Friday, 7 April 2000

WEEKEND PREVIEW

The movies are about a communal experience bringing people together. But not this weekend.

I can't recall a weekend with so many niche movies hitting the screen and so many niches at the same times. Black + White is a city movie about a cultural phenomenon that has been the subject of many movie characters in movies as aggressive as Kids and as insipid as Can't Hardly Wait. But none of them bothered to make an entire movie about it, that is true. And Black + White, for me, answers the question why. There is nothing much to say there. Teens are teens. They are always looking for a new trend. The idea, which Toback clearly does not intend, that relationships with black people are a fad, like blue hair or tattoos, is rather insulting to black people, no? The idea that young white girls are just out there looking for the newest adventure with a male member and are drawn to the exotic is rather insulting to young girls, no? Not to mention that it's as old as Edgar Rice Burroughs. The character that made Black + White most intolerable to me is, no coincidence, the character that most people take away from the theater with them as the best moment of Black + White. It's the character that the studio is using in their advertising. And that's Mike Tyson. And what does Mike Tyson do in this film? He sits quietly, trying to do the right thing--even if the excuse of being that way is that he's on parole--and ends up bitch slapping Robert Downey Jr. for coming on to him, and then subtlety gives a thumbs up to murdering someone. In other words, the exact stereotype of Mike Tyson that white Americans hold near and dear to our hearts. Excuse my language here, if you can, but it's the old "You can give him a million dollars, but he's still a ni**er" belief system. And I find that deeply offensive. But that ends up being the entire movie. Rich white people are stuck up and stuffy and don't care about their children. Teenaged girls are sluts. Teenaged boys just wanna-be-gangstas, though they don't have the backbone for it. If you look like Claudia Schiffer, you are a money-grubbing backstabber. To be fair, the only people who are interesting in this movie are the folks of the Wu-Tang Clan, who seem to rise above it and have some perspective. But that's not enough for this movie, which intends to be about bringing people together, to be a great catalyst for indulging our most basic racial fears. The fact that Stanley Crouch is on its side, in a serious political universe, should scare a guy like Toback, not be cause to spread Crouch's comments all over his ads.

Man. This movie gets me worked up. I wrote a lot more about it than I wanted to. Again! Anyway, Ready to Rumble aspires to no political bent whatsoever. It's a wrestling movie, first and last. Two dumb guys who love wrestling go on "a mission from God" (see: Blues Brothers, the better version of this story) and end up smack in the middle of the world of the WCW. Joining them for this trip is an over-the-hill Oliver Platt, who gets in a couple of good moments, and Rose McGowan, who has two good moments in front and two good moments in back. (I tease Ms. McGowan. Ooooh, just writing that sounds good. But her performance is fine here. I wish her agents would get her a great role already. She deserves to do more than be a tart in movie after movie. I gather that she had at least one offer for a real role lately, but her agents are playing the "She's going to be worth a lot more after Ready to Rumble" card, which she won't be, since she plays a 10 minute part in the film doing stuff we've seen her do before. Of course, when Ready does $60 million instead of $120 million, the agents will be scrambling, not wanting to explain why they didn't take other small, quality offers that were filled with other people in the meantime, and will get her another crappy little slut role in a big movie. I really do think she can do more than that.) One of the flaws in the movie for the obsessive wrestling fans will be that the movie is really about the two guys (Scott Caan and David Arquette) and really only cameos the major wrestlers. There is also the reality that the WWF now overshadows the WCW (at least for this moment, bosses upstairs who sign my paycheck) and even my 10-year-old nephew was wishing that The Rock, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Mankind would show up. There will be a group of people who will enjoy more than 3 or 4 gags from this movie, which, by the way, gets a lot better in the third act when they are actually fighting. Those people will hate...

Return to Me is the new romantic comedy with David Duchovny and Minnie Driver. And I thought it was a delight. It's far from perfect and Bonnie Hunt still has to get a few more films under her belt before she really knows what she's doing with the camera, but a delight nonetheless. The two leads are charming indeed. There is old-fashioned romance. In fact, the couple at the center seems to be dating for weeks, so much so that he feels free to just stop by, yet he hasn't even gotten her blouse off yet. There is old-fashioned melodrama, including death, illness and trips to distant lands hoping that you'll be stopped by the person of your dreams before you board the plane. And there are actual old people, headed by Carroll O'Connor and Robert Loggia. There is a scene where one 40-something character (David Alan Grier) says to Duchovny, "What's with the old people?" And that's what a lot of 20somethings will say in this movie. But they just aren't the audience for this one. Women who love romantic comedy will love this movie. Anyone over 50 will love this movie. Monkeys will love this movie. (That's an inside-of-the-movie joke.) I don't want to tell people who aren't in those groups not to go. I'm just trying to make it clear (over and over again) that this is a classical romantic comedies that will make for a nice night at the movies, but won't change your life forever. But is worth the time if you like these kinds of films.

What niche does Rules of Engagement fall into? That's a good question, though this may be the movie that has the most legitimate crossover potential. Except for one thing. Everyone who sees it seems to think it sucks. It seems to be in the same Paramount family of films as The General's Daughter, though I liked that one. After Double Jeopardy, I know that anything can happen with a Tommy Lee Jones movie. And I expect this film to get a decent sampling this weekend. But the future seems dim.

Also inherently niche are the limited releases of Me Myself I (which I think is a smart, modern, terrific romantic comedy with a great performance by Rachel Griffiths), Joe Gould's Secret (which is "just okay" despite a great performance, as always, by Ian Holm) and Southpaw (which I haven't seen.)

And of course, my box office guesstimates, all the venue counts and more in Box Office Extra, right here after noon, e.s.t.

THE GOOD: How often does a studio executive take public responsibility for making a mistake? Wait. The temperature in hell is still 102 degrees in the shade. Nonetheless, Mike DeLuca, production president at New Line, wrote in (THB 2/29) and made a mistake and, well, I'll let him tell you.

"You may recall that about a month ago, I overreacted to an anonymous item concerning a charge that we moved Boiler Room's release date after Miramax had set Reindeer Games. In my tirade, I claimed the opposite was true. I have since come to learn that not only was I operating half-cocked with incomplete information, I was operating with just absolute dead wrong information. We indeed made a change in October that I was completely unaware of. I'm not a little wrong here, I'm like "Mars Lander" wrong. I offer my apologies to Miramax and the entire profession of publicity in general. I was the weenie on this one, not the other way around."

"Guilds, Closets & Other Sneaky Acts"