Dragnet (1987).

Review #2427: Dragnet (1987).

Cast: 

Dan Aykroyd (Detective Sergeant Joe Friday), Tom Hanks (Detective Pep Streebek), Christopher Plummer (the Reverend Jonathan Whirley), Harry Morgan (Captain Bill Gannon), Alexandra Paul ("the Virgin" Connie Swail), Jack O'Halloran (Emil Muzz), Elizabeth Ashley (Commissioner Jane Kirkpatrick), and Dabney Coleman (Jerry Caesar) Directed by Tom Mankiewicz.

Review: 

Maybe you know what Dragnet is, but your dad or grandfather probably know it quite well in some way or form. Apparently, Webb was inspired by what he saw when filming his role in He Walked by Night (1948), specifically what he heard from technical consultant Marty Wynn involving the actual procedures and activities of police officers that he got Wynn to cooperate on what became one of the big procedurals of its time. In 1949, Dragnet was born on radio with the NBC radio network, as featuring Jack Webb and a handful of partners. Two years later went by before it went to television (now with Webb and Ben Alexander), running for eight years and also having a film version in 1954. And then of course there was the new thing for its time: a revival years later, with Webb now starring with Harry Morgan that ran from 1967 to 1970. There were plenty of routines to be had in those shows, whether that involved LSD or other types of rackets. Webb would continue to busy with making television shows involving authority such as Adam-12 (1968-75), O'Hara, U.S. Treasury (1971-72), and Emergency! (1972-77) before he died in 1982 at the age of 62.*  Apparently, Tom Mankiewicz was brought in to work on a re-write of a film script that had been done by Dan Aykroyd and Alan Zweibel (who had worked together on Saturday Night Live) involving Dragnet and was then asked to direct it himself, which was his directing debut, having famously done work as just a writer with Superman and an assortment of James Bond movies; he directed just one other movie with Delirious (1991)

I do remember, very vaguely, seeing my dad watch this movie on a VHS tape once, specifically the part where the name P.A.G.A.N is revealed (People Against Goodness and Normalcy, ha, get it). That was what, nearly 15 years ago, so I suppose it is better late than never to actually watch this movie. You get a buddy cop movie (complete with a tank and jet) that happens to have a very by-the-book person at the helm that is sometimes funny and altogether a bit stuffed at 106 minutes long. As a semi-spoof, it at least looks like it cared about the original material, although it definitely shows a bit too much willingness for the "let's put a pop song in it" idea. You can probably tell that Aykroyd had a fascination with Jack Webb in actually getting the jargon down with the calm and collected feel of someone who rolls with the punches. Of course, Aykroyd actually did work as a reserve officer with multiple police departments (no I'm not joking), so this isn't merely just a case of a long-winded bit, he just thought it would be an honor to do a Jack Webb homage, to a certain type of mixed result. According to Aykroyd, Hanks (who was cast in the film because Albert Brooks said no and Jim Belushi wasn't available) was not big on the final result of the film. Hanks (in the period between Splash [1984] and, well, Big [1989]) does fine here, maneuvering through the proceedings with a good dose of charm and you do eventually get a sense of connection between him and Aykroyd as hard (okay, maybe sometimes hardly) working cops on the beat as a team. Morgan might have been winding down in his seventies (this was his penultimate film appearance), but at least he looks happy to be around for a few scenes in experiencing some jargon said at him again. Plummer is calm enough to work as the wolf in sheep's clothing, for the most part. The rest is here and there, mainly because the movie comes up with a few softball ideas to corral the procedural (so a Playboy knockoff and a totally not evil Reverend to go with uniting them for a common goal) that probably came out of at least one too many re-writes. Sure, you can't make it all a sketch, but the movie does have most of its steam in the first half when trying to play setup rather than the inevitable sequences of action, for better or worse. I enjoyed it just enough to roll with its general pacing. As a whole, Dragnet (1987) is a fine little movie that at least doesn't come off as merely an overextended sketch idea and has a few moments worth watching. It definitely is hit-or-miss, but if you are looking for a bit of fun, you might find it here.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*To tie this to movies a tiny bit, Webb was actually approached about playing Dean Wormer in Animal House (1979). Go figure, he turned it down.

Tomorrow: the horror season begins.

Viva Knievel!

Review #2320: Viva Knievel!

Cast: 

Evel Knievel (himself), Gene Kelly (Will Atkins), Lauren Hutton (Kate Morgan), Red Buttons (Ben Andrews), Leslie Nielsen (Stanley Millard), Marjoe Gortner (Jessie), Cameron Mitchell (Barton), Frank Gifford (himself), Eric Olson (Tommy Atkins), Albert Salmi (Cortland), Dabney Coleman (Ralph Thompson), and Sheila Allen (Sister Charity) Directed by Gordon Douglas (#663 - Them! and #686 - In Like Flint)

Review: 

You might wonder why I had this movie on my mind. Of course, you might have a curiosity of who Evel Knievel was. Born in Montana in 1938, Robert "Evel" Knievel was a stunt performer and entertainer that did numerous motorcycle jumps after having the aspiration to do so by seeing a daredevil show. He worked in copper mines, rodeos and served in the Army to go along with working in insurance and motorcycle dealer shipping before he became famous. Eventually, he became his promotor to rent out venues and set up a show to get folks to see him do wheelies before jumping stuff such as a box of rattlesnakes or (eventually) cars. Among the most famous of stunts in the early years was a jump over the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on New Years Eve 1967 that actually had him get John Derek and his wife Linda Evans to shoot the jump and landing...whereupon he landed just a bit short of accomplishing a pain-free 141 ft jump and crushed his pelvis and femur among other injuries that one can actually access. In 1971, a biopic of the rider came out that was produced and starring George Hamilton that had him do a monologue about being the "last gladiator in the new Rome" (for his part, John Milius co-wrote the movie and called Hamilton a "great con-man" while Hamilton believed that Knievel became the persona in the movie). Eventually, he went with an idea to jump Snake River Canyon in Idaho that would be closed-circuit TV and broadcast in theaters (to namedrop for fun, it actually had Vince McMahon as an investor while Shelly Saltman served as a promoter) in 1974 with a "Skycycle X-2" that failed to accomplish the jump. Knievel would jump on and off for the rest of his years, whether that involved walking out on his own power in Wembley after breaking his pelvis to having a planned shark-jump lead in him crashing into a cameraman and breaking his arms in rehearsal. Prior to the film being released in June of 1977, Saltman's book called Evel Knievel on Tour came out about the life of Knievel (covering the buildup to the Snake River jump) with interviews that had Knievel speak on the matter of certain subjects. Knievel did not like the book (which was pulled out on threats of lawsuits) and took it upon himself to speak to Saltman. On September 21, Knievel, who apparently had hurt his arms in an accident to the point they were in casts went to the 20th Century Fox lot (Saltman was a studio vice president) and struck him with an aluminum baseball bat that saw a shattered wrist and arm to the point of needing plates for Saltman. This was the first and only film for its star in Knievel; the screenplay was done by Norman Katkov and the story was written by Antonio Santillán. This actually was the last film for its director in Gordon Douglas, who directed a wide variety of movies from Our Gang to Elvis and Sinatra that led to such films as I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), Tony Rome (1967), and In Like Flint (1967); Irwin Allen was a supervising producer on this film, if you can believe it.

Knievel received a bit of jail time and probation before getting sued in a civil trial. A movie involving a guy keeping his word (like wearing a helmet, for obvious reasons) and playing into his anti-drug image seemed funny when you considered he later assaulted a guy and acted like a bum about paying the guy that he shattered his arm and called it "frontier justice" (Knievel never paid any money to Saltman before dying in 2007). So, you've got two guys who were honored by the Academy with awards (Buttons, Kelly) to go alongside a stunt performer, an ex-Evangelist preacher-turned-actor in Gortner and an actual adversarial role in Nielsen and some sort of weird drug plot after it all started with him breaking into an orphanage to deliver his action figures (take a guess what happened to the market) to children. How exactly was this supposed to be a breathtaking movie for its star when you've got drug-addled guys going around bopping people on the head to take on killer stunts, Monday Night Football's Frank Gifford showing up in a yellow-and-orange suit, and Gene Kelly playing a drunk that doesn't really like his kid? Not to give away the game, but Knievel didn't even do stunts for the film, that fell to Gary Charles Davis to crash on cue (well, except for the one time they use actual archive crash footage). Knievel barely acts at all, as if he was only good on a camera if his hip was fractured rather than showing actual charisma. To say the role Kelly is beneath him seems to understand that his subsequent appearance in Xanadu (1980) was an improvement. Okay, so you might wonder what the idea is with the drugs: after getting Knievel to Mexico and sabotaging his bike so he dies, they will get him back to the States in a coffin with a tour trailer that happens to have drugs in the walls. Nielsen may have been a suitable actor for the occasional drama, but even he can't make this stick to actual credibility, particularly since it practically smells like it should be in a comedy that actually has Knievel lecture the audience about not doing drugs before a stunt in the first half. As a whole, this is a movie filled with enough hokum to batter one into having plates into his arm, inspiring plenty of chuckles in its breathtaking lack of charisma that would be perfectly up your alley for a bad movie night.

Overall, I give it 4 out of 10 stars.

I love you too much to let you off Turkey Week without one more surprise tonight: Atlas Shrugged: Part I.

WarGames.

Review #1610: WarGames.

Cast:

Matthew Broderick (David Lightman), Dabney Coleman (Dr. John McKittrick), John Wood (Dr. Stephen Falken / WOPR), Ally Sheedy (Jennifer Mack), Barry Corbin (General Jack Beringer), Juanin Clay (Patricia Healy), Dennis Lipscomb (Watson), Joe Dorsey (Col. Joe Conley), Michael Ensign (Beringer's assistant), William Bogert (Mr. Lightman), Susan Davis (Mrs. Lightman), and Irving Metzman (Richter) Directed by John Badham (#088 - Short Circuit, #1293 - Dracula (1979), and #1456 - Saturday Night Fever)

Review:

"If you get the characters right, everything else falls into place...Every actor has to be directed differently from every other actor...You have to make the set a comfortable place to be where it's okay to fail."

Films are a product of their time but some of those films represent the age they came from more than others, whether of good quality or not. WarGames is certainly a film for its decade, made in a time where computers for the home were growing in popularity but before the Internet (in other words, a time before my time). The story for the film was done by Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, who developed their script over the course of a few years beginning in 1979. The original core involved a "dying scientist and the only person in the world who understands him - a rebellious kid who's too smart for his own good." Three people would play their part in shaping the film with computers: a meeting with Peter Schwartz, then of the Stanford Research Institute, shaped the film with hacking, since he felt a new subculture was arising in hacking with kids. Willis Ware of RAND Corporation helped inspire the idea of hacking into the computer with remote access (whether military or not). David Scott Lewis (a real-life hacker would eventually move to clean tech) would be the model for Broderick's character, and he had argued that the film has the most accurate representation of hacking. The character of Falken was originally inspired by Stephen Hawking, while the character of Beringer was inspired by then commander-in-chief of NORAD General James V. Hartinger. The original director for the film was Martin Brest, who shot for a few weeks before being let go by the studio, owing to his dark approach to the material, for which Badham would go the other way (treating it as a film to look fun and exciting rather than a dark rebellion). Noted writer and script doctor Tom Mankiewicz would also make contribution to the film, albeit without a screenplay credit.

Honestly, I was okay with the film, albeit with the observation that it just seems like a spunkier version of another film about hacking that would come out twelve years later with Hackers (1995), which also dealt with a high school hacker inadvertently getting his way into a deeper mystery. Actually, that isn't too far off, since Parkes and Lasker would return to write another film together that dealt with hacking (in this case security) with Sneakers (1992). After all, the film proved an influence to others in higher places of civic authority in the danger of "automatic dialing and access capabilities of the personal computer." In other words, it spooked President Reagan about hackers. Ten years after the release of this film saw the first ever convention dedicated to hackers with DEF CON (which happens to have attendance from folks interested in hacking alongside federal agents). This was the first major role for Broderick, who had started acting with stage and TV work two years prior. He does well what is needed here in wistful curiosity, where one cares to see where the line goes with hacking rather than wanting to see him get stuffed in a prison locker (one can only wonder what would've happened with the dark interpretation of the script by Brest, which might have been weird or really stiff). Coleman, a character presence in film and television, does well with what is needed in an authority foil with keen sense to go with what is needed in the scenes spent in the war room. Wood, known for his work in the theatre since the 1950s, does well with sardonic charm that lends itself well to the second half in maturity and futility. Sheedy (also in her second role, having appeared in Bad Boys less than two months prior to this film) is fine, breezy in those moments spent with Broderick, but the true presence of mind comes with Corbin, who provides booming bravado that is crisp in those moments spent in wavering circumstances with computers and choices. Admittedly, the one thing that sticks out to me regardless of age is that NORAD command center set, which is elaborate with all of its technological gizmos and lighting that probably makes the actual NORAD seem strange in comparison. Of course, it just happens to be a movie that tries to have a bit of adventure with hacking that will hit its target more so than missing it. In other words, it works for what it is without looking like a stodgy relic, walking that fine line between casual and tense in undertones that work for whoever wants to see where it will play out in 114 minutes. It is a movie about tech and the danger that could come from an over-reliance of it when faced with requirements of something as deep as nuclear war scenario-making. John Badham certainly made an eclectic range of warm films over the course of three decades, and while this might not be his greatest effort, it certainly stands well among his line of work in solid entertainment for engagement in tone and execution.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

You've Got Mail.

Review #1020: You've Got Mail.

Cast: 
Tom Hanks (Joe "NY152" Fox), Meg Ryan (Kathleen "Shopgirl" Kelly), Parker Posey (Patricia Eden), Jean Stapleton (Birdie Conrad), Greg Kinnear (Frank Navasky), Steve Zahn (George Pappas), Heather Burns (Christina Plutzker), Dave Chappelle (Kevin Jackson), Dabney Coleman (Nelson Fox), and John Randolph (Schuyler Fox) Directed by Nora Ephron (#554 - Sleepless in Seattle)

Review: 
Remember Sleepless in Seattle (1993)? I watched and reviewed the film three years ago, and while I will admit that Hanks and Ryan had a fine enough chemistry with each other, I found it to be fairly okay but not something I'd probably watch again, with a love story that certainly seemed to take inspiration from older films, such as An Affair to Remember (1957). As for this film, the inspiration this time around is the 1937 play Parfumerie by Miklós László, which had already served as the basis for The Shop Around the Corner (1940). Fittingly, the bookstore featured in this film is named after the older film. In any case, this is a movie basked in its time, or more specifically romance on AOL, a thing that I vaguely remember my dad sometime in my childhood (and yes, that noise during the connection and disconnection sequence is still stuck in my head). Ultimately, this is a mediocre movie, although the performances in it are pretty tolerable. Hanks and Ryan are fairly likable, and it is interesting to see their dynamic evolve over the film's run-time, managing to never really drag the film to any sort of ridiculous level (in a movie about online romance, anyway). They help the movie feel charming without soaking itself in sentimentality. The film starts with the two characters involved with other people, and while you know that they are eventually going to not end up happy with those people, the movie doesn't make anyone out to be selfish or needlessly annoying. Posey and Kinnear provide some amusement, and while I'd say they don't have much to their characters, they aren't entirely caricatures. The film goes through the cliches you might expect, but at least there isn't some sort of adversary or big message that the film wants to push other than one of romance, so there's something for you. The rest of the cast is pretty acceptable, contributing to some light fun, with my favorites being Stapleton and Chappelle. For a movie that is light on substance, it is a movie that is inviting for anyone in the mood for a rom-com. Like with Sleepless in Seattle, I can't really see myself watching this film ever again, but I can at least appreciate this film and its romance aspect a bit better than the other film, for what it's worth. It may feel a bit gimmicky, but the basic plot structure still works enough to carve out some sort of winner. This is a predictable film, but it's also comforting for people in the right mood or mindset, and I suppose at the end of the day that means something.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: Tootsie.

Review #084: Tootsie.

Cast
Dustin Hoffman (Michael Dorsey / Dorothy Michaels / Emily Kimberly / Edward Kimberly), Jessica Lange (Julie Nichols / Nurse Charles), Teri Garr (Sandra "Sandy" Lester), Dabney Coleman (Ron Carlisle, The Soap Opera Director), Bill Murray (Jeff Slater, Michael's Room-Mate), Charles Durning (Leslie "Les" Nichols, Julie's Father), Sydney Pollack (George Fields, Michael's Talent Agent), George Gaynes (John Van-Horn / Dr. Medford Brewster), Geena Davis (April Page), Doris Belack (Rita Marshall), Lynne Thigpen (Jo), and Estelle Getty (The Middle Aged Woman) Directed by Sidney Pollack.

Review
This is one of those classic comedies that always leaves a imprint on you, if not a memory of it. This was my first time watching it, and I feel the film works well. The acting is good, so good for Jessica Lange that she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, actually the whole thing got Oscar Nominations all aroung the board, winning just one. The film is balenced as it is a good film to watch all around.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.