robcat2075 Reviews

Piranha (1972)

Amazing feat

[1/10 · 4 January 2024]

I am baffled as to how the filmmakers accomplished this.... they saw the huge success of "Jaws" and its numerous B-movie ripoffs ripoffs like "Barracuda", re-titled their execrably boring jungle movie to fit, then... somehow traveled back in time to 1972 to release their movie before the killer animal craze even happened.

That is the only way to explain that this film has the title "Piranha" at all since the actual piranha action and even piranha-referencing dialog is exceedingly slight. Imagine if you took a Tarzan movie and renamed it "Crocodile!" because of a brief tussle with one of the reptiles on the way to the real plot.

Nothing worth recounting happens in this movie and it all happens at a glacial pace. I watched it on YouTube thinking it was the famous 1978 Joe Dante "Piranha" but, no it isn't. The print is terrible, all the blue has faded to gray. It's possible the scenic photography was attractive at one time, but no longer.

Skip it.

Love, American Style: Love and the Phone Booth/Love and the Doorknob (1969) Season 1, Episode 3

Gary Lockwood does Larry Storch

[8/10 · 25 November 2023]

Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" is the greatest film that ever will be made and ever can be made. Gary Lockwood co-starred in it but, of course, the real star of that film was the film.

Lockwood was one of the two dry-as-dry-ice astronauts in "2001", the one who has an unfortunate EVA, thanks to HAL. I've seen very little of his other work, but here he is, doing comedy! And very well, too.

I guess "Love and the Doorknob" was a way to get a couple of young newlyweds to make a lot of suggestive "pull it out" comments and yet be able to insist to the censor that it is all completely innocent.

This was brave of him to do. Some actors would have turned down a role with so few lines.

The Strongest Man in the World (1975)

Disney Was Doping before Doping Was Cool.

[7/10 · 9 September 2023]

I saw this when it first came out and found it modestly enjoyable, if implausible. At the time I didn't understand "franchise" so I thought it was kinda cheap of them to keep re-using characters and settings (Dexter Riley, Medfield College) from older movies.

But it wasn't until years later, as stories of athletes using performance-enhancing drugs entered the newspapers, that I thought, "wait a sec... wasn't all that... A DISNEY MOVIE???"

Yup, Disney was ahead of the curve on this one. Is it possible the scriptwriters were influenced by the whispers of Soviet bloc athletes (especially weightlifters) having some kind of chemical advantage at Olympic Games a few years before? Maybe?

But this was years before Arnold et al. Showed the world what serious chemicals could do for the human form; the public didn't understand how real it all was.

But that's why this movie could pass in 1975; the audience didn't grasp that this was an unfair, but entirely possible, advantage Dexter & co. Had cooked up for themselves. It just seemed like they were outsmarting their foes and explaining it all away with college-knowledge technobabble about "adrenaline".

That would definitely be illegal today, an adrenaline supplement. Maybe that's why this Disney classic hasn't been the object of a remake.

Charlie Chan in London (1934)

Subverting white privilege expectations

[7/10 · 9 July 2020]

I'm fascinated by Charlie Chan movies because the white people in them are either idiots... or the real killer. I don't think you could recruit a bigger ship of fools than the white people in a Charlie Chan movie.

They're always far more sure of themselves, far more self-entitled than they have any right to be. Or just flat out clueless.

Warner Oland's portrayal of Chan is a broad caricature of ever-smiling, pidgin-Englished Orientalism which would seem offensive but... maybe Charlie is just acting that way when the white people are around. When he's alone, he's all business.

The Chinaman stereotype is Chan's disguise.

When the white people walk in, he flips back to confirming their low expectations. He's one step ahead of them because he's made them think he's one step behind.

It will be impossible to rehabilitate these movies for general audiences but I find them fascinating for the subtext of people being undone by their own prejudice.

The Score (2001)

Brando not worth it

[5/10 · 8 March 2020]

So this is the film on which Brando allegedly refused to work and play well with Frank Oz. He was clearly not worth the trouble.

His role is insignificant, his performance is not notable. Probably any of a dozen Hollywood character actors could have been cast in his role to better result.

I'm sure he got over-paid millions.

The film itself is not bad, but has a few too many heist film tropes, like the borderline incompetent security guards who are too busy paying attention to a game to watch their surveillance monitors.

Watched it on Netflix.

Catnip Capers (1940)

"Reefer Madness" and "Lost Weekend"... for cats!

[8/10 · 27 September 2019]

I had to go check to make sure this was really a Terrytoon. It starts out like a regular cat and mouse cartoon but... wow!

Someone must have been having trouble getting off the sauce and the the reefer and the blow when they wrote this one. This is surprisingly elaborate for a Terrytoon. How did this happen? Were the bean counters out sick for a month? Was the poor-quality-assurance team on strike?

It is not funny, it's better than that... it's nightmarish.

American Vandal (2017–2018)

Too contrived

[1/10 · 29 September 2018]

I began watching the first episode thinking it was real. The advance publicity had led me to think it was.

But it all seemed a bit too perfect, too convenient for amateur documentarians to have captured all this footage that fits together just right.

And the whole notion of permissions and releases... impossible.

So I looked farther and... it's all fake.

It's not interesting anymore like that. It's not even entertaining-fake like a Christopher Guest mockumentary is.

It's just tedious and contrived.

If this had the element of being about a real event it would be tolerable and maybe even compelling. As a mockumentary, it is poor.

Miss Sticky-Moufie-Kiss (1915)

Insane premise - Insane ending

[9/10 · 3 August 2018]

This comedy is wild on several levels. The premise is wild, the fact that the actors are a husband and wife team is wild, and the fact that it's a silent movie about a speech impediment is wild.

This is a very unexpected film for 1915. With a little dusting off this could be a SNL sketch. Sidney Drew's face is half the show. He has expertly managed to capture the appearance of someone just on the edge of projectile nausea.

I'm going to say they stole the ending from "Humoresque"

The Bellboy (1960)

Better than Italian neo-realism

[3/10 · 23 July 2018]

I came to this because Jerry Seinfeld spoke so admiringly of it in his CCC with Jerry Lewis. I can't accuse him of under-selling it.

I can see why the French thought Lewis was a super genius. They saw "The Bellboy" and thought, "well, it's not as bad as Italian neo-realism and that's supposed to be genius stuff..."

I imagine audiences of the time got a kick out of this. It's a bunch of silly sketches connected into one film without a significant story. It's a bit of a precursor to a film like Monty Python's "The Holy Grail" but without the strong writing, the strong comedy timing and the strong editing. After watching this film one understands a bit why Monty Python was such a shock a decade later... "The Bell Boy" is what passed for film comedy in the 60s.

I understand that he patched this thing together in record time. It's a feat in just that regard but would say that Lewis has over-estimated his ability to carry a scene by himself and underestimated the need for strong supporting players.

The opening scene with the "executive" is a cop out. Did the studio make him add that? I don't know, but it is typical of this movie's habit of pre-telegraphing the joke so it's not funny when it finally arrives.

Take the 10 (2017)

Funny slacker movie

[7/10 · 19 October 2017]

It was free on Netflix so I watched it, needing a comedy.

Characters amusing for their foolishness and mutual unreliability. It recalls Houston's "Beat the Devil" with Bogart.

Everyone has a serious problem. You might say their problems get resolved, not solved.

I admire actors who can create work for themselves and that is what has happened here. Produced, written and directed by one of the leads.

Don't believe the reviewer who said this was gay propaganda. There's about 20 seconds of superficial gay angle, purely as a joke.

Father Knows Best: The Gardener's Big Day (1959) Season 6, Episode 3

the polite white supremacists

[8/10 · 21 July 2017]

We don't typically remember "Father Knows Best" as a "social issues" sitcom but that makes this episode stand out all the more. I only saw it once in syndication in the 70s but it sticks in my mind. This must have been a tough episode to write, to show the prejudice that even ostensibly decent people harbor in themselves.

The local civic boosters decide to pick a typical citizen out of the phone book for some public event and then they are horrified when the man they pick is... the local Hispanic gardener! For some reason they ask leading citizen Jim Anderson to discreetly shove him aside so they can pick someone else, but Jim won't have it. Never explicitly saying they don't want a Mexican, they dance around it with a dozen politely-worded objections and Anderson keeps turning it back on them. Everything positive virtue they say a citizen needs to embody, Jim explains how their chosen man is a fine example of it.

The gardener is really a McGuffin to facilitate this examination of White discomfort with "otherness".

On the down side, the gardener character is still pretty much the standard TV Mexican stereotype. Heavily accented, obsequious, cheerful, and always ready to defer to his social superiors.

But I give the writers credit for finding a way to put this story out there. Not too much credit; it would have been interesting to have many more episodes of this sort. Maybe that's what they thought they were doing every week?

Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat (1941)

Who's lazy now?

[3/10 · 19 July 2015]

Much is written about the talent and time that go into making a cartoon like this as if to validate its status as a piece of movie history.

But really... who is lazier, the fictional Negroes in the cartoon or the real-life writers, animators and director who are so lacking in originality that they are recycling 30, 40, 50... 100 year old jokes and insults just to get seven minutes of running time?

Even in 1941 when this was released this was stale stuff, already beaten to death a hundred times over in films, theater and commercial art.

I'm sure the artists involved would claim they didn't have "a racist bone in their body". They seem to also be lacking the bones for basic observational skills. There are a thousand and one way to draw or caricature a black person and yet that one black-face stereotype is what they keep pulling out of their ass as if that were the only option.

The hipster girl that gets off the steamboat is one small deviation from that formula but she's practically white. It's like they couldn't reconcile dark skin with non-stereotypical behavior.

All in all, a rather sorry outing for the Lantz Studio who had quite a few sorry outings in their run.

Columbo: Last Salute to the Commodore (1976) Season 5, Episode 6

The Stateroom scene

[4/10 · 17 July 2015]

"Last Salute to the Commodore" almost appears as if someone tried to extend "the stateroom scene" from the Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera" into a feature length film, with a murder mystery added on top of it all.

It's quite weak in may ways. The victim, the motive, the clues that lead Columbo to the solution.

The supporting assistants to Columbo, especially "Mac" seem to have no reason to be there. Usually his assistants hinder him in some humorous and innocent way, but the present ones are just... there. I'm going to guess there were some contractual obligations being fulfilled.

The Beaver (2011)

Long Dark Beaver Into Night

[2/10 · 19 March 2014]

When I encountered this movie it was promoted as a "dark comedy". It is not that. It fails completely at that. You may tell me that Jodi Foster didn't intend it as a comedy. That may well be, but that is how it was pitched to get me to try it. It's unfunny and disappointing on that score.

As a portrait of people with emotional problems (most of the characters) it also fails. Mel Gibson's character gets substantial examination but the others are shorthand movie clichés. Overall, I never believe that Walter believes he needs this puppet device.

Plus to whoever wrote the score, that does help get across the message that the actor performances don't, but the movie still doesn't get to the goal line.

George Washington Slept Here (1942)

Mostly unfunny

[25 December 2013]

Like most comedies it might play better for a large assembled audience than in solitary home viewing but there isn't much going on here that is amusing.

Jack Benny lacks the convincing leading-man quality to carry this role. Certainly there's no "chemistry" between him and Sheridan.

Ya know... a funny contrarian casting for this would have been Edward G. Robinson. He could have done the exasperation of the homeowner bit very well. Jimmy Stewart would be a more conventional casting but I imagine he would have turned down a script like this.

Basically there aren't many funny lines in this. There are lots of lines that the music sound track sort of tries to plus and let us know were intended as humorous but it's all pretty weak.

The funniest part was the complication involving "Uncle Stan", that was worthy of a comedy of errors.

The Dick Van Dyke Show: It May Look Like a Walnut (1963) Season 2, Episode 20

I couldn't believe what I was seeing

[9/10 · 29 October 2013]

I never saw this episode until maybe... the 80s?... long after I thought I had seen every Dick Van Dyke Show episode there ever was. Imagine my surprise as the story unfolded.

It is the most gob-smackingly strange and compelling half hour of sitcom TV I've ever seen. It was so odd I couldn't even stay in my chair as I watched it. I could not reconcile what I was seeing with the world of Rob and Laura Petrie I thought I knew and yet there wasn't one false note about it, it is so perfectly executed.

Up until the very end I was wondering how they were ever going to pull this out of the fire.

Whoever wrote this deserves a place in TV Valhalla.

Hollywood Canteen (1944)

Fleeting is fame. Watch it for the music.

[7/10 · 21 August 2013]

Almost every face in this movie was a notable star but only a handful are remembered today. A few, like Joe E. Brown, I knew only from caricatures in cartoons.

The musical performances are the best part, in fact, I fast-forwarded through most of the cringe-worthy story sections to concentrate on those. The story almost seems like a horrible joke on any real servicemen who might have seen this.

As others have noted, one of the highlights is the Golden Gate Quartet number. I've read that studios had to plan scenes with substantial black performers ( i.e. those not portraying servants) so that they could be cut from the movie without damaging the story. Southern white audiences demanded that. It is very much in evidence here. Unlike most of the other musical segments they have no tie-in with the action on the floor.

Too bad someone couldn't come up with a better story to tie it all together but the time-capsule nature of it makes up for some of that.

Dynamite Swine (2010)

A festival surprise.

[8/10 · 26 September 2010]

I saw "Dynamite Swine" at the 2010 JamFest Indie Film Festival in Hammond, Louisiana and was quite impressed with it.

It's a bit of a caper movie revolving around the premise of a guy who has gone one hand too far in his gambling and now has an impossibly short time to figure out how to retire an impossibly large debt owed to an impossibly onerous villain.

Best of all it's a funny film. There are parts where almost every cut is adding a new amusing element. It's possible the body of the film is perhaps too funny as there's no way to tie everything up at the end and top what has come before.

There are moments where the acting performances get a bit too stagey and tip into camp but the fast pace prevents any of those from being dwelled upon too long.

I'm sure this must have been done on a small budget but it's not painfully obvious and it's not detrimental to the flow of the film. I'd compare this to the early shoestring films of Robert Townsend or Robert Rodriguez except that it's more entertaining.

Marvin the Martian in the Third Dimension (1996)

Great revival of classic characters

[9/10 · 22 March 2009]

I saw this as "Duck Dodgers in the 3rd Dimension" at the World Animation Celebration in L.A. in 1997.

I was quite knocked out by it, both for the 3D effects and for the faithful revival of the classic WB characters in it.

For once someone got it right. The characters were in character, the voices sounded right and the animation did them justice.

We were told that everything was animated on paper first by 2D animators, then those images were handed to 3D animators to match exactly. Sounds awkward but it worked great.

This film hasn't been widely seen. Hopefully with the current 3D boom it will be released theatrically, perhaps on the front of a similarly themed live action film.

A Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955)

A great childhood memory

[8/10 · 16 January 2009]

I think I was probably about 8 or 9 when this film came thru White Bear Lake Minnesota. It seemed to have been ceaselessly promoted on local television and my friends and I had been playing out the scenes we saw in the commercial for weeks beforehand in the wooded vacant lot next to my house.

Dinosaurs, mastodons, Pterodactyls... this movie had it all. When we finally saw it in the theater we loved it and it remained one of the top 2 or 3 pictures that really stand out from those years. But I only saw it that once. I often wondered about it over the years, but was never sure of the title. Maybe I just dreamed it?

Finally seeing "Journey" again on DVD 40 years later, I'm aware of many lapses and shortcomings in the film that I never noticed when I was 8. The grafting of the New York City bookends onto the original Czech film is a marvel of economy and Ed Wood style film-making, but what the hey... it worked for me when I was 8.

I have no idea what a child today would think of this film. I would hope they'd enjoy it. I would hope they would find excitement in identifying with the boys in the film. But I don't know... you can't count on today's kids to make allowances for the production standards of 1950's Czech film making.

My biggest complaint is that the (pirate?) DVD i watched has a whole scene with the dialog wildly out of sync. Not just careless dubbing out of sync, but WAYYY out of sync.

At the Seashore (1929)

Two chicks on a rag.

[7/10 · 3 December 2007]

Another vaudeville act captured by the Vitaphone cameras. Their material will seem well-worn today, but I can imagine this was amusing in it's time. Wise-cracking women were probably a bit of a novelty and the borderline titillating nature of their comments may have helped draw the audience in.

I notice they talk easily about drinking alcohol. They have disdain for it but not on the scale that would remind us alcohol was a banned substance at the time.

There's very little visual element to their routine, it's really more like a radio sketch with a few props added to set the scene. But it's a great little time capsule of the origins of sketch comedy.

When East Meets West (1928)

A wink to the 21st Century

[9/10 · 2 December 2007]

I saw this as a DVD extra to the 2007 DVD release of "The Jazz Singer" (Disc 3)

This is one of the better Vitaphone shorts, in no small part due to the comfortable on-camera demeanor of the performers, especially Ray Mayer. The songs are corny, but they seem to know that and acknowledge that to us in future with a wink and a nudge.

Edith Evan's singing is just fine, but Mayer's accompanying piano work and spoken introductions are a subtle parody act in itself. (Watch the gum.) This is a vaudeville act captured on film and I presume a successful one, but I wonder how they ever played this to the back row of a live theater setting. Somehow they must have done it.

Bernado De Pace (1927)

The Harpo of the Mandolin

[9/10 · 1 December 2007]

I'm never sure what to expect when I launch one of these old Vitaphone shorts. Some are painfully modest acts, and then there are gems like this where an exuberant performer is able to really sell it.

The campy nature of Mr. De Pace's manner is the best part of it although he obviously plays his mandolin well. It brings to mind a combination of Harpo Marx, Chico Marx and the 1960's pop-star Tiny Tim. I wonder who influenced who?

This short is one of the restored Vitaphone films included on the 2007 DVD release of "the Jazz Singer" as bonus material. The sound quality is surprisingly good in view of the age of the material.

Lambchops (1929)

A cute little Vitaphone short

[8/10 · 1 December 2007]

A cute little short, Gracie shines, George doesn't quite have the straight man perfected but he'll get there.

I wonder how they did this act in vaudeville with no microphones or amplification.

The most disorienting element is seeing them both so young, 10 years before their radio stardom and 20-30 before their TV show.

Someone should have told George to tilt his fedora away from the camera so we could see his face better.

I'm impressed with the sound. 1929 is still the stone age for movie sound but audio superiority of Vitaphone's sound on disc system really shows here.

She Done Him Wrong (1933)

It was really "Come up sometime, and see me."

[6/10 · 17 September 2007]

I regret that this film doesn't live up to the enormous reputation that precedes it. All the talk about it being "pre-code" is technically correct, but "She Done Him Wrong" doesn't push the boundaries as other films from the same period did. The most daring element is the painting of West (it really doesn't look like her) that is strategically obscured by a hat whenever it is on screen.

As a derivative of her "Diamond Lil" stage play, this film may show just how primitive Braodway was at that time. Songs and dances tied together with only the slightest of plots. Not much more than a "revue" really.

Mae West has a few good one-liners in this film, but only a few, and the most famous one, "Come up sometime and see me", is not as typically quoted.

I doubt this film made Cary Grant "a star". He's not in it much, and he's not very interesting in it.