AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951) / GIGI (1958). The film industry has produced a substantial number of truly transcendent musical masterpieces – Singin’ in the Rain, Top Hat and A Hard Day’s Night are but three examples – yet rarely have these films won Best Picture Oscars. Instead, the Academy’s taste in musicals tends to run toward lavish, overproduced extravaganzas that often lumber rather than waltz across the screen. MGM’s two Best Picture musical winners in the 1950s are entertaining enough – and certainly superior to such victors as Oliver! and The Great Ziegfeld – but they represent neither the finest of their respective years nor the movie musical genre itself.
An American in Paris is the better of the pair, with Gene Kelly as Jerry Mulligan, a struggling Yankee artist living in the title city. Jerry agrees to allow his work to be promoted by society woman Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), who clearly has an interest in more than just his paintings. Unfortunately for her, he’s smitten by a lithe Parisian girl named Lise (Leslie Caron) who, unfortunately for him, happens to be engaged to a popular singer (Georges Guetary). Oscar Levant adds the comic relief as Kelly’s sad-sack best friend, while George & Ira Gershwin provide the classic tunes – the climactic “An American in Paris Ballet” sequence is the film’s most famous, though I’ve always had a soft spot for Kelly singing “I Got Rhythm” with the assistance of a group of children. Still, the story is thin even by musical-flick standards, Jerry’s treatment of Milo leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and Kelly and Caron don’t exactly set off fireworks as a couple (Kelly would find a much better match the following year with Debbie Reynolds in Singin’ in the Rain). Nominated for eight Academy Awards, this won six; Kelly also won a special award that year for his versatility as an actor, singer, director and dancer. Incidentally, this film’s Best Picture victory came at the expense of A Streetcar Named Desire, a masterpiece that retains all of its merits.
Gigi reunited much of the principal talent from An American in Paris, including director Vincente Minnelli, producer Arthur Freed, scripter Alan Jay Lerner and leading lady Leslie Caron. This finds Colette’s novel about a young woman trained to become a courtesan sanitized into a story about a young woman trained to become a society lady. Caron is delightful as Gigi, and the score by Lerner and Frederick Loewe contains numerous familiar standards – while it’s a tad unsettling seeing 69-year-old Maurice Chevalier singing “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” while surrounded by playground children, he’s at his best accompanying romantic lead Louis Jourdan on “It’s a Bore” and matching memories with Hermione Gingold in the wonderful “I Remember It Well.” But after an enchanting two-thirds of a movie, Gigi not only loses its fizzle but also ceases making narrative sense, as a movie about individuality in the face of conformity oddly turns into a movie about embracing conformity with both arms. This wowed ’em at the Oscars, going nine-for-nine (also the same year, Chevalier was given an honorary award for his longtime contribution to cinema). Completely ignored by the Academy were the year’s two best pictures, Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
Each movies arrives in a two-disc edition packed with bonus features. Paris extras include an audio commentary incorporating rare vintage interviews with Kelly, Minnelli and others as well as new comments by Caron and Foch; a 42-minute making-of documentary; the American Masters episode Gene Kelly: Anatomy of a Dancer; and a vintage cartoon and short. Gigi extras include audio commentary by film historian Jeanine Basinger, with additional comments by Caron; a 36-minute making-of documentary; the first screen version of Gigi, a 1949 nonmusical from France; and a vintage cartoon and short.
An American in Paris: ***
Gigi: **1/2
Extras: ***1/2
88 MINUTES (2008). 88 Minutes actually runs 108 minutes, a cruel trick to play on moviegoers who check their watches at the 80-minute mark and erroneously believe they’re on the verge of being set free. A film so moldy that it was released on DVD in some countries as far back as February 2007, this risible thriller stars Al Pacino as Dr. Jack Gramm, a college professor and forensic psychiatrist whose expertise has helped the FBI in nailing down serial killers. One such murderer is Jon Forster (Neal McDonough), whose claim of innocence is taken seriously once a new rash of similarly styled killings begins. But are these murders the work of a copycat? Is Forster innocent, and the real killer has never been caught? Is he masterminding the proceedings from his front-row seat on Death Row, with an accomplice doing his dirty deeds? Or is the killer Gramm himself? Director Jon Avnet tries to ratchet up the suspense by presenting every character, right down to bit players, as the possible assassin, but it’s an approach that only garners laughs. It’s usually fun when a murder-mystery offers several suspects, but this goes beyond serving up some red herrings; here, we get trout, tilapia and mahi mahi as well. Scripter Gary Scott Thompson wrote The Fast and the Furious, so that probably explains why Gramm spends a good amount of time driving a taxi (don’t ask). But Thompson also wrote the straight-to-DVD sequels to K-9 – K-911 and K-9: P.I. – so he’s also quite familiar with dogs. Rest assured, this joins the pack of movie mongrels.
DVD extras include audio commentary by Avnet; an alternate ending; and an interview with Pacino.
Movie: *1/2
Extras: **
THE LOVE GURU (2008). If I had ever entertained the notion that Mike Myers would some day make another movie as awful as The Cat In the Hat, I might have opted for early retirement long before the fact. Yet here’s The Love Guru, and it matches that Dr. Seuss bastardization step for step when it comes to thinking up evil ways to torture audience member; I daresay that even a splinter in the eyeball would be less painful than sitting through this debacle. Myers (who also co-wrote) stars as Guru Pitka, an American-born, Indian-raised spiritual leader who’s miffed that he constantly places second to Deepak Chopra when it comes to the popularity of self-help gurus. Pitka is given a golden opportunity to excel when he’s hired by Toronto Maple Leafs owner Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba, and you know you’re in trouble when she’s one of the more tolerable aspects of a movie) to patch matters up between the hockey team’s star player, Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco), and his wife Prudence (Meagan Good), who lately has been stepping out with the enormously endowed Los Angeles Kings goalie Jacques “Le Coq” Grande (Justin Timberlake). And yes, every time Le Coq pulls out le cock, we predictably hear a thud as it hits the floor. In fact, predictability is a rampant problem with The Love Guru, as a substantial amount of gags can be guessed before they even finish coagulating. That’s not to say every joke is apparent before the fact, as witnessed by ones involving copulating elephants, piss-saturated mops and the term “monkey mustard.” An embarrassment, to say the least.
DVD extras include a 10-minute making-of piece; 11 deleted and extended scenes; and bloopers.
Movie: *
Extras: **
RISKY BUSINESS (1983). From Screwballs to Hardbodies, the eighties were jam-packed with inane teen sex comedies – rest assured, Risky Business is not one of them. In fact, along with The Breakfast Club and (in some circles) Fast Times at Ridgemont High, this is one of the defining youth films of that decade, although writer-director Paul Brickman’s script is so razor-sharp that it’s a disservice to pigeonhole this as just a teen flick – in that respect, it bears some similarities to the ’60s landmark The Graduate. As much a peek at the Reagan era and its capitalist excesses, this stars Tom Cruise as high school senior Joel Goodsen, a clean-cut suburban kid who’s terrified he won’t make it into Harvard. While his parents are away for the weekend, he gets involved with a savvy hooker named Lana (Rebecca De Mornay in her first major role), and they partner on a unique business venture that will benefit both of them as long as they can avoid the wrath of Lana’s “manager,” Guido the Killer Pimp (Joe Pantoliano). Beautiful to behold in its stylistic sheen, this features a marvelous theme by Tangerine Dream that sets the proper mood, with the backing song score expansive enough to include tunes by ’80s icons The Police, Bruce Springsteen, Talking Heads, Phil Collins and more. And then, of course, there’s the famous scene of Cruise (enormously appealing in this role) dancing to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” while decked out in his underwear. (In other sequences, he’s sporting Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses, and sales of the eyewear skyrocketed after the film’s release.) The choice quips in Brickman’s screenplay come fast and furious; I’m sure my friends and I were far from the only high school kids who, during our senior year following the film’s August release, elected to adopt the line, “Sometimes you gotta say, ‘What the fuck,'” as our own personal mantra.
DVD extras include audio commentary by Cruise, Brickman and producer Jon Avnet; a half-hour 25th anniversary retrospective; a more pessimistic ending preferred by Brickman but shot down by the studio and by test audiences; and original screen tests by Cruise and De Mornay.
Movie: ***1/2
Extras: ***
SPEED RACER (2008). To complain about the excesses of Speed Racer would be like bitching that there are too many rib eyes kept on ice at your local steakhouse or that there are too many references to God in the Holy Bible. Anyone who ever watched the 1960s cartoon series should recall the frenetic pace, often blurry visuals and gaudy color schemes. In fact, those were the reasons kids tuned into the series in the first place; certainly, it wasn’t to marvel at the flat characterizations or infantile dialogue. Still, while there’s no denying the visual wizardry behind Speed Racer, visual wizardry is about all that the movie has going for it, and it’s hard to rally the troops behind so chilly a leader. The basic plotline deals with earnest Speed Racer (Into the Wild‘s Emile Hirsch) attempting to bring down the corrupt dynasty that controls the racing industry, but for the most part, the narrative form as we know it often doesn’t seem to exist in this film: The Wachowski Brothers (The Matrix) employ impressive CGI mixed with old-school techniques to create something of a mind meld – Peter Max by way of Andy Warhol by way of Dr. Seuss. Yet splashy colors and kinetic energy both have the ability to wear viewers down, especially when bombarding them for 135 minutes. Little children are sure to get antsy during this PG-rated confection, while adults need more subtext than a broad condemnation of rampant capitalism (the primary villain is cut from the same soiled cloth as today’s odious, profit-driven CEOs). Faring best amidst all the razzle-dazzle are John Goodman as Speed’s doughy dad and a scene-stealing chimp who deserves his own three-picture deal.
DVD extras include a 15-minute piece in which actor Paulie Litt, who plays young Spritle, tours the movie set (pop-up trivia facts appear throughout this feature) and a 15-minute featurette exploring the movie’s cars.
Movie: **1/2
Extras: **
This article appears in Sep 16-23, 2008.
