Category: Comedy

NIGHTBITCH (2024)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Marielle Heller
CAST: Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Jessica Harper
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 59%

PLOT: A woman pauses her career as an artist to be a stay-at-home mom, but her domesticity takes a surreal turn.


[SPOILER ALERT…if you plan on seeing Nightbitch, avoid this review.  This movie, like most movies, works best on the viewer if they have no idea what’s happening or what’s about to happen.  Consider yourself Spoiler-warned.]

Nightbitch shoots out of the starting gate like a thoroughbred – or a greyhound, if you will – but about halfway through, it runs out of narrative steam.  I felt like a gambler watching a horse race, watching my horse lead the pack around the first turn, already spending the winnings in my head, and then my horse fades a bit, then a bit more, and by the time we get to the finish line, I’m tearing up my ticket in frustration.  I needed a WIN, not a PLACE.  There goes my trifecta.

Amy Adams plays an unnamed Mother who has put her promising career as an artist on pause to be a stay-at-home mom while her also-unnamed Husband (Scoot McNairy) pursues his career as a…um…well, whatever it is, he has to travel a lot, leaving Mother at home with, you guessed it, Son (played by adorable twins Arleigh and Emmett Snowden).  Referred to throughout the movie as “my guy” and “sport” and “little buddy,” Son is a typical toddler in the throes of the terrible twos: cute for long stretches, maddeningly frustrating for longer stretches.  [Ed. Note: the author is not a father, has no plans on becoming a father, and will never possess the immense dedication it takes to rear a child, so don’t expect him to embrace the chaos of toddler-hood because it ain’t gonna happen.]

Mother is going through an identity crisis, set up in a brilliant opening scene where Sally, the woman who assumed Mother’s job at an art gallery, asks her, “Do you just love getting to be home with him [Son] all the time?”  Mother answers the question with a little more honesty than Sally or anyone had a right to expect, including this tidbit: “I am deeply afraid that I am never going to be smart, or happy, or thin ever again.”  I am a straight Hispanic cisgender male, so I’m here to tell you, I will never understand that mindset, but I am reasonably certain there are untold millions of moms out there who, if they listened to Mother’s opening statement, would say, “AMEN, sister.”

A little later, Mother delivers an internal monologue where she reflects that, as a mother, you can squeeze someone into the world “who will one day pee in your face without blinking.”  Again, I’m not a parent, but I know that’s truth in cinema right there.

After a few more establishing scenes of Mother interacting with Son, who absolutely REFUSES to go to sleep at night or eat anything for breakfast except, apparently, hash brown patties fried in butter, some odd things start to happen.  At the playground, some stray (?) dogs approach her as if she’s their best friend.  Mother notices her sense of smell has become much more acute.  Son helpfully points out that her back is hairy.  And, in a creepy Cronenberg-y moment, she notices a lump growing at the base of her spine just above her rump.  Curiosity gets the best of her.  She heats a needle, lances the lump, and…well, if you remember the title of the film, you have an idea of what pops out of that lump.

This was all wonderfully thrilling stuff as a movie lover.  I’m thinking, “My god, this is a Spike Jonze movie told from a woman’s perspective!  I’ve never seen anything like this!  This is gonna be GREAT!”  Mother starts to enjoy eating a lot of meat.  She starts to play “doggie” with Son, growling and barking at each other like two puppies.  The two of them eat their lunch at a deli with no silverware…or hands, to the consternation of other diners.  Son doesn’t sleep at night, so Mother, in a genius parenting move, buys a dog bed and gets Son to play “doggie” and sleep in the dog bed at night.  Presto, problem solved!

And more and more dogs start showing up at her door, at night, sometimes bringing gifts: small dead animals.  One night she walks outside, starts digging around, and an astonishing transformation takes place…

I know, I know, SPOILERS, I get it.  But it’s important to get across just how brilliantly original the first act of the film is, because the second act is, alas, all downhill.  I am not saying that the film’s message is unimportant, not at all.  I admire the film because of its message, and because it was being delivered in such an original way.  But then we get into conflict with Husband, who is desperately trying to understand why their 2-year-old is now sleeping in a dog bed on the floor, or why their cat suddenly turned up dead on the front porch, or why his wife suddenly wants a separation.  It must be said, Nightbitch is remarkably even-handed with the Husband’s dialogue.  He is not reduced to a 2-dimensional sitcom husband.  When she lays into him for not supporting her career, he fires back with a well-reasoned argument.  Their dialogue could be turned into a first-rate play.

But instead of exploring the surreal nature of Mother’s new condition, the movie settles into soap-opera territory, with only the occasional nod to the mystical incidents in the first act.  I distinctly remember, in the middle of the second act, feeling as if a balloon had deflated in the plot.  I imagine defenders of the film might say, “Well, the second act is where the weird stuff has to take a back seat to deal with the real issues at hand.”  Okay, maybe that’s true from a real-world perspective, but to me, it felt as if the filmmakers were on the verge of showing us something mindboggling, then backed away from the precipice at the last minute.

Does that make me guilty of critiquing a movie for what I wanted as opposed to what I got?  I guess it does, as much as I dislike that tendency in myself.  I feel there are so many different ways the movie could have gone in act two, could have leapt gleefully over the edge of convention and truly broken the mold with this movie.  When it became clear what they were doing instead, my elation evaporated.

I give Nightbitch a generally favorable score, though, based on the mad inventiveness of the first act and the plot in broad strokes, and also on the incredibly brave performance from Amy Adams, who maybe has two scenes in the entire film where she seems to be wearing any makeup.  She also appears to have to put on some weight for the role, which is not something I can ever recall seeing a female actor do.  Male actors have turned that kind of thing into a cottage industry, but when was the last time you saw a woman do it?  That took guts.  Watch Nightbitch for Amy Adams’ performance and for the story, even if the movie doesn’t follow its own plot to a satisfying conclusion.

RED ONE (2024)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Jake Kasdan
CAST: Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, J.K. Simmons
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 30%

PLOT: After Santa Claus is kidnapped, the North Pole’s Head of Security must team up with a notorious hacker in a globe-trotting mission to (all together now) save Christmas.


Jake Kasdan’s Red One is by no means perfect, but it is not nearly as bad as the plethora of negative reviews would have you believe.  The Rotten Tomatoes website lists such jabs as:

  • “…forgettable as a first dusting of snow.”
  • “…offers big-budget visuals but lacks soul…”
  • And my favorite: “An ugly, under-lit, joyless slog, devoid of any holiday charm or sense of fun.”

Let me first address that “under-lit” comment.  I first attempted to watch this movie at our local AMC cineplex, and I noticed that the ads and previews were so dim that parts of the screen looked almost black.  I petitioned the manager to adjust the projector settings twice, but to no avail.  (“That projector has been giving us problems for two weeks.”)  When the movie started and it was just as dark as the previews, I gave it up as a lost cause, left and got a refund, and streamed it on Prime instead, and on our big-screen HD TV, presto, no more under-lit areas.  Everything was perfectly visible, clear, and bright.  So, it’s entirely possible that that reviewer’s issue with the screen being “under-lit” could have been a projector issue, and NOT a problem with the film itself.  Just wanted to throw that in there.

As far as those other negative comments go, well, I don’t know what kind of mindset those folks were in as they watched Red One, but it’s difficult for me to comprehend how anyone could call it “joyless.”  I found it charming and funny myself.  But then, when it comes to holiday movies, I have always been partial to the ones that attempt to provide logical solutions to the massive logistical problems involved in getting one man to travel the entire globe in a single night, delivering presents to every household that’s waiting for them.

For example, in The Polar Express, we are treated to a semi-industrial North Pole that runs like clockwork and (thanks to convenient time dilation) can get everything into Santa’s sleigh so he can dash away just before midnight. Red One ups that ante right from the get-go.

After he has taken a brief holiday in the city – masquerading as, of course, a mall Santa – the real Santa Claus, call sign “Red One” (J.K. Simmons), is driven to the nearest military airbase in an armored limo with a motorcade escort.  Accompanying him is his Chief of Security, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson)…because of course the real Santa would have a bodyguard.  It just makes sense.  Then, at the airbase, under blacked-out radar coverage, Santa’s state-of-the-art sleigh, powered by eight gigantic reindeer and carefully monitored by NORAD, takes off for the North Pole with a fighter jet escort.

I dunno, man, I just ate this stuff up with a spoon.  The imagination and attention to detail that went into creating this version of the Santa mythology brought a smile to my face for pretty much the entire movie.  Another example: I mentioned to my girlfriend that this version of Santa Claus is not very fat, which is usually a given.  But then there’s a scene where Santa lifts weights in a gym as Drift spots him, and I thought, okay, I can buy that.  Santa needed to drop a few pounds. It sounds absurd writing it out like that, but I’m telling you, for me it all made sense.

So, like I said, right away I was on board with the logistics of the story.  Then the real plot kicks in when Santa is kidnapped under everyone’s noses by a gang of bad guys who manage to infiltrate the North Pole’s highly sophisticated defensive measures.  The only way Drift and his colleagues will have a chance of retrieving Santa before Christmas Eve is with the help of Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), a talented but amoral tech genius who claims he can track down anyone, anywhere, anytime.

There’s the usual backstory of Jack’s son who lives with his mother and her husband, and Jack was never father material to begin with, but the son is going to play in a concert on Christmas Eve, and so on.  I’m not saying this material is irrelevant, but for me it was secondary to my enjoyment of how the filmmakers were treating all the mythological/fantasy/sci-fi material.  We get talking polar bears [not the Golden Compass kind, the Zootopia kind], murderous snowmen who are seemingly invincible, tech gadgets that turn Matchbox cars into full-size vehicles [I want one!], a whole new use for Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, and we even get to meet Santa’s brother.  Yep…his brother.

I mention all these details because they are what I responded to mostly during the film.  The plot?  The plot is, let’s face it, standard thriller fare, with a reasonably interesting big-bad and hidden connections and a few surprises, but because the filmmakers went to such great lengths to provide a fascinating backstory for all the mythological characters and how the North Pole is organized logistically, I didn’t particularly care if the story was perhaps shallow and mildly predictable to anyone who has seen more than 10 movies in their lives.  I’m not ashamed to admit it.

But because of how the filmmakers were telling the story this time around, I just ate it up.  Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans are a decent screen pairing.  Bonnie Hunt as Mrs. Claus was a treat.  Lucy Liu was perhaps the most wasted of the entire cast, although she does get one very brief kicking-ass scene.  The motive behind Santa’s kidnapping was credible.  There was nothing in the movie that broke its own set of rules, which is more than I can say of quite a few would-be thrillers out there.

Heck, I’m just gonna say it: Red One is the Galaxy Quest of Christmas movies.  You either buy into the preposterous, but logically sound, premise and laugh for a while, or you don’t.  As for me, I’ll be watching this one again next Christmas.  Or maybe sooner.

SCROOGED

By Marc S. Sanders

Bill Murray with director Richard Donner delivered their contribution to the Charles Dickens assortment of A Christmas Carol iterations with a modern update called Scrooged.  Until now, this movie eluded me.  Yet I can’t deny it has all the ingredients for a sure-fire green light to make the movie.  Bill Murray? Doing Ebenezer Scrooge?  Stop everything people!  Get this ready for December.  STAT!

Unfortunately, it misses the mark.  

Now, I’m supposed to like this miser by the end of the story, right?  So then why is Murray’s personification so annoying and unappealing by the end? If I was his nephew, I’d rescind my invitation to come over for Christmas dinner.

The best and most hilarious part of Scrooged occurs in the beginning following the easily recognizable Danny Elfman instrumentals.  Santa and his elves are happily making toys when suddenly terrorists attack the North Pole and Lee Majors jumps out of nowhere ready to bear arms with ol’ St. Nick and his crew.  I was sad to realize this was only a TV commercial for the station programming that Murray’s character oversees.  If there is a God, he’ll reveal the location of the lost film for The Night The Reindeer Died.  Earlier this year I saw Lee Majors needlessly squandered away in the terrible Fall Guy adaptation.  It crushes me that he got this same kind of treatment over thirty years prior.

Bill Murray is the uncaring and thoughtless Frank Cross.  When we meet him on Christmas Eve day, he’s firing an executive (Bobcat Goldthwaite) for simply disagreeing with him.  Also, in typical overplayed Bill Murray fashion, Frank insists that his assistant Grace (Alfre Woodard) ignore the needs of her family during the holiday and get work done with him.  Grace of course filling in for the Bob Cratchit role.  

Following a few other gags to parade the comedian’s antics around, Frank is encountered with the Jacob Marley stand in, played by John Forsythe.  At this point I’m still with the picture even if the breadcrumbs are easy to follow.  Forsythe, in his grotesque makeup, works well against the clown who leads this movie.  (Not a bad scene together between Charlie and Bosley. “Hello Angels!”).

It’s when the follow up ghosts make appearances that my mind ponders what I’ll be writing about in this review.  Ghosts of Christmas Past (David Johansen) and Present (Carol Kane) enter on cue and right away I grew bored and uninterested.  

Johansen is a cabbie, or just another screeching screamer like Murray.  He’s laughing at Frank’s demise and past missed opportunities, but I’m not seeing what’s funny or even heartbreaking.  Neither theatrical mask of comedy or tragedy is functioning.  Carol Kane does her typical schtick with the high-pitched baby talk voice, dressed in a fairy get up.  Beyond that familiar routine, she commits every kind of Three Stooges smack and painful tug on Frank’s face that you can imagine.  Why of all things does she rely on a toaster to upper cut the jerk in his face?  I mean why a toaster???? If the comedy works, then I should not be wondering why a toaster or a pie or two by four or an anvil.

There’s nothing wisely written here.  The screaming and the smacking get old very fast and it gets in the way of a potential love story passed by that the script was promising for the Frank Cross character and his crush Claire (Karen Allen, whose smile always lights up a room).  I never felt like Bill Murray was ever listening to Karen Allen in the scenes they share.  Did they even rehearse this stuff?  Too often, Bill Murray seems to just be winging it, and it wouldn’t make a difference if Karen Allen even memorized her lines.

Scrooged starts out with fresh, quality made National Lampoon material but then waddles into the same typical chapters of Dickens’ holiday story.  However, while it hammers the familiar story beat by beat and you tell yourself there’s the Fred character and there’s the mute kid covering for a crippled Tiny Tim and there’s Yet To Come, you got Bill Murray who was granted too much artistic license to improvise, and has thus squeezed out all of the sensitivity and spirit that we expect from A Christmas Carol.

I’m sorry but I think I liked this Frank Cross a whole lot more before he was visited by the ghosts.  This is one Scrooge who should’ve been allowed to sleep through Christmas.

PS: If anyone can find a DVD print of The Night The Reindeer Died, I’m ready to review it.

WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP (1992)

By Marc S. Sanders

I’m not enamored so much by sports unless they are dramatized effectively in the movies.  If I can see Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes making magnificent trick shots with a basketball in White Men Can’t Jump, my attention will be had.  There’s lot of street corner basketball depicted in Ron Shelton’s film and for the most part it is sensational and quite funny when partnered with the on court ribbing that guys toss at one another.  This film arrived with the oncoming trend of “Your momma is so…” insults, which still bring out the sophomoric glee in me.

Fortunately, White Men Can’t Jump doesn’t just rely on the basketball antics. There’s a good set up here and some well-drawn characters.  It’s one flaw may be that I think the film overstays its welcome.  Just when you think the picture is over and every loose end is tied, a new development occurs.  That’s because every sports movie demands a final championship game.  Who made up that stupid rule?

Billy Hoyle (Harrelson) makes quick cash on the court by being the fish out of water on Venice Beach.  He’s the pasty white kid with the dorky rainbow-colored cap that any urban black athlete will happily challenge for a game of one on one or two on two.  That’s the trick to his con because he’s a magnificent player actually, and regular player and loudmouth Sidney Deane (Snipes) sees an opportunity for them to partner up and clean up.  Like most competitive sports, you gotta taunt your opponent and when they have gone overboard, you lay on your conceit and declare that you can beat them any day with any guy they choose to partner them up with, such as the blond, white guy sitting on the bench doing morning stretches. 

They each have their own motivations.  Billy is up to his neck in debt to some bookies who he wouldn’t throw a game for. They are ready to collect or shoot him in the head, or both.  His girlfriend Gloria (Rosie Perez in a standout performance) aspires to land a spot on Jeopardy!. Sidney lives with his wife Rhonda (Tyra Ferrell) and baby in the criminal area of Watts.  She’s pressuring him to get them out of the slums and buy a house in a nice neighborhood. 

At first, the cons work for the pair, but the question is can Billy and Sidney trust one another.  Will they scam each other while trying to work together?

Ron Shelton’s script works because it turns in various directions when you do not expect it.  These are unusual characters. Lovable, but not all that they seem either and they are built with flaws that will undo them while they try to make a further leap ahead.  Billy is a smart kid on the court but he’s not smart with money like Gloria.  Sidney is smart at putting up the façade of a dumb loudmouth on the court but that’s his M.O. for being a responsible family man.  Gloria seems like a zany dingbat on the surface but she may be the smartest character of them all.  It’s definately not because she has memorized every kind of food that begins with the letter Q for the game show.  She has true instincts and knows to see through the B.S. of people that her boyfriend Billy can’t. 

White Men Can’t Jump is a both a con movie and a sports movie, but it’s not the greatest of each of those categories.  Still, it’s very, very entertaining thanks to Harrelson, Snipes and Perez working in top form. Wesley Snipes is doing the fast-talking wise ass routine that Eddie Murphy built his career on.  You don’t see this kind of guy in every Wesley Snipes movie though, like you do in Murphy’s films.  That’s what impresses me with Wesley Snipes.  He’s not known to be an Eddie Murphy or a Chris Rock.  He’s an actor, not a comedian, and yet he’d convince me otherwise if this was the only performance I ever saw.  

Other than his obvious role in Cheers, Harrelson normally portrays smarter guys.  Billy is smart, but he lacks instinct and not just with money but with how he considers Gloria.  The best thing Ron Shelton could have done after perfectly casting this trio was to give these characters heart followed by the flaws that weigh them down.  All that maintains what could have been a one note and flat story.

However, the film runs a little longer than I cared for.  While basketball is at the forefront of the script, I believed the film was concluding when I saw the two guys had finally grown up and learned.  Only then, a new development occurs for Sidney and his family. Suddenly, it’s up to the two guys to get back together for one more game.  I didn’t need that one more game.  I had my fill and that final tournament is shot in slow motion – literally every shot the guys make, and I’m starting to lose my patience.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m impressed.  Harrelson and Snipes are not stunt doubled.  That’s them doing the doing the shots and accomplishing enormous efforts of agility to wow the audience.  They’re great, but by this point, I had seen enough basketball to deliver the message and I found the tacked-on twenty-minute epilogue mostly unnecessary. 

Granted some may argue that something occurs in that last game to justify the literal title of the movie.  I know what you’re talking about.  Yet, that could have been covered a lot more efficiently, I believe.  Less would have been more in this situation.

White Men Can’t Jump is great comedic entertainment, full of improvised dialogue and characters that are easy to like while keeping up a skeptical guard on them.  That’s good.  It states that Shelton’s characters are complex and that holds my interest.  Even the extras are ones to appreciate in their sweaty t-shirts while delivering urban vernacular to harass one another.  It’s a great culture to get a peek into.  I love the one guy who is a sore loser and whips out his knife, but then just as his girl calms him down, he says forget the knife.  He’s gonna get his gun. I challenge anyone not to laugh as all the other guys on the playground make a mad dash escape in a hundred different directions.  It would likely go down this way.  We hear of violent stabbings and shootings all the time. In this movie however, Ron Shelton and his cast find the natural humor of this opposing conflict.

I guess that’s the best compliment I can give the writer/director.  He didn’t sensationalize his characters.  Ron Shelton has a way of just letting his creatures of the court play.  Into—the—basket it goes. 

SWISH!!!!  It works.

THE HOT ROCK

By Marc S. Sanders

I’m a sucker for a good caper.  Capers play like strategy games.  An object (Hitchcock called them MacGuffins) needs to be acquired.  It doesn’t matter so much what the object is.  The importance falls within the pursuit. 

William Goldman wrote The Hot Rock, adapted from a novel by Donald E Westlake who penned a series of books focusing on the ex-convict John Dortmunder and his further adventures.  In the film, he’s played by Robert Redford. 

On the day that John is released from a New York state prison he’s picked up by his inept brother-in-law Kelp (George Seagel) who escorts him to Central Park.  Kelp wants John to be the fourth member of a team and steal a priceless diamond.  A man by the name of Dr. Amusa (Moses Gunn) sits about five feet away from them on a park bench.  Amusa breaks it down for the men, but they get interrupted by an elderly woman who sits between them to feed the pigeons.  This is what you can expect from The Hot Rock, a film structured under one pesky inconvenience after another.

This rock is currently on display at the Brooklyn Museum, on loan by an African country who has no business having possession of the valuable.  The stone belongs with Amusa’s country and he’s ready to pay Kelp and his crew $25,000 each to pull of the heist.  He’ll also, reluctantly, front some funding monies ahead of the theft for preparations. 

Like in all of these kinds of movies, John is ready to do one last job.  Then he’s out for good.  However, one last job turns into four last jobs.  Without spoiling too much, the rock gets relocated from one place to another.  So, a late-night heist at the museum turns into a break in a prison, and then it’s somewhere else and somewhere else after that.

As Hitchcock describes, you never care about the MacGuffin.  For movie purposes, you see it on display in its majestic glory, encased in a glass box right in the center of the museum, but so what.  The question is to uncover how the guys are going to get it out of there.  The Hot Rock doesn’t work nice and neatly like Ocean’s 11 or The Score.  In those movies, there are things that don’t go according to plan.  In The Hot Rock, nothing goes the way it should. Honestly though, it should be funnier than it really is. 

I recall there was a movie called Quick Change with Bill Murray doing his best to get out of New York City following a bank robbery.  It was comedic all the way through and maybe that’s because it was Bill Murray of Caddyshack and Ghostbusters fame, not to mention Saturday Night Live.  Robert Redford is the rugged actor of the time in 1972, though.  Not a comic and he plays Dortmunder like a serious kind of thief, even with his famous blond locks and toothy grin.  George Segal along with Ron Leibman and Paul Sand are bumbling chatter mouths, but are they funny?  Segal’s character steals a car to pick up John and we see him trying to figure out how to drive the dang thing, nearly running over Redford.  I never believed he did not know how to not drive the car. 

BY THE WAY: Ever notice in movies that they’ll show someone does not know how to drive a car by having them accidentally turn on the windshield wipers?  That’s all that is done.  That and having the car drive in S shape patterns as if the steering wheel suddenly took on a life of its own.  Then the scene comes to a halt with a startling slam on the brakes.  Never fails.  This happens over and over again in the movies.

Zero Mostel appears as the father/attorney for Paul Sand’s character.  It’s Zero Mostel, but Goldman’s script doesn’t give him much material to play with.  It’s not a silly caper flick because suddenly Zero Mostel of The Producers makes an appearance.  Look at Ocean’s 11, and see what Carl Reiner is doing.  There’s an organic affection for Reiner’s character that Mostel never achieves here. 

Peter Yates directed The Hot Rock a couple of years after the car chase thriller, Bullitt with Steve McQueen.  He impressed audiences with what two cars pursuing one another across the hilly streets of San Francisco could accomplish.  In this film from the early 1970s, Yates attempts to dazzle the audience with a few more speeding car stunts but they just don’t cut the corners.  Everything on screen looks like Yates and his crew are trying too hard.  There’s a helicopter sequence and much time is devoted to seeing how the chopper flies low over the Hudson River and then soars above the Twin Towers, still under construction at the time.  Look everyone!  Ron Leibman is flying a helicopter and Robert Redford and the rest look woozy about it all.  Thing is that James Bond movies were already doing this kind of schtick (with special effects) year after year by this time.  Peter Yates just doesn’t offer up anything that looks like a new sensation.

I’m actually surprised The Hot Rock has not been remade like Ocean’s 11 or The Italian Job.  In this film, the tools and skills are left to the guys and their cons. There’s no computer overrides or laser sensors to assist them.  Today, all of the techno stuff would be there with lots of closeups of fingers tapping away on a keyboard and then data entries appearing on a monitor.  In between, would be the comedy and would you believe of all people, I thought Will Farrell would be the guy to play the straight man and lead the charge.  The comedy of the situations would remain, but the thieves would be nerdy geniuses, each having their unique abilities and quirks. 

The set up is there for a remake.  Who you cast and what is done with it is up to the filmmakers. 

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT

By Marc S. Sanders

Before there were Swifties or Dead Heads or Parrotheads or Beliebers or Fanilows, there were Beatlemaniacs.  Everyone was screaming for and chasing after The Beatles – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

The musical mockumentary, A Hard Day’s Night, captures the famous foursome from Liverpool over a two-day period, during their time of matching suits and mop top haircuts when they were taking the world by storm with their harmonizing vocals of innocent love and fancy-free celebration.  Richard Lester (eventual fill in director of Superman II) directed with a loose documentary like camera while the young men carried themselves in lighthearted and silly situations that served as a visual vehicle for their hit songs like Can’t Buy Me Love, All My Loving, and I Love Her.  The title song was featured too of course.  Along with Billy Joel and Barry Manilow, I grew up on this music and it helped me appreciate the loose construction of Lester’s film. 

Silly scenarios are set up with McCartney’s supposed “grandfather” (Wilfred Brambel) getting into all kinds of mischief while the guys circumvent through media conferences with improvised dialogue like:

REPORTER: Are you a mod or a rocker?

RINGO: I’m a mocker.

I’m not sure I understand the humor or the existentialism of this exchange, but it had fans, including famed critic Roger Ebert, going ga ga over it.  It even made it on to Premier Magazine’s Top 100 movie quotes of all time.  Then again so did “Plastics!” from The Graduate.  These are the vernaculars of the time.  It’s gotta have something to do with devoted fandom.  Right?

I recall seeing the music documentary U2: Rattle And Hum in the theaters upon release, and there was a moment where The Edge was sitting quietly next to Bono in an interview and snapping his palm on his knee, and the die-hard fan I saw it with could not stop laughing with appreciative glee.  I’m just as guilty.  If someone says in simple conversation “I have a bad feeling about this,” my Star Wars man child wakes up like a dog seeing a squirrel.  It can be politicians, rock stars, movie stars, preachers, athletes or even our parents that center us on an obsession that we respond to.  There’s no denying the Beatles had this kind of magnetism.  With half the band gone, the appeal still upholds much like it does for Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson.

A Hard Day’s Night serves a visual extension of the band beyond just what we would receive audibly over the airwaves and on vinyl.  They had recently finished performing on The Ed Sullivan Show, during their first arrival in America. Their charm, good looks, witty intelligence and even their quiet sensitivity enhanced the worldwide significance of the band.

Richard Lester finds opportunities to show the Beatles being performers of themselves behind the scenes, though most of what is shown in A Hard Day’s Night seems staged.  After all, we famously get to see John acting silly in a bubble bath and when his frustrated manager drains the tub and the suds dissipate, John is nowhere to be found.  A cute gag, much like we would find in music videos on MTV, twenty years after this film’s release.

There is a blend of overhead and wide ground level shots of the four prancing and dancing in an open field while Can’t Buy Me Love echoes through a scene.  It’s silly.  It means nothing.  It’s simply sophomoric fun begging us to appreciate their harmless, mad cap shenanigans.

Each bandmate is given room to shine, but Ringo surprisingly stood out to me the most.  He seemed like the little brother to the other three who was never taken seriously.  Paul’s grandfather even tells Ringo to give up music. He should be “parading.” Suddenly, just before a practice warm up for a television program, Ringo is missing.  The fourth Beatle has seemingly run away.  If I could find character dimension anywhere in this Oscar nominated script by Alun Owen, it surprises me that it came from Ringo; the one who was occasionally considered the least celebrated of the Beatle craze.  At the time, he wasn’t a songwriter.  He sat in the back with his drums.

A Hard Day’s Night is enjoyable simply for the innocence shown of the four guys from Liverpool.  They’re happy with themselves and to be with each other.  It’s very natural and yet it’s a little sad too.  This film predates what was never expected to come of them over the next decade and a half with break ups, marriages, controversies, new career trajectories, and even a sudden death of one of their own, occurring on December 8, 1980.

I can only imagine that in the moment of Beatlemania, A Hard Day’s Night was a celebration of happiness and cheerfulness.  They had a rebelliousness to them, yes.  However, there was never anything like them.  Today, the film serves as a reflection of my earliest appreciations for infectious song lyrics and music.  As a middle-aged man, with two members of the band gone, the picture works like a home movie for me.  It’s like watching archived footage of family members who have long passed away.

When you watch A Hard Day’s Night and sing along to the songs as they enter the picture, the words and the melodies return. You’ll likely find yourself thinking back as if to ask yourself “Remember When…?”

THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS

By Marc S. Sanders

Reader, it has been a hard week.  Hard because my flat screen has been on the fritz.  Finally, today at last, the Best Buy Geek Squad will be paying me a visit and working on a repair. In the meantime, I have had to relegate myself to one of the smaller flat screens within the household.  I feel dirty.  Cheap.  I can’t even look at myself.  Just look away!!!!  Considering the dire circumstances, I could never look at my next big film to review during the absence of my 9.0 sound system and 65 inches of viewing pleasure.  It would be a sin to watch a Christopher Nolan or Steven Spielberg piece anywhere else (unless it’s in the cinema).  Therefore, I settled, and I hit rock bottom.  I opted to for Netflix meh! 

All I have, all I can give you, all I can offer, all I can claim for you during this dark, sad time is Herbert Ross’ attempt at shaping a Michael J Fox thirty second MTV style 1980’s music video into a film.  The “film” is The Secret Of My Success. 

I recall seeing this movie at age 14 during a field trip to Washington DC with my eighth grade Yeshiva class.  Every time the dimply cute yuppie Canadian sensation from Family Ties and Back To The Future graced the screen, the girls in my class screamed with puppy love glee.  I liked Fox at that time.  I still do.  He was a bright guy and while not an actor like Brando or Olivier, he had a unique charm that defined the clean cut 1980s with knit ties and Benneton sweaters.  His unforgettable Alex P Keaton was the fictional cheerleader for the era of Ronald Reagan, and no one protested.

I recall the promise of The Secret Of My Success as being the vehicle that would elevate his tv persona to the big screen since he already had luck with Marty McFly and a healthy B-movie following with HBO airings of Teen Wolf (a much better movie than it ever deserves to be). Regrettably, this film never landed.  It’s most glaring failure is that it never even lives up to its title.

The assembly of Herbert Ross’ romantic, New York, yuppie comedy occupies itself so much with music montages.  It’s as guilty of its own indulgence as Rocky IV.  How many times must we see a grinning Michael J Fox hustle through the concrete jungle of the city and then through skyscraper cubicle hallways within a white collared business world?  Night Ranger is the ‘80s hair band who provides most of the movie soundtrack and they owe much to Michael J Fox as the face that accompanies their work with trinkling keyboards and electric guitars with the raspy roar of their lead singer.  If Michael J Fox is not walking down streets where apparently supermodels live to turn their heads (I saw you Cindy Crawford), he’s got a pen wedged between his teeth and he’s pulling huge three ring binders off of shelves while doing an all nighter.  This is oh so boring.  In 1987 however, it is all a couple of Teen Beat readers needed in their lives.  I can watch Meryl Streep or Gary Oldman read a three-ring binder.  Michael J Fox just doesn’t have a knack for this skill.

Fox plays Kansas farm boy Brantley Foster.  Now that he has earned a business degree, he has enormous aspirations to climb the top of the New York corporate ladder and make a success of himself with a “beautiful secretary.”  Because, you know, you can’t make it without a secretary, much less a beautiful secretary. 

Upon relocating into a roach infested apartment, Brantley’s plans fall through, and he has to beg his super rich Uncle Howard (Richard Jordan) into giving him a job in the mail room of his building.  Brantley encounters a beautiful blond executive named Christy (Helen Slater) amid a sea of uptight middle-aged men.  The depth of this attraction only goes so far as fantasizing about her walking towards him in a cheesy, glittery pink evening gown with a keyboard and saxophone chiming in.  On the side is Howard’s bored trophy wife Vera (Margaret Whitton) crowding young Brantley in an illicit Mrs. Robinson kind of affair.  Let me clarify.  Vera is married to Brantley’s Uncle Howard.  So, Brantley is being terrorized by Aunt Vera.

For the purposes of ridiculous farce, that might be funny for a moment.  However, The Secret Of My Success takes forever to arrive at the farce it could have hinged on.  Instead, Brantley has to discover a way into the white-collar world when he comes upon an empty office and bears the fictional name of Carlton Whitfield to justify his suits and his motivation to work in the heart of the corporate world.

I noted that the film does not live up to the title.  When Brantley is working the persona of Whitfield, we never get an idea of his brilliant ideas for business success and operations.  We never learn what turned Uncle Howard’s high-rise building into the towering reputation it apparently stands upon.  We never understand the threat of a shareholder’s takeover that Howard and his team fear is imminent.  Where’s the value in anything that Brantley is doing to be that corporate hero and what is he trying to improve or salvage?

Instead, we are left with a very poor chemistry pairing between Helen Slater and Michael J Fox.  Slater is flat out boring with no dynamic to her.  If you want to see how to deliver any variation of a line in a flat, monotone way, then observe what she has to offer.  Fox is on another level of energy that Slater cannot match and Herbert Ross and the script from Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr (Top Gun, Legal Eagles) chooses to occupy itself more with this romance than the corporate world at play.

The following two years after this film’s release would do better for this hustle and bustle setting with Oliver Stone’s cynical Wall Street and Mike Nichols romantic comedy Working Girl.  The latter film follows a near exact blueprint of The Secret Of My Success.  Yet, it wins because we actually see the main character, portrayed by Melanie Griffith, actually demonstrate her prowess for the cutthroat world of business power and politics.  By comparison, Michael J Fox just wants to play hooky and make out in the back of a limousine.

A last-ditch effort is made though when the big wigs assemble for a weekend getaway. What seems like an attempt at bedroom farce barely gets started with the players climbing staircases and tip toing behind doors and hopping into bed together and blah blah blah.  It doesn’t serve, however, because the idiot plot intrudes where everyone has to act as if they have no idea of who is sleeping with who and who is Brantley and who is Whitfield amid the fast-talking dialogue edited within.  You want to scream at the screen and tell everyone to shut up because this can all be explained in sixty seconds.

Again, as Mike Nichols’ Oscar nominated film eventually proved, there was a better film to be made here for Michael J Fox.  It could have included all of the cynical realities that go with the natures of a corporate American beast.  Instead, The Secret Of My Success relies on music video montages with the teardrop keyboards and the yearning saxophone that seemed like a requisite for the adoring Michael J Fox of the 1980s. 

Enough already!!!!  I need to cleanse my palette.  GEEK SQUAD, WHERE ARE YOU????? 

IT’S A GIFT (1934)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Norman Z. McLeod
CAST: W.C. Fields, Kathleen Howard, Jean Rouverol, Tommy Bupp, Baby LeRoy
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 94%

PLOT: A henpecked New Jersey grocer makes plans to move to California to grow oranges, despite the resistance of his overbearing wife.


I have pondered and pondered for almost a week now, and I still have no idea how the title of It’s a Gift relates to its plot, unless it refers to the comic abilities of the film’s star, W.C. Fields.  Perhaps it refers to the bequest of a dead uncle that sets the plot in motion.  Or maybe it’s a situation where the studio heads couldn’t think of a title and just picked one that was languishing on a stack of papers somewhere.

Not that it matters.  It’s a Gift is a tiny gem of a comedy with a plot as inconsequential as its title.  As fate would have it, this is the only W.C. Fields movie I’ve seen, but I’m prepared to bet that this is the best W.C. Fields I’m likely to see.  The only other one on my radar is The Bank Dick (1940), but it’s hard for me to imagine how it could top It’s a Gift for pure slapstick comedy.  Or not slapstick exactly…it’s a weird, wonderful combination of slapstick with theatrical farce, like The Three Stooges or the Marx Brothers but with a shortened leash.  In this movie, Fields is not a wacky character like Groucho or Curly…he’s us, and that makes it more effective.  (That was part of Buster Keaton’s genius, too, but that’s for another review…)

Fields plays Harold Bissonette (pronounced “Bee-so-NAY”), a cosmically patient man living in New Jersey with an overbearing wife, Amelia; a thoughtless teenage daughter, Mildred; and a rambunctious young son, Norman.  How rambunctious?  He wheels around their apartment on roller skates; when Harold tells him to stop, he obliges by removing only one skate.  If I had tried that with my parents, I wouldn’t be alive to talk about it.

Harold’s relationship with his family is defined by their total indifference to what he wants and his desire to avoid conflict at all costs.  Right at the outset, when he tries to shave in the bathroom, his daughter blithely steps between him and the mirror so she can do her hair and brush her teeth.  Rather than raise an objection (which he clearly wants to do), he improvises by hanging a travel mirror from the pull chain on the overhead light bulb.  The mirror spins slightly, leaving him no option but to shave in stages whenever the mirror faces him.  This scene beautifully defines both characters with barely a word spoken.  [Marc, if you’re reading this, this kind of thing is right up your alley.]

The plot involves a dead uncle who has left Harold a decent chunk of change.  Harold’s wife, Amelia, looks forward to moving to a nice house and buying some nice dresses, but Harold has something else in mind.  He wants to move the family to California and raise oranges on an orange grove he’s bought from his daughter’s boyfriend, or the boyfriend’s father, or something, it doesn’t really matter.  What matters is, the boyfriend discovers the orange grove is a wreck, but Harold refuses to listen and moves ahead with his plan.

Before they move to California, though, there are two hysterical sequences to get through.  One takes place at the general store Harold runs in town.  His day at the store plays out as one of the worst (and funniest, for us) days of his life.  It involves an angry customer demanding kumquats, which is funny all by itself because in real life, it’s impossible to demand kumquats and be angry.  Try it sometime.  There’s also a regular customer, Mr. Muckle, an elderly gentleman who is blind and hard of hearing; he carries an ear trumpet and a large cane which he swings indiscriminately in front of him, destroying anything breakable in his way.  There is something Matthau-esque in Harold’s desperate attempts to get those kumquats while also keeping the deaf Mr. Muckle away from his light bulb display.  And then there’s the clueless assistant and the meat locker and the child in the overhead basket and a barrel of molasses and so on and so on.  No WONDER Harold wants to get out of town.  Another day at that store and they’d have to carry his customers out in a hearse.

The second sequence, and by far the funniest in the whole film, involves Henry trying to get some sleep on the front porch because his wife won’t stop nagging him about using all their inheritance to buy an orange grove.  This marvelous set piece involves him trying to sleep on a rickety porch swing while his upstairs neighbor engages in conversation with people below, a baby drops grapes on his noggin through a hole in his ceiling/the baby’s floor, the swing threatens collapse at any moment, a random coconut manages to bounce down three flights of stairs, and he is “accosted” by an insurance salesman.  What makes this scene work so well is not the slapstick nature of the scene, which plays out like a Looney Tunes cartoon, but Harold’s dogged determination to get some damn SLEEP, despite the universe’s intention to make it utterly impossible.  Fields here proves himself a master of understated reactions.  Where the Stooges or perhaps even Groucho would resort to yelling or lobbing insults, Fields projects a world-weariness, as if this kind of thing is always happening to him, HAS always happened to him, and WILL happen to him in the future.  He loses his temper only once, and even then, he doesn’t resort to yelling: he just goes inside and gets his shotgun.

This and the grocery store scene are the highlights of the film.  After they pack everything into their car and hit the road, it becomes a series of episodes before they finally arrive at the orange grove he bought, which is, as promised by his daughter’s boyfriend, a wreck.  What happens next, I wouldn’t dream of revealing, except to say it’s as implausible as it is satisfying.

While It’s a Gift will never be mentioned in the same breath as anything by Capra or Wilder in the screenplay department, it works impeccably as a vehicle for W.C. Fields and his often-imitated/never-quite-duplicated brand of comedy.  (Walter Matthau came close.)  I haven’t seen enough of his films to be scholarly in my approach, but I can report that it made me laugh much more than I thought it would.  That’s all I can really ask for in a comedy, so I’m not going to try to break it down too much.  I’ll just roll with it, like Harold.

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. 

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING. THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING.

By Marc S. Sanders

Farce works best when the serious explodes into the outrageously absurd.  When Jonathan Winters is a lawman who insists to Brian Keith “We gotta do something! I mean we really gotta do something!” you should know that whatever needs to be done has got to be out of unreasonable paranoia.   Yet, the desperation and nonsensical fear is something you can empathize with because if I were told the states were being invaded, I’d surely think twice as I reach for the tennis racket in the back of my closet to use as a weapon.

Norman Jewison set aside his penchant for intense drama, socially reflected in films like In The Heat Of The Night, to direct a madcap satire imagined from the very real threats of The Cold War of the 1960s.  At a time when submarines were being used for silent spying and espionage, a Russian sub gets stuck on a sand dune within the shallow ocean waters just beyond the New England town of Gloucester.

Alan Arkin as Rozanov leads a squad expedition off the vessel and intrudes upon the vacation home of Walt and Elspeth Whitaker (Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint).  With a pistol pointing at the family of four, all that is really needed is a boat to nudge the helpless submarine back into the water.  Yet, as word spreads of who has arrived, that’s not what the townsfolk will have you believe.

Before the age of the internet, hysteria still managed to catch fire with word of mouth.  Reader, perhaps you heard of what happened when Orson Welles aired his radio show of H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds.  Yes!  Apparently, an alien invasion was really happening.  What amuses me about Jewison’s film is that only a very few people even get an opportunity to see the Russians in person.  Still, the fear overcomes everyone in town.  The battle crazed old codger named Fendall (Paul Ford) dons his sword, and because he carries said sword, he seems most fitting to lead the charged brigade.  

The Russians Are Coming. The Russians Are Coming. works like a pre-cursor picture to what the team of ZAZ would later do with Airplane! and The Naked Gun.  The town switch board gets overrun.  The men take hold of their rifles, but stop at the bar for a belt first. Two of the wives board a motorcycle with a side cab waving a poster that says “Alert” in front of their faces so they can’t see where they’re going.  What’s anyone supposed to gather from saying “Alert,” anyway?  It’s ridiculous, but the palpable tension of these fine folks is convincing when they come alive on this sleepy Sunday morning off the northeast coastline.

As comedic as Jonathan Winters always was, he takes it seriously as a deputy who does his best to lead while wearing his badge.  Brian Keith is great at just being Brian Keith, the grump who tries to keep things in perspective but can’t because everyone else is ready to take up arms.  Carl Reiner doesn’t have to do anything but occupy the screen and he’s funny.  He’s the antsy father to an eleven-year-old boy who he chooses not to believe.  In all seriousness, are we ever to take Carl Reiner seriously when he tries to offer a sound explanation for the Ruskies’ arrival?

Alan Arkin is just lovably speaking fluent Russian at times while trying to navigate his team around the island with no idea of what to do or what to say.  He might be the most sound character of the whole picture. He’s lovable and hilarious.

The film takes place in one day and it’ll leave you curious with how it all gets resolved among the two misunderstood factions.  Just when Norman Jewison ably reaches the highest summit of intensity, the oddest occurrence happens to shift the tide of the film’s characters and comedy.

Like other satire, particularly Sidney Lumet’s Network, The Russians Are Coming.  The Russians Are Coming. stands prophetically.  It was released in 1966, at the height of The Cold War with very fearful circumstances occurring in the news such as The Bay Of Pigs invasion.  Earlier this year, a sense of nervousness arrived when it was announced that Russian submarines have docked themselves outside of Cuba, seemingly lined up with Florida.  Anything could suddenly turn into a sad reality.  Still, how we respond to scary possibilities is how we live through these moments.  

You can laugh at The Bay Of Pigs crisis now.    Could you do it back when it was actually happening?  I wouldn’t know.  Yet, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make light of the situation.  Hogan’s Heroes, The Three Stooges, Mel Brooks, Charlie Chaplin and even the Looney Tunes ably served the purpose of needing to self deprecate our innate fears that would get all of us into nonsensical tizzies.  The Russians Are Coming.  The Russians Are Coming. was one of the best films to accomplish that feat.  

We gotta do something! I mean we really gotta do something!