This here is a little thing I’m calling the Thunderbird on Cinema Double Feature, as you might be able to tell from the title, which may show up now from time to time. The premise is, essentially, that I take two film which are connected in some way and write about both of them, in an unprecedented bit of film criticism the likes of which has never been seen before. Rather than try to dig deep and really delve into the core of the film, as real film critics you see, I’ll just be throwing together two small articles I managed to crap out and charging double the price. That’s called economics kids, read a book once in a while.
This first edition of this subfeature concerns a couple films I’ve already seen and written down notes for months ago, which means my impressions will be fresh and perfectly valid. It also deals with a director I haven’t really talked about yet, which I’m sure no one actually wanted to hear. Enjoy.
Play It Again, Sam (1972)
Actor. Writer. Comedian. Director. Playwright. Clarinetist. Although his star has certainly dimmed, it'd be pretty hard for it not to considering, when it comes to American filmmakers there aren’t many that have done so well for so long as one Mr. Woody Allen. Going back all the way to his debut film (What’s New Pussycat?, released in 1965), Woody Allen has been able to sit down at his typewriter and crank out a new movie almost every year since, a grand total of 40+ plus movies under his belt. Although starting off in straight, full-fledged comedies, Allen is likely most well-regarded for his string of films in the 1970s (in particular Annie Hall, which won 4 Academy Awards), which helped to redefine and reestablish the romantic comedy genre, not to mention helping to bolster the careers of both Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow. Whether or not that’s a bad thing is up for you to decide, and whether you think the world needs so many rom coms about a neurotic Jewish man having sex with a woman out of his league is another issue, but you can’t deny the man’s work ethic. He’s worked with science-fiction, film-noir, animation, 19th century Russian prose, murder mysteries, mockumentaries...even if he does repeat himself at least he mixes it up a little sometimes, you know?
Based on the play of the same name, which was also written by Woody Allen, Play It Again, Sam stars Woody Allen as the standard Woody Allen character: A neurotic east-coast Jewish writer who somehow has tremendous luck with women despite looking like a broom with male pattern baldness. In this particular case he plays the role of Allen Felix, a critic obsessed with the 1942 film classic Casablanca to the point that Humphrey Bogart’s character appears to him to give him some hard boiled advice from time to time, like Ben Kenobi from the Bronx. Felix is recently divorced, his wife citing a lack of excitement in their relationship as reason enough for the split, and he’s understandably a little bummed out. His friends, Dick and Linda (played by Allen regular Diane Keaton) decide it would be for the best if Felix got back on the saddle and set him up with a couple of new women and test the waters, to use dissimilar turns of phrase.
However, Dick and Linda’s relationship is far from perfect itself, and as Felix and Linda spend more and more time together, a spark of attraction threatens to grow into the flames of passion. Could Felix, would Felix betray the trust of his friend and step into the world of adultery? Is he even ready for such a commitment, or is his mind still in rebound mode from the departure of his wife Nancy? And where exactly does Casablanca fit into all of this? That’s for you to find out, in case you decide to watch it for yourself.
Woody Allen is a man who loves his romantic comedies, or at least he’s been cursed by a witch to write so many, and going by critical opinion he’s pretty good at it. Since the very idea of romance fills me with deep-seated feelings of shame and regret, I tend not to go much for the rom-coms, but I found myself enjoying Play It Again, Sam. Not so much for the general setup, which has been done in many films before (even the ‘main character obsessed with Casablanca which which eventually helps to show his evolution as character’ thing has been done), but because the romance element feels more or less like a natural buildup. Not so much for Allen’s bizarre rape comments (you’ll know it when you come to it), more so it’s that when Felix and Diane talking with each other it feels like two real people having a conversation. Much like how actual human beings form relationships, or so I’m told. Allen and Keaton have great chemistry together, and if it didn’t seem like Allen was the type of writer that planned out scenes point by point, I’d think that he just improv-ed the whole thing. Which is something I tend to enjoy in films actually, the dissolution of the barrier separating real and directed action. It’d explain my love of Spinal Tap at least.
Aside from some cartoonish Jerry Lewis-style antics which I don’t much care for (don’t ask how I know what a Jerry Lewis-style antic is when I haven’t seen a Jerry Lewis film), and the aforementioned weird ‘women like rape’ line, I found myself enjoying Play It Again, Sam. I haven’t seen enough of his filmography to determine whether this is one of his best movies, but I do think this could make for a great introduction to his other work, either to his early comedic works or his later more dramatic projects. Of course my introduction to Woody Allen was Antz, which might explain why it took me so long to watch another one.
RESULT: RECOMMENDED
Sleeper (1973)
Love him or hate him, the one thing you have to concede about Woody Allen is that the man is one of those tirelessly prolific kinds of writer that always pisses me off. Coming one year after Play It Again, Sam (and Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex* (But Were Afraid to Ask), by the by), Allen wrote, acted in and directed Sleeper, his one and only foray in the genre of science fiction. This film was yet another to feature the Woody Allen/Diane Keaton billing by the way, which seems to have been the partnership connected to his better films. Is Sleeper indeed one of those gems of the 70s, as were the likes of Annie Hall and Manhattan, or is it a dud? Does even bringing up the question cast perceptions of doubt on its potential quality or lack thereof? Read on and find out.
In the sci-fi romcom Sleeper, Woody Allen stars as Miles Munroe, a 35 year old clarinet player and former health food restaurateur who is definitely not Allen playing himself as he does in all his films (dude writes what he knows). After being cryogenically frozen back in 1973, Miles is revived 200 years later by renegade scientists in a dystopic utopian future that looks a lot like someone’s backyard in Southern California. It seems that in the subsequent 2 centuries the United States of America has given way to the despotic and dictatorial American Federation, and society has entered into a Huxley-esque state of hedonistic yet sterile complacency. Androids now act as manservants, tobacco and junk food is actually better for you than fruits and vegetables, and people have sex by machines. Not the worst place to end up in, but the brutal tyranny does put a little damper on things.
Miles Munroe is a neurotic, cowardly schlemiel of a man,who happens to be a fugitive now that he’s been unfrozen, so of course he gets roped into the underground resistance movement to discover and stop the Federation’s secretive Aries Project. During his escape he decides to disguise himself as the android servant of Luna (Keaton), the yuppie poet laureate of the future. After abducting Luna (more or less), the two wacky weirdos decide to go on a journey to discover just what that whole Aries Project thing is all about. Which will probably lead to the dissolution of aforementioned despotic and dictatorial American Federation, because this is a light-hearted romantic comedy and not Brazil. Not saying that Sleeper ending with a lobotomized Miles glorifying the Federation ala George Orwell’s 1984 wouldn’t have had its own charms in a lot of ways, but I don’t think twist endings like that are really Allen’s style.
Sleeper is far more a work of comedy than of science-fiction, a Spaceballs or Galaxy Quest rather than a Planet of the Apes or Soylent Green, and any radical ideas about the future and technology takes a back seat to the comedy. Like a bus in Montgomery Alabama in the 1960s, that’s how far back that seat is in this analogy. I imagine the budget for this couldn’t have been too large, but I’ve seen episodes of Star Trek and Doctor Who from this era that had better sense of setting and special effects than what one sees in Sleeper, and if your Hollywood movie has worse special effects than Doctor Who then that’s just fucking embarrassing. You could perhaps explain away by reiterating the point about it being a comedy and that it isn’t necessary, but it still doesn’t keep the film from looking like an Ed Wood original. Dude may have been pumping a movie a year, but if what he is putting out feels half-assed it doesn’t really mean much, does it?
So if sci-fi wasn’t the primary objective, then that means the focus is on the comedy and the romance, but I don’t think Sleeper really excels in those cases either. The goofball comedy is in full-force when compared to PIAS, and it just falls flat for me just as it did then. It’s not that I don’t think Allen is funny, because I do, it’s more that I find him at his funniest when he’s talking and telling jokes and when he tries to be wacky it comes across as someone trying to do Blake Edwards or Mel Brooks (both Allen and Brooks wrote for Your Show of Shows, so there’s that connection). The romance might be even worse, as it seems thrown in because the story needed to have a romance and not because a romance added to the story, which wouldn’t really be much at all if the romantic elements were removed. I didn’t really like Luna or Miles as characters (especially Keaton’s character), and that chemistry that worked out so well in PIAS almost seems nonexistent here. Or rather the actor chemistry is there, but the character chemistry isn’t there. By the end of the movie and you get the heartfelt ending I couldn't bring myself to care whether Luna and Miles reconciled their love or not, because I couldn't bring myself to care about the characters at all. The tagline for the poster does indeed say ‘A Love Story About Two People Who Hate Each Other’, but there’s a long-ass distance between that and 10 Things I Hate About You, if you catch my drift.
Obviously I didn't care for Sleeper all that much, but I wouldn't say I hated it either. It was average I could you say, a C to C+, enjoyable enough to watch at the time. It’s just doesn’t have anything that would make me want to go back, and it’s not a film I would’ve regretted not seeing. If you’re way too into romantic comedies or you’re working your way through Woody Allen then yeah, sure, but if you’re not? Eh, I’d say you’re better off elsewhere.
RESULT: NOT RECOMMENDED
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