Here’s a couple of movies today. First, on a festive Sky Movies, it’s Wayne’s World.
At this stage, I think all the Wayne’s World schtick is just too familiar for me to say if I think it’s any good any more. I mean, we all like the Bohemian Rhapsody car trip, but it’s hardly great comedy.
I really don’t get what they’re doing with Lara Flynn Boyle’s character. Was there a big problem with very attractive women continuing to hang around not very attractive men who dumped them in the 90s?
There’s a cameo from Meat Loaf as a doorman at a club.
Tia Carrere is good, though. Which the film needs to try to rebalance the enormous sexism of the main characters.
Rob Lowe, also, is excellent as the slimy TV executive.
I do like the scene where Wayne and Cassandra talk in Cantonese.
“We fear change” is a line I use myself.
I like the scene where Rob Lowe is trying to persuade Wayne to let their sponsor have a spot on the show, and he refuses to sell out, all while doing tons of actual product placement.
Rob Lowe is a Pick Up Artist.
The scene where they reenact the Laverne and Shirley title sequence left most of the UK audience confused, as I recall.
Chris Farley makes an appearance as a security guard.
Alice Cooper’s scene is funny, even though it’s a retread of a scene from Saturday Night Live with Aerosmith.
I like the scene where they do their first show with the network, and it’s in a studio, with an announcer and a prerecorded theme tune, and Wayne sabotages his interview with their sponsor.
Nice Robert Patrick T2 reference.
I think the thing I like most about this is the playing with film conventions.
Especially the ending, where they play the unhappy ending first, then do a Scooby Doo ending.
The ‘Mr Big’ record producer is played by Frank DiLeo, Michael Jackson’s producer.
OK, so in the end, I enjoyed watching this again. I do have a problem with the normalised sexism, but the film makes up for that with charm.
After this, a film I have never seen, and know nothing about save that it’s directed by Indie darling Hal Hartley. It’s Trust, and spinning through it on fast forward, I assumed the lead actress was Rosanna Arquette, but it’s not, she’s Adrienne Shelly.
Everyone in this movie is quitting something, and they’re all angry. She’s been thrown out of school, argues with her father, slaps him round the face and walks out, at which point he drops dead.
Meanwhile, Matthew (Martin Donovan) quits his job, angrily, and his father, very blue collar, doesn’t approve. He gets him to clean the bathroom, which he does, but then leaves a cigarette there, so his father goes ballistic. These are not happy families.
There’s some egregious boom mics in shot on some of these scenes. The film was obviously shot flat, and is supposed to be masked to 1.85:1, so when Channel 4 show it unmasked, you get a huge mic bouncing around at the top of frame that’s very distracting.
Matthew is very deep. You can tell because he carries a hand grenade around with him.
His father sets him up with a job repairing TVs, because that’s his expertise. But he refuses to work on TVs, “Television is the opium of the masses”
He’s awful. He pushes people around, punches them for seemingly no reason, and there’s no comeback. He goes into a bar, and everyone there seems to be scared of him.
But he and Maria meet up, and start to become friends. She changes her hair and starts wearing her glasses.
“We don’t need a genius, we need someone to fix the TVs.” Some actually good management thoughts.
Maria’s mother blames her for her father’s death, and hate the idea of she and Matthew being together. She gets him drunk, then puts him in Maria’s sister’s room, hoping this will break up the pair.
I’m glad to see that Chekov’s Hand Grenade does make a late appearance at the end, as Matthew takes it to his hated place of work and threatens to blow himself up. And it occurs to me (not for the first time) that he’s basically an alt-right terrorist. Disaffected, violent, sees himself as superior to everyone. If this were made now he’s be in a MAGA hat. No wonder I hate him.
After this, recording continues with Sex Talk. The tape ends during this.
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