Blaxploitaudient: Black Mama, White Mama

This is the ninth movie in my 2024 monthly series watching blaxploitation films I hadn't previously seen. 

I said last month that my Blaxploitaudient series has thus far neglected the actual inspiration for doing this series, which was watching Elvis Mitchell's documentary Is That Black Enough for You?!? at the end of 2022. Beyond that movie being the direct impetus for starting this series, I wanted to watch movies that I'd actually learned about from that movie, and so far, had not.

So this month I got the list of all the movies mentioned in ITBEFY?!? (because of course that exists online, dozens of times over probably) and went through them to find good candidates. Not all the movies mentioned qualify as blaxploitation movies, of course, because some are mentioned as points of contrast with blaxploitation, jumping off points for blaxploitation, or historical context of regrettable depictions of Black people on screen. 

Among the actual list of blaxploitation movies, though, I wasn't able to find, at least by checking their titles, a couple movies I remembered by the scenes Mitchell showed from them, which suggested to me they might make fruitful material for this series. In fact, of the 11 titles where I chose to go in for a closer look, there were no slam dunk candidates. Or rather, I should say, there were no slam dunk candidates that felt like they were offering me something distinctly different from the films I've already seen. While I understand stories of women and men wreaking righteous revenge on pimps and drug dealers is the bread and butter of the genre -- and I do already have one more film in the pipeline that would be described this way -- I felt there was more to be gained from finding something a little different.

Which is how I landed on Eddie Romero's 1973 film Black Mama, White Mama, the second of eventually three films in this series that will feature Pam Grier. (I've been trying not to duplicate too much -- which is why I haven't watched a Shaft sequel or another Rudy Ray Moore film -- but Grier is basically synonymous with blaxploitation, and she's really good.) When I saw that this was a prison movie in which the titular characters spend much of the running time chained to each other, I thought, "Well that's something I haven't seen yet." And that title? I couldn't ask for a better encapsulation of the essential confrontational nature of blaxploitation, even if it accounts for only 50% of the title.

This is clearly an exploitation film, as there's a lot of nudity, and the prison setting -- which is at least the initial setting for the action -- is ripe with exploitation sleaze. I'm not sure if it's a totally a blaxploitation film, though, since Grier is essentially the only Black character in it. When I checked its bonafides on Wikipedia, the site says Black Mama, White Mama contains "elements of blaxploitation." I agree that it does, and that's good enough for me when I've been looking for a slight change of pace from the Foxy Browns and Cleopatra Joneses I've been watching. 

Another thing that makes the film distinctly different is its setting. The prison is not in America, but rather, in an (unnamed?) Central or South American island nation, meaning most of the cast we see is not white or Black but Latino. (I'll say Latino rather than Latinx because that's what it would have been in 1973, or maybe even Hispanic.) Actually, now that I check Wikipedia again, I see it was shot in the Philippines, which explains the Asian features of some characters. As we know, the Philippines is a blend of Asian and Latin culture, though I doubt the film is actually supposed to be set there, as a specific location is besides the point of the story.

There's some real tawdriness here. The movie takes a long and lingering look on a prison shower scene, in which we see both of our leads (the other is Margaret Markov) bearing all, as well as many others who won't appear in the movie very long. What's more, a prison warden type watches them through a peephole where she masturbates. You don't see a close-up of a hand on a crotch or anything, but I was surprised to see the movie go as graphic as it did in the scenes of her pleasuring herself. 

We learn that people seem to be in this prison for all sorts of reasons. Grier's Lee Daniels (not the filmmaker) is there for what she calls "a parking ticket," though it's hard to say whether it's an actual parking ticket or something equally insignificant and she's speaking metaphorically. I suppose it's also possible she's vastly underselling the significance of her crime. I don't believe the movie ever clarifies. (Oops, I shouldn't forget that Wikipedia is my friend. It says she's a prostitute, which could explain the "elements of blaxploitation" Wikipedia also talks about -- and indeed does not seem like sufficient reason to be shipped off to a prison on an island nation.)

However, Markov's Karen Brent is an actual revolutionary -- the contrast with Lee's crime is hardly charitable -- and this forms much of the basis of the story. When the two women escape, chained together, it is because they are freed by Karen's fellow revolutionaries, who stage a shootout on the road with prison officials and other members of the corrupt entourage of the island bigwig, as the prisoners are being transported. This bigwig is also regularly seen being ministered to in various ways by topless women. Yes, this movie wanted to deliver on the promise of its advertising.

There are some funny bits as the two escapees make their way through the countryside. (The revolutionaries just created a diversion, and they are going to rendezvous later.) For example, they disguise themselves as nuns after subduing the actual nuns, presumably in a fairly gentle manner. There's a sense that this sort of thing is supposed to be the overriding tone of Black Mama, White Mama. 

However, the movie stops being such a "good time" as it approaches its climax, with another big shootout involving the revolutionaries and the corrupt bigwig and his henchmen. In fact, without saying too much about what happens, one has to question if they had a good sense of where they wanted this narrative to go and whether the materials to get you to that point really support that goal. This isn't a good enough movie to be a serious consideration of anything involving revolution, so it's right to wonder if they would have been better off sticking to the lighter tone and sense of the triumph of good over evil that prevails in most other blaxploitation movies. (But then, this might not be actual blaxploitation, right?) 

I also hoped they would play the relationship between Lee and Karen for more tension. There's a sense that these two are supposed to be rivals, but it's not convincingly established. We do get one or two true exploitation moments when they slap the shit out of each other, but that's dropped pretty quickly, which is kind of a disappointment considering the dialectic established by the title.

Next month for Halloween I will watch the horror movie Ganja & Hess, if you want to play along with this series for at least one month. 

Things that already meet each other

Last night I started, but only got halfway through, the new Netflix teen dystopia movie Uglies. I wasn't particularly enjoying the movie, but that's not why I got only halfway through it. It was because of our new diabolically comfortable living room couch, which I may see fit to write about at length at some point, due to the way it's eating into my same-night movie completion rate.

But I don't need to have finished Uglies to write about what I'm writing about today.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Netflix has gotten into the habit of shorthanding the appeal of a movie by suggesting it is the love child of two other movies. At the same time, it is complimenting its viewers by considering them familiar with the old show biz pitch shorthand for what a studio exec might expect from a script they are considering buying.

"It's Star Wars meets Casablanca" goes the old pitch, and in theory, the exec's eyes light up with dreams of Oscars and box office dollars. (I don't know what movie that would be, but presumably there is one out there that meets that description.)

So in its descriptions for its movies -- not every movie, because it wouldn't work with every movie -- Netflix has taken to giving you, the viewer, the same sort of pitch, hoping you will watch.

Even when it's hilarious.

Now let me first say that the point of the "Movie A meets Movie B" template is that the two movies are distinctly different from one another. There may be some way they are complementary -- if they aren't in some way complementary, the movie will probably be a disaster -- but you do think of different things when you consider each movie in isolation. The way they blend gives the movie its sense of new vitality, a perfect combination of what a studio considers safe and what a studio considers a safe-ish risk.

So that's why I find the description for Uglies to be particularly hilarious:

"It's Divergent meets The Hunger Games."

Now, I haven't seen Divergent, so you can correct me if I'm wrong. But isn't Divergent itself The Hunger Games meets Divergent? And isn't The Hunger Games itself Divergent meets The Hunger Games?

Obviously Divergent and The Hunger Games are not the same movie. If memory serves, people in Divergent have some sort of mental powers. 

But saying that a new YA movie is like the love child of these two movies is kind of like saying that a new teen sex comedy is like American Pie meets Superbad. Or that a new sci-fi movie is like Star Wars meets Star Trek. Or that a new period piece about servants working in a fancy mansion is like Remains of the Day meets Downton Abbey.

I'm not suggesting Netflix is wrong to market movies using this convention. It's clever and efficient. And the average person -- the person who might actually be the target audience of Uglies -- is unlikely to parse the semantics of the recommendation like I am doing here. 

I do think there are ways to do it better though.

From the half of Uglies I've seen, I can tell you the movie is about a future society where all citizens are given cosmetic surgery at age 16 to make them beautiful. This makes everyone extremely shallow, except for the stalwart few who resist the mandatory surgery and stay their same "ugly" self. (I'm sorry, but it is not possible to make Joey King ugly.)

If I were trying to replace one of the two movies in the pitch for Uglies with another movie that would deliver us a more nuanced pitch, I might say that it's Divergent meets Gattaca. (While I have not gone out and watched Divergent since writing the above paragraph, this movie does seem to have more in common with Divergent than The Hunger Games.)

Gattaca, as I remember it, was also about beauty and genetic perfection. And it was also set in a world with tall futuristic buildings and young people. 

The trouble is, that same average viewer doesn't know Gattaca from Battlestar Galactica from Attica, the prison in New York. ("Attica! Attica!") 

And so it is, regrettably, far better for Netflix to say "Obvious thing you know and love #1 + obvious thing you know and love #2 = thing you will obviously love."

A silent movie that should have been the length of a silent movie

I saw the phenomenon known as Hundreds of Beavers last night. I was very amused by it ... for about 25 minutes. But the movie goes on for 108 minutes. 

My favorite silent movie of all time is the Buster Keaton masterpiece Sherlock Jr. You could make an argument for Erich Von Stroheim's Greed, which is currently ahead of Sherlock Jr. on my Flickchart. But I can tell you which movie I'm more eager to see again.

And part of that is that Sherlock Jr. is only 45 minutes long. There is so much brilliant physical comedy packed into that 45 minutes that it makes your head spin. I've written about Sherlock Jr. multiple times before, so if you want to go off down that rabbit (beaver?) hole instead of this one, the posts are here and here. 

Hundreds of Beavers has some moments that are as fun and joyous, in their own ways, as some of the better moments in Sherlock Jr. 

But by running more than twice as long, with many of the set pieces resembling one another in actual content as well as tone, it feels four times as long.

You've not doubt heard about Mike Cheslik's movie by now, but if you haven't, allow me to introduce you.

It basically feature the main character, a fur trapper named Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews), interacting with all manner of rabbits, wolves, dogs, and -- yes -- beavers, who are played by actors wearing animal costumes. The movie is in black and white and there is no (well, almost no) spoken dialogue. There is also almost no on-screen text, so it's truly the sort of film that would play equally well to any audience with any native language.

There's a lot of delightful silliness involving backfired booby traps, frozen sneeze icicles, attempts to win the hand of the daughter of the local trading post, and more dead animals with cartoon X's in their eyes than you can shake a stick at. The underlying creativity is undeniable and thoroughly delightful. 

But there's just ... so ... much of it. 

My long-standing conflict in terms of silent movies is that their length does not conform to my notion of what makes a feature film. However, I have granted films like Sherlock Jr. a pass because they were made in a different time, when movies that ran longer than an hour were rare. And by "granting a pass" I mean I include them in all my various movie lists.

Even though Hundreds of Beavers was made during an era when I would not grant it this sort of pass, I doubt that Mike Cheslik actually cared a lot about the length of his movie for its own sake. The movie is such a rule breaker that I don't think Cheslik would hesitate to make it only 45 minutes if that's what he thought was appropriate for it.

But let's say Cheslik was concerned about meeting a certain minimum length in order to qualify for the Oscars or something like that. (Hundreds of Beavers getting an Oscar nomination. There mere concept makes me giggle.) Wouldn't that 85-minute minimum for Oscar consideration be plenty of Hundreds of Beavers? I think it would be. 

Over the course of all this silly mayhem, there is enough of a narrative thread that you can at least say the story has a certain trajectory, even though at its core, the movie is the sort of experience whose scenes you could watch in any sequence and still get about the same out of it. And any individual moment of creativity is not something you'd feel like you wanted to sacrifice, now that you've seen it and know that it exists.

But creative types need to kill their darlings, and Hundreds of Beavers just has too many darlings for a viewer to leave the experience feeling anything less than exhausted. 

Setting a movie one year in the future

Aki Kaurismaki's Fallen Leaves didn't get released in Australia until 2024, but I'm not ranking it with this year's films. It had a 2023 release in most parts of the world, including the United States -- and this last is the most salient deciding factor in what year I rank or miss ranking a movie, as the case may be.

But Fallen Leaves thinks of itself as a 2024 movie -- at least in terms of its characters' present tense.

As I was watching the movie Tuesday night on Kanopy, I noticed a curious detail, which is that there is a calendar hanging on the wall in one of the scenes that clearly shows the year as 2024. In fact, you'd almost say it was an intentional focal point of the scene. But even if it isn't intended as a focal point, no detail is accidental in a well-made movie.

And there's no doubt Fallen Leaves is emphasizing its setting as present-day Helsinki. The Helsinki part is obvious from regular mentions, and -- to anyone who lives in Helsinki -- probably from familiar landmarks. The present-day part is underscored by the fact that characters repeatedly listen to radio broadcasts discussing the latest developments in the war in Ukraine. (The rest of the production design is fairly timeless, though, as the cell phones look like they might be 20 years out of date.)

But why 2024 and not 2023?

The film debuted at Cannes in 2023, and had its release in many if not most countries before 2023 was out. Did Kaurismaki poorly estimate how long the post-production of his movie would take, thereby pushing the date on this calendar forward to the following release year to compensate? Surely not, as the sort of film he makes mustn't require much post.

The question then is, is there some purpose for setting the movie in 2024 rather than 2023?

In the U.S., we of course have a notable quadrennial occurrence in 2024, which is the presidential election. But no part of this movie references America, though you do see the effect of American culture in some of the songs Kaurismaki plays on the jukebox in the bar the characters frequent.

Internationally, 2024 is an Olympic year, but this movie has nothing to do with that either. It's about two lonely and broken characters who find and nearly lose each other, and I don't think it's the first Kaurismaki film that has that central theme. 

So why 2024 and not 2023?

The people who watched this movie in 2023 would have been wondering this even more than I would have been wondering it Tuesday night in my living room. Was it just meant to mildly unnerve them, mildly knock them off balance in a way Kaurismaki is capable of doing with his eccentric narrative choices?

I often don't google these things, preferring to leave the question dangling in the air, unanswered. This time I did google, though, and on Wikipedia I found this interesting passage, which encapsulates other elements that I briefly touched on earlier that defy a definable chronology:

The time period of the film is unclear, and it has been said to be set in an alternate reality.^[17] The wall calendar shown in the film shows autumn 2024, but the news narrated on the radio takes place in the early moments of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.^[18] Tube radios, landline phones and old-fashioned trains are used in the world of the film, among other things.^[17] It also contains several references to films, including Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die, David Lean's Brief Encounter, and Charlie Chaplin's Limelight.^[8]

The decision to make one of these time periods the future is interesting indeed, and more than a little eerie. However, I don't know that I ultimately find these choices crucial to the narrative, which is constructed of mostly simple things. That's not a criticism. In fact, I found this more profoundly sad, in a useful way, than the other Kaurismaki films I've seen, particularly a bleak song sung by a band at the bar near the climax.

Does the 2024 setting encourage me to rank it in the current year?

Alas, no, especially with that Wikipedia explanation.

They can't all by 2024 movies. 

R.I.P. Darth Vader

I missed memorializing Donald Sutherland when he passed, so I'm certainly not going to lie down on the job when it comes to noting the departure from this world of James Earl Jones.

Unfortunately, I would not say I have any truly unique words in reflecting on the legacy of one of our most beloved cultural icons and recognizable voices. 

However, as a child who saw Star Wars in the movie theater when he was not yet four, I do have a perspective on him shared by only those within a couple years of my age.

For many of us, Jones' voicing of Darth Vader was the first time we heard the blood-chilling sounds of evil. When we heard Darth Vader, we suddenly had a perfect encapsulation of an unimaginable threat to our safety. Our parents had kept us safe from harm, but somehow, some way, this villain could still get us, if we weren't careful.

I was first in line for the next two releases -- to the extent that my parents cooperated with that agenda, though I can't really remember for sure. As much as I dreamed myself away into the exploits of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, the pull of Darth Vader's menace -- not phantom, but very tactile and real -- was an equivalent part of the adventure, the same sort of glimpse into the pit of darkness that would later make me and others into horror fans.

And though Darth Vader was obviously Jones' most iconic role, when we think of him, we don't think of a cruel and twisted man.

We think of the wonderful grandfatherly figure in Field of Dreams, who helps Ray Kinsella on his journey to build a baseball diamond in his Iowa cornfield. I may not love that movie the way I once did, but I cherish the portrayal Jones gives us.

We think of the stern but ultimately loving father in Coming to America, whose underlying gentleness was passed down to his son, Prince Akeem.

We think of The Lion King's Mufasa, another paternal figure, whose warmth and light were extinguished by the vicious Scar.

I was leading up there to a point that the on-screen and voice-only Joneses were very different types, but Mufasa, of course, was also a voice-only role, and there he is the ultimate good rather than the ultimate evil.

Few actors have had such careers where they thrived equally as heroes and villains, and that may be the ultimate compliment to an actor's range. 

We had no reason to expect James Earl Jones to live very much longer than the 93 years he lived. But the fact that he was still supplying the voice of Darth Vader as recently as 2022 in the Disney series Obi-Wan Kenobi, 45 years after he originally gave life to the character, indicates that we didn't feel like we were even done yet with Jones as a working actor, let alone as a person living in this world. 

Now any future attempts to create Darth Vader's voice on screen will likely be the product of AI, and don't think we won't get them. In fact, they might even sound as good, almost, as Jones himself, though that's as much of a twisted fate involving the blending of human and machine as Darth Vader himself.

But those of us who first heard the booming voice of darkness, and the labored breathing that went with it, in a movie theater in 1977 as three-year-olds, we'll know the difference.

We'll know. 

Does it taste purple yet?

Yesterday, the two oldest and the youngest members of my family -- in other words, the 14-year-old stayed home -- went to see a free advanced screening of Harold and the Purple Crayon at Melbourne Central. It was a Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. and we caught the train. It was one of those experiences where feeling like yokels from the country coming into the big city was part and parcel to the charm, even though I go there twice a week for work. 

It was also one of those times where my younger son gets to experience some of the glitz and glamor of me being a film critic. I guess I sort of mean that literally, as there was a "purple carpet" at the screening, which you could walk while having your picture taken in front of a large backdrop that was a modified version of the movie poster. Also, free popcorn and drinks upon entering the theater, and fairy floss -- a.k.a. cotton candy -- for the kids. The fairy floss was purple, naturally.

But the thing that really impressed him, I think, was me telling him that the movie didn't open until Thursday. At first he thought I was joking -- I'm a kidder -- but a repetition of the fact assured him that it was true. 

"So we're going to be the first people in the world to see it?" he asked.

Yep, Dad has a cool job sometimes -- even if that "job" does not actually pay him.

I explained that there were preview screenings in lots of cities but that yes, we would be seeing it before the members of the general public. I didn't remember until later that the movie has actually been out in most parts of the world since August, and in the U.S., since very early August. So we're actually some of the last people in the world to see it. But he doesn't need to know that. (The late release date in Australia is so it will still seem fresh for the start of school holidays, which begin a little more than a week after its release.)

Another thing we were invited to do is wear our "finest purple." This was easy for my son, whose school colors are yellow and purple, and who therefore has a rich purple sweatshirt with the school emblem on the breast. 

My wife doesn't, and would never, participate in these sorts of shenanigans, but of course I wanted to participate. The only trouble is, I've gone off purple a bit lately -- see this post if you want more of a discussion of that -- and the purple t-shirt I used to have, which showed a bear watching TV in the woods, was lost to one of the occasional clothing purges my wife forces me to do.

I did have one shirt that would work, but whether it qualified was the source of a little bit of controversy.

The t-shirt is one of the oldest in my collection, having survived all the clothing purges, as it dates to early 2000s -- before I left New York in 2001, anyway. It's one of the shirts the transit authority made, and probably still do make, to show your affection for whatever subway line you travel the most. 

At least, you hope that's what the shirt does. In a story that now embarrasses me, a friend of mine got me this shirt as a present because she knew I liked the design of these shirts -- but she got it for me for a subway line I never actually rode. So I asked if she would exchange it for a line that did have some meaning for me, the Manhattan to Queens 7 line, which went out to the old Shea Stadium where I would see Mets games. She did it but she didn't seem too pleased about it, which I certainly get.

So the 7 line has this icon appearing on all its trains, and so does my shirt:

That's me. Still look good at 50, don't I?

Unfortunately, after nearly 25 years, this is how my shirt looks today:

I'm not showing my face in this one. You already saw it in the previous photo. Once is enough.

My son and my wife, who will not give me an inch of slack in any situation where a little razzing is called for, both told me that this is pink, not purple.

Looking at those two photos next to each other, I can't really argue with them. But in the moment, I did. In fact, I googled "what is the color of the 7 train to queens" and the answer provided was "purple." I also showed them an image of the logo on screen. I suppose if this did anything, it only showed them that I was not crazy in thinking of this as purple -- though it did nothing to convince them I was wearing a shirt that was actually appropriate cosplay for the movie.

Well, there were supposed to be prizes, potentially, for the best purple outfit, though realistically, neither of us ever had a shot at that.

I couldn't really let go of the idea that I was wearing a purple shirt, so when the plot takes the characters out of their storybook and into the real world, and they land in a park that looked like it could have been Central Park, I was hoping, praying, that the story would see it fit for them to ride the 7 train because of its telltale purple color -- thus providing me the ultimate vindication. Of course, I soon realized that the movie actually takes place in another former home of mine: Providence, Rhode Island.

We really enjoyed the movie. My wife and I especially laughed a lot at the line readings of Jemaine Clement in the villain role, but the whole thing was pretty charming -- a lot better than these movies usually are. (I'm thinking of something like Lyle Lyle Crocodile, though we did sort of like that one as well.) The whole thing has a little bit of an Elf vibe, a comparison you might not have been inclined to make were it not that Zooey Deschanel plays essentially the same role in both films. I'll have a review up in a couple days if you want to hear my more detailed thoughts about what works here.

I'm sorry to see that the rest of the world who have already seen it aren't quite so fond of it, as the average rating on IMDB is only 5.7. Oh well, can't please everybody all the time. I guess most people just aren't as tickled by Clement as we are in this part of the world.

Before I leave you I should explain what the title of this post means. 

It dates back to when a friend of mine was at a camp with another friend of mine, though the second friend was not my friend at the time and only became so later. The second friend, a bit of an unintentional goofball, was watching one of the camp counselors make up a vat of artificial grape drink by stirring it until it was ready for consumption by the campers. Unable to wait any longer for his grape drink, my friend asked, completely unaware of anything incorrect about the question, "Does it taste purple yet?"

The bit is funny because purple is, of course, a color, not a flavor. However, it's also sort of an apt commentary on these artificial sugar drinks, whose flavor bears so little resemblance to the alleged fruit flavor of the drink that a color is as good a descriptor of the flavor as the fruit.

One final thought:

How did all the purple in this movie play on me, when you know, if you followed my previous link, that the color purple has started to nauseate me a bit when used in Dreamworks movies and the like?

I'm glad to say I liked the purple in this movie. It did not offend or nauseate me. I suppose it helps to like the movie itself, which may not have been the case in some of those Dreamworks movies.

So maybe it's time for me order a new 7 line transit shirt, which will surely be purple for at least a couple decades, and will be just the attire to wear to Harold and the Purple Crayon 2. 

An "And Danny DeVito" featuring the actual Danny DeVito

If you are coming to this post seeing the poster for the newly released Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and think I am going to dissect the finer details of another sequel 36 years in the making, you are bound to be sorely disappointed. (Though if you want to read my thoughts on it, my review is here.)

No, this post is about a convention in the opening credits that I've discussed on this blog once before. 

To save you clicking on that link, I'll tell you that it's that moment in the credits when most of the primary cast has been listed and they're about ready to move on to the next section of the credits, but you get the name of one last actor -- the coup de grace, the chef's kiss, the final unexpected name that'll make you squirm with unexpected delight. It's a spot in the credits that actors specifically request in their contracts, and it is always preceded by the conjunction "and."

For me, I have always thought that the perfect sort of actor to appear in this spot is Danny DeVito. So for some strange reason, every time I watch the opening credits of a movie, and it came out during DeVito's career as a professional actor (which covers a 55-year span), I'm always waiting for the "And Danny DeVito" to finish off that section of the credits. When it invariably is not Danny DeVito, I always try to decide if that person has a suitably DeVito-ish quality -- if that person occupies, in some small way, that precise corner of the cinematic landscape that DeVito occupies.

This is not leading up to me telling you that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is finally the movie where I got a real "And Danny DeVito." Sorry to disappoint you again.

In fact, the "And Danny DeVito" in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is Willem Dafoe, who may just be the second best "And Danny DeVito" next to the man himself.

But I was consciously thinking about my personal little DeVito meme as I was watching those opening credits. I don't do it as frequently as I once did, so this was noteworthy.

Because about 15 minutes later, there, on the screen, was Danny DeVito.

It might have occurred to me that we'd actually get Danny DeVito in this movie, because of course DeVito played The Penguin in Tim Burton's Batman Returns, not to mention also appearing in Burton's Mars Attacks! and Dumbo. But if it did, it never escaped my subconscious. 

DeVito plays a netherworld janitor, and before Burton reveals that he's dead -- like everybody else in this netherworld -- he has the camera approach him from behind, to keep the surprise for a moment longer. I knew right away that it was DeVito, not that you would confuse him with Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Oh wait.) But even when his voice, still heard without seeing his face, did not sounds particularly DeVito-ish, I thought "That's Danny DeVito," which struck me as particularly funny because I'd just thought of him a few minutes ago.

And it was.

Did I conjure him into existence? I don't think I said his name aloud, likely not once but certainly not three times. Maybe I thought it three times.

In any case, I thought it was a funny coincidence.

So I guess Mr. Danny has slipped from the status of "surprise last inclusion in the cast" to "enjoyable cameo" as he enters his ninth decade of life, though I should say, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is still on the air (its 16th season!) and still popular I guess, and DeVito is still in it. I've seen exactly one of the 170 episodes. Not my thing, really.

In case you don't want to click on the other link in this post, I gave Beetlejuice Beetlejuice three stars, or 6/10 using the ReelGood rating scale. I feel like I give every reheat of IP three stars these days. I'm sucked in just enough by the fan service to overlook the essential flaws in the construction, which equals out to a pretty okay time at the movies. Will it always be this way? Until we're all grapping mops to wash floors in the netherworld of the dead?

I may be circling another Cable Guy viewing

On actual Father's Day -- which was this past Sunday in Australia, not sometime in June -- I sought to keep the good vibes going from my Liar Liar viewing on Saturday night. You know, another movie I'd already seen and knew I liked, which might be similar in ways to Liar Liar.

As you know if you read my last post, Liar Liar gave me some unexpected Father's Day food for thought, and my initial browsing on Sunday night was aimed at continuing that theme. But the right option never really presented itself, so instead I continued to pursue a different theme: people laboring under the influence of a curse/spell, in order to radically change their perception of, and interactions with, other people in the world.

That's right, I landed on Shallow Hal, the 2001 film that nearly cracked my top ten that year, but has since come under probably justified scrutiny for its implied fat shaming -- even if the message of the movie is that we shouldn't fat-shame people. (So why so many fat jokes, Shallow Hal?) 

We're different as a society since now, so I wanted to see if I was different as well. And was a little worried about the possible result, making this the opposite of a guaranteed fun viewing experience on Father's Day -- what I was seeking with the Liar Liar viewing. 

It turns out yes, I am different, in that I didn't laugh very much in this movie, whereas I remember laughing a fair bit in 2001. But I still thought it was a worthy, possibly misunderstood, effort.

But let's start with the not laughing, and whether it actually has to do with our enlightened viewings toward body positivity or is rooted somewhere else.

I don't think in 2001 I was laughing at things like furniture breaking under Gwyneth Paltrow's Rosemary -- bad timing, as I just broke a piece of furniture in our house the night after I watched this -- or the rear of their canoe pitched six feet off the surface of the water, with a flabbergasted Jack Black fruitlessly rowing air. If you are going to do this concept, these are good visual sight gags, but I don't believe they made me laugh per se. Certainly didn't on this viewing.

So was it laughter that vaulted Shallow Hal to my #13 in 2001, or sentiment? 

Peter and Bobby Farrelly do make every effort to shine a light on the humanity of their characters. We know they have a pattern of putting people with physical or mental limitations in their films, to give a showcase for people of all types and to proactively shout down the people who would laugh at them. I think this is what Shallow Hal is trying to do with unattractive people, even though there is an obvious false equivalency between a character with spina bifida and a character who is just "ugly" -- which is actually just "ugly" as defined by society and popular magazines.

Because they are comedy directors, they of course also have to make jokes, and the jokes stem from the scenario they are investigating. I think Shallow Hal is mostly devoid of cheap shots, even though it's clear the movie would never be made today. And characters who are insensitive pricks are taken to task for that.

No, the real quandary regarding Shallow Hal is whether Hal actually displays any personal growth in his journey, at least not until an ending that strains some credibility. 

Namely: If he sees someone who he thinks is physically beautiful, is he actually really doing anything different than what he's been doing this whole time?

It's a tricky one. The idea is that by being able to see inner beauty, he's seeing what she actually looks like and not caring. And though he starts to become a nicer guy at the same time, displaying generosity rather than ogling, it's still the guy who thinks he's seeing a perfect 10, and that isn't real growth.

I think the conceptually idealized message that Hal is seeing what people really look like, and then converting it into physical attraction on the basis of connecting with them emotionally, is worth conveying, and I don't know if you could put it in that different a package -- especially coming from a comedy background. (It would still be years before Peter Farrelly made something not explicitly comedic, like Green Book.) But it may never be fully possible to appreciate Shallow Hal without some sort of asterisk. 

And the Farrellys may have always known this would be the case. Which actually speaks sort of well of them as "artists" -- I have to put it in quotation marks because I doubt they would classify themselves as such. But artists, by definition, go outside their own comfort zone, or the comfort zones of their intended audience, to present a challenging version of the truth, and it isn't exaggerating to say that this might be what Shallow Hal is doing.

I've written all this about Shallow Hal and so far it has nothing to do with the subject of this post. What does The Cable Guy have to do with all this?

Well, it specifically has to do with the combination of the two movie choices I made this weekend, both of which have similarities to my favorite Jim Carrey movie, and top 20 movie on my Flickchart.

Liar Liar has an obvious connection in that both films star Carrey. In fact, it was the very next film Carrey made after The Cable Guy, and in most people's minds, it represented a return to form after that critically dismissed Ben Stiller film. (The Cable Guy has vastly gained in appreciation since then, and as you might know from previous mentions, I am its biggest champion.)

But there was a funny lesser connection with The Cable Guy that I didn't notice until this viewing. Namely, both films feature Carrey's character beating somebody up in a bathroom.

In The Cable Guy, Carrey's Chip Douglas thinks he's helping out his new "friend" Steven (Matthew Broderick) by attacking the date (Owen Wilson) of Steven's estranged girlfriend, Robin (Leslie Mann). So he poses as a bathroom attendant at the restaurant where they are on a date, and when the jerk comes in to relieve himself, Chip introduces him to various hard surfaces and standard bathroom components. 

In Liar Liar, well, of course, it's Fletcher Reede beating himself up. It's his desperate attempt to get a continuance on his court case because he is unable to lie. It's certainly just a coincidence but I thought it was a funny one.

Shift to Sunday night, and there are some funny similarities between Shallow Hal and The Cable Guy as well. 

For one, Jack Black is in both movies. He plays the titular character in Hal, and he's the supporting role of Steven's best friend -- his actual best friend -- in Cable Guy. 

But Tony Robbins is also in both movies, though his role in The Cable Guy is small enough that you probably wouldn't remember it unless you'd seen the movie nine times (or so) like I have.

We know his role is significant in Hal, as he is the one who frees Hal's mind to see inner beauty by putting a "spell" on him. How Robbins does this is a bit of a mystery, and it doesn't matter. I mean, how did Max's wish come true in Liar Liar? It doesn't matter.

But Robbins also has a small -- albeit off-screen -- appearance in The Cable Guy. There's a moment when Steven, laid low by Robin's decision to take some time apart from him, is listening, only for a moment, to a Tony Robbins self-help seminar in order to get his mojo back. (Yes, I just noticed the Robin/Robbins connection myself.) Chip then arrives to pick him up -- even though Steven didn't realize they were supposed to get together -- and the sequence ends.

So will it be The Cable Guy the next time I'm looking for a comfort food comedy circa the turn of the century?

Could be. You know how I talk about how favorite films seem to come up for me for a viewing about every four years. Guess when my last Cable Guy viewing was?

Yeah that's right: June 18, 2020. 

A pre-Father's Day cautionary tale

Today is Father's Day in Australia. Mother's Day is perfectly aligned between Australia and the U.S., but Father's Day is pushed from June to September (assuming we can consider June the default and September the deviation). Something to do with it being winter in June and ... not quite winter in September. (In fact, today is also the first day of spring, per the southern hemisphere convention of changing seasons on the first of the month. Yes they have to be difficult down here.)

When I was searching for something light and funny to watch last night -- we'd had a couple hours where emotions had run high among various people in the family -- I didn't expect that thing I would fix on would end up also being a profound warning about taking fatherhood for granted. 

In fact, I didn't land on Liar Liar on Amazon Prime until the second time going through my options. I have of course seen Liar Liar -- this might be my fourth viewing overall -- but that was by design. I knew the light and funny thing I would end up with would be something I had already seen, in order to guarantee myself the lightness and funniness I wanted, rather taking a risk with some unknown quantity.

At first I thought maybe it wasn't quite the right thing, for one reason that doesn't have much to do with anything and one that does. The random reason was that I had just rewatched another Jim Carrey film from this era, The Mask, earlier this year, and watching Liar Liar seemed like going to too similar a rewatch well. 

The more salient reason was that over the years, I seem to have forgotten just how good Liar Liar is.

Not only have I not written about it on this blog, as I can see by the fact that I'm using the "liar liar" tag for the first time, but my records should that I haven't watched it in the "rewatch era" -- in other words, the era in which I started keeping track of my rewatches. That began in in 2006, so it's been more than 18 years since I've watched this movie, though I think I did watch it three times in its first ten years of existence -- if we are indeed calling this my fourth viewing overall.

It would have to be at least four, because there was so much I remembered about this movie -- lines of dialogue, inflections of Jim Carrey's voice, laugh-out-loud bits of physical comedy. 

What I didn't remember is exactly how funny these things are -- and just how touching I find the movie's underlying sentiment. 

In fact -- and it could just be because my own son had a tough emotional moment an hour or so earlier -- I almost found myself getting a little choked up.

Liar Liar is an exaggerated version of a very real problem, or at least potential problem, among fathers and their children. Mothers, unless they defy what the statistics tell us, are very unlikely to neglect their children. You are much more likely to find mothers that go to the extreme of suffocating their children with love and affection than those that fall down on the job even a little bit. Mothers are treasures and we should probably acknowledge them a lot more often than we do. 

Fathers? Fathers can drop the ball without even trying ... often because they aren't trying. 

Even good fathers, though, can slip into a sort of middling indifference toward their duties, knowing the mother will pick up the slack, knowing that everything will get done when it should get done because of the ingrained calendars most mothers have in their heads. That's certainly true of household duties and life admin, but can even be true of some of the basic ways children need to be nurtured. 

In Liar Liar, I thought specifically about how Carrey's Fletcher Reede keeps putting off the game of catch with his son, the one where young Max is supposed to be Dodger pitcher Hideo Nomo and Fletcher is supposed to be Oakland A's star ... well, you know the line of dialogue: "I'm Jose Canseco! I'M JOSE CANSECO!" 

Putting off playing with my kids is something I have been guilty of. Although I kick a soccer ball with my younger son in the backyard about once a week in good times -- we have a game where we switch who plays goalie in the net in the back yard, and the other one takes shots until he scores -- he'd probably like that to be more like two to three times a week. And as I sit here typing this, I feel like life has gotten in the way and it's been about three weeks since we've done this.

See that's the thing, for dads it is easy enough to say that life has gotten in the way. Or even just to give off that vibe, that you're too tired, that you're too busy, that you just can't do it right now. Give off that vibe enough, and you don't actually have to say no to your kids. They see the no in your face so they don't even bother asking.

And then one day, it's the last time you ever play soccer in the back yard with your son, and you don't even know it already happened until after the fact.

The time we have with our children is precious. In the moment, we find certain demands of that relationship onerous, and we think only about our short-term gratification in not having to do the thing they want to do, so we can lie down, so we can scroll through our phone -- even so we can do things that we legitimately have to do, like prepare dinner or put away laundry.

But the children are not going to be there forever. One day they will grow up and they won't want you or need you to do any of these things. Or, in a more extreme version, Cary Elwes will try to get them to move to Boston with your ex-wife Maura Tierney, leaving you in Los Angeles wondering where it all went wrong.

Even though my biggest takeaway from the movie was how much I laughed -- still laughed, all these years later, at brilliant physical comedy by Carrey that I have seen at least four times -- the takeaway about my relationship with my sons was almost as big. I think of that heartbreaking look on Carrey's face after the scene where he has tried to get Max to unwish his single-day truth curse so Carrey can try to win his case in court. When Fletcher explains that all adults lie, even the perfect Gary (Elwes), Max says "But you're the only one who makes me feel bad." 

The look on Carrey's face that captures the shock of his recognition of the truth in Max's words ... it's one of those early moments from the actor where we must have recognized he was capable of more than mugging. And it really drove home, for me, that we rarely are so lucky to have a child spell out for us, in so many words, the ways we are failing them. In most cases, they never give it to us so bluntly, so we don't have the opportunity to mend our ways and make sure the relationship doesn't deteriorate by degrees until it no longer exists.

It's almost enough to make me go to my son's soccer game this morning ... almost.

You see, my wife has set it up so that I get a "break" on Father's Day, not having to go to the early soccer game so I can stay home and lounge in my pajamas. It's a nice gesture and I have to give her the gift of taking it, to make her feel like she is properly recognizing me on Father's Day.

But after seeing Liar Liar ... well I really want to go to that game.

Now, for context, I have only missed a few of his games this year. There have been a couple times when he's stayed over at his aunt's house for a sleepover, meaning she took him to his game the next morning. However, on one of those occasions, I actually did go to watch the game anyway, even though she brought him there. I am a good father -- pretty good, at least, I hope -- and so I've gone out of my way to see certain games, even when I didn't need to.

But the thing is, you never know when the game will be a watershed moment for them. About three or four weeks ago, my son had one of those games, where he scored not only his first goal of the season, but his second. Thankfully, I was there to see it. 

If something like that happens today, well, I'll miss it.

But I think I can make up for it. I think I can play soccer with him later, after he gets home, even if he's a bit soccer'd out. I think I can also play some one-on-one basketball with my older son, even though he doesn't need me like he once did.

Last night, though, my older son did need me. He was feeling a little lost -- those were his words -- for reasons he couldn't put his finger on. He had given my wife a little attitude and then had snapped at her. For a moment we didn't know where he had gone, and then we realized he had been in the back yard, crying.

I was there to give him a long hug. (She was too, but I was the one who saw him first.) He's 14, so I don't get to hug him often. I made it count and I said the right things to make him feel better, at least a little bit.

I am a good father -- but I could always be better. And I won't have forever to prove it.

And sometimes, we get cinematic reminders of such things from the most unexpected placed.