The Hot Button by David Poland

Friday, 20 November 1998

WEEKEND PREVIEW

As for the weekend in general, it's Enemy of the State, The Rugrats Movie, Celebrity, Central Station and Waking Ned Devine hitting theaters this weekend. The buzz on Enemy is pretty damned good across the board. This could end up being the huge hit that was somewhat overlooked in a market of animated kids films, the Psycho remake and the Star Wars trailer. (Yes, for those of you who have been under a rock, the Star Wars prequel trailer hits theaters this weekend. But if you don't already know that, God knows how you found this column!)
The Rugrats Movie should prove that kids are more loyal than adults and that they will turn out for their favorite show, unlike many "The X-Files" fans who stayed home and waited for the video tape. (See, it costs kids half as much to go and their perspective on money is that the more noise it makes in your pocket, the more it's worth. And all their parents really want to know is, "Will it shut them up for 90 minutes? Dear God, please let it shut them up!" For more on parenting, go to my new column at Parent Soup, called, How to get your children to stop asking for McNuggets, you poor sorry bastard.)
Celebrity, Central Station and Waking Ned Devine are all art house fare, though Fox Searchlight will try to make Ned a wide, wide release. Ironically, while Celebrity is filled with leggy women, Waking Ned Devine will probably be the leggiest of these three films by far. Central Station features a performance by Fernanda Montenegro that has been hailed by many. I haven't seen the picture yet, but I look forward to it. All I can say is, if you want to see it, don't blink. Go to theaters now.
THE GOOD: My New York travels continue. My room at The Paramount has improved, and so has the service. I figured it out. You have to ask for the same thing three times and all of a sudden they get it. And once they get it, they are quite efficient. (The knocking of the radiator seems like such a petty complaint in a hotel room that costs less than $200. It's a NYC perspective.) I felt like my father when I was surprised by the $9 price tag on an omelet at the Howard Johnson's on the corner. (I was in a rush, hurrying to a matinee of Les Misérables, which gives you some idea of how long it's been since I lived here. At least it wasn't Cats.) I remembered his shock at an $8 tag on eggs at the Waldorf years and years ago. (That price is now $28.) I also went into the greatest store in the world, the NBA Store. Now, this is not because I am an NBA nut, but because it's the most cleverly designed, technologically advanced, handsome and thoroughly stocked single-subject store I've ever seen. It blows the Disney, Warner Bros. and Viacom stores right off the map. Somehow, the NBA gets entertainment better than the entertainment giants. Of course, they had the others to break the ground, but let's give the NBA Store a Brewington-esque, "Wow!" What a store!
THE BAD: The last great scam of 1998 may be Disney's effort to turn Mighty Joe Young into a kids film. Have you noticed? Last summer, Joe was a terrorizing ape on the loose in Hollywood with the classic "destroyed car" money shot that was popularized with Twister. Now, it's nice Joe. Running Joe. Cute Joe. It's no longer Touchstone or Hollywood, but a Walt Disney Picture, with a by-the-numbers, "hello children" voice over. I bet they even cut out the Charlize Theron nude scene. (Just kidding.) My guess is that test screenings showed that adults just wouldn't take the movie seriously. Giant monkey... hah! So, they went to the one market that remains pure -- the kids. A good idea, but when a marketing campaign changes this drastically, the odds of success are quite low. Quite.
THE UGLY: MGM is trying to pull the first great scam of 1999. The studio pushed up At First Sight from February 5 to January 15. The reason? MGM claims it's because the film really appeals to women. I guess that's why the film was moved out of the summer, out of the fall, out of the holidays and into 1999 in the first place. Because it's sooo appealing. What a load of phooey. Shovelable phooey. The real reason they moved the film to the 15th is that the Martin Luther King Day weekend offers a better chance of scoring big before people realize what a piece of crap you have on your hands, and, on top of that, the cash-strapped studio saves a month of interest payments on this apparent turkey and is a month closer to the video window so they can squeeze the last dollars out. This also holds true, sadly, for the other three films scheduled to be put out of their misery that weekend: Arlington Road, Varsity Blues and Virus. Maybe one of the four will be worth the effort. Personally, I really liked the dumped Boys on the Side of a few years ago. As for At First Sight, it may be a chance to see real-life couple Mira Sorvino and Val Kilmer doing it on screen, but how seriously can we take a woman who has fallen for a man who was too egomaniacal and self-absorbed even for Cindy Crawford?
HAPPY TRAILERS TO YOU: I finally caught the trailer for Hurlyburly. Sorry, those of you touting this film for major awards. It looks like a loser. The trailer has that kind of desperation where the trailer makers are desperately searching for the only three good lines in the whole thing and then hook them together with a whole lot of montage. But then again, who knows? The show is a long, lingering mood piece, not a snappy bit of cinema bait. Maybe it will surprise for the better, but trailer reading is usually a pretty good way to figure it. It's like the Courage Under Fire trailer in which Meg Ryan didn't get a line of dialogue. You just knew that she was using some kind of funky accent or vocal trick that scared the excrement out of Fox and, consequently, they designed the trailer to avoid her talking. (She used both by the way.) The Hurlyburly trailer is so impatient that you just know the movie is going to be. And that makes me impatient.
BAD AD WATCH: I come not to bury an ad today, but to praise one. Again. Universal Marketing has balls of steel. A 30-second Psycho spot with nothing but a shower running. How can you not love that? Answer: You can't. And to make it even weirder for me, my hotel here in NYC has that showerhead exactly, and all the male clerks downstairs are kind of lanky and strange. (Before the strings start, my room here is smaller than a Bates Motel room.)
READER OF THE DAY: Matthew wrote: "Gary Ross has something to say with Pleasantville. To call the film 'schizophrenic' is oversimplification, since the entire dynamic of the piece is to watch this imaginary community go insane when a little reality finally seeps in. To ignore the obvious repercussions of what happens to a place when the line between what people need and what they truly want becomes blurred would only serve to create a one-dimensional, lifeless piece filled with cute special effects and occasional one-liners.
"As Pleasantville now exists, however, it is so much more. Not only is there wonderment and awe and beauty, but the ugliness is not ignored, which gives the entire film a what-happens-next uneasiness, and lends its meaning without the message becoming too heavy-handed. The film ends on a note of whimsy, but is shot through with the sadness of how resigned we all have become in accepting the unacceptable in our daily lives. To rob Ross of his right to bestow his film with symbolism and meaning simply so it can better fit a demographic group and make more money at the box office is a ridiculous thought. If New Line was willing to take the chance in the first place, and allow him to go a few steps further with Pleasantville than with any other garden-variety comedy, then all we, the audience, should do is thank them for their audacity, because what we got is a triumphant little film with a lot on its mind, unlike 99 percent of whatever else is out there."
REPLY OF THE DAY: Again, my argument was not with what he wanted to say, but with how he said it. I believe that you have to justify your use of a loaded phrase like "no coloreds" if you want to use it in your film. I would have forgiven Ross all of his minor infringements on his own set of rules (though it's not really my place to allow anything, just to comment on it) if the dark payoff was as well done as the comedy. And on a philosophical level, babies who first feel pain, cry out of fear, not out of anger. The kind of rage that the citizens of Pleasantville feel is as simple-minded as any garden variety comedy and to me, and more dangerous, because it dillutes the very real weight of racism.

E ME: Pleasantville, marketing scams and sex between Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino. Talk about your smoothie from hell! What do you think? I'm still looking for Star Wars trailer reviews and thoughts on any film that you see this weekend. Write?