Category: Chevy Chase

SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES

By Marc S. Sanders

Neil Simon has always been a huge influence on me.  I grew up watching Randall & Klugman spar as his Odd Couple.  I recognized the northeastern Jewish vernacular of his B-trilogy semi-autobiographies that run through Brighton, Biloxi and Broadway, and I’ve performed and directed a number of his winning stage plays (Rumors, Lost In Yonkers, Chapter Two).  The comedic mind and personal pains of live theater could not continue without hearkening back to the great Neil Simon.

One of his lesser celebrated works told only in the form of a screenplay (a rare achievement of Simon’s) is Seems Like Old Times.  Released in 1980, it’s the writer’s sendup of classic screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby and equipped with fast talking dialogue from one character to the next like you would find in His Girl Friday or It Happened One Night.  I’m not much of a Chevy Chase fan, but when he’s in the right properties, he’s a master at tossing one quip away after another while earning the chuckle. Neil Simon tweaked his script to cater to Chase’s timing along with his co-star, Goldie Hawn.

Seems Like Old Times is remembered as the second team up for Chevy Chase with Goldie Hawn, who was everyone’s favorite adored actress of the time.  Audiences followed her from giddy flower child in Laugh-In and an Oscar in Cactus Flower with Walter Matthau, over to Foul Play with Chase and then on to her fish out of the army swamp in Private Benjamin.  She was an absolute hit, and while these pictures appear dated by today’s standards, they still hold up. Seems Like Old Times even feels like it could garner a Jennifer Aniston remake today.

Chevy Chase is Nick Gardenia, a writer working on a book in a mountain rental home overlooking the Pacific near Carmel, California.  When he’s taken hostage at gunpoint, he’s forced to rob a bank.  This may or may not affect Ira Parks’ (Charles Grodin) campaign for State’s Attorney.  Ira is married to Public Defender Glenda (Goldie Hawn) who used to be married to Nick.  When Nick shows up in the middle of the night in the Parks’ garage, it’s up to Glenda to hide Nick from Ira and figure out a way to get him exonerated.  It’s not easy when the couple will be hosting the Governor and his wife for dinner, along with a litter of six lovable dogs who happily express themselves and intrude at the most inconvenient times.  They range in size from St. Bernard to tiny terrier with the jingling bells on the collar.

Seems Like Old Times is a perfect marriage of Neil Simon’s unending wit with easy to swallow, but complicated scenarios that beautifully complement Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase comedic specialties. Charles Grodin was actually nominated for a Razzie for his performance.  An absolute insult to a well suited antagonist for clean, escapist lunacy.  It’s Grodin being Grodin, but it works so well.

Jokes thankfully run on repeat with cars getting stolen over and over while Glenda upholds her career of winning in the courtroom by employing her small time crooks to help them stay out of trouble.  T.K. Carter is great as Chester, her limo – rather station wagon driver, who just can’t put down an inviting bottle of wine.

Robert Guillaume delivers his Benson sitcom timing and partners well with Grodin. Harold Gould is the exasperated judge who knows Glenda all too well.

I recommend you dig up Aurora’s (the Parks’ illegal immigrant maid) recipe for chicken pepperoni and saddle up for an old-time romantic comedy at home. Seems Like Old Times is a fun romp for the whole family to watch, but especially with the one you love, or maybe the one you used to love.

CADDYSHACK

By Marc S. Sanders

Do you think in 10 years or even 50 years from now, people will remember that Harold Ramis was one of the funniest writers in film history? Animal House, Stripes, Scrooged, Groundhog Day (I hate it, but I won’t deny its legacy every February 2nd), and Ghostbusters. One film that cemented the stage for his success in the 1980s is arguably Caddyshack, which focuses on the snobs vs slobs at a high-end golf country club known as…ahem…Bushwood. It’s okay to laugh. Your mother is not in the room.

Caddyshack is more or less a vehicle for the comedic talents of Saturday Night Live players to put out their best material seemingly made up on the fly. Bill Murray is the demented grounds keeper tasked with getting rid of a damaging gopher. Chevy Chase seems to be the charmer with a delivery of wit in every word he says. He’s more or less good looking here but just as deliberately stupid as everyone else. Rodney Dangerfield goes beyond his stand-up routines, or maybe he doesn’t. He’s just shoved into the film and let loose to anger and harass the head snob, Ted Knight. Knight is unquestionably the best of the bunch here. He’s got such great timing with his outbursts and delivery. I even love how he pronounces the car maker Audi. It’s more like “ottie.”

Ramis has a thin storyline about one caddy (Michael O’Keefe) trying to win a college scholarship. Meh. So what! Caddyshack works best when it’s just playing for skits and raw laughs. There’s gross out comedy like doodie in the swimming pool, compliments of a Baby Ruth candy bar, and vomiting in cars. Dangerfield’s one liners are fast and loose. The judge’s daughter is a sly minx for the dweeby male cast to ogle, and the gopher footage with Murray is straight out of Looney Toons. I do love the irony of the Catholic priest going out to play 9 holes in the middle of an electrical storm; a prophet who will spit in the face of God. “OH RAT FARTS!!!!”

Caddyshack is not my favorite of Ramis’ films, but it’s become a touchstone in comedy quotes and repeat viewings. It’s stupid and coarse and silly and belongs nowhere in the Parthenon of great filmmaking efforts but it’s a favorite of almost anyone’s for how brash it truly is. It’s an R rated interpretation of The Three Stooges. If not for nothing, I’m sure that somewhere there is an esteemed judge of the cloth who was proud to sentence young men to the gas chamber as a means of “owing it to them.”

Harold Ramis with co-writer Brian Doyle Murray (Bill’s brother) conceived of Caddyshack as a push back against that system of order. Well done, men. Tee up!

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION

By Marc S. Sanders

Not until December 25, 2021, had I seen National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.  Friends and colleagues couldn’t believe it, the same way they can’t believe I’ve never eaten a cheeseburger.  I’m not a big Chevy Chase fan.  I think the one film I like of his, because of him, is Neil Simon’s Seems Like Old Times.  The guy is just not a draw for me.  My fellow Cinephiles (Thomas Pahl, Miguel Rodriguez and Anthony Jason) introduced me to Fletch earlier this year.  Wow, did that movie start with a really interesting premise that just stumbled like 2,000-pound stone slowly sinking to the bottom of a very deep and empty sand trap.  The film didn’t work because of Chevy Chase.  Once it got past its exposition, Fletch relied too heavily on boring and unfunny schtick from a very unfunny Chevy Chase.  I was waiting for Christmas Vacation to fall into that same trap.  For a fraction of the film, thankfully, it didn’t.

By and large, what works with Christmas Vacation is because of its writer John Hughes, who writes with the consistency of humor that worked in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and especially Planes, Trains and Automobiles.  The slapstick is most apparent here, then in other Hughes film released before.  (Home Alone would win that record title a year later, of course.)  As I said, Christmas Vacation relies entirely on the slapstick element.  There is no sensitive allowance for warm hugs or coming of age realizations and character arcs.  Clark Griswold gets in one predicament after another.  Like a mediocre Three Stooges short, some of those predicaments work.

Pun intended, the biggest highlight is when Clark decorates his Chicago suburb home with an infinite number of lights, eventually disrupting the next-door neighbors intimate candlelit dinner and blinding them into pratfalls.  The timing is pure John Hughes craftsmanship; John Hughes…not Chevy Chase. 

Stupid set ups include Clark getting trapped in the attic, unbeknownst to the rest of the family, as well as him hanging from the outside gutters and losing control of a tall ladder.  What works in these moments are what worked for the humor in Ferris Bueller with the school principal character, or Steve Martin’s character in Planes, Trains… .  Clark tries to come up with a way to get out and tip toe across the floor beams of the attic, trying to avoid a haphazard accident in the process.  The floors creak.  The items he finds in the attic squeak and grind.  When he’s hanging from the gutter, the rusty piece of metal is gradually giving way as he holds on for dear life.  I appreciated the prop humor.  The victim might be Chevy Chase, but that could’ve been anybody.  I guess sometimes, the pie is funnier than the one who gets it in the face.  So, there are moments that work.  I like the beginning as well where the dumb patriarch takes his family out to the forest to literally cut down a tree and then carries his optimism that he can actually fit it in the living room.  Moe, Larry and Curly had this kind of positivity when they convinced the Hoi Polloi that they could repair a plumbing problem in a mansion.

Much doesn’t work here either, though.  An overabundance of relatives show up to celebrate the holiday.  The set up is the same as in Hughes’ first film, Sixteen Candles.  However, in that film, each grandparent was given a moment to stand out among the masses.  Christmas Vacation doesn’t capitalize on that so much despite great talent that features Diane Ladd, Doris Roberts and EG Marshall.  No relative is a given a personality or unique and humorous annoyance.

The most remembered relative is Randy Quaid’s Cousin Eddie, but honestly, I found nothing funny about the guy and I thought he only served for irritated facial expressions to capture Chevy Chase in close up.  I know.  I know.  Before seeing this film, I was well aware of the “Shitter’s full” routine.  Okay.  Okay. Shit, poop, doodie, whatever you want to call it is funny.  Shit is God’s endless joke on the living beings he/she/they created.  A two word sentence of dialogue while draining a hose full of shit does not a movie make, though.  Otherwise, there is nothing marvelous about Randy Quaid in this film or the other relative extras that appear.  Clark’s (third time recast) kids could have also been funny but the script doesn’t let them.  There was just no material for these people on the page.  We know how pitch perfect actors like Juliette Lewis and Johnny Galecki have become over their careers.  I’d argue they are funnier and more talented actors than Chevy Chase ever was, but like the other supporting players the script didn’t consider the talent.  Beverly D’Angelo is back as Clark’s wife too.  Moving on…

I could have had regretted watching this film.  I finally, finally, FINALLY gave in per the insistence of practically everyone I know, on a whim, when I saw it available on HBO Max.  I don’t regret watching it.  Truly I don’t.  Yet, I don’t feel better having done so either.  Christmas Vacation is not an all-time great comedy or holiday film.  I don’t believe it did anything for anyone’s career.  Notice I didn’t mention the director’s name, because it doesn’t matter and I haven’t heard from that guy since this picture.

The film is just there, I guess, and as each passing December comes and goes, it is awarded new life…. unlike the electrocuted, exploding cat that perishes under a love seat.  Now that’s funny! Thankfully, this precious feline gave up his lives for a chuckle from me.  Had it been Chevy Chase though, then this review might have gone in another direction.