Creator (1985): A Review (Review #1764)

CREATOR (1985)

The plot of Creator sounds a bit like a variation of Frankenstein. However, Creator ends up being a surprisingly romantic film, elevated by a strong central performance. 

Renowned Nobel Prize-winning scientist Harry Wolper (Peter O'Toole) is looking for a new research assistant to continue his somewhat secret experiments. He finds the ideal candidate in Boris Lafkin (Vincent Spano), a slightly grumpy and rebellious but decent pre-med student. Boris is ideal because he is not keen on working with Wolper's frenemy Dr. Kullenbeck (David Ogden Stiers). Boris is also attracted to a mysterious woman whom Wolper knows the identity of. In exchange for revealing her name, Boris agrees to work with Wolper. She is Barbara Spencer (Virginia Madsen), a fellow student with whom Boris eventually begins a romantic relationship.

Now, what exactly are Wolper's not-so-secret experiments? Simply put, he wants to clone his late wife Lucy, who has been dead for 35 years. Most of his colleagues save Kullenbeck take his work as a combination eccentricity and grieving mechanism. As it turns out, Wolper is really inches from achieving a resurrection of sorts.

In order to facilitate this, Wolper and Boris require female eggs. Answering an ad, the sassy but unsure cocktail waitress Meli (Mariel Hemingway) agrees to let them use her ovaries. She moves in and soon Meli falls in love with Wolper. Will the not-so-mad scientist realize that one can love the living while still respecting the dead? Will Barbara's health crisis separate her and Boris forever?

In most hands, almost everything about Creator might have come across as either goofy or creepy. The idea of cloning someone has very concerning elements to it. However, Creator manages to be almost a romantic comedy. The best description that I can offer for Creator is that it is an odd blending of My Fair Lady and Re-Animator. 

The reason that Creator is more endearing than deranged is due to a variety of factors. The first and perhaps most important are the performances. Creator is a delightful turn for Peter O'Toole. He makes Wolper into a nice, elegant mad scientist. Wolper comes across as more of a rascal than a complete psychopath attempting to resurrect his long-dead wife. Wolper is endearing and quite touching thanks to O'Toole's performance.

When Boris sees a picture of Lucy, he remarks, "She was something". Wolper wistfully responds, "She was...everything". O'Toole makes clear in these simple moments why someone would steal laboratory equipment and offer women money for their eggs to bring a long-dead woman to life. O'Toole is impish and almost innocent in his manner. While mentoring Boris in the sciences and arts of love, he offers his Love Formula. You are in love, he says, when you think about the lady more than yourself.

He is matched by Spano as Boris. One sees an awkwardness to him, almost a shyness underneath the mix of anger and self-contempt. Who else would create a robot that said mean things about him and even set it up to give him potentially deadly electric shocks to get him out of bed? 

Madsen is delightful as Barbara, the object of Boris' affection. There is a guilelessness, a sweetness but mixed with an intelligence in her. She is probably fully aware that Boris is into her, but she does not give in right away. Madsen's Barbara builds up the relationship to friendship, then openly flirts with him. Someone who is not attracted to you won't pull off your towel and compliment you on your body. 

While a smaller role, Stiers is effective as the arrogant Kullenbeck, Wolper's frenemy. He, however, can have moments of comedy, such as when he is thoroughly stunned when Meli flashes him in a not-so-friendly game of tackle football. Hemingway is probably the weakest of the performances. To be fair, Meli had a small part to play, but she did not convince that Meli had fallen in love with Wolper. When she stands up for him, either at the football game or suggesting to Kullenbeck that she is really a lesbian, Hemingway does much better.

I will, in retrospect, walk something back a bit. Spano's third act when attempting to not lose Barbara was at times a bit over-the-top bordering on hysterical in all meanings of the word. I might put that down more to Ivan Passer's directing and Jeremy Leven's adaptation of his own novel. This part did not fully work, which did push Creator down a bit.

However, it is more than made up for by other parts that did. When Boris and Barbara finally consummate their relationship, they have a wonderful set of dialogue where they discuss the joys of the middle class while in the shower. Few people could rattle off such joy in the first flowerings of love and look so beautiful doing so.

As a side note, Boris tells Barbara that he lost his virginity at 15 to a girl who was 27. I don't think we need to go into how his first sexual encounter was, technically, statutory rape. 

Creator is a surprisingly sweet and moving film. It has elements of romance and comedy to where the actual "cloning your very dead wife" part seems almost secondary. Strong performances and a nice pace move Creator along to being good, even touching, entertainment. 

DECISION: B-

Life with Lucy: Lucy's Green Thumb

LIFE WITH LUCY: 

LUCY'S GREEN THUMB

Written by: Mark Tuttle

Directed by: Marc Daniels

Airdate: Unaired 

After the twin horrors of Lucy and the Guard Goose and Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree, one would think that anything afterwards would be better. Lucy's Green Thumb the eleventh of thirteen Life with Lucy episodes and the third unaired one, was better to be sure, but it is still pretty abysmal. 

Lucy Barker (Lucille Ball) has come up with yet another health concoction that makes everyone gag. Separately, the rest of the family dumps the green juice into Melvin, the potted plant that has not grown. To everyone's surprise, Melvin grows quickly in the span of a few hours. Lucy's business partner/in-law Curtis (Gale Gordon) sees Lucy's awful drink as a new fertilizer that will make them rich.

Pity that Lucy cannot quite remember exactly what she put in the mix.

Curtis spends much time berating and raging at her. His son Ted (Larry Anderson) comes up with a method to jog her memory. He has Lucy reenact her steps until she finds that the secret ingredient is turnip. Now they are all ready to debut the newly christened "Gigantagrow". Curtis gleefully called a press conference to announce the miracle plant food and the whole family is there to bask in their soon-to-be fortune. Right as Lucy explains what happened to Melvin, he starts wilting in front of everyone. While the McGibbon-Barker family may end up not being rich, they at least have each other.

Lucy's Green Thumb is pretty much a disaster. It starts out badly, with wild applause for when Ball shows up. I can understand the reaction to her entrance. Here she is, a literal living legend, coming into view. However, it is distracting because one focuses so much on "the legend" that the current situation is lost. The episode should be around Lucy Barker, not Lucille Ball.

Things do not improve when Ball breaks out into her exaggerated crying when she is overwhelmed by her failure to remember all the ingredients in her green drink of death. It evokes too much of Lucy Ricardo, Lucy Carmichael and Lucy Carter. It was like seeing someone long past their prime trot out a guaranteed hit only to find it rote rather than amusing. 

Yes, it is unfortunate that age is an issue with Lucy's Green Thumb. Suggesting that a senior citizen cannot remember things makes the situation look unintentionally bad and ageist. I am sure that Bob Carroll, Jr. and Madelyn Davies did not intend to do this. However, Carroll, Jr. and Davies were 68 and 65 years old respectively when they wrote Lucy's Green Thumb. It is a sign that they were writing material for someone well over forty years younger. How could they have thought a major plot point being a then-75-year-old unable to remember would be funny and not creepy? In her exhaustion, Lucy says, "Yesterday? When was yesterday?". Given her advanced age, it just comes across as sad. 

Lucy's Green Thumb is beset by other problems both in logic and execution. Curtis really should have confirmed the press conference with Lucy instead of just scheduling it, a strange lapse of judgment from someone who has been seen as sane versus zany. Her inability to remember the formula should have forced him to cancel or postpone the conference. It had to go on because the plot required it to.

Moreover, Donovan Scott's Leonard continues to be a drag on the show. I think Scott really did try his best, but he was awful. When Lucy tells him that she does not remember the formula, Leonard becomes uncharacteristically enraged. "LUCILLE?! HOW COULD YOU DO SOMETHING SO STUPID?!?!" he screams out while shaking her hysterically. Leaving aside the elder abuse played up for laughs, this whole section ends up being shocking. Granted, it was planned and rehearsed, but Ball's expression makes it all the more horrifying. Leonard tries to say that his reaction took the place of Curtis', but it does not work.

Leonard has always been pretty nice and subservient to "Mrs. B.". Seeing him go insane, especially given that he probably would not benefit financially or in any way from "Gigantagrow" makes his meltdown more horrifying. Had Curtis done that, it would have worked given his past behavior. For Leonard to basically go bonkers makes it almost murderous.

About the one good thing in Lucy's Green Thumb is of all things the editing. The transition from a small to large Melvin is quite smooth and effective.  Apart from that, though, Lucy's Green Thumb is another poor Life with Lucy episode. As she struggles to remember the formula, Lucy breaks out into howls of sorrow. "I'm just a big flop!", she cries. 

Famous last words...   

1/10

Next (Unaired) Episode: Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Joy Ride (2023): A Review (Review #1763)

JOY RIDE

Joy Ride is the worst film of 2023. 

I said that about Book Club: The Next Chapter. I came close to saying that about The Boogeyman. However, Joy Ride outdoes them all in its crassness, its degeneracy, its racism. Joy Ride is not funny, not clever, and a horrifying reflection of a society that can give lavish praise to such garbage.

Lifelong BFF's Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) are total opposites. Audrey, adopted by a white couple as an infant from China, is studious, responsible and a successful attorney. Lolo, born in the States to Chinese immigrants, is vulgar, unemployed and making art that resembles penises. Audrey's job requires her to go to Beijing to close a big deal, and Lolo goes as her unofficial translator. Tagging along is Lolo's cousin Vanessa, better known as Deadeyes (Sabrina Wu). Deadeyes lives up to her moniker: generally catatonic and more interested in K-Pop and her online community than anything else. In Beijing, Audrey reunites with another friend, Kat (Stephanie Hsu), who has found fame as a Chinese television soap opera actress. 

The deal for some reason requires the men to know all about Audrey's Chinese family, so after some hoodwinking the foursome travel through China to find the adoption agency and track down Audrey's birth mother. They end up sharing a train carriage with a white drug dealer who forces them to ingest heavy amounts of cocaine, cause freak sex accidents to a traveling basketball team and try to pass themselves off as a Korean K-Pop group.

Why the last? Simply put, Audrey discovers that she is not Chinese but Korean. That requires a trip to South Korea to find Audrey's birth mother, but their efforts to get to South Korea end up a disaster. A livestream of this faux-K-Pop group performing WAP ends with Kat's skirt falling, revealing a massive Devil tattoo covering her vagina. That scandal causes friction among the group, which is surprisingly the least of their issues.

Ultimately, their relationship heals, and Audrey reconciles with her past. 

The audience that I saw Joy Ride with laughed exactly once. It was at the beginning, when the child Lolo defends the child Audrey. I need to set this up a bit. Audrey's white parents had approached Lolo's Chinese parents, who were openly hostile to them until they reveal their daughter. Lolo takes Audrey to go to the swings but are stopped by a little white boy who ran up to them and said something about "no ching-chongs allowed". At that point, Lolo tells him, "F*** YOU!" and punches the boy, who is sent flying and then is sent flying again when another girl on a swing hits him accidentally.

I think they laughed uproariously at the sight of a little girl cursing. What can be funnier than that? After that though, the theater was dead silent as Joy Ride went on. This is not surprising, given that Joy Ride was devoid of humor and good taste. I figure that screenwriters Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao were aiming for an Asian female version of The Hangover, one where hijinks and cringe comedy blended.

What perhaps they, along with director Adele Lim, failed to note is that viewers are not laughing with the guys from The Hangover. We are laughing at them. There is a big difference. We are not asked to sympathize with the Wolf Pack, but recoil in horror at how they got where they are. Joy Ride, oddly, wants us to like these four women, but they are all so unlikeable. Even Audrey, ostensibly the most responsible and mature one, quickly and irrationally goes in on a menage a trois with two basketball players.

This sequence where three of the four women go all-it with their sex partners is not funny. Leaving aside for the moment the editing is choppy, all of these women look like complete sex-obsessed loons. Only Deadeyes was not shown in sexual debauchery, apparently fine with just having a K-Pop dance-off with another basketball player.

To be fair, perhaps their irrational behavior can be attributed to their forced cocaine ingestion. That entire sequence leads us to how everything in Joy Ride is awful. While on a Chinese bullet train, Audrey is adamant about looking for the best carriage to share with others. She repeatedly rejects any carriage that has Chinese people in them, then comes upon one that is occupied by a single white Caucasian female, whom they find is American. 

It should be obvious to everyone except those who found Joy Ride hilarious that the single white female will end up being a criminal. She is a cocaine smuggler, and in order to save herself, forces the four of them to swallow all the coke she has through every bodily orifice. Yes, they literally take it up the ass. 

Despite this, they are thrown off the train and stranded in the middle of China. 

As a side note, given that Kat is a major Chinese star, she could not afford a driver and accommodations for herself and her gal pals? 

Perhaps in the wild, hysterical overacting that everyone in this scene was involved is where those praising Joy Ride got that this was funny. All I could think about was how racist and idiotic everything was. It is racist for Audrey to assume that an Anglo woman traveling alone in China would be the "safe alternative". It is illogical to think that the outlandish amounts of cocaine they all took would not have instantly killed them. One of them, I think Kat, bemoans her plight, complaining loudly about "the blow that literally exploded in my asshole". 

Yes, perhaps it is a stretch to put too much thought into the logic of seeing people swallow so much cocaine that it would kill a small Uighur concentration camp. However, I don't think you can have such a scene and not have people with functioning brains ask how any of this is possible. It might have actually benefitted Joy Ride all the more if they all had overdosed on the train, thus sparing us more misery.

Joy Ride is a very racist film. Right from the get-go, when the little Anglo boy stops Audrey and Lolo from going to the swings, the film pushes the idea that whites are either openly racists or dumb. Audrey, for example, thanks her employer for the "Mulan-themed birthday party" they gave her. That, I figure, must have read funny when the two television writers came up with that. However, it was not funny, made less funny by Park's forced delivery. Audrey's fondness for Mumford & Sons and Taylor Swift also makes her somehow "less authentic" to her heritage. One can play with stereotypes, but Joy Ride is not clever enough to give us that. 

It is curious, however, that the film actually made an unintended case for how white parenthood is actually better for Asian children than Asian parenthood. Audrey was brought up by two white parents, and she (menage a trois notwithstanding) became a successful lawyer. Lolo was brought up by immigrant Chinese parents, and she ended up a sex-obsessed loser. There is no way in any world, real or fantasy, where Audrey and Lolo would be friends, let alone BFF's. All friends will have varying degrees of differences between them. However, they also have to have some things in common. Audrey and Lolo have nothing in common, not even their Chinese heritage. 

No Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother parenting for Lolo.

The racism even extends, perhaps unintentionally, to how the Asian characters were portrayed. There was controversy a few years back when Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi were cast in Memoirs of a Geisha. The argument was that only Japanese or Japanese-descended actresses could play the roles. A major plot point in Joy Ride is that Audrey was Korean and not Chinese. Is the film arguing that "all Asians look alike"?  The plot point of an Asian-American woman searching for her past in The Joy Luck Club ended up being a bit of a bad punchline in Joy Ride. 

The film has no performances, at least until Park is left alone to search for her birth mother. Joy Ride takes a strange detour into a drama, where Audrey meets Dae (Daniel Dae Kim), her late mother's husband. We see a surprisingly touching moment where Audrey sees a video her late mother made for her long-lost daughter in case she came after her death. That part of the film somehow worked much better than the raunchy, idiotic monstrosity we were mostly given.

Joy Ride is shockingly unoriginal. The characters were one-note (responsible one, irresponsible one, weird one, nonentity). The situations cringe-inducing: no amount of faux-female empowerment will make their irrational WAP performance look good. The movie has no plot. It has nothing to offer.

Joy Ride is dreadful beyond what I could have imagined. It is the anti-Joy Luck Club, one that denigrates everyone involved in the film. Even the audience.  

DECISION: F-

Life with Lucy: Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree

LIFE WITH LUCY: 

LUCY AND CURTIS ARE UP A TREE

Written by: Bob Carroll, Jr. and Madelyn Davis

Directed by: Marc Daniels

Airdate: Unaired

I cannot remember where, but I read or heard somewhere that a Lucy episode be it I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and/or Life with Lucy started with a simple premise and built from there. Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree, the tenth and second unaired Life with Lucy episode, takes that idea to a whole new level by literally telling you about the entire plot in the title. Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree is also bad, just bad, and would have been another reason to dump this misguided debacle.

Margo McGibbon (Ann Dusenberry) is very concerned that her mother Lucy Barker (Lucille Ball) and father-in-law Curtis (Gale Gordon) are spoiling the kids. Margo's husband Ted (Larry Anderson) is more blase about things, and their disagreement turns into a fight. Lucy overhears the fight and is alarmed. 

She goes to Curtis, who is busy building their grandson Kevin (Philip J. Amelio, II) a treehouse. Realizing that they have indeed been spoiling the children, they agree the best solution is to move out. Which one should move out, though, is a source of contention. Kevin overhears their conversation via the walkie-talkie Curtis got him. Managing Herculean strength, Kevin moves the latter away from the treehouse to force them to negotiate. 

Lucy and Curtis agree to cut back on their gifts and that neither will leave, which brightens their day. That is a counter to the rainstorm that traps them there. They are all wet but there's hope. The rest of the family has returned, rescued them, agreed to not seeing them go and everyone starts "singing in the rain".

One might imagine that I would like Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree more because this is the first Life with Lucy episode in which Donovan Scott's Leonard does not appear. Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree is also the first Life with Lucy episode which does not have a single scene at the hardware store. To be honest, those are positives: Scott's Leonard is both a bad and unnecessary character. However, Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree is bad because it is more than unfunny. It is boring and illogical.

I cannot remember if Margo and Ted ever opted to talk to their parents about how they were spoiling the children. I think there was mention that they had or tried to. By not doing so, Margo and Ted essentially infantilized their parents, refusing to see them as adults. 

That these adults opted to fight with each other rather than approach or be firm with their own parents is probably the most logical thing in the episode. Ball has an irrelevant sequence where she tells Kevin a bedtime story. To be fair, hearing her version of The Frog Prince is a showcase for her still-agile skills. However, it is totally unnecessary to the story and is there as time filler. It shows how thin Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree is.

Kevin is about five to seven in the series. How exactly would he be physically capable of moving a large, heavy ladder by himself? I doubt he would be able to even shift it, let alone pull it away. Why did no one notice or care that Lucy and Curtis were missing? From what I remember, Ted and Margo take the kids out to dinner to celebrate making up. I guess they opted not to ask Lucy and Curtis to join them, or even ask, "Has anyone seen Grandma or Groovy Grandpa"(Groovy Grandpa being Curtis' walkie talkie handle)? 

More bizarre is how Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree is shot. In the opening scene, the editing made it look like Dusenberry was not in the same room with Ball. It gave the impression that she had to reshoot the scene and was inserted into it later. The editing is so jarring that one got the idea that the original scene was so bad acting-wise they had to hurriedly try for reshoots without Ball's presence. Given how bad Dusenberry was, one can imagine how awful the original scene was. 

Perhaps the saddest part of Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree is when Ball breaks out into crying. The audience loved it, probably for the same reason I hated it: it brought back memories of Lucy Ricardo. 

Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree is more Lucy and Curtis Find Their Time is Up.  How bad is the episode? Even the absence of Leonard can't make it good.

0/10

Next (Unaired) Episode: Lucy's Green Thumb

1985: A Review

1985

With AIDS no longer being a death sentence, it may be hard for today's generation to understand not just the gravity of those early days of terror but the terror itself. 1985, a strong if perhaps at times predictable drama chronicling one man's impending death, does a good job in humanizing those aware and unaware of this terrible disease.

Adrian Lester (Cory Michael Smith) has come back to his Texas home (an unspecified suburb of Dallas) for Christmas. We soon see that he is different from his more faith-based parents Eileen (Virginia Madsen) and Dale (Michael Chiklis). Adrian wants to get closer to his younger brother Andrew (Aidan Langford) but Andrew is a bit cold towards him. This is probably due to how Adrian has not kept in touch and skipped out on a promised trip to visit Adrian in New York City.

There is, however, a reason for Adrian being a bit separate from his family. There is a reason for the surprisingly lavish gifts Adrian gives them, including a trip to Hawaii. There is also a reason for his distance from Carly (Jaime Chung), a former friend with some benefits who is starting a career as a stand-up comedienne. 

Adrian is dying of AIDS. He wants to tell those around him that he is gay and that he may not live to see Christmas, 1986, but ultimately, he can tell only Carly. That is not to say that the Lesters are not aware of something being amiss. Dale reveals that he made a side trip to New York after attending a fellow veteran's funeral and saw Adrian wrapped around another man. Dale is also privately troubled by Andrew's switch from football to drama, and his love for Madonna also raises concerns. Eileen is caring, but she too knows her son is keeping something from her. With Adrian going back to New York City, she quietly tells him that when he's ready to tell her, she'll try to be ready to hear.

1985 is a very quiet film. No one has a big scene or moment, not even when conflict comes up. Dale and Carly both are angry and/or upset at Adrian, but there is no yelling or even raising of voices. Instead, both are assertive on their points, but not violent or belligerent. I think it communicates more a sense of hurt than hostility, making them more believable as characters. 

I think the humanizing of the characters is to the film's benefit, as we can see in 1985 these five people, flaws and all. Other films might have made Adrian very saintly or Dale perhaps too aggressive and belligerent. However, writer/director Yen Tan resists this temptation. Yes, Dale for example is still a gruff, growly individual. Eileen is sweeter and more nurturing. However, Chiklis has a scene with Smith where he talks about how his father never hugged him to express emotion. His background as a Vietnam veteran still haunted by his experiences in combat also reveals him to be more than the somewhat hostile man.

In the brief time frame and running time (85 minutes), 1985 tells its story simply. Perhaps too simply, as for most of the film we get very few hints about what exactly troubles Adrian. We see him take some medication and be evasive about matters, but it is not until close to the end that the hints become stronger. For example, Adrian cuts himself while slicing an onion. While Eileen goes to get a band-aid, Adrian's panic over the blood is so great that he tosses the onion and even the cutting board into the trash. This moment, brief as it is, reminds viewers of the panic AIDS caused. It also suggests that Eileen may finally get hints about what is going on.

There are many subtleties and suggestions in 1985. It might be stereotypical, but Andrew's newfound love for theater and Madonna strongly suggests that he too might be gay. It is never made clear whether Andrew is, but it does explain Dale's growing sharpness with both his sons given how he knows Adrian's sexual orientation. In some ways, the subtleties make 1985 more tragic. Dale knows that Adrian is gay. Eileen knows, or strongly suspects, that Adrian has AIDS. They may not know that it is both. We the audience now know, but Adrian's inability to verbalize it for most of the film makes him all the more tragic.

1985 has strong performances from most of the cast. Cory Michael Smith scored major recognition when playing The Riddler on Gotham, and now he shows us a softer, gentler side as Adrian. For most of the film, Adrian is a bit distant from things, such as when he meets up with Marc (Ryan Piers Williams), a repentant former bully. It is not until he reveals all to Carly that we see Smith use so much skill to move the viewer. Adrian's revelation of his late partner Leo's agony when he ultimately succumbed to AIDS, coupled with his thorough loneliness in his grief, is heartbreaking. We see that it is not just his impending, inevitable death that tears at him. It is his inability to share his grief with his family, both of Leo's death and the knowledge that he too will most likely be gone soon. 1985 is another strong calling card for Smith, and I hope he gets more roles to showcase his skills. 

He is matched by Virginia Madsen, who excels as Eileen. She plays Eileen as very gentle and sincere, always trying to keep the peace, nurturing if sometimes a bit too involved. Her last scene with Smith though makes one almost weep. "You don't have to tell me until you're ready. And I'll try to be ready when you are," she tells him. By keeping things simple, Madsen, Smith and Yan all make this moment all the more beautiful and heartbreaking. Madsen even has a small moment of humor, when she quietly, almost conspiratorially confesses to Adrian that she voted for Walter Mondale in the 1984 election. It does remind me of a similar moment in Peggy Sue Got Married only it was Kennedy that the mother secretly supported. The more things change...

One can fault Chiklis for being a bit too gruff and stereotypical as the working-class Dale. At times it skated towards parody of the not-tolerant man. However, his last moment with Smith when Adrian hugs Dale shows the father, in his way, letting go of anger to embrace the child he loves. Chung was a little more stilted as Carly, but like Madsen and Chiklis, her last major scene works well.

I do not know why the last scenes are the best for people, but there it is. 

1985 is made up of many master shots, where we have the characters in the middle of the frame. The black-and-white cinematography may be too artsy for some. You are, however, left not with a sense of either hope or despair, but with mourning for everyone involved. 1985 is a well-acted, well-written, quiet film that reminds viewers of the early, terrifying days of AIDS. 

DECISION: B+

Life with Lucy: Lucy and the Guard Goose

LIFE WITH LUCY: 

LUCY AND THE GUARD GOOSE

Written by: Bob Carroll, Jr. and Madelyn Davis

Directed by: Peter Baldwin

Airdate: Unaired

Joan Crawford's estranged daughter Christina once remarked that she did not know if Trog was Joan's last film. She added that if wasn't, it should have been. Mother of the Bride was the final Life with Lucy episode broadcast, and as such it ended Lucille Ball's disastrous fourth television series on a high note. Had it ended with Lucy and the Guard Goose, one of the five "lost" episodes, it would have sunk Ball's reputation to where it would never have recovered. While none of the Life with Lucy episodes had been good save for Mother of the Bride, Lucy and the Guard Goose was just beyond awful, a total fiasco from opening to closing that is simply cringe inducing. 

The M&B Hardware Store has been robbed. Co-owner Curtis McGibbon (Gale Gordon) does not want to spend money on a security system. Co-owner Lucy Barker (Lucille Ball), who inadvertently caused the situation by leaving the key in a visible key stone, first suggests a guard dog and then a guard goose. Somehow, Curtis goes along with this, only to end up being held hostage by Oliver the Guard Goose. Lucy's efforts to rescue Curtis ends up with her also being held prisoner by the honking horror until in frustration, Curtis throws something at Oliver.

Worried that he killed him, they take Oliver home, where they find to their relief that Oliver is not dead. He, however, is still terrorizing the McGibbon family. Even police officer Sergeant Green (Charles Levin) is no match for Oliver the Goose. Ultimately, Lucy outwits the goose by imitating a goose herself, drawing him out of the house.

Lucy and the Guard Goose is such an embarrassment from the word "go" that one watches more in sadness than horror. The entire idea of a "guard goose" might have sounded funny, but one asks, "Why a guard goose"? Lucy tries to rationalize it by saying that geese are naturally aggressive, but it still sound stupid. Curtis may have been wildly cheap, but even he might have considered that a burglar alarm would have been a better investment than a literal guard goose. He could have hired a security guard or invested in better locks, but a guard goose?

As a side note, I figure the hardware store should have been insured for robbery, so the theft of power tools would not have been the disaster the episode portrayed. 

Perhaps it is not unexpected that we do not see Oliver being bonkers in Lucy and the Guard Goose. We have maybe one shot of him when he strolls into M&B Hardware, but for the rest of the episode all we hear is his honking. While I do not think it would have been fun to see any animal harmed, I empathize with Curtis' frustration and anger at being held prisoner by a rampaging bird. To be fair, why did he ask Lucy to help him? He's pretty much has had contempt for Lucy, with reason, but why trust the person who caused the problems to help solve them?

Lucy and the Guard Goose is not helped by the performances. Of particular note is Ann Dusenberry as Margo Barker McGibbon. For reasons unknown, her running gag is retelling her oddball dreams. The episode starts with her talking about a dream where she dances the tango with Tip O'Neill (the then-Speaker of the House). When she gathers with her family as they face the crisis of the out-of-control goose, she decides this is the perfect time to tell of her newest dream.

"I was having this great dream. Mick Jagger came over and wanted me to join his group, but I said, "Mick, you can't always get what you want". I did a literal eye roll at this line. I figure that she did her best with such an awful line, but her performance is particularly atrocious. It really was just awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. There was an almost unhinged manner to it, hurried and desperate. It is as if she knew all of this was truly horrendous and was desperate to get out of it. 

There was just nothing in Lucy and the Guard Goose. The performances were all bad, even Ball and Gordon, who so far have been the only good things in Life with Lucy. I think they too did their best, particularly an agile Ball who had the ability to move like a goose. That, however, oddly draws from a similar moment from I Love Lucy almost thirty years prior except they were baby chicks. 

Lucy and the Guard Goose is shockingly bad. The public was spared a stunningly bad Life with Lucy episode. Perhaps after seeing it, the network executives decided to cancel Life with Lucy rather than watch Lucille Ball be so humiliated by this dreck. 

0/10

Next (Unaired) Episode: Lucy and Curtis Are Up a Tree

Big Time (1988): A Review

BIG TIME

I am neither a Tom Waits fan nor a Tom Waits hater. Truth be told, I think I know the name more than the music. That is, until I saw Big Time, his combination concert film experimental performance piece. It is a good introduction to Waits' music, though perhaps a bit odd for most people.

Divided into three acts, Big Time intercuts Waits performing two concerts in Los Angeles and San Francisco with some performances as a kind of oddball Master of Ceremonies. As he performs on stage, one sees a surprisingly magnetic performer. We get a good variety of songs, which are in my view quite good. Down in the Hole, for example, makes him sound and look like a ragged Jim Morrisson. Innocent When You Dream (Barroom), which closes the concert (Big Black Mariah plays over the credits) is a good song, albeit a strange one. 

Waits' gravelly, growly voice mostly speaks a lot of his lyrics versus singing them. Waits is scratchier than say Leonard Cohen but surprisingly softer than late Bob Dylan. His performance style is also curiously like Joe Cocker, almost flaying about with slightly possessed glee. Waits is also quite theatrical in Big Time when performing either on stage or in filmed sections directed by Chris Blum. 

Whether you think Tom Waits is artistic or crazy is up to you. His performance style seems to have him perpetually hunched over when he is not sitting at the piano. The aforementioned Down in the Hole intercuts his song with him doing a faux-preacher manner on a stage. It works well, though it does also come across as slightly bonkers. 

His dialogue at times makes a case that he is crazy. As he attempts to be some kind of barker to attract men to a strip club, he calls out that the women went beyond XXX to being girls without skin. That kind of almost outrageous manner lends Big Time a bit of a kooky manner. It is watchable, if a bit odd for some people. 

Questions on his sanity continue when he performs a song under an umbrella on fire. One watches, if not in shock, at least in mesmerized puzzlement. It does give one an idea of what a Tom Waits concert would be like, though it is hard to know if all the theatricality he had.

Big Time is a pretty lost film, having never been released on DVD and rarely screened. I understand that at one point, no prints could be found. I think Tom Waits fans will enjoy Big Time. Those of us who have barely a passing acquaintance with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member will find things to like though be warned: it can be a bit oddball. 

DECISION: B-