Friday, 4 February 2000

WEEKEND PREVIEW

Dear God! Weekend Preview returns! I'm not ready!

Scream 3 opens and word has it that Miramax has been keeping a lid on the movie. They claim it's fear of someone giving away the 3^rd act surprises, but most think that it is just junk. People saw it Thursday morning. I guess you'll know soon enough.

While I was on The Road to El Dorado (see below,) Jeff Wells was checking out Disney's Gun Shy, which he thinks is a much, much better movie than the limited release and the trailers would suggest. Hmmm...guess I'll have to go to the movies this weekend.

Simpatico expands…stay out of its way. Topsy-Turvy expands…if you are a Pirate King, you will love it. If you are listening to Britney Spears on purpose, you'll probably hate it.

One last thing -- there is a movie called Knockouts about a girl boxer that is suddenly in limited release with big ads. Do NOT mistake this for the Sundance hit Girlfight. It would be unfair of me, having been unlooped these last few weeks, to say that the film is doing nothing but trying to trick people into paying money because they think the film is the much-buzzed-about Girlfight. But that it my first guess. Buyer Beware.

THE GOOD:"We're off on the road to El Dorado…with Bob, Bing and Dorothy Lamour" Oops, wrong song.

DreamWorks was kind enough to give us a look at their new animated musical, The Road to El Dorado Wednesday night and it wasn't until about 10 minutes in that I realized that it was, in fact, a road movie. And that's alright by me. I love the road movies. As a little kid, my bedroom was on the opposite end of the house from my parents and my sister and I used to stay up til all hours watching TV, and in those days, the only thing that played late at night was old movies. (That was before anyone realized that the hours between 12:30 and 6:30 were of value.) And so, I watched Bob and Bing and Dorothy over and over again.

And so, in animationland, DreamWorks' Bob and Bing are Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh. Their Dorothy Lamour is Rosie Perez. And their Jimmy Van Heusen is (or is that "is" an "are"?) Elton John, Tim Rice and Hans Zimmer. All of which puts me in a weird state of mind.

One the one hand, Kline and Branagh work well together. Rosie Perez is a hoot. The songs are very good, though none of them smelled of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" hits to me. And the animation is quite wonderful. By choosing El Dorado as a setting, the DreamWorks team has found another set of styles and colors to mine that are really quite beautiful. Seems to me that there will be little problem getting people to see this as a Disney-quality (and it is the gold standard, which Katzenberg helped build) musical that kids and many adults will really enjoy.

But (there's always a "but," isn’t there?), as an adult who loves the road movies for all their production limitations, the film doesn't quite live up to the wackiness of Bob and Bing. All the pieces are there. But there is a certain restraint that kept the film from soaring. The movie reminds me of Aladdin in some of its tone, though it seems much more concerned about mocking the natives. Even the evil of the lead bad guy is based on reasonable confusion, not his idiocy. Simply put, comedy is not politically correct. This one is a little to kind for its own good.

Also, one of the keys to the road movies was that the guys just burst out in song sometimes. And they knew they were in a road movie. Neither is true here. It seems that since Toy Story, there has been a vogue of songs as background. And there is one song here that "Bob and Bong" sing. But I could hear the music cues for Rosie's big seduction number. And then, no song. This movie cries out for communal singing by the locals. After all, the convention of the road movies was vaudevillian. And they got the right cast. But then, they make it dreamy.

All that complained about, I really did like the movie. There are a bunch of cartoon in-gags and when Kline and Branagh and Perez get rolling, they are a lot of fun. But best of all, the animation is quite beautiful and rich with colors that you don't normally see. This is, for me, a better animated feature than The Prince of Egypt. Not as spectacular at times, but a better overall movie. And it's another clear sign that DreamWorks animation is a unit aggressively trying to break new ground, which they did with both Antz and P.O.E., and I suspect will do in a big way with Chicken Run.

P.S. The big surprise of the evening was Elton John showing up to perform a few songs from the movie at the after-screening reception (after Kline and Branagh intro'ed the film earlier.) Elton seemed a little cranky, going as far as suggesting that Jeffrey Katzenberg has cut too many of the songs they recorded for the film, only about half of which actually made the film. He was great. But the weird thing was…I never pushed forward in the crowd to get close. I've become a jaded f**k, haven't I? Of course, had Elton done some of his old songs, like "Captain Fantastic" and "The Brown Dirt Cowboy", the album of which I wore out the grooves of, I would have been throwing people out of my way.

THE BAD: Who do you hire when you want to remake a great old western, filled with subtle and interesting moral dilemmas? Why Bruce Feirstein, of course. WHAT?!?!?! The man who made Bond brain dead is now going to step all over Richard Brooks! Of course, some of you can't remember back past the debacle of Wrong Is Right (a movie that has grown in esteem with many) or Fever Pitch, but when Richard Brooks wrote The Professionals, it was during the same period of In Cold Blood, Sweet Bird of Youth and Elmer Gantry. Bruce Feirstein, with all due respect, couldn't come within a country mile of writing anything 70 percent as good as any of those films. There is one lunatic out there who could tear up a remake of The Professionals. His name is John Milius. Yes, he's a pain in the ass. But yes, he could do it wonderfully. Don't let him direct, but let him write it. And then let Robert Rodriguez direct it with Conrad Hall as his D.P. Then you might have a great movie.

PAGE TWO: Welcome To The New Line, "Roger, Ball & Bay" and More WCW @ ROTD