Category: Elisabeth Shue

SOAPDISH

By Marc S. Sanders

To get inside the head of a character on a soap opera would best be portrayed by someone who’s literally living a soap opera off the set.  That’s the paramount theme of every member of the cast and crew of the daytime drama The Sun Also Sets.  Everyone is living through their own checkered background from the lead actress to the returning actor to the homeless deaf/mute extra on down to the trampy nurse and the buxom doctor on the show. By default, the program’s head writer and the producer fall into this category as well. 

The hilarity found in Soapdish gave me remembrances of classic films like All About Eve and Sunset Blvd. Ego and stardom are treasured commodities above all else and an actress’s greatest fear is being aged out of fandom and replaced by the new girl in town. 

Celeste Talbert (Sally Field) is a star actress with dozens of career awards but an insecurity with becoming past her prime. A diva concern is that the stories written for her are not worthy of her importance to the show.  David (Robert Downey Jr) is the young producer feeling the pressure to come up with something to boost the ratings before his boss, the always naturally funny Garry Marshall, replaces the program with game shows.  On David’s side for her own ulterior motives is Montana Moorehead (Cathy Moriarty) who plays the resident nurse and is ready to take the reins from Celeste and make the show her own.  She’ll seductively manipulate David into getting things to work out her way. 

In the meantime, Lori Craven (Elisabeth Shue) sneaks onto the set seeking an opportunity by way of Aunt Celeste.  Best she can get is to portray a deaf/mute homeless woman extra.  Head writer Rose (Whoopi Goldberg) has devised a new plot where Celeste’s character will be tried for murdering Lori’s homeless mute character.  Lastly, at least through the first thirty minutes of the film, Jeffrey Anderson’s (Kevin Kline) character who died on the show twenty years prior by an unfortunate beheading is recruited out of dinner theater by David to return to the program.  Both Lori and Jeffrey’s unexpected arrivals do not sit well with Celeste.

Following along okay, so far? Well…

SECRETS ABOUND on Soapdish!

This film was developed by the powers who delivered Steel Magnolias to the big screen a few years prior.  The original playwright and screenwriter, Robert Harling, teamed up with Andrew Bergman, to satirize the weepy material that daytime drama promises and which he embraced seriously with his beloved play.  The director of Magnolias, Herbert Ross, also serves as an executive producer on this film.  To add some extra authentic spice, Aaron Spelling is producer.  That’s right.  The guy who produced Dynasty, 90210 and Melrose Place.  Michael Hoffman directs. 

The look of this film is so odd and has a garish blood coated red appearance to the television studio where the show within the movie is set, as well as to the offices that hover above.  The set designer for the film, Eugenio Zanetti was inspired by Dante’s Inferno.  Makes sense really because no one is ever satisfied with how The Sun Also Sets develops from one atrociously delicious storyline to the next, and how it makes them look in the public eye.  Zanetti is quoted as saying the offices of the producers and writers hover above the set for the soap opera.  So, it looks as if the powers that be are staring down into the depths of hell that the cast and crew must work and reside in.  While it looks odd, after having seen the film, I can’t help but believe Zanetti makes sense.

There are moments here that are outright hilarious.  As a community theater actor and director, I can totally relate to Kline’s character being stuck in a retirement community steak/playhouse performing as Willie Loman in Death Of A Salesman while elderly patrons call for their waiters.  Poor Jeffrey also has to project that much louder for the old folks to hear him.  This scene stands as gold on its own. A whole farcical film could be developed on this side story alone. 

Soapdish does lose some of its comedic appeal before it reaches the middle of the picture when secrets are uncovered related to Celeste, Jeffrey, Lori and so on.  Sally Field goes for great physical comedy that lands perfectly with the skeletons that Celeste pulls out of the closet.  Kevin Kline makes for a hysterical arguing scene partner, and the craziness just gets bigger from there. 

Whoopi Goldberg is also very funny as the one with common sense and brains behind her character.  For once, she’s not going for the female Eddie Murphy equivalent.  I’m with Rose when she vents to David about how she’s supposed to write a believable return from the dead of a character who was killed when he lost his head.  Maybe a brain transplant?

Cathy Moriarty does a fine job of being the conniving seductress.  She’s a full-bodied intimidator of teased, frizzy blond hair and a buxom nurse’s uniform costume against Robert Downey, Jr.’s nervous preppy producer.

There’s satisfying moments for cameos from Carrie Fisher as a casting director as well as Teri Hatcher and Costas Mandylor as bubbleheaded supporting characters.  However, the best scene stealer is Garry Marshall. I don’t think a single line he’s given would be as funny if he was not providing them.  He’s just got that Neil Simon kind of delivery as the studio boss.  “The nurse is in the restaurant?  Was there a meeting I missed?”

Other than a few F bombs, I think Soapdish works as movie the whole family could watch the next time they are snowed in or hunkering down from a blizzard or hurricane.  Soap operas are designed for escape and the outrageous comedy of Michael Hoffman’s film reaches into outrageous areas that work with surprise and big laughs. 

This nonpaid critic, who endures his loving wife’s adoration for General Hospital each night before bed, is at least a fan of The Sun Also Sets and Death Of A Salesman dinner theater. 

BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III

By Marc S. Sanders

I think Bob Gale and director Robert Zemeckis forgot one thing about Back To The Future Part III. It was supposed to be a time travel movie. Sure, Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) travels back to the Hill Valley of the Old West in the year 1885, but once he gets there, there is not a lot of material for the beloved DeLorean.

The film picks up immediately where the last film cliff hanged. Marty is left trapped in 1955, and he receives a letter sent to him 70 years earlier from his present day Doc Brown companion (Christopher Lloyd) originally from 1985. You still with me? When Marty realizes that Doc gets shot in the back by Mad Dog Tannen (character actor great, Thomas F Wilson), he arranges with the 1955 Doc to send him back to the Old West and prevent that from ever happening.

From there, the film turns into a staple Western. There’s the calvary, Indians on horseback, quick draw duels in the street, a saloon, stage coach and wagons. Most importantly, there’s a steam engine to push the DeLorean to the necessary 88 miles per hour to send our heroes back to the future. That dilemma is solved quickly and early on. They now just have to wait for the train to arrive.

So the film calms down to allow a charming Mary Steenburgen as Clara Clayton, a schoolteacher, to capture the affection of the good ol’ Doc. When the romance seems impossible though, we get a depressed Doc. A depressed Doc Brown is never good for a movie. Consider this. It’d be so easy to just wait for the moment to travel back in time. However, obstacles get in the way, right? In the fantastic first film, Marty has to play guitar at the school dance to get the necessary first kiss between his parents thereby solidifying his existence. That’s fun…and then he kills it while performing “Johnnie B. Goode.” Here, the moment to time travel is approaching, but it can’t happen because Doc is depressed. What’s so fun about that?

Like Part II, Part III is watchable. It’s not terrible by any means. It’s just a little stale. The best gag, however, is Marty taking on the name of “Clint Eastwood” to build his status in the town. This allows a lot of inside jokes. What would’ve sent this film into the stratosphere is if they got the legend himself to make at least a cameo. Alas…. I can dream and wonder.

Back To Future Part III ends the film on a sweet message similar to what you get from other fantasies like The Wizard Of Oz or Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. It reminds me that despite its shortcomings, the entire Future trilogy is great to share with the whole family. No doubt, there’s always something to look at and focus on.

Still, some movies that require focus specifically, takes work. The first film allowed me to wonder. Wonder if all of this could be true one day. Wonder how they thought all this up. Wonder how Marty is actually going to get back to the future.

If I have to choose, I’d rather not focus. I’d rather just wonder.

BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II

By Marc S. Sanders

Back To The Future Part II is a paint by numbers or recipe film more than just a film. This has to be done, so that that can be done, cook on high for just over two hours and all will be wrapped up. Because it is so focused on covering all bases it forgets the wonder and fun of the original film, and just gets down to business. Watching this film makes you feel like dad just won’t throw the football around with you in the front yard. He’s got work to do.

The sequel picks up immediately where the first film ended with Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) taking Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) and his girlfriend Jennifer (Elisabeth Shue) to a very zany looking future in the year 2015, complete with flying cars, Jaws 19, the abolition of lawyers, and opportunities to get a redesign of your body complete with a replacement of your spleen and colon just like Doc explains. When an elderly Biff Tannen gets a hold of a sports encyclopedia, he travels back in time to 1955 to tell his younger self to make bets he can’t lose. Now the future is entirely changed, riddled with crime, and Biff in absolute power. Worst of all, the brute is married to Lorraine, Marty’s mom (Lea Thompson, regrettably not given much to do this time around). So, Doc and Marty need to travel to 1955 to set things right all over again.

Look, if you were gonna make a sequel to Back To The Future, this is likely what the script was going to spit out. It’s a watchable film. However, it’s lost the soul of the original installment. It feels like an office project. The comedy is absent. A long sequence shows a middle age Marty in 2015 talking on video phone remotely with his bullying boss, and getting fired, with fax machines all over the house spitting out the message as well. This is supposed to leave me in awe? This is funny?

The second half of the film in 1955 has Marty pursuing Biff the bully while trying to get the sports book back. Biff, played by Thomas F Wilson, is more or less doing the same thing as the first film. Only he’s not the dumb buffoon we laughed at the first time. He doesn’t have George to bully around this time. You realize Biff and George made a perfect comedic pair. That’s missing here. So he bullies some little kids and with extreme harshness and tries to kill Marty on several occasions. It’s not so funny this time. It’s cruel.

A fun motif (that also carries forward in Part III) is that the actors are playing their characters at different ages 30-60 years apart from one another. Fox, Wilson and Shue also play their kids or grandkids. A nerdy Marty Jr is nerdy, but not quite funny. Fox is not doing the fantastic humor that Crispin Glover did as George in the first film. He’s just wearing an oversize jacket with his jeans inside out and squeaking his voice. Meh…not funny, just there.

Robert Zemeckis’ sequel is just okay. It’s disappointing because he and his collaborator Bob Gale worked so inventively on the first film. The construction is solid. I still love the various transformations of Hill Valley, California. If the film were made today that’d all be done with CGI. I appreciate the texture in the construction of the town’s past, present and future. Each time period allows me to look around and see what’s replaced what and so on. So, I’m truly grateful for that.

All and all though, Zemeckis and Gale had all the right ideas. They just didn’t have the best execution in mind.

THE KARATE KID (1984)

By Marc S. Sanders

Though it may feel like an After School Special at times, there’s always been a charming quality about The Karate Kid, and that stems from the relationship between Daniel LaRouso (Ralph Macchio) and his elderly Asian mentor from Okinawa, Mr. Miyagi (Oscar nominee Pat Morita).

John G. Avildsen, director of Rocky, is harsh in the expository bullying that Daniel endures when he moves from Newark, NJ to California. The Kobra Kai kids led by William Zabka (your go to bully for 1980s films) are brutal in their fighting skills as they use Daniel as a means to exercise their Sensei’s philosophy of “No Mercy!” The Sensei is played very frighteningly by Martin Kove.

What’s hard for me to digest with The Karate Kid is that Macchio is not very good in the role. He kind of comes off as a kid I’d never want to hang out with. He tries too hard to be cool, but he doesn’t look cool. His sense of humor is really never funny. It’s too hokey really when he puts the charms on his crush Alli (Elisabeth Shue). While Shue is fine her in her sweetness, Macchio is really why I never found any chemistry between the two actors. He comes off like Shue’s little brother more than a high school crush. He’s a twerp. What saves me from giving up on Daniel, or Macchio in the role, is the maintenance man who steps in to rescue Daniel from another beating.

Pat Morita is excellent as Mr. Miyagi and has truly created one of the most pop culturally significant characters in film from the last forty years. There’s an authenticity to his role. Most importantly, he’s a veteran of World War II who suffered loss. A great scene occurs mid way through the film where Daniel finds a drunken Miyagi commemorating the death of his wife and newborn both lost due to complications in childbirth while he was away in service. Screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen brought a depth to the Miyagi role. Along with Morita’s performance, he allowed a likability in Daniel that eventually catches my interest. Daniel eventually appreciates the elderly man beyond his devotion of karate. When Macchio is responding to Morita, I like him. When he’s responding to any other character in the film, I don’t like him.

The centerpiece of the film is the mundane training that Daniel endures. “Wax on. Wax off,” and so on. It’s hardly forgettable but it’s also a little slow moving. Still, I like the lesson. Miyagi demonstrates that the best way to learn karate is ironically when you have no inkling that you’re learning karate. Use the fundamentals of any skill and apply it to the art of karate. Karate doesn’t stem from an urge of violence. It comes from something more intrinsic. Karen’s script with Avildsen’s direction never forgets that.

The payoff moment is when it dawns upon the very naive Daniel of what Miyagi was teaching him all along. Daniel might be painting the house and sanding the floor and waxing the cars on Miyagi’s property, but is that all he’s doing? Soon we discover the significance of this drawn out sequence. Morita opens your eyes when he throws punches and kicks at a frustrated Daniel, and it dawns on the kid that he suddenly knows how to defend himself. Avlidsen films a hair raising scene at this moment. Its like when the frail Yoda uses the Force to lift Luke’s X-Wing fighter out of the swamp. It’s another layer revealed in the Miyagi character.

So, without Mr. Miyagi The Karate Kid plays like a cheesy home room, early 80s lesson film. When a scene includes Morita, the wow factor is front and center. Often I talk about the best characters are the multi dimensional ones. Mr. Miyagi is the perfect example. We see him as the quiet maintenance man, then he’s the master fighter, then he’s the guy with a healing skill, then he’s the guy who’s got the secret crane technique for delivering a kick, and then he’s the guy with a sorrowful past and finally he’s the mentor and most importantly, he’s the friend. All of this crammed into one little old man from Okinawa. Pat Morita is the reason to watch The Karate Kid.