I am a little boy and my parents took me to see this movie because I have seen The Lion King 17 times and my parents said they couldn't take it anymore. Especially after I asked Daddy, he is a lawyer, if I can legally change my name to Simba. So they took me to see this movie instead and I thought it was a very strange movie because at the end there is something called a derby race and also there is a boy named Alfalfa, which is a name I have never heard of, with hair that sticks up in back and he drinks dishwasher detergent and he hiccups bubbles while trying to sing a song. He is played by a boy named Bug Hall. Also, there are all these other kids, called rascals, in the movie but none of them play video games or even go to the mall like real human kids would do. My daddy says that's because this movie is a remake of a bunch of old movies he watched on TV when he was a little boy. Then I asked Daddy, did he like the Little Rascals when he was a little boy and he said, no, actually, he never did. He liked Beanie and Cecil. And Mommy asked after the movie was over if I liked the movie and I said, no, I thought it was the family movie from hell, and I wanted to go back and see The Lion King a hundred million more times starting RIGHT NOW!!!!!! (PG)
Brendan Fraser, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Steve Buscemi, Michael McKean
The only similarity between this lame pop-music-scene satire and its obvious role model, the widely esteemed This Is Spinal Tap, is that McKean appears in both films, in Spinal Tap as a haughtily ignorant rhythm guitarist and in Airheads as a haughtily ignorant radio-station program director.
Otherwise, this dead-end project is typified by the unimaginative, crass script by Rich Wilkes, in which Fraser proclaims the sincerity of his commitment to rock music by announcing, "I ain't just pulling pud here!"
The plot in this listless farce posits Fraser and his bandmates, Buscemi and Sandler, as a Los Angeles group so desperate for attention that they take over a radio station and stumble into holding its employees hostage until the band's demo tape is played on the air.
Fraser is joined in flagrant overacting by Joe Mantegna, who is about 40 years too old to be playing a heavy-metal disc jockey. Seinfeld's, Michael Richards is wasted as a station executive, as is Farley, playing a bumptious cop (though he does get to rip the nipple ring off one creep). The flimsy Judd Nelson has a few feeble scenes as a ruthless record-company executive. Amy Locane, as Fraser's feckless housemate, and Nina Siemaszko, as a ditzy radio-station secretary, have the only female parts with anything resembling substance. And the always anemic-seeming Buscemi, looking especially cadaverous and disengaged, could sink the band's hopes all by himself. In the be-thankful-for small-favors department, he, Fraser and Sandler sing only one song. (PG-13)
Jeremy Davies, Alberta Watson
Bobbing along in the wake of this summer's plush, big-star cruisers—the new Disney, the new Hanks, the new Arnie—is this strangely engrossing little movie, a mordant comedy about an MIT student (Davies) trapped at home during vacation with his mother (Watson), a vodka-drinking, pill-popping housewife confined to bed with a broken leg. Eventually, Davies winds up sharing that bed.
With her frayed sexiness and sleepy, dolorous delivery, Watson creates an encyclopedia-worthy example of the frustrated suburban housewife. Davies has a pinched quality that is less than endearing—he's like a pickled Timothy Hutton—but is exactly right for an emotionally crabbed student. And first-time director-writer David O. Russell gets all the details perfectly: the dry light of an evening in a meadow where Davies tries to make out with a neighborhood girl; the way Watson coughs to discourage the advances of her philandering salesman husband; and Davies' desperate need to indulge in the titular gerund (slang for masturbation) while the family dog, Frank, whines outside the bathroom door.
The film's real achievement is a deftly maintained tone that combines more flavors—flip, funny, disturbing, tense, charming, ugly, pretty—than are generally held in any director's spice rack. Mind you, Spanking the Money is impressive, but it's not necessarily likable. If you want that, there's Forrest Gump. His mama always said life is like a box of chocolates. (What's death? A Hershey's wrapper?) I'll take mère Watson, bad leg and all. (Not rated)
Pauly Shore, Lori Petty, Andy Dick
The military comedy is a time-tested vehicle to movie respectability for comic actors, from Buster Keaton to Bob Hope, Abbott and Costello to Bill Murray. They all had at least one thing going for them that Shore lacks, however: more than a morsel of talent.
Director Dan Petrie Jr. does rein in Shore's dweeb-o-rama use of his own puerile argot. He can't, however, overcome Shore's lack of timing and unfunny attitudinizing. Nor does the rest of this insipid comedy compensate.
Shore and Dick are inept Los Angeles salesmen who join the Army Reserve after being fired. Signing up to learn water purification, they end up in a war in Chad. Army touches on all the cliches, including the tyrannical sergeant and the potato-peeling punishment. Added is the politically correct tough-gal buddy, Petty. Petrie's idea of humor is to have Dick go "Cluck, cluck, cluck" to annoy Shore after accusing him of being a "chicken."
Anyone determined to accentuate the positive (and damn with the faintest of praise) could say this movie isn't quite as stupid as Shore's Son-in-Law. That's the best that can be said. (PG)
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto,
- Ralph Novak.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
