Jahnke's Electric Theatre

Click here to learn more about anamorphic widescreen!

Site created 12/15/97.

page created: 9/30/05
originally published: 8/31/05

Jahnke's Electric Theatre #15
The In Sound from Way Out!

Jahnke's Electric Theatre - Main Page

Happy September, everyone. Yes, we've almost made it through another summer of space mutants, car chases and troubled young superheroes. And like many of you, I'm pretty burned out on being entertained so relentlessly all season. So this is a fairly abbreviated edition of the Electric Theatre this week. Only half a dozen movies, only one of which is actually now in theatres. But it's a good one, maybe one of the best of the summer so far. Therefore it should come as no surprise to discover that it is this week's...

The A-Picture - The 40 Year-Old Virgin

A while back, a friend and I were discussing movies and he put forth a distinction between "professional" comedy and "amateur" comedy. At the time I didn't really understand what he was talking about, mainly because I disagreed with his examples, but now I get it. A couple weeks ago I saw Wedding Crashers, a blockbuster that seems to please audiences everywhere except for me. That movie is an example of amateur comedy. The filmmakers' idea of humor is just to let Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson ramble along and riff and do whatever comes to mind. The 40 Year-Old Virgin, on the other hand, is professional comedy. The people who made this movie actually worked hard on it and their attention to detail pays off handsomely. Steve Carell (who also co-wrote the script) stars as Andy, a painfully shy and awkward collector of comic books and action figures. He starts to hang out with some co-workers at the electronics store where he manages the stockroom and naturally, they make it their mission to get Andy laid. Not much of a plot, admittedly, but great comedies have been built on much less. This works because Carell and director Judd Apatow have written a really good script, one that doesn't make fun of the way Andy's chosen to live his life. They sidestep easy cliches (for starters, Andy doesn't live with his mom like you might expect) and populate the film with funny, well-rounded, sympathetic characters that are easy to believe in. Carell's performance is outstanding and he's surrounded by equally good actors like Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen. TV vet Apatow proves himself to be a sure hand at film directing. It takes a lot of confidence as a filmmaker to end a movie as relatively realistic as this one on such a giddy note of absurdity. The 40 Year-Old Virgin is smart, hysterical and easily one of the best mainstream comedies I've seen in years. (*** ½)

After the Sunset

Every so often you'll see a movie and you just know that the only reason it was made was so the stars could have a working vacation on location. Ocean's Twelve is kind of like that. After the Sunset is even more so. Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek star as a pair of jewel thieves who have retired to an island paradise after one last big score. But as fate would have it, an even bigger score is going to be on display on board a cruise ship docked at that very island. Woody Harrelson, as the FBI agent who's been after Brosnan for years, doesn't think that's just a coinky-dink and shows up to guzzle umbrella drinks and engage in some amazingly stupid homoerotic horseplay with Pierce. You can throw a rock into a video store and hit a more interesting heist movie than this one, although there's no denying that the scenery is gorgeous. (**)

The Bad News Bears

With the release of Richard Linklater's remake, I realized that the last time I'd seen the original Bad News Bears I was about 8 years old. One DVD rental later, I'm pleased to report that it's just as good as it ever was. Maybe better. Walter Matthau is in rare form as Buttermaker, barking orders at a well-cast team of misfit and loser kids. The movie is refreshingly unsentimental. Even when characters redeem themselves or (god forbid) grow, it's handled in a understated way. I still haven't seen the remake, though I hear it's pretty good and I hope I still have a chance to catch it. Even so, it has some pretty big shoes to fill in the original Bears. Where else are you going to see Matthau throwing a beer at young Tatum O'Neal as a reality check?

Undisputed

Walter Hill is one of my favorite directors and while Undisputed is a far cry from being among his best work, it's a good example of why I like him so much. In anybody else's hands, this movie would be colossally stupid and probably about half an hour too long. With Hill, it's still pretty dumb but it's enjoyably dumb and, clocking in at a brisk 94 minutes, it does what it came to do and gets out. Wesley Snipes stars as a convict serving a life sentence for murder. He was arrested just as he was about to become a pro boxer and now he's the prison champ. Suddenly there's a new champ: Ving Rhames as the heavyweight champion of the world doing time for rape. Peter Falk is an aging mobster who arranges to pit the two against each other in the ring. It's pretty routine but it's a good routine, staged with style and conviction by someone who knows how to get the most out of a B-premise. (***)

Young Adam

Ewan McGregor stars as a mysterious young man who takes a job with a family working on a barge in the rivers of Scotland. McGregor and boss Peter Mullan drag the corpse of a young woman out of the water one morning. While Mullan enjoys his minor celebrity as the discoverer of the body, McGregor initiates an affair with his wife (Tilda Swinton). Young Adam is a slow, rather downbeat movie that, if you can get into it, does reward your patience. However, the pace is so deliberate that I couldn't blame you if you gave up after thirty minutes. I stayed with it and I'm glad I did. McGregor is very good and David Mackenzie's direction is excellent, with a number of startlingly original scenes. However, I'm not ashamed to admit that I am not smart enough to have any idea what the title is supposed to signify apart from serving to call my attention to it on the list of new releases. (***)

Now Playing at the Hell Plaza Octoplex - Sextette

OK, folks. Everything else that has been in the Octoplex has been a warm-up. Every single movie I've bashed in this part of the Electric Theatre has been Citizen Kane compared to the jaw-dropping horror that is Sextette. Mae West's final film, released in 1978, is like nothing else you've ever seen. Completely ignoring the fact that she was about 80 at the time, Mae stars as her usual sexpot character, freshly married to her sixth husband (played by Timothy Dalton, of all people). But all her ex-husbands keep showing up during the honeymoon and they include Russian President Tony Curtis, German filmmaker Ringo Starr, and presumed-dead gangster George Hamilton. But wait, there's more! You also get Dom DeLuise as Mae's manager, Regis Philbin and Rona Barrett as themselves, Keith Moon as a flamboyant dress designer, and if you can make it through to the very end, Alice Cooper as a singing waiter! In my favorite scene, Timothy Dalton and Mae West sing a duet of "Love Will Keep Us Together". Of course in the original song, the words go "someday your looks will be gone" so Dalton chivalrously changes them to "your looks will never be gone". Sextette is an insanely bad movie and I know full well that some of you may actually want to see it now out of morbid curiosity, just as I did. Go with God, my friends. You will not be disappointed. (*)

Obviously I've got to stop it there this week. How can you top Sextette? Beats the holy hell out of me but I've got two weeks to figure it out. Until next time, have a holly jolly Labor Day. Jahnke out.

Adam Jahnke
ajahnke@thedigitalbits.com

Dedicated to Robert Moog

"Electric Theatre - Where You See All the Latest Life Size Moving Pictures, Moral and Refined, Pleasing to Ladies, Gentlemen and Children!"

- Legend on a traveling moving picture show tent, c.1900

Jahnke's Electric Theatre - Main Page