A while back I was asked to submit a writing sample with a job application. The only options I had were academic papers. So, I wrote a movie review just to have a piece of light, casual prose. I had a great time writing it. So now I write this blog, just for the fun of it.

The topics are the two things I know most about: movies and philosophy. Once upon a time, I enjoyed serious cinema. I still do, actually. But when I began studying philosophy more seriously, all I wanted to watch were escapist, genre movies. All week long, I would read serious books, and think serious thoughts. Serious movies just weren't as fun as they used to be. Thus, the movies I write about are generally low-brow. But I cannot abide by pop philosophy. And while the philosophy posts are informal, and not for specialists, I do try to keep them serious. So this is a low-brow/high-brow kind of blog. Unibrow.

One last note, this is not about philosophy in movies. And, not because the movies I discuss are not exactly art. But because the philosophy in movies is usually about an inch deep. Even when a movie is philosophically interesting, it usually is not philosophical about it. The best philosophy in movies, in my opinion, is literary, or psychological. They show how people deal with philosophical problems. After all, can you imagine what it would be like if a movie tried to be objective? It would be like watching a science-fiction movie with real science. 1000 failed experiments that only provide ambiguous data.
Thanks. If you've somehow found this blog and read this far, I hope you enjoy it. And, don't worry, I don't think philosophy must be objective.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Top Comedies #3: From when talent was more than a matter of grooming.

Mr. Mom, I expect, will expose me to the more ridicule than any other post, even those sophomoric philosophical posts which would be better kept in a sealed box in the back corner of a locked basement. You know, the place where you keep your Fleetwood Mac records. But while I am a nerd, and a dork, I am never a geek and just won't give in to caring too much what others think. Mr. Mom is great. If you don't agree, that's fine. Just go watch some South Park, or Archer, or whatever other puerile, cynical, scatological, phony satire that you are convinced is brilliant. As for me, I'll be too busy trying to catch my breath from uncontrollable laughter to really care how deep this movie is.

I could get into whether or not the depth of the social commentary actually does qualify this as a "good" movie. Or I could analyze it's incessant references to pop culture and compare it to the the same technique used by nearly every comedy released in the past few years. Did this pioneer topical comedy? (No. It didn't. It's just a send-up of sitcoms.) Or I could marvel at its perfect casting. Terri Garr is on-the-money as someone who starts off as a stay-at-home mom, then becomes the newbie at an ad firm who has to prove her worth. Sexy and homey. Smart and wanting confidence. She nails it. Everyone does in the movie. Martin Mull as the lascivious boss. Jeffery Tambor as the feeble auto-exec who betrays his integrity. Everyone in this movie plays as if this were the only role they ever would, or could get.

But I don't want to sit around navel-gazing on the competence of actors from a time when talent was more than good looks. If this movie were made today, it would star Ryan Reynolds, the head of the ad company would be in his twenties, and the resolution would involve beautiful entitled people realizing that they are happy settling for a lifestyle that is unimaginable to just about everyone watching the movie. OK, so that is basically how it  does play out, but today the house would be bigger in reverse proportion to the shallowness of the characters. What I do want to sit around navel-gazing on is the general fantasticness of Michael Keaton.

The guy has it all, except the resume he deserves. Alternating between intense and brooding, downright goofy, and terrifying (I am still a little too freaked out to be able to watch Pacific Heights again), Keaton was the kind of star should have had the type of career that George Clooney has. Instead, he is humiliated into taking roles like "generic father-figure" in pointless Herbie the Love-Bug reboots (not going to give any site devoted to that movie the traffic from a link).  Nevertheless, he still makes everything he is a part of a little bit better. He was perhaps the only good part of The Other Guys. 

Unfortunately, to this day, when copy writers for the blurbs that go on the back of DVD cases want to remind people who he is, they still use the worst movie he ever made in parentheses. (I count this one as the worst, because I don't even count Jack Frost as a movie.) But it is worth remembering that he was once recognized as pure movie gold.  We all know why he fell from the A-list. He evoked the wrath of studio executives by leaving the role of Batman before anyone realized just how bad Batman movies would become. But take moment and look at his list of movies. Start with the earliest and move forward. You'll find some classics that you forgot to think of when I brought up the idea that Mr. Mom is one of the funniest movies ever made. Beetlejuice. The Paper. These are great movies.

And Keaton is great in them. Just like he was great as Jack Butler. Jack was naive when he got fired, jealous when his wife got a job, prideful when he has to compete in a race with her boss, humble when he throws the race, pathetic when he can't bother to shave, or even change his shirt as he gains weight and becomes an avid soap opera fan, strong when he puts himself back together, caring as he helps his sons through their own struggles, fearless as he tells his old boss off. And every time I watch this movie, I can't stop laughing. He is hilarious as he does all of this. Everyone laughs when they watch this movie. Ryan Reynolds could never have pulled it off.


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