Re-Evaluating Bad Movies

I was expecting the worse when I sat down to watch Peter Sellers’ final performance as Inspector Clouseau. The Pink Panther Strikes Again is a great babysitter for Doomsday’s children, but it’s a batshit crazy movie for anyone over the age of 6. The franchise had gone off the rails and I fully expected to watch Peter Sellers go off into space with Roger Moore. But surprisingly, and this is good news for IanTheCool as he goes off on his Clouseau journey, is sorta back to basics (at least for the 70’s run of Pink Panther movies). Mel Brooks collaborator Ron Clark stepped in to cleanup the script (Sellers and director Blake Edwards weren’t on speaking terms by this point) and we get the most cohesive screenplay in the entire 70’s run.

A criminal organization (inspired by the French Connection) puts out a hit on Clouseau. They believe they succeeded and set out to do a heroin deal in Hong Kong. As SnoBorderZero can see in the photo above, even in 1978, Blake Edwards couldn’t wait to do more yellow face jokes. Anyhoo, believed to be dead, Clouseau goes undercover in attempt to arrest them.

One of my main complaints of this series, going back to the 60’s films, is that Clouseau never does any meaningful detective work. He’s a buffoon in his own movies and the plots often don’t matter. You’re watching a 90-minute skit starring Peter Sellers. That issue is solved here as Clouseau is actually an active participant in the investigation. Granted, most of the work is done by Dyan Cannon (who plays the villain’s disgruntled ex-mistress), so Clouseau really only has to get the bad guys to lead him to the heroin. But that’s more than he’s done in the entire series.

Cannon is great. She’s the best of the leading ladies. Cato is finally given significant screen time and joins in to help bust the drug deal. I’m sure 1godzillafan was thrilled about that. Cato is awesome. I also love Henry Mancini’s score throughout the Hong Kong scenes. Goofy but fun. The bad guys weren’t too bad. Robert Loggia has a bit part as a thug. Dreyfus still has the honor of being the series best villain. No competition here. Overall, I hate to say it, is this the best Pink Panther movie??!! The original is a perfectly fine 60’s crime caper if you accept it’s not a proper Clouseau film. Shot in the Dark gets all the praise cause it established all the comedy tropes but the script is lousy. Return is the funniest. I think 1godzillafan will attest to that, but again, the script is lousy. Strikes Again is so batshit crazy, it’s arguably the most memorable one. When the dust settles, I suspect it’ll be the only one I’ll actually remember. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good movie. That leaves us with Revenge, which is so inoffensive (let’s ignore the yellow face), that it could be included in the conversation. I think the original and Revenge are the two you can accept for what they are.

CURSE OF THE PINK PANTHER (1983)




Following the death of Peter Sellers, MGM/UA wanted to continue the series with Dudley Moore (which is a great idea), but Blake Edwards declined (feeling that only Sellers can be Clouseau), and opted to resume the franchise with a new character. Before he did that, however, he made 1982’s Trail of the Pink Panther, which is not a real movie, and just a highlight reel of Sellers as Clouseau. IanTheCool can ignore that one. Only relevant part of Trail is that it sets up Curse. Clouseau goes missing and a New York detective, Clifton Sleigh, sets out to find him. Curse follows Sleigh’s search for Clouseau, while different groups try to stop him. It’s just a rehash of Strikes Again in the sense that people are trying to murder our main character. It all concludes with Sleigh meeting Roger Moore and the movie heavily implying that Clouseau faked his death and now lives as Roger Moore. Why? God only knows. The movie then ends with David Niven, Robert Wagner and Capucine, from the original Pink Panther, stealing the diamond one last time. It all comes full circle. Overall, I didn’t hate it, but Dudley Moore as Clouseau was the right decision. Blake Edwards fucked up.

SON OF THE PINK PANTHER (1993)

The original Pink Panther series comes to an end in this rather pointless sequel starring Roberto Benigni as Clouseau's illegitimate son. I don't mind Benigni (most people in America don't find him amusing) but his brand of comedy isn't necessarily in alignment with Peter Seller's. If anyone was to do Pink Panther movies in the 1990's, the obvious choice would have been Mike Myers. It also doesn't seem like Blake Edwards knew how to adapt these Looney Tunes style of Pink Panther movies for the 90's. Sure, John Hughes was making Home Alone movies and Baby's Day Out during this period, but the protagonists in those movies weren't idiots. Edwards needed to accept that audiences didn't want to spend 90 minutes watching a buffoon.

thebtskink, we did it again!

I finally watched Showgirls. I was expecting a complete disaster, but it was better than its reputation suggests. I mean, still not good. But its sort of competent?

I just watched John Huston's Moby Dick for the first time. Not a perfect movie but I liked it a lot. It always made me laugh that they made In The Heart of the Sea almost ten years ago that turned out to be a massive bomb because everything about it seemed so strange. Imagine the pitch to Warner Bros. execs.

Ron Howard: Boy do we have a movie for you!
Execs: Sweet, lay it on us.
Ron Howard: You know Moby Dick?
Execs: Oh yeah, so you want to remake Moby Dick?
Ron Howard: No.
Execs: What?
Ron Howard: We want to make a movie on the story that Moby Dick was based on.
Execs: Uhhh, why not just remake Moby Dick?
Ron Howard: Because this is the story behind Moby Dick?
Execs: But nobody gives a shit about Moby Dick.
Ron Howard: Exactly, so we're going to do a story about the story.
Execs: If people don't care about Moby Dick why would they care about the real story?
Ron Howard: We need $200 million.

But I was thinking, if they were going to remake it why not cast Russell Crowe as Ahab?  He's the right age, right temperment, he'd be a good fit.  Considering how beloved Master and Commander is despite also being a bomb and never getting the sequel(s) it deserved, it would be a solid companion piece if they actually tried to do the novel justice.  Even without having read the book you can tell that Huston's movie is very abbreviated and trimmed, it's fun and exciting but doesn't feel complete.  Someone pitch this.  And not Ron Howard.

This shit still makes enough money to get mentioned in a shareholder meeting.

automaton-media.com/en/news/1994-street-fighter-movie-starring-van-damme-is-still-a-money-maker-according-to-latest-capcom-shareholder-meeting/

Only thing I remember about Iron Will is Kevin Spacey. I was Team Balto.

Texasville

I recently rewatched The Last Picture Show having last seen it around 2008 or 2009, maybe even earlier?  I picked up the Criterion edition a few months back and when I broke out the blu ray I remembered that it also came with Texasville, the sequel that I didn't even know existed until the disc came in the mail.  I rewatched, or should I say reabsorbed The Last Picture show and the somber, desolate tone mixed with teenage angst spoke to me in pretty profound ways that I can get to in some other post but it had me wondering what Texasville had to offer.  Considering how it was released almost 20 years after Last Picture Show but took place 33 years after the events of the previous movie, I was mildly curious how it would attempt to recapture the themes or characters.  Do we really want or need to see what these people are like in middle age?  I wasn't sure at first but after seeing it the answer was a hard, solid 'no we do not.'

So straight up, this movie is strange on almost every level.  I don't want to harp too much on comparing it to LPS but even as a standalone movie it's just bonkers.  The movie centers on a middle-aged Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges) as he juggles a struggling business, a stale marriage and a bunch of problematic children.  His main hobby seems to be sleeping with the wives of the men he knows, but it gets stranger because his teenage son is sleeping with the same women.  And it's not some shameful secret, it's something they openly discuss and joke about.  In fact, the whole town seems to know of this father-son tag team duo including Duane's wife played by an uncharacteristically hot Annie Potts, but everyone seems to be pretty okay with it.  Then Cybill Shepherd's Jacy shows up again and you would think things would get awkward for Duane but they don't.  In fact Duane's family latches onto Jacy and they become great friends.  I understand that it was based off a book that was published a few years before the movie was released but just because someone publishes a book doesn't mean that it needs to go into production.  I don't ever plan on reading the book but I would at least be interested in reading the jacket to see if there's a point to it.

The thing about this movie is that there is no reason it should exist.  Not only does it add nothing to this overarching story or characters, it doesn't even feel like it belongs as a sequel to LPS.  The only thing Texasville has in common is that it features some of the same characters but most of these characters are completely meaningless to the story and are only there to make you go 'remember them?'  Cloris Leachman, Randy Quaid, even Timothy Bottoms serve very little purpose.  Bottoms' character Sonny is probably the most confusing part of the movie.  In LPS he was the main character with Duane being his best friend/secondary main character.  We watched as Sonny stayed in Anarene while Duane worked in an oil field then shipped off to Korea.  Sonny suddenly marries Jacy, her parents squash it immediately and finally the movie ends as he sits with Leachman's Ruth, the older woman he had been having an affair with.  It's a bleak, uncomfortable movie about youth and coming of age in a town that almost serves as its own character.  In Texasville, none of this is referenced.  Duane is the central character while Sonny is relegated to a very supporting character who holds very little sway in the movie.  There is almost no mention of his affair with Ruth, his hours long marriage to Jacy, Duane's stint in the army, basically the things that might cause tension here.  We spend time with these people but there's no reason for us to care about them.  There's no reason for us to care about anything because there's no reason we needed a sequel to The Last Picture Show.  I don't even think Bogdanovich knew exactly what he was going for as the movie feels so rudderless, I still don't know what the main point of it was.  It's one thing to watch teenagers in a dying town, but in Texasville the town isn't dying and the setting isn't even really a factor.  It's also hard to relate to middle aged folks whose main problems are that they're in debt and are sleeping with each other.  The mood and feeling of the original film are completely gone.

Looking at Letterboxd I see that there are a lot of 4 1/2 and 5 star reviews.  At first glance I thought that was insane and these were reviews by hot take internet movie buffs, then I realized they were for the most part talking about the 2 1/2 hour black and white directors cut that was also included in the Criterion release.  I decided to watch the theatrical version because if I watched the directors cut I would have nothing to compare it to.  Not only that, just because something is a 'directors cut' doesn't mean it's a vast improvement on the original cut, just ask Oliver Stone.  I figured if I found Texasville the least bit interesting I would watch the directors cut at some point.  But now I never want to watch the directors cut.  Why would I ever watch the directors cut?  I'm not invested or interested in revisiting these characters in any way, at least in this setting.  I cannot imagine what improvements were included that would make this aimless drama into some forgotten masterpiece.  I try not to compare my thoughts to others online but these people leaving the 5 star reviews are the same people who think Moonraker is the best Bond movie and Godfather III is better than the first two.  They just want to be different.

C- so says Doomsday, and that might be generous

In my other thread I've been plugging away at Andrei Tarkovsky movies.  While it's gratifying watching some heavy, philosophical films I felt the need to balance it out somehow so I didn't become more of a curmudgeon than I already am.  After a good friend of mine brought them up, I thought that balance could be served with the Terminator movies that I have yet to see.  As I've said before, the first two Terminator movies, especially Terminator 2, were some of the formative films in my upbringing and in me becoming a film fan.  Terminator 3 came out when I was 18 and while I didn't enjoy it as much as T2 and although it was missing James Cameron behind the camera, I still welcomed a new Terminator film into my life.  When I found out that they were making another Terminator film though, one without Schwarzenegger or Cameron's involvement, I was almost offended.  The gall, the audacity.  I didn't see it and at the time it didn't sound like I missed much.  Likewise, I decided to skip Terminator Genisys and Terminator: Dark Fate and only heard worse and worse things.  Why would people want to shit on this franchise that I and millions of other people love so much?  Well, thanks to Andrei Tarkovsky I felt like it was high time I found out.


Terminator Salvation


The only Terminator film to primarily take place during the 'war against the machines,' Terminator Salvation spares no expense for star power.  Featuring Christian Bale as John Connor, Bryce Dallas Howard as Kate (they don't call her Katherine Brewster, I imagine because it's one of the worst names for a character in cinema), Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese (RIP on both counts), along with Helena Bonham Carter, Common and Michael effing Ironside, this Terminator sequel surprised me in that it actually felt like it was trying to justify its own existence and wasn't a straight up cash grab, at least on the surface.  By that I mean, it tries to develop its own story and stand on its own rather than recycling the 'killer cyborg traveling through time' storyline yet again.  It opens on Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a present day prisoner who's about to be executed but at the last minute signs his remains over to Helena Bonham Carter and her 'experiments.'  Twenty years later, John Connor attacks a Skynet location which is where Wright has been 'stored' after being turned into a Terminator.  Not sure why he wasn't activated, why his memory wasn't wiped, it was all kind of unexplained, but he goes looking for answers and on the way runs into Kyle Reese.  Connor, Wright and Reese all converge at Skynet's base while attempting to end the war once and for all while also making sure they preserve the past/future timeline that will secure their victory.  For a story that's attempting to further the Terminator mythos that doesn't sound like a bad story, right?  Well even though the intentions may be noble, behind the camera we find ourselves with, uhh, McG.  While we get an overabundance of futuristic, post-apocalyptic war movie action, it lacks characterization and tries to make up for that with some forced, sometimes very forced Terminator callbacks.  When Connor tells Kate 'I'll be back' and we smash cut to a boom box blasting You Could Be Mine, I had a bit of an eye roll to put it mildly.  

This movie came out 15 years ago so it's easy to look back at it with 20/20 hindsight.  The movie itself came and went and the planned franchise was quickly put on ice.  I think because it wasn't planned as a stand alone film, the movie feels like a long television episode of a series.  It drops you in the thick of it with little introduction to any of the characters or personal drama and the central plot of the movie is just 'the mission.'  Compared to the other Terminator films this feels thin even though it tries to keep things fast paced and action packed.  It feels like a post-apocalyptic war movie but it doesn't feel like a Terminator movie, no matter how many Terminators are featured.  Also, and some may disagree, at the end of the day this is Schwarzenegger's franchise.  While we would discover that his casting doesn't guarantee success in these films, his presence is sorely missed and a CG digi double fight doesn't carry the same heft.  Christian Bale was a huge star when the movie came out but it's not his torch to carry.  If it was announced tomorrow that he was cast as Indiana Jones I still would never watch it.  But Bale sure brings it here, you can tell he takes his role as John Connor and military leader seriously.  He almost makes up for Worthington's character whose reason for existing is pretty baffling.  The conclusion with him sacrificing his life for John also feels unmotivated and forced.  His death doesn't really accomplish anything nor does it further the arc of any other character.  But those points aside, the movie itself was entertaining in several parts and how bad can a movie with Michael Ironside really be?  I'll admit, I didn't dislike Terminator Salvation as much as I thought I would.  I would have several notes for it, it's riddled with issues and ending on a verbal 'to be continued' in a now dead franchise doesn't help but there are certain things about it that help it stand out and like I said, I give it credit for trying to continue the story to a degree.  It's not a movie I'll ever watch again but it exceeded my low expectations and for that I'll give it a pass.

They coulda done some cool stuff with that movie but they kinda bailed at the last minute. I thought they were gonna kinda made Connor a terminator or at least a machine woulda been pretty sweet.

And I don't think mcg was that bad of a director. The color and production are kinda wonky at times but I wasn't too mad at his choices. He directed that uglies movie was kinda glad to see he's still working.

Uncharacteristically? Annie Potts is always hot, sir. Always.