May 23, 2019 temporalparadoxLeave a comment
It Takes Two. Dualstar Productions 1995.
I dimly remember watching Full House and I remember a lot better having an interest in the Olsens' Dualstar work when I was young. I won a couple of their detective series videos in a contest I think I got a third just because I liked the series, and I saw others without owning them. I know I saw a few of their movies, but not as much of their filmography as I expected looks familiar.
It's not surprising to see identical siblings (or close enough in their case) build a career in show business out of their similarity, but I can't think of another pair that built a brand (or at least had a brand built around them) the way Mary-Kate and Ashley did. While they have plenty of productions that demonstrate it's possible to create a vehicle for them without banking on their identicality, this one is a "Prince and the Pauper" story, apparently with a bit of The Parent Trap thrown in (I always wondered why the Parent Trap remake had Lindsay Lohan in a dual role instead of getting still-bankable real twins).
Amanda Lemmon has spent the first ten years of her life in an orphanage. Alyssa Callaway has spent her whole life raised by her wealthy father Roger, their butler Vincenzo, and her boarding school. They happen to look uncannily alike. Amanda is about to be adopted by "orphan collectors" the Butkises, but would much rather be adopted by her social worker Diane. Alyssa returns from her boarding school for the summer to learn that her father will be marrying Clarice, selling the lovely mansion, sending Alyssa to a school in Europe forever, all the standard golddigging wicked stepparent stuff, prompting Alyssa to formally Run Away in protest, not long before Amanda gets dared into ringing the bell at the "haunted" mansion across the lake, and they promptly get mistaken for each other. Quickly overwhelmed by being swept into another life, they both run off into the forest and find each other. Amanda and Alyssa decide to spend a day in each other's lives, and quickly find that Diane and Roger would be perfect for each other, and setting them up together would take away both their problems.
The cartoonish evil of Clarice is saturated in tropes. There's no relationship between her and Roger at all, her first scene without Roger has her talking openly about her golddigging plans so that Alyssa and the audience can hear them, and there's a major rush into the wedding. All of those things come up a lot in romantic comedy plots, especially where children are involved. When you make the fiancee that needs to be dumped so unambiguously villainous, there's no room for any justification for why they're together in the first place. Roger makes some comments about "this family needs a mother", but if that's the only qualification, there are doubtless many better candidates in his life.
We learn that Roger made his money "accidentally", by buying the frequency band that cell phones use back when it was a cool, futuristic idea that would never take off. Where did he get the money to buy up radio frequencies? Never mentioned. Just something that anybody with dumb luck can do, I guess.
I really do like Diane and Roger together, and there's some great humor from the kids at camp. I would've liked to see more involvement from the other kids once the plot to get them together was under way. This may have started from a "rich kid/poor kid switch places like Twain" place, but it quickly gets away from that and really, for me, Alyssa and Amanda being each other's doppelganger was one of the least interesting parts of the story.
I don't mind a story being by the numbers, but some of the numbers this hits are lazy and worn out to the point that it took me out of the story. It's mostly just a fun good time with the Olsens, Steve Guttenberg, and Kirstie Alley, and that's all it's trying to be. And it's for kids, so it doesn't have as much of a need to innovate.
90s, comedy1995, 90s, Ashley Olsen, Jane Sibbett, Kirstie Alley, Mary-Kate Olsen, Steve Guttenberg
July 6, 2017 temporalparadoxLeave a comment
Police Academy. The Ladd Company 1984.
Police Academy grew into a franchise of irreverent comedy, which I kind of have the same impression of as of Carry On, only with at least a cohesive theme. I think the third movie is the most popular, but this is where it started. If this one hadn't done well, there wouldn't be a III. As far as I know, there are still "Police Academy" movies being made, in the kind of sad way cheap movies get the "National Lampoon" name put on them.
80s, comedy1984, 80s, Bubba Smith, Donovan Scott, G.W. Bailey, George Gaynes, Steve Guttenberg
May 23, 2014 May 23, 2014 temporalparadoxLeave a comment
High Spirits. Palace Pictures 1988.
I'd never heard of this movie when I came across it, and to be honest, I didn't put a lot of thought into enqueuing it. I searched for a few widely known Peter O'Toole movies and this came up as a similar title. Comedy, ghosts, Irish castle, I'll take it. He seems to have been in a lot of odd movies later in his career, which are coming to the surface first.
I've only recently begun to notice the… charisma(?) of Steve Guttenberg, and I'm reluctant to classify the strengths of Daryl Hannah just yet for fear of putting her in a box.
The flying bed in the poster reminds me far too much of Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
80s, comedy, Fantasy1988, 80s, Beverly D'Angelo, Daryl Hannah, Liam Neeson, Peter O'Toole, Steve Guttenberg
May 2, 2014 temporalparadoxLeave a comment
Short Circuit. Turman-Foster Company 1986.
I'm a bit surprised at the fact that I only heard of this movie in the last decade. An eighties comedy sci-fi(ish) adventure about a cute robot coming to life seems like the sort of thing I would have been watching once a week as a child. In fact, I only became aware of its existence and cult status after meeting the internet hivemind that loves this movie.
Now that I'm actually going to watch it, all I can think of is that lightning doing magical things to machines seems dated even for the 80s.
80s, comedy, Science Fiction1986, 80s, Ally Sheedy, Steve Guttenberg, Tim Blany