Double Feature: Play It Again, Sam (1972) & Sleeper (1973), directed by Woody Allen

Originally written for the Tricycle Offense

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

Scrooged (1988), directed by Richard Donner

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Christmas Must Be Tonight", by The Band

     I’m not totally up to snuff, or I’m suffering from writer’s block, or my hands have finally caught up to the crap my brain has come up with, so here’s a short article I managed to come up with as my gift to all of you you. No, you can’t return it.

     Well it’s that time of year again folks: Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Winter Solstice/Festivus. A time of festivity and joy, where families and friends gather together to enjoy fine foods, exchange gifts with one another, bask in the glow of each other’s company and attempt to not be utterly rancid dicks to each other for at least 24 hours. Or, if you’re the kind of miserable dick that I sometimes tend to be, it’s a disgusting display of consumerism and greed that long since killed any sense of goodwill that the season originally had and replaced it with high suicide rates and naked opportunism. Mostly however, I tend to see Christmas and the assorted other holidays much in the same way I see the life of Batman: Full of childhood trauma, often times drifts into dark places, but ultimately a force for good. If you see any clowns at your Christmas party though, you get the fuck out of there. No good can come of it.

     Speaking of movies, Christmas is the one holiday (aside from Halloween) big enough to have it’s own film hype train surrounding it, like a festive Flava Flav. Most of them are, of course, schmaltzy three dollar productions shat out by the Hallmark Channel or ABC to appease moms and people with a high saccharine tolerance, but there are a few gems that really justify the concept of a Christmas movie. The most famous is easily It’s A Wonderful Life (which actually helped to destroy Frank Capra’s film career), but you also have A Miracle on 34th Street, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Nightmare Before Christmas, Home Alone, Rudolf and the other Rankin-Bass animated films, A Christmas Story and probably others that I’ve forgotten or that you the reader care more about. It’s no easy task creating an iconic Christmas movie, and I’m not talking about a movie that is just set on Christmas either. You have to take that same message of peace and love that every other X-mas movie out there is trying to push and twist it just enough that it stands apart from the others without alienating itself from the message it’s meant to represent. Many have tried to create a Christmas movie that will be remembered throughout the ages, and they all been washed away into the great yuletide sea. Does Scrooged, the film I’ve decided to write about this time, share a similar fate to it’s brethren? We shall see.

     We shall see.

     Directed by one Mr. Richard Donner, whom you might recall from such films as Superman, The Goonies, The Omen and the Lethal Weapon series, Scrooged is a slick 80s take on the classic Christmas Carol story by Charles Dickens, which was about a old rich bastard who is tortured by three ghosts on Christmas Eve into being charitable in case you can’t check wikipedia for some reason. SNL alum and comedic legend Bill Murray plays Francis Xavier Cross, a rich young bastard who just so happens to be the president of the IBC television network, which is about to broadcast an international extravaganza edition of ‘Scrooge’, as they call it. Frank is a miserable dick, as you might expect, whose relentless drive upwards has alienated himself from everyone around him, including his brother James, assistant Grace (with requisite ailing child, although he’s not so much dying of some sort of super-polio as he is the strong silent type), and his former lover and love interest, Claire Phillips. One night, Frank is visited by his old business partner Lou Hayward, who warns him of continuing down the path he’s made for himself so far, and drops the truth bomb: Frank will be visited by three ghosts, who will attempt to show him the error of his ways, or else. You can probably guess what happens from there.

     Predictable though it may be, there are a lot of good points to Scrooged. It’s funny for one, as you might expect from a film that counts Bill Murray, Bobcat Goldthwait amongst it cast. Not quite laugh out funny in my opinion, except for perhaps a few moments with in Ghost of Christmas Present, but there’s a low simmering humour that persists throughout the film. I also quite like the special effects, especially the Ghost of Christmas Future moments (is this always where the budget goes in these types of stories?), which are fantastical without being overblown. It’s something that I’ve always enjoyed about the Donner films that I’ve seen; they’re fantastical without being full-on fantasy, grounded without mulling about in hard-nosed reality. Scrooged is a bit too goofy to work out as well as Superman in that regard, but it also feels like a film that is having fun being a film, and isn’t that what we as an audience like to see? I mean, that’s why Guardians of the Galaxy made 80 trillion dollars right? Because it was fun?

     Hopefully that was one coherent paragraph.

     The major complaint I have with this movie also happens to be its major strength: that of it’s lead actor, Bill Murray. Now I love Bill Murray as much as the next guy, and he’s been in plenty of films that I consider the pinnacle of comedy, but that’s kind of the problem. Frank Cross is supposed to be this caustic, self-serving prick, the Ebenezer Scrooge of Scrooged and I can’t see Bill Murray in that role. A smug jerk sure, the sarcastic asshole that you can’t help but like, but a Dickensian heel? No. In fact, whenever you see Bill Murray trying to lay down the Scrooge, it just comes off as forced and unnatural, like he’s trying to take the piss out the role. Which is fine on some levels of course, you know what you were buying into with Murray in the 80s, but it undercuts the more dramatic moments of the film and (once again) makes those scenes come off as unnatural. Even if I had never seen a Murray-centric film before, I can’t buy him as an evil boss, or really anything other than a guy who has mastered the art of the snark. Which is probably why he did The Razor’s Edge and all those Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch movies, to prove he had acting chops and shut fuckers like me up.

     So is Scrooged worthy of being considered a Christmas classic? Eh, could be. It’s got enough black humor and jokes for the adults while not being too dark for kids to enjoy, much like The Goonies, which I would guess classifies it as ‘fun for the whole family’. It’s got a little bit of happy, a dash of sad, and it ends on the positive message that you want out of a Christmas movie. I wouldn’t say I loved it, but I certainly wouldn’t have a problem placing it within the Christmas movie rotation next time winter rolls around. Try it out for yourself, maybe you’ll feel the same way.

Result: Recommended

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! See you all next year!

5 Pretty Bad Film Adaptations of 5 Pretty Good TV Shows

I’m in a little bit of a depressive state at the moment, so hopefully all of my faithful imaginary readers will understand that I couldn’t muster up the will to actually do a new movie write up at the moment. Major depression doesn’t mix well with Seasonal Effectiveness Disorder I suppose. Not putting out something makes me feel like more of a failure than I already do however, so I’ve decided to trot out another edition of everyone’s favorite system of structured and organized information: a list! Because if there’s one thing the internet needs more of, it’s lists. And pornographic pictures of cartoon horses, apparently.

They say in our jaded modern age that there’s nothing original anymore.That the bigwigs in charge of Hollywood are so afraid of potentially losing out on ‘phat stacks’ (film industry term for money) that they run any halfway decent idea into the ground as much as possible, which is why we as the movie-going audience are subjected to the three R’s -- reboots, remakes and re-imaginings. Which is certainly true to an extent, but the idea of copying an already popular idea has been around since the creation of film as an artistic medium. Throughout the wild & wonderful history of film, there have been movies based on plays, books, comic books, operas, rock operas, radio shows, video games, board games, action figures, and of course television programs. The transition from television to film (and vice versa)is not an easy one; you lose out on a continual narrative and ability to attract an audience over a period for a single chance to push the basic essence of a product, ideally one that entices the original fans and draws in new ones as well.. Occasionally it works out pretty well (The Muppet Movie, The Fugitive, The Addams Family), but in just as many cases it turns out not so well. So, since more people are interested in reading something essentially negative than positive, I’ve come up with 5 instances in which a good TV show ended up stumbling on its way to the theatre. Read on and find out just how bad my arguments are, because I’m sure I’m wrong about something.

5. Mystery Science Theater 3000 The Movie (1996), directed by Jim Mallon

If there was one show that I could give credit for sparking my interest in films beyond just watching them, it’s Mystery Science Theater 3000. While ‘watching a show about watching other people watch a movie’ sounds like a concept ripe for disaster, it had just the right collection of amazingly funny people attached to it to make the show into an all-time classic, cult or otherwise. Indeed, the fact that Joel Hodgson, Mike Nelson and the rest of the cast have been able to find success doing the exact same thing in Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic (although not quite as good in my opinion) proves that, much like The Daily Show, it was a program simple enough that the comedic potential was as endless as the legions of shitty movies pumped out year after year. Seeing them be funny and know movies all those years ago made me want to be funny and know about movies as well, and I think I’ve succeeded at failing to do either of those things in my own work. Mom would be so proud.

I suppose it’s a bit weird then, to declare my enormous love for MST3K in the above paragraph but place Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie in a list of bad film adaptations, which would seem to be a contradiction. The problem, at least for me, is that there’s nothing that really sets this movie apart from the original series in any way. Much like Monty Python’s first film And Now for Something Completely Different, MST3K: TM is basically an episode of the show, only with no commercials and with a slight visual upgrade. Which isn’t necessarily bad, since it’s doing exactly what made it popular in the first place, but by only doing what the original show did it feels like something of a missed opportunity. The same could be said for the film they’re lampooning within the film (This Island Earth), which is a fairly bad movie but not nearly as bad as some  some of the better episodes, like Manos, The Hands of Fate or The Final Sacrifice. If it had been Plan 9 from Outer Space perhaps, to round out the Ed Wood trilogy the show had started with Bride of the Monster and The Violent Years, or maybe the Roger Corman shithouse classic The Terror (starring Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff), then maybe the case could have been made for ‘the movie so bad it couldn't be seen on television’ or something. Maybe touch upon antagonist Dr. Forrester’s goal for the film equivalent of torture that’s been running through the entire series.

That being said, I don’t know what a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie could have been other what it was, because I don’t see them making a Holy Grail like Python. It’s not like it’s bad either, it’s as funny as any episode of the show, all the characters behave as they should, etc. etc. It’s just not a particularly special episode and after years of making fun of movies, I feel like when they finally had the chance to make a movie about making fun of movies, the final product should have reflected that. Oh well, I should really just relax.

4. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), directed by David Lynch

Out of all the projects that surrealist film director David Lynch has ever worked on, including that one PS2 commercial with the baby, none have had as long-lasting and as ardent a following as Twin Peaks. Long before your True Detectives and Fargos and Cumberbatch's had quirky characters solving crimes involving horrible murders, FBI agent Dale Cooper was tracking a vicious serial killer in the Pacific Northwest and nursing a crippling cherry pie addiction. Part soap opera, part crime thriller, part supernatural nightmare, Twin Peaks was of the most unique programs on television, and retains its unique  flavor even years later, in this apparent renaissance age of television. Even though it only lasted for two seasons, and ended on one of the biggest bullshit cliffhangers I’ve ever seen, I still ended up loving most of the characters and ultimately enjoyed my watch-through of the series. If you happen to be interested in Twin Peaks, both netflix and hulu carry both seasons, so you can watch it for yourself. They’re even filming a followup miniseries to finish the series that’s supposed to come out next year I believe, so you’ll be able to blow through the entire TP experience with relative ease.

One year after the series had ended, Lynch released Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, a feature-length film and the first time ever that David Lynch ever returned to something he had already done before. Rather than address that fucking cliffhanger, Fire Walk With Me is in actuality a prequel, the least popular of the quels. Specifically, it relates to Laura Palmer, the infamous teenager whose death and the resulting mystery kicks off the show, and her final days leading up to her death. It’s not a very pleasant death of course, and we also get to see the moral degradation of Laura Palmer that she attempts to mask behind a facade of wholesome perfection, much like every other David Lynch movie, as well as the vaguely supernatural elements that is also like every other David Lynch movie. We also get cameos by David Bowie and Kiefer Sutherland, who end up doing absolutely nothing of consequence.

The issue with Fire Walk With Me is the same issue I have with a lot of prequels: what’s the point of watching it? People who have seen the show know how the Laura Palmer story ends, know who murdered her and know that she was into some dark shit, and people who haven’t seen the show would only be spoiled on the outcome of an entire  season or so of buildup. We also get almost none of the cast of the show in the film and thus very few of the colorful characters that people had come to know, including Dale Cooper (who only has a minor role), who is easily the most popular character in the show. Instead we get some other FBI agents instead, who exist solely for the purpose to set up the premise that Twin Peaks is a weird place worth investigating. Which doesn’t really need to happen since we already know Coop visits the town because he’s in pursuit of a serial killer, and he connects it to Twin Peaks due to his unusual methods of investigation. I suppose it gives you a better sense of who Laura Palmer was, makes you more sad to see her murdered, maybe even gives you a better sense of the world TP takes place but then you could say the same thing for Phantom Menace. We don’t need to see Darth Vader as a child, and we don’t need to see Laura Palmer when she was alive, so we end up watching for the details and not the film itself. Again, what’s the point?

If you’re already watching through Twin Peaks, then yeah, I guess I could recommend it, even though you’re probably already planning on seeing it. For those who haven’t started watching it or have no plans to see it, then I really couldn’t. Aside from the whole spoilers issue which has already been addressed, when taken by itself Fire Walk With Me is one of the lesser films of a director who’s already the most ‘hit-or-miss’ filmmaker in Hollywood. And that’s why it made it the list.

3. Inspector Gadget (1999), directed by David Kellogg

Some of you out there in the material world might remember a little show by the name of Get Smart, a comedy show created by the legendary Mel Brooks which ran from 1965-1970, which featured Don Adams as the bumbling yet lovable secret agent Maxwell Smart fighting against an evil terrorist organization known KAOS. Some of you may also remember a little show by the name of Inspector Gadget, a cartoon show created by Andy Heyward  which ran from 1983-1986, which featured Don Adams as the voice of a bumbling yet lovable cyborg police inspector fighting against an evil terrorist organization known as M.A.D.. This is not a coincidence.

Probably.

Although I wasn’t old enough to enjoy the show during its original run, and I never bothered with the subsequent spin offs, I fondly remember watching the show when it ran in syndication back in the 90’s. Much like with Godzilla, another beloved character from my childhood, having a brand new movie in the theaters that I could love was everything I could have asked for and more. Tristar’s Godzilla was ultimately a disappointment, since the studio apparently wanted to make the last half of Jurassic Park 2 again and not a Godzilla film, as was Disney’s live-action attempt at Inspector Gadget released a year later. Not quite on the same level as Puff Daddy sampling Kashmir, but bad enough to talk about for a bit. Both films also featured Matthew Broderick in a major role. This is not a coincidence

Probably.

There are plenty of things about IG99 that are worth decrying in a public forum, but I’m feeling lazy in a metatextual kind of way, so instead here are some shitshow highlights, presented in a list within a list.

• Taking the gravel-voiced master of evil known as Dr. Claw and turning him into some business dude literally sporting a metal claw.
• Matthew Broderick attempting a Don Adams/Peter Sellars level of goofiness and failing miserably
• In fact, the entire film attempting to be a live-action cartoon, and failing miserably.
• Matthew Broderick’s evil twin with his Gary Busey teeth.
• Andy Dick
• The Gadgetmobile, which you would think is voiced by Sinbad since it’s the 90’s but is actually voiced by D.L. Hughley.
• Andy Dick again
• Spawning an even more abysmal DTV sequel a couple years later, notable for seeing Matthew Broderick replaced with French Stuart of all people.

Just to name a few. I could probably come up with a couple more reasons as to why this particular flop was a bad adaptation of a decent tv series, but honestly my memory is a bit fuzzy, and I’m not getting paid to revisit past trainwrecks. At least not until I start that unsuccessful patreon. #hereshoping

2. Wild Wild West (1999), directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

A long long time ago, when Will Smith was thinking of leaving the rap/Fresh Prince game behind and entering the lucrative world of Hollywood movie acting, he and his and agent sat down and hashed themselves out a plan for becoming the biggest star in Hollywood. The trick, as it seems, was that you never wanted to be in anything that was potentially controversial, never anything that was too weird and never anything that didn’t have a lot of money attached. Basically either a blockbuster action movie or an inspirational oscar-bait drama, so as to capture both the casual moviegoing audience and the critics in one fell swoop. You’ll never see Will Smith in a quiet little Wes Anderson flick, but that upcoming Suicide Squad by WB, a multi-million dollar PG-13 comic book movie? He’s on that shit like white on Bill O'Reilly.

It’s not exactly a view on filmmaking that I follow, of course I’m not a Hollywood so what the fuck do I know, but it’s no doubt worked out well for Smith when you take a look at his career. Men in Black did well enough to get a trilogy and an animated series, Independence Day is supposedly getting a sequel despite it being awful, and even Hancock was really popular for about 15 minutes. While he’s always in bridesmaid mode on the acting front, there’s not many cases where you’d say that his performance is what brought down a movie. He maintains a consistent B average, and it is this consistency that has allowed him great success as a Hollywood superstar. The rest of his family are mediocre of course, but at least they have those ‘Parents Just Don’t Understand’ royalties to fall back on.

One notable black mark on Will Smith’s filmography that’s not called I Am Legend  is of course Wild Wild West, in which Smith and Kevin Kline fight a man with no legs and a giant steampunk spider with magical steampunk weapons, as was all the rage in the late 1800s. Perhaps moviegoers were outraged at the historical inaccuracies of Will Smith being a government agent long before he would’ve been allowed to vote or even be employed as said government until the mid 20th century, maybe they had grown tired of Smith’s antics after WWW after lifted almost everything from the far more successful Men in Black from two years prior, sometimes you can smell shit when it’s right in front of your face, who can say for sure? It made money of course, which I imagine was the only thing Mr. Smith was interested in, but the critical reception to the film has ensured that this particular IP is will be box office cancer will for a long, long time. Expect the Wild Wild West reboot coming to theaters in the near future.

It’s a shame really that Hollywood had to completely fuck up the film adaptation of the Wild Wild West, because the television isn’t all that bad. Maybe even a cult classic, to use an overused term. It’s certainly a product of its time (1965-1969) in many ways: there’s nothing in the way of continued narrative, all storylines and characters introduced in an episode are resolved and disposed of by next week, James West is the typical uncomplicated whitebread hero who never says or does anything out of line, and there’s no controversial or overtly violent subject matter (although the level of violence was one of the excuses given to it’s cancellation I believe, much like in the case of Brisco County Jr.), but it was also ahead of its time as well. It was the first ever steampunk/weird western TV series as far as I know, and the weird and fantastical inventions that the show became known for are quite ingenious without falling outside the realm of possibility. Casting recurring Dr. Loveless as a little person, one Moriarty/Ra’s Al Ghul-esque in his intelligence and competency no less, rather than the legless ‘Confederate scientist’ also seems like a progressive move for 1960s American television. Had it been allowed to continue, had it been done in a time when TV wasn’t so rigid and uniform, I could see The Wild Wild West lasting much longer and being far more popular than it ended up being. It’s American James Bond man, how could that not be popular?

1. Star Trek (1979-2013), directed by a whole bunch of people

There have been many great science-fiction series throughout the many decades of television’s existence. Doctor Who, The Outer Limits, Battlestar Galactica and it’s subsequent reboot, Babylon 5, Farscape, Stargate SG-1, and probably a couple more that don’t come to mind, but one of the oldest and most popular of the bunch is Star Trek, without a doubt. Created by Gene Roddenberry in 1966, Star Trek envisioned a world where humans had finally resolved all the issues that we had been killing and destroying each other over for the past entirety of our existence and were now free to explore the universe as a unified people, meeting strange new life forms that were all humanoid in shape and spoke English for some reason and foiling the efforts of hostile species that would otherwise destroy that wondrous peace. Although the original series only lasted for about three years, it turned out to be quite popular and eventually ballooned into a franchise. There were the four Trek TV series of course, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager and Enterprise, as well as numerous albums, comic books, novels, video games, board games, erotic fan fiction, and movies. Yes, movies, which most moviegoers will know from the 2009 film by JJ Abrams and its 2013 sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness, although the adventures of the Enterprise go as far back as 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which was the first time the original cast had returned to their now iconic roles. All in all there are around 10 films in the Trek canon, from the Original series all the way up to the Abrams remakes. Not too bad as far as franchises go, when you consider British national treasure Doctor Who has been around even longer than that and can’t seem to corral the budget for a feature-length film.

But they suck.

I should clarify, they don’t all suck, but on average the Star Trek films lean closer to suck than awesome on the quality scale. Whether it was due to studio meddling (Star Trek V), adding shit to canon what didn’t need to to added (why do the Borg need a queen) or stuff that was just weird (time traveling whales), it seems like the commonly touted belief that the odd numbered Star Trek movies were shit isn’t too far from reality. You’d think that once we hit the 2000s and technology allowed us to more accurately represent science fiction the films might have gotten better, but they may have gotten even worse since the olden days. Not because they’re rebooting the universe and messing with Kirk and the others, because I didn’t start watching Trek until Next Generation and have no strong feelings on TOS, but because Abrams is a substandard director who values style over substance. While it may not be perfect, at its core Star Trek is a series that has a clear theme of discovery and utopianism, and those things related to Star Trek should reflect that message. Even dark and brooding Deep Space 9 understood that. It’s not ‘super fun action team lens flare time’ or whatever Abrams was attempting to do, and I think Roberto Orci learned how to write screenplays from overhearing the drunken ramblings of a homeless man, because watching that movie was like an endurance test for the bullshit meter.. Fuck, at least Abrams is moving on to Star Wars where he doesn’t have to think as much, but Orci is still connected to nu-Trek 3, so that’s another franchise down the toilet.

I know there will probably be some who disagree with me on the nu-Trek films, in fact I know at least one friend who liked Into Darkness, or are annoyed by me casting doubt on JJ Abrams and the upcoming Star Wars movie. That’s fine, we all have opinions. What I will ask however is whether the state of Star Trek is any better now than it was then. These new movies have brought ST to the attention of modern audiences, for better or worse, but what has been brought to the franchise beyond those films? Star Trek has had its greatest cultural relevancy as a television show, so where is the new Trek TV series? Where are the video games, the comic books, the novels? Where is anything to take advantage of this new universe, to expand upon it, as was done in the past, or are we expected to just sit and wait for Hollywood to crap out a new movie every couple of years? I’m against running an idea into the ground as much as the next guy, but isn’t world building the big selling point of having a franchise in the first place? So we can see more of the thing we’re throwing our money at? I’m not even that big of a Star Trek fan, even if I seem to have an opinion on how everything should be done, but it seems like a wasted opportunity to me. And that is why I consider the Star Trek films to be lackluster adaptations. The End.

There you have it. Feel free to agree, disagree, or ignore this article altogether.

Doctor Who (1996), directed by Geoffrey Sax

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Doctorin' the Tardis", by The KLF

     Considering that Doctor Who is the longest running science fiction series in television history (starting with “An Unearthly Child” way back in 1963) and has since then spawned enough spin-offs, comics, hit singles, video games, books and films to become a full fledged multi-media franchise, you’d think that would entitle it to some sort of time-based pun for the opening line of this article. Perhaps even an intentionally bad pun, so I can pretend to be awkward and we can all revel in mocking a currently unpopular form of humor. Well I’m sorry to say that we won’t be traveling down that particular path of cliches in this particular article, mostly because I couldn’t think of a pun at the time. Rather we will be revisiting my particular path of cliches, which involves a little opening bit tangentially related to the film, perhaps dipping into some autobiographical territory, before summarizing the film and failing at cogent analysis. Much like sex with the spouse that you’ve long since lost all affection towards, it’s ultimately unfulfilling but consistent.

     I first became aware of Doctor Who after watching the Ninth era episode “The Unquiet Dead” on the Syfy Channel (the channel which hates science fiction so much it calls itself Syfy), but it wasn’t until the Tenth era with David Tennant taking over the role as the Doctor that I started watching the show in earnest and truly became a fan of the character. Once Tennant gave way to Matt Smith (who gave way to Peter Capaldi) and the Stephen Moffat reign began in full however I lost interest, choosing instead to move the large backlog of episodes prior to the modern series. At least in those olden-times episodes I could forgive the ridiculous things that occurred as it being a product of its time, shoestring budgets and all. Even at it’s most campy the old Who never insulted my intelligence the way the way it does in the modern series, which repeatedly attempts to be grandiose and compelling and manages to fail on most of those occasions. In my opinion of course, since I haven’t bothered watching any of Capaldi’s episodes after the first and so have no idea as to the quality of the most recent Doctor Who series. I did hear they made the Master a woman though, and a ‘I’m crazy so I must be kooky’ one at that, which might’ve been interesting if it also didn’t seem on the surface like a poor attempt at shifting the status quo. The series already has a female villain, the Rani, that they could have brought back and built up instead, thereby leaving the Master open for another potential story arc, but instead they decide to genderswap an existing male character and call it progress. Of course it doesn’t really matter if it’s done well, but considering Moffat is the type of artist who sculpts with a jackhammer rather than a chisel, I have my doubts that he could ever write a female character that didn’t lose to a puddle in terms of depth, even if said female character used to have a penis (and was also a cat person).

     But I digress.

     If we want to to get technical, and I know you nerds love technology, Doctor Who has had three films in its 51 year history. The first two, Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks -- Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966), are adaptations of two stories from the original William Hartnell series of Who (The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth respectively) and featured Peter Cushing as an absent-minded human scientist named Doctor Who battling the xenocidal alien squids across time and space. While Cushing would have made for an excellent Doctor, the two 60’s films are their own property and hold no connection to the canon and continuity of the television show. The third film however, a made-for-TV movie simply titled Doctor Who, does in fact fit within the canon of the show. According to wikipedia, it was originally intended to serve as the pilot to an American Doctor Who series and was actually co-produced by Universal Studios, 20th Century Fox and the Fox TV channel, although no such series was ever made. It was also the only appearance of Paul McGann as the 8th iteration of the Doctor until recently, although he is consistently featured in the Doctor Who audio dramas by Big Finish. We may get into the Cushing Who films at some point in the future, but this time we’ll be checking to see if Who ‘96 is up to snuff. Does it serve as a worthy addition to the franchise, or did Geoffrey Sax take a demon dump in the T.A.R.D.I.S.? Only time will tell.

     About 7 years after the conclusion of the show’s ‘Classic’ run, Doctor Who begins with a voiceover by Paul McGann, the 8th Doctor, telling us the backstory to this particular adventure. Some time after the events of “Survival”, the last episode of the Classic series, the Doctor (in his 7th incarnation, played by Sylvester McCoy) transports the Master (the Doctor’s archenemy as well as a fellow Time Lord) to Skaro (the original home of the Daleks) to stand trial for his numerous and horrible crimes. The verdict is death, and since the Master had already exhausted the 13 regenerations afforded him by vague unexplained rules, he gets liquidated with seemingly no issue. The Doctor, in accordance with the decision of the council of Skaro is then tasked with transporting the Master’s remains to the planet Gallifrey, homeworld of the Time Lords, presumably so the rest of the species can piss on his grave. This, as McGann explains, turns out to be a bad idea. #Spoilers

     Sure enough, during the trip to Gallifrey, the Master (who is now a puddle of bad CGI goo, like an off brand T-1000) escapes from his hi-tech urn and sabotages the T.A.R.D.I.S., forcing the Doctor to make an emergency landing in San Francisco circa 1999, on the eve of the Willenium. The Doctor steps out of the T.A.R.D.I.S. and is promptly shot by Chinese thugs in pursuit of thief Chang Lee (who ends up being a somewhat important character but never a likable one), while the Master sets off to enact whatever evil plan he’s come up with this time around. Thanks to the barest minimal efforts of Chang Lee, the Doctor is taken to the hospital, where he comes under the care of Dr. Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook), who is called away from the opera and her apparently pissy boyfriend to attend to him. Despite her great surgical skill (which is told to us but never actually shown) and the pleas of the weakened alien, Dr. Holloway doesn’t take into account the Doctor’s two hearts (Time Lord physiology) and promptly fucks up the surgery. The Doctor, shining beacon of hope to a million worlds across the universe throughout all of time, dies on the operating table, with nary a friend to remember his life or his grand achievements.

     Or so it would have been if the Doctor was some sort of pansy-ass human, as he eventually transforms from his old, mostly dead Sylvester McCoy body into the suave, debonair form of Paul McGann. The Master, in a similar-but-not-quite fashion, becomes a bad CGI goo snake and possesses the body of an EMT by the name of Bruce (Eric Roberts), thereby granting him new life of a sort. This feeble human body is not enough for The Master though: he wants the Doctor’s life, or his future lives to be specific, and if that means opening the magical plot device known as The Eye of Harmony (conveniently located within the T.A.R.D.I.S.) and destroying the Universe as we know it, so be it. It’s up to the new Doctor, along with Grace Holloway, to find the MacGuffin (in this case some sort of microchip in an atomic clock) so that they can fix the T.A.R.D.I.S., close The Eye of Harmony and stop the Master once and for all. A walk in the park for the guy who saves the Earth every week.

     Now I’ve watched a decent amount of movies in my day, and from the movies I choose to write about you folks know I have a certain fondness for movies of an underground, cult, and low-budget nature, because I’m of the mind that a good movie is good regardless of the money thrown at it. So I hope my meaning comes through when I say that Doctor Who looks and feels cheap. The production values of today might be spoiling me as to what to expect from television, but I think that even if I were watching this back in the day I would have found it chintzy as well. The bad CGI snake has already been mentioned, and could probably be forgiven considering the state of computer graphics at the time, but the special effects in general barely seem like an upgrade from the original series, despite coming a decade and with a presumably larger budget than the show ended up with at that time as well. Combined with the cheezy flirtations with melodrama, the grossly out-of-place cartoonish sound effects placed during attempts at ‘comedy’, plus the issues with plot (nothing too outlandish for Doctor Who, but the surrounding elements are pretty bad) and characterization, it’s all mixes together to make a shit stew. It’s a made-for-TV movie that no one could mistake for anything other than a made-for-TV movie, and that’s not a compliment. When you’re dipping into Hallmark Channel territory, you’ve lost all hope.

     One of the main parts of the Doctor Who formula is the addition of a companion who travels with the Doctor and acts as the audience surrogate/damsel in distress, usually a white female in her early 20s (#diversity). Occasionally these usually female companions work well opposite the Doctor and become interesting characters in their own right, like Sarah Jane Smith (who was popular enough to get a spin-off show, The Sarah Jane Adventures) or the Time Lady Romana, and sometimes they’re just a character for the Doctor to bounce dialog off of. Grace Holloway is of the latter, a character that isn’t absolutely horrible but sort of builds up enough bad karma to become unlikable. I’ll give Daphne Ashbrook the benefit of the doubt and say that it was the director and the script that allowed Grace Holloway to come of as such a vapid, wooden character that seemingly exists for the Doctor to get his proto-50 Shades freak on with. Grace Holloway is a character that has no problem making out with a guy that accosted her in a parking lot, a she repeatedly states is mentally ill mind you, less than 24 hours (hell, less than 5 hours) after breaking up with her boyfriend, whom she is never shown to have any feelings for whatsoever. Is this supposed to be a character the audience is supposed to identify with? Is it supposed to be one that we like, that we’re supposed to like interacting with the Doctor? Because she fulfills none of those criteria. In fact, for a franchise that’s lasted long enough to see the bad balance evenly with the good, I’m failing to recall a single secondary character in this film that I actually liked or cared about one way or another. Just morons and chucklefucks the whole way down.

     Then, of course, there are the issues affecting Who canon itself. Making the Master into a bad CGI goo snake is pretty bad, and claiming that the Doctor is half-human seems like a pointless addition for the purposes of plot, but my personal biggest grievance with Doctor Who is the reason they give for the transition from the 7th and 8th Doctors. While I like every incarnation of the Doctor’s character in one way or another, I’ve always had a fondness for Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor, and the fact that his whole death scene is “walk out of T.A.R.D.I.S., get shot by thugs which only appear in that one scene’ is both stupid and unfortunate at the same time. Not that all the Doctors have had grand exits (Sixth Doctor Colin Baker got it even worse) but both Colin and McCoy came in at a time when everything was against them in regards to production, bad administrators, budgetary issues, all in a period where the BBC was trying to phase out the show altogether. Despite all the crap they had to deal with, there are still moments in their respective series when the brilliance that makes Doctor Who great could shine through. They needed some way to get McCoy out and McGann in obviously, but he didn’t get to save the Earth one last time, or stop the Daleks/Cybermen/Zygons/whoever from committing evil space crimes on some innocent planet, he was shot by some extras and died a victim of malpractice. What a goddamn waste.

     As for what I actually liked about the movie...there’s not much, to be honest. As I said before, I like every incarnation of the Doctor in some way, and when McGann isn’t bogged down by the movie’s shit he’s the quirky and enigmatic Time Lord that we’ve come to know and love. Eric Roberts as the Master isn’t all that bad either, even though he dresses like the Terminator and has stupid green eyes, he’s as ridiculously sinister as ever. I think I might prefer the T.A.R.D.I.S., which has gone from the white circled walls of yesteryear into a full-on Victorian mansion motif, complete with stained glass windows and wood-and-stone foundation. It’s a bit excessive but I’m a sucker for late 19th century decor, and it gives a far larger sense of space than the singular room shown in the classic and modern runs of Doctor Who. It makes the T.A.R.D.I.S. feel like the Doctor’s home, rather than just the vehicle he travels in, which is often implied to be the case but rarely shown. Dude’s been traveling the Universe for hundreds of years but I think this might be the only time he’s shown to have actual furniture.

     Doctor Who is not for everyone, but 1996’s Doctor Who is not for anyone. I suppose I might recommend it to DW fans interested in seeing the first and only appearance of the 8th Doctor, but from what I’ve heard the audio dramas from Big Finish do a much better job of fleshing out McGann’s character and adventures, so honestly I’d say go with those instead. To everyone else I’d say that if you’re actually interested in getting into DW, this road leads to nothing but hate and confusion. You’re better off just trying out the modern series, or maybe a Tom Baker serial and seeing how you feel about it then, put this shit off until the last minute. Don’t worry, when it comes to Doctor Who, you’ll always have time to spare.

     Always leave them wishing you had left sooner.

RESULT: NOT RECOMMENDED