6/24/15: The Cause of, and Solution to, All of Life’s Problems

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'80s comedies, ad agencies, advertising agency, advertising industry, Alan C. Peterson, Alar Aedma, alcoholism, Allan Weisbecker, alternate title, bad films, battle of the sexes, Beer, Bill Butler, Bill Conti, brewery, cinema, comedies, David Alan Grier, David Wohl, Dick Shawn, directorial debut, film reviews, films, homophobia, husband-wife relationship, Kenneth Mars, Loretta Swit, masculinity, Mel Brooks, misogyny, Movies, Norbecker, offensive films, over-the-top, Patrick Kelly, Peter Michael Goetz, racist, Rip Torn, satire, Saul Stein, sexist, silly films, spoof, The Selling of America, TV ads, unlikely heroes, William Russ

Every once in a while, a movie comes along that manages to genuinely surprise me, for one reason or another. It might be a film that’s surprisingly good or even unexpectedly great. It might be a “sure thing” that fails miserably, maybe something by a beloved filmmaker that manages to completely miss the mark. On very rare occasions, a movie might surprise with an unexpectedly thought-provoking concept or some heretofore unexplored insights into the human condition. And then, of course, there’s Beer (1985), also known by the much more on-the-nose title The Selling of America.

In this particular case, Beer surprises by being one of the most outrageously misguided, casually offensive films that I think I’ve ever seen. Coming across as a completely tone-deaf attempt to emulate the societal critique of Mel Brooks’ immortal Blazing Saddles (1974), Kelly’s film is stuffed to bursting with so many outdated, honestly offensive observations on race, feminism, masculinity, nationality, gender and sexuality that it makes something like Porky’s (1982) seem progressive. Beer is a “have your cake and eat it, too” kind of film, a movie that wants to shake a finger at society’s ills while gleefully indulging in the same sort of bad behavior.

A.J. Norbecker (Mel Brooks mainstay Kenneth Mars) has a bit of a problem: the German-born brewery owner is experiencing an unprecedented drop in sales and he places the blame squarely on the advertising agency that’s handling his promotional material. As Norbecker sees it, all beer is just “piss-water”: it’s the ads that really make the difference and he wants ads as cool as Miller and the other major players. To that end, he gives the agency’s president, Harley Feemer (Peter Michael Goetz), an ultimatum: beef up their campaign, increase his sales or lose their biggest client.

Behind the scenes, Feemer and the other guys try, in vain, to come up with anything original. Leave it to B.D. Tucker (M.A.S.H.’s Loretta Swit), the agency’s “token female executive” (their phrase, of course) to come up with the only good idea: they need an ad campaign that will appeal to the common, everyday man who’s the actual market for Norbecker Beer…nothing posh, highfalutin’ or pretentious, just a bunch of normal, macho guys drinking beer. Hiring her old friend, former hotshot director/current washed-up alcoholic Buzz Beckerman (Rip Torn, consuming scenery like a black hole), B.D. goes about putting together the ad campaign that will reset Norbecker’s fortune and secure her own future.

As luck would have it, B.D. and Buzz find their ideal spokesmen when they witness a trio of doofuses accidentally stop an attempted robbery in a dive bar. The three guys are perfect for their purposes, mostly because they’re not real people so much as generic templates: Merle (William Russ) is a good-ol’-boy (complete with steer horns on his Cadillac) fish out of water in big, bad New York City; Frankie (Saul Stein) is an Italian-American construction worker with a raging libido and the kind of enormous, stereotypical Italian family that passes around bowls of pasta large enough to drown in; and Elliot (David Alan Grier) is an uber-nerdy black lawyer who gets pushed around at his blatantly racist firm and fights a losing battle, at home, to prevent his young son from listening to boomboxes (no, really).

In no time at all, Merle, Frankie and Elliot are national heroes and superstars: all men want to be them and all women want to bed them, which is quite a change from their former loser/unemployed statuses. With new-found fame, however, comes a whole new raft of problems. Merle begins to feel a loss of identity and pines for the simpler life, Frankie develops erectile dysfunction just as he becomes a sex symbol and formerly nice-guy Elliot is starting to treat his wife and kid like crap. As the men become more and more wrapped-up in their manufactured personas, their real selves begin to fall by the wayside.

As the campaign continues to pick up steam, B.D. looks to find new ways to keep her manufactured stars in the media spotlight, mostly by injecting some all-important sex appeal into the proceedings (“Whip out your Norbecker…Beer!). With feminists around the country in an uproar, Norbecker Beer becomes more popular than ever, cornering a whopping 50% of the U.S. market. Norbecker, obviously ecstatic, sets his sights a little higher: he decides that he wants to take over the European market, as well, believing that a “surprise advertising blitz” will allow him to take over Germany (his first name is Adolph, after all). Will our hapless heroes end up losing their very humanity, becoming as callous and ruthless as the Madison Avenue execs that made them what they are? Will B.D. ever earn the respect that she so desperately wants? Will Adolph conquer Europe? Whip out your Norbecker and find out for yourself!

Make no bones about it: Beer (or The Selling of America, whichever you prefer) is an absolute mess, albeit a fascinating one. The biggest, most obvious issue with the film is that director Patrick Kelly (on his sole production, apparently) and screenwriter Allan Weisbecker (who also wrote an episode of Miami Vice) have absolutely no grasp on the supposedly satirical material whatsoever. Beer ends up in that nebulous “no-man’s-land” between pointing out the systematic stupidity of things like sexism and racism and actively upholding said prejudicial viewpoints. It’s the equivalent of someone who goes out of their way to explain that they aren’t racist before busting out the most virulently racist joke you’ve ever heard. It’s the “feminist” who drops a wink while telling women to get back into the kitchen, the “progressive” who thinks the term “twinkletoes” is a perfectly acceptable descriptor for a gay man.

Time and time again, the film seems to be attempting to poke holes in these very real issues while also attempting to milk them for easy, shallow laughs, many of which end up being more than a little mean-spirited. At one point, B.D. tells Elliot that he isn’t “black enough,” so he goes home and watches a handy “black studies” videotape, picking up such important tips as grabbing his crotch, swaggering and walking around with a boombox. When he shows up to the next shoot looking like an extra from Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1985), B.D. is absolutely shocked: “You look like you just stepped out of the ghetto! When I said ‘black,’ I didn’t mean ‘black-black’!” Funny shit, right?

Or how about the thoroughly “fresh” way in which Frankie’s entire family seems to have stepped out of a dinner-theater version of Mama Mia, complete with endless shouting and fainting when our friendly mook reveals that he plans to move out of their unbelievably crowded apartment? He’s only 29, after all, which is way too early for a good Italian boy to cut the apron strings. Frankie’s also such a completely irresistible ladies’ man that even when he can’t get it up, his conquest-of-the-moment blames it all on herself, begging him profusely for the opportunity to “do better” and not “disappoint him.” Whatta guy, right?

We even get a heart-warming, climatic scene where Merle and Frankie must wade into the “horrors” of a gay bar and “rescue” poor, drunk Elliot from a fate worse than death: that the scene devolves into the kind of rousing fist fight that would be more at home in Road House (1989) probably goes a long way towards indicating where the filmmakers sympathies lie. Never fear, however: it’s all balanced when ol’ Norbecker decides to market a new “lite” beer to gay men. As we see him cavort with a bunch of half-naked men in a sauna, he delivers the immortal pitch-line: “You can take it in the bottle or you can take it in the can.” Because, you know, “can” is also used as a slang word for “butt” and that’s kind of funny, right?

Truth be told, not much in Beer is actually funny, though nearly all of it is pitched at the kind of frantic, hysterical pace that usually denotes slapstick comedy. There are moments that manage to shine through the mess: the various TV commercials are actually pretty good and Buzz gets in a great line about how he once made Alan Ladd look “six feet tall” (I’m a movie nerd: that’s the kind of reference that makes me chuckle, sadly enough). The acting is also just fine (or, at the very least, it’s all of a piece with the film’s overall tone), with fantastic turns from David Alan Grier (in a very thankless role) and Loretta Swit (in an even more thankless role).

While I frequently found myself cringing during the film, my heart really went out to poor Swit: she really is a great actress and she gives the performance her all but it’s a ruthlessly stacked deck, from the get-go. Nothing about the character of B.D. really makes sense (at one point, she actively fights against sexualizing the ads, only to flip-flop a moment later) and the filmmakers seem bound and determined to humiliate her as much as possible. Rather than letting B.D. succeed, since she mounted a successful ad campaign and won a coveted CLEO award, we instead get the pathetic culmination where Merle comes to his senses and decides to leave, spurring B.D. to bed him to stay: “Do I have to get down on my knees,” she asks, with her tone and body language pointing to the obvious.

Turning B.D. into the butt of the film’s joke actually manages to sum up the movie’s problems in a pretty good nutshell: while Beer makes noises about tackling issues like sexism, racism and masculinity, it’s pretty clear that its sympathies lie elsewhere. The feminist protesters are portrayed as shrill nuts, the gay men in the club are lascivious wolves, the German guy is power-mad and the only one who makes any sense is the guy who looks like he stepped out of an old Western. It’s a stacked deck, regardless of how ridiculous the prejudicial portrayals are: showcasing an eye-rollingly obvious example of racism isn’t the same thing as condemning or commenting on it, after all.

There will, undoubtedly, be many who would counter my observations with the rejoinder that Beer is nothing more than a typical, ’80s comedy (almost, but not quite, a sex comedy, to boot): was I really expecting any kind of astute observations on anything? I’ll freely admit that I never expected Beer to be a great film, nor even a particularly smart one. There’s nothing wrong with dumb, politically incorrect comedies: I saw more than my fair share of Police Academy and Porky’s movies, growing up, and I don’t consider myself to be a raging, misogynist beast. This is a very different era than 30 years ago (or even 10 years ago, to be honest) and certain mindsets have a tendency to look as quaint as museum setpieces in this day and age.

At the end of the day, however, Beer can really only be judged on its own merits. As a film, it’s silly, nonsensical, occasionally funny but, for the most part, resoundingly lunk-headed. With too many detours into genuine racism and sexism to have much modern value, Beer/The Selling of America will probably best be remembered as a curio, a representation of a time when films could flaunt flagrant stereotypes, all in the guise of “making a statement.” Don’t be fooled, though: the only statement here is that this Beer is warm, flat and skunky.

2/28/15 (Part One): The Tin Man Rides Into the Sunset

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'90s films, 1990s films, action films, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Locke, CCH Pounder, cinema, cyborgs, Daniel von Bargen, Delta City, Detroit, dystopian future, evil corporations, Felton Perry, film reviews, films, franchises, Fred Dekker, Jill Hennessy, John Castle, Judson Vaughn, Mad Max, Mako, man vs machine, mercenaries, Movies, Nancy Allen, near future, Night of the Creeps, OCP, Officer Lewis, Officer Murphy, Peter Weller, rebels, Remy Ryan, Rip Torn, Robert Burke, Robert DoQui, RoboCop, RoboCop 3, sci-fi, sequels, set in Detroit, Shane Black, Stephen Root, street gangs, The Monster Squad, writer-director

Sometimes, a film can hit just about all its marks and still be disappointing: take Fred Dekker’s RoboCop 3 (1993), for example. Here’s a movie where expectations are already set fairly low (this is the third one, after all, and the first without Peter Weller behind the helmet), yet there’s every possibility to be not only pleasantly surprised but genuinely blown away…after all, Dekker is the unmitigated genius behind two of the greatest genre films of all time, Night of the Creeps (1986) and The Monster Squad (1987). In his more than capable hands, RoboCop 3 could have been the caustically funny, surprising joy that RoboCop 2 (1990) should have been. Instead, the film ends up being a thoroughly competent, middle-of-the-road sci-fi action film with only hints of Dekker’s demented genius. An auteur like Dekker reduced to the role of hired gun? Say it ain’t so, Joe!

The film kicks off with a pretty familiar scenario: the loathsome OCP is still trying to build their dream project, Delta City, over the charred bones and lower-class citizens of near-future Detroit. As in the previous RoboCop films, Detroit is still a war-zone: this time around, the prime offenders are a mob of stereotypical “punk” marauders dubbed The Splatterpunks, who seem to delight in setting any and everything ablaze with Molotov cocktails. In a telling development, OCP is taken over by the Japanese mega-conglomerate, Kanemitsu Corporation, making Detroit the first U.S. city to come under foreign rule. The new president, the titular Kanemitsu (Mako), is a no-nonsense businessman who’s tired of OCP continually missing its deadlines for breaking ground on Delta City.

In order to help along the process of claiming property that the residents don’t want to part with, OCP employs a collection of mercenaries known as Urban Rehabilitation Officers (Rehabs, for short). The Rehabs are, ostensibly, being used to fight the rising crime wave: in reality, they’re being used to forcibly remove the residents of the various slums that OCP wants to demolish. The residents are moved to “refugee camps” where they promptly seem to drop off the grid: the ultimate case of the “haves” doing away with the “have-nots.”

Our intrepid heroes, Officer Murphy (now played by Robert Burke, who looks a little like Weller, if you squint) and Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen) get caught up in the struggle when a group of homeless revolutionaries, led by scrappy Bertha (CCH Pounder) and Nikko (Remy Ryan), a pint-sized hacker who’s ably to handily turn lethal ED-209s into loyal “puppies” with the push of a button, butt heads with the Rehab officers, led by the odious Commander McDaggett (John Castle). In the ensuing chaos, Officer Lewis is killed (RoboCop’s sad “Officer down” line is just as ludicrous on paper as it is in the film) and Murphy is branded a murderous renegade. As OCP and the Kanemitsu Corporation fill the airwaves with bogus stories about RoboCop’s villainy, OCP’s CEO (Rip Torn) and Kanemitsu work behind the scenes to eliminate the cyborg avenger and clear the last roadblock to the long-delayed Delta City. To this end, Kanemitsu unleashes his own cyborg, a lethal-killing machine known as Otomo (Bruce Locke). Will RoboCop and the revolutionaries be able to stop OCP and the Rehabs once and for all or does the dawn of Delta City begin now?

While the first film was a fairly streamlined, subtly ironic sci-fi action film, ala Mad Max (1979), the sequel employed the “bigger is better” aesthetic, pumping up the action scenes while letting some air out of the more subversive ideas. In the process, RoboCop 2 became a much sillier, louder and goofier film, albeit one with enough inherent parallels to the original to serve as a more than suitable follow-up. RoboCop 3, by contrast, is the most cartoonish of the three films, as well as the first of them to earn a PG13 rating: as expected, this means that the film is exponentially less gritty and gorier, although the body count is still exceptionally high…in this case, it just means that hordes of baddies “fall down,” ala old Westerns, rather than explode in red sprays of arterial fluid.

By itself, this isn’t really a problem: the second film was, in reality, only a few small steps removed from a complete cartoon and (brain surgery scene notwithstanding) had about as much impact. The bigger issue comes from the fact that the whole film is obviously pitched at much younger audiences: all of the issues are very black-and-white and the very character of Nikko feels like nothing more than an attempt to insert a pre-teen hero into the mix. Compared to the foul-mouthed urchins in RoboCop 2, Nikko is Little Orphan Annie and the whole thing has a trite feel that definitely feels aimed at the lowest common denominator.

Acting-wise, RoboCop 3 is extremely broad, although the style does tend to work, since the film is inherently broad and silly. Burke does a suitable job as Weller’s replacement, although he doesn’t sound anything like our original Officer Murphy. We get a few “regulars” here, such as Nancy Allen, Felton Perry and Robert DoQui, although they’re pretty much relegated to the background for the majority of the film, allowing newcomers like Ryan, Pounder and Stephen Root (always a joy to see) to step up to the plate. For his part, Rip Torn turns in the kind of performance that he’s been autopiloting for way too long, although his smug bureaucrat fits the film’s heart-on-sleeve politics like a glove.

More than anything, I’m disappointed that so little of Dekker actually shows through in the final product. Short of a few scattered scenes and details (the OCP exec jumping out of a window while his wife harangues him on the phone, RoboCop driving the blazing, Pepto-pink pimp-mobile around like it was a tank) that are explicitly reminiscent of Dekker’s tongue-in-cheek approach, the film is depressingly generic and middle-of-the-road. It’s always bummed me out that Dekker only directed three films in his entire career and this was one of them: it’s equivalent to Francis Ford Coppola’s entire filmography consisting of The Godfather (1972), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Jack (1996). At the very least, Dekker has recently been rumored to be involved in Shane Black’s new Predator reboot: fingers crossed that this translates into him directing the film, although a Dekker script is (usually) a thing of beauty, so that’d be fine, too.

Ultimately, RoboCop 3 is not a terrible film: in many ways, it’s no worse (or better) than a hundred other direct-to-video, ’90s era “gems.” While the film is competently done, however, it also possesses no real sense of identity or even much in the way of distinguishing features: it just “is,” for better or worse. Since the third entry seemed to effectively nail the coffin lid shut (at least until the recent reboot), it’s fair to say that our heroic man of steel had already passed his expiration date by this point, a mere six years after he debuted. Quite the pity, really: with Fred Dekker writing and directing, RoboCop 3 should have been one of the most unforgettable franchise entries ever. Instead, the film is so generic as to be completely forgettable: now that’s irony that’s right up Fred Dekker’s twisted little alley.

 

7/9/14: Horse Waits, Tom Tries

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'80s films, Amber Bauer, Bill Pullman, cinema, Cold Feet, comedies, cowboys, double-crosses, estranged siblings, film reviews, films, greed, horses, Jeff Bridges, Kathleen York, Keith Carradine, Movies, odd movies, psycho killers, Rip Torn, Robert Dornhelm, Sally Kirkland, stolen jewels, Tom Waits

Tom Waits is such a weird, cool, enigmatic bad-ass of a dude that whenever he shows up in movies, he usually steals them right away from the rest of the cast. Like a thief in the night, Waits slips in, does that thing he does (acting? living? just being?) and slips out, leaving nothing but bare walls and floors in his wake. He’s truly an amazing actor in that, like similar odd-job Crispin Glover, he so readily becomes whatever character he’s portraying: it’s always impossible to tell where the character ends and Tom begins, which makes each and every performance both thrilling and a little terrifying. Needless to say, Waits’ by turns hilarious and frightening performance in Robert Dornhelm’s weird ’80s oddity, Cold Feet (1989), is not only the best, most interesting performance in that film but probably one of the best, weirdest performances of that whole year.

Monte (Keith Carradine), Maureen (Sally Kirkland) and Kenny (Tom Waits) are three small-time crooks with a big-time plan: they’ve stolen a small fortune in emeralds and had the bright idea to have them surgically implanted in a horse. After wack-a-doodle Kenny unceremoniously blows away the crooked vet who performs the surgery, the trio make their escape, hitting the high road and handily by-passing law enforcement.

Trouble comes to paradise when Monte double-crosses his partners (even more grievous since he was actually engaged to Maureen, who appears to be as loose-screwed as Kenny is) and hightails it for his square brother’s horse ranch. Monte hasn’t seen brother Buck (Bill Pullman) and his wife, Laura (Kathleen York), in quite some time but they didn’t exactly part on the best of terms: Monte is desperate, however, and really does want to save Infidel (the horse) from getting gutted by the increasingly ruthless Kenny. Monte also wants to reconnect with his estranged 9-year-old daughter, Rosemary (Amber Bauer), who’s just back from a “survival school.”What better place to hide a horse than a horse ranch, he figures?

As Kenny and Maureen haul ass across the country in a stolen motor home, Monte tries to convince his suspicious brother that the reasons for his surprise visit have more to do with familial love than ulterior motives. Laura would love to see Buck and Monte become close again but is this too little too late? Once the local sheriff (Rip Torn) gets involved, you just know that the whole thing is gonna get awful crazy awful quick. There’s no fury like a woman scorned, however, and Maureen is going to make sure to get her pound of flesh, come hell or high water. And Kenny? Well, he just wants to keep eating them Turkish dates, man!

Similar to the Crispin Glover-starring oddity Twister (oddly enough, also 1989), Cold Feet is about 10 pounds of weird in a 5-pound sack. The movie is all over the place, an almost complete mess tonally: it’s a light-hearted comedy right up to the point where Kenny blows somebody away in cold-blood, then goes into slapstick territory before becoming a “brothers-in-crisis” drama, a crime thriller and a romance. The whole thing is shot through with a garish, neon ’80s sensibility which is completely jarring when juxtaposed with the numerous nods to Westerns and rural living: call it the “Rhinestone (1984) factor” but there’s something about the neon-’80s and cowboys that just don’t go together.

Acting-wise, you’ve got a pretty mixed bag: Pullman plays it dead-serious, Carradine hams it up, Kirkland plays it like a dinner-theater version of Madea stoned on nitrous, Rip Torn is Rip Torn and Waits is, as can be expected, suitably amazing. It’s no surprise that Kenny ends up being not only the most interesting character in the film but, despite his obvious insanity, the most relatable character: he’s not interested in any games, he doesn’t have any agendas…he just is, dammit, and to hell with any of you squares who tell him otherwise! Whether he’s doing bizarre calisthenics in a moving car, reminding Maureen that sex with radium miners will make her ass glow, eating Turkish dates by the bagful or surviving the kind of shit that would kill the Terminator, Kenny is, quite simply, the man and Waits is absolutely magnificent. Despite any other issues with the film (and boy are there issues), folks could be forgiven for stopping by just to check out Kenny: Waits’ performance really is that much fun and he gets a sizeable chunk of celluloid dedicated to him.

Another highlight for me, albeit a fleeting one, was a pretty superb cameo from Jeff Bridges as a grinning, shithead bartender with a, itchy trigger finger: even for his few moments of screen-time, it’s painfully obvious how equally bad-ass Bridges is. I can’t help but feel that a true Tom Waits/Jeff Bridges collaboration might blow the planet off its axis, ushering in a new ice age…we should probably never find out.

Without a doubt, Cold Feet is definitely a curiosity. Director Dornhelm (still working today) has mostly stayed in the realm of television, so I’m guessing that this didn’t end up being a springboard to bigger and better things. The film never achieves anything approaching a consistent tone or sense of purpose but is still filled with some truly great moments: Sheriff Rip Torn scamming new boots…pretty much anything involving Maureen and Kenny’s cross-country ride…absolutely anything involving Tom Waits. There’s an awful lot of dead space going around, however, and the main storyline about Buck and Monte’s reconciliation is pretty long in the tooth. The film also has a tendency to slip into really silly slapstick (Maureen’s fight with Rosemary’s teacher is really stupid) which sits uncomfortably next to Kenny’s moments of actual violence.

Cold Feet is a weird bird but I’m pretty confident that at least some viewers out there will be able to get on its frequency. While the film is messy, silly and frequently nonsensical, it’s also quite a bit of fun and features one hell of an awesome performance from Tom Waits. If you’re a fan of Waits, this should be a must-see. For everyone else, however, this may just be one of those ’80s curios that passes you by. I would really think hard about it, though: after all, you wouldn’t wanna piss off Kenny, would you?