York City.

Put aside the on-set intrigues and backstage stories, They All Laughed is a sweet-spirited romp. The country-western music dates it a bit, and a sad nostalgia permeates it now. But it's one of the best of Peter Bogdanovich's productions that doesn't retreat into the past to garner its good graces. And with his mixed cast of professionally-minded veterans and star-crossed amateurs, he probably felt more freedom working on this film than three of his previous elephantine-proportioned ones (Daisy Miller, At Long Last Love and Nickelodeon). Certainly with his guerrilla crew (working without permits) led by Wim Wenders DP Robby Müller, the film has the energy and snap of what one would consider an indie hit these days. But in 1981, critics and industry folk had the knives out for Bogdanovich, making this an overlooked gem—a true labor of love in a medium that held a lot of heart-break for the director.

The View from 2024: I was surprised that I hadn't moved over my review of They All Laughed from the old web-site to the new one. My memory of the movie is still fresh—and my memory of writing the review is fresh, as well—that it still feels like it was yesterday.

I remember taking anybody I could think of to see it—it was playing at The Egyptian Theater in Seattle—in an exclusive run from a print owned by Bogdanovich (the movie had a less-than-good distribution deal and Bogdanovich, still grieving over the death of Dorothy Stratten, bought back the film and determined to distribute it himself, a move that bankrupted him).

It was good enough to be a hit, but the director had that trio of earlier failures and had become box-office poison. He'd made a slight critical comeback with Saint Jack—which also starred Gazzara—which was executive produced by Roger Corman, Bogdanovich's old boss at AIP...and Hugh Hefner of Playboy magazine. It was through Hefner that Bogdanovich met Dorothy Stratten...and everything fell apart.

They All Laughed didn't make money, but over time, it has become a cult favorite, its caché increasing over the years, now it's championed by Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, and Noah Baumbach. For the rest of his career, when he had the chance, Bogdanovich kept trying to recreate the magic of They All Laughed—Illegally Yours, The Thing Called Love, and She's Funny That Way—they all have their charms, but never recreated what he had in that film.

North (1994)

Saturday is "Take Out the Trash" Day.

North (Rob Reiner, 1994)

"I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."  Roger Ebert, reviewing North

"...If you read between the lines, [the review] isn't really that bad."  Rob Reiner, New York Friar's Club Roast

Roger Ebert's little hissy fit—resembling a child's tantrum (interestingly)—about North is probably the most famous thing about it. Ebert described it as "the worst movie he'd ever seen"...and that just can't be right. I've been unable to find a review of Ebert's for Myra Breckinridge—he did, however, write Beyond the Valley of the Dolls—and he had seen Super Mario Brothers the previous year. So, I'm not sure why the particular bile-spewing for Reiner's film. 

It's merely a children's film that desperately wants to be funny...and just isn't.

North (Elijah Wood) is having a bad life. A good kid, all-around student, MVP ball-player, and acting prodigy, he's an over-achiever and under-nourished. Still at an age when he's seeking parental approval, he's getting nothing from his self-involved parents (Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, who are basically playing their self-involved "Seinfeld" characters but at a higher volume and without waiting for studio audience laughter)—he's a pants inspector and she's a travel agent who spend their little family time complaining about their jobs, thus giving North panic attacks.

"I don't get it." says North. "A child is born. He's given a life. But then, he's appreciated by everyone except the folks who gave him that life. It's just not right." It's getting so bad that his GPA, RBI's, and other worth-indicators are starting to take a hit. Best to go to his "Special Place" where he can spend time alone and think. Reiner shows North walking past traditional tree forts, scenic river spots and covered bridges to reveal that North's "Special Place" is an easy chair in a department store floor-model. That's how messed up North is. And it doesn't get any better when the store Easter Bunny (Bruce Willis) shows up to offer observations and perspectives (and, frankly, unnecessary narration). 

Rather than explain that North's life will get better when his self-actualization kicks in, E.B. just tells him that the way the other kids' parents use North to shame their kids to "do the right thing" that "your parents have a gold-mine" and that "under-appreciation is a common childhood lament" and, generally, you're basically stuck with the parents you have—unlike baseball where you can sign for free agency.

That one sticks. In the easy chair, North comes up with a plan where he might resolve his issues: with his friend Winchell (Matthew McCurley) he announces that he will leave his parents and sue them for divorce.* Attorney Arthur Belt (Jon Lovitz) takes on the case and the hearing results in Judge Buckle (Alan Arkin) telling North he has two months to find better parents or he has to go back to his biologicals. The decision puts his parents into comas.

North then travels the world looking for better parents—and the trial's publicity gets him several offers—from Texas (Dan Aykroyd and Reba McEntire are the parents), Hawaii (Keone Young, Lauren Tom), Alaska (Graham Greene, Kathy Bates), even from the Amish (Alexander Goudonov and Kelly McGillis from 1985's Witness—a good joke if anybody gets it), in a series of un-PC sequences that "a lot of people" complained about.**

Finally, North ends up with the perfect parents—the Nelsons (John Ritter, Faith Ford and little ScarJo in her film debut)—but, still, something's wrong. They're just not "his" parents, so he decides to make his way back to them, a move complicated by a "child uprising" that wants to kill North (!!) for wanting to un-do the cause of kids' rights.

Bruce Willis serves as "sequence interpeter" in each of North's adventures.

The movie has enough content to throw all sorts of parents' groups into tizzies, but, really, it doesn't do anything that hasn't been done in the past: The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy wants to be someplace else but dull old Kansas but learns "there's no place like home); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (a child in poverty conditions—played comically—interacts with a bunch of horrible children who all meet dire fates); Time Bandits (a boy prefers his fantasy world to his parents' hum-drum consumer-hell and has adventures throughout history with authority figures he might prefer to his parents—who are killed in the end). No one is complaining about those—probably because they are movies about kids with embedded life lessons (or else nobody's noticed). 

Reiner and screenwriters Andrew Scheinman and Allan Zweibel (the movie is based on his "North: The Tale of a 9-Year-Old Boy Who Becomes a Free Agent and Travels the World in Search of the Perfect Parents") don't so much embed as employ "Shock and Awe." Zweibel was one of the founding writers of "Saturday Night Live," co-created "It's Garry Shandling's Show" and consults on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and his work on those and with Gilda Radner and Billy Crystal (among others) are nice combinations of the twee and the harsh. It's just no one expects them in a kids' movie (except for the very good ones I've mentioned) with the go-for-the-gut sensibility of "SNL".

Movies, when it comes down to it, are miracles of chance when they "work" and connect with audiences, and North has elements of proven past successes, but is so desperate to evoke laughs, that (in the words of Nigel Tufnel) it "goes to 11."

As a result, the movie is hysterical in all meanings of the term except funny. 

But, not so hysterical that it should evoke the over-reaction that it garnered. "The worst movie ever made?" Please. 

* This isn't the first movie to hang on this premise: 1984's Irreconcilable Differences took the contentious consequences of the Peter Bogdanovich-Polly Platt marriage and turned it into a "comedy" with daughter Drew Barrymore suing for her own separation...from them. In reality, kids have sued their parents over various issues...the most unsettling is over abuse. And this might strike very close to the bone in the Hollywood community, where a small percentage of child-stars have sued the parents over managerial/control issues. 

** "A lot of people." Wonder if they're the ones who kvetch about the world being "too PC"—when it's them telling the joke. Anyway, this is an asterisked aside because *SPOILER ALERT* none of this is reality, it's all a concoction in North's head (like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz but without the tornado-caused blunt force trauma). One could excuse the crass stereotype jokes as being the inexperienced kid North's "un-woke" perceptions as story-justification, but the fact that they're over-the-top and kinda not funny have to go to the film-makers.