Raiders of the Lost Ark* (1981)

There’s really nothing I can say about this film that hasn’t already been said before. Raiders of the Lost Ark launched the Indiana Jones series and solidified both Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg as Hollywood titans. It is a near-perfect blend of action, romance, humor and drama.

Raiders of the Lost Ark sets itself apart from many other adventure films because the main character, Indiana Jones, is a scholarly archeologist. He’s not just a smug, dashing hero- he’s also a brilliant researcher who knows his stuff. The inclusion of real artifacts into the tale is a big plus. Looking for the much fabled Ark of the Covenant provides for both archeological and religious information that is both interesting and enlightening. This rare blend of education and entertainment is the driving force behind the success of the film and its sequels.

Harrison Ford was in the middle of the Star Wars saga when he did this film and it proved his worth and acting chops, as he plays the debonair yet gritty Dr. Jones to perfection. He makes the character his own and does so in a believable fashion. The supporting cast also does a tremendous job in their respective roles, creating one thrill ride of a film that is great from start to finish.

While a few of the special effects show their age nowadays, Raiders of the Lost Ark pushed the envelope back in 1981. The stunt work is very carefully choreographed and the script wastes no time advancing the action and the storyline simultaneously. This is such an enormous benefit that many Indy clones and knock-offs fail to pull off. Instead of shifting focus from the action and the information, Raiders of the Lost Ark keeps its sights on both sides of the equation the whole way through.

It is because of this that the film is so darn engaging and fun. Jones is too charismatic not to like and the quest for the Ark is too interesting and important not to care about. Viewers become heavily invested in the characters, the action and the purpose by the end of the film, which all makes for a triumphant picture. The addition of John Williams’ legendary score helped solidify Raiders of the Lost Ark as one of the most important and memorable films of all time.

As goofy and unlikely as some of the action and decisions may be, you can’t deny this tour de force. It is one of the rare great films that can be watched and enjoyed endlessly, no matter how many times you have seen it before. Raiders is one of my all-time favorite movies, but my rating is certainly not tainted by subjectivity. This film is hailed by many critics, actors, directors and (most importantly) movie goers as one rapid-fire thrill ride that’s sure to please (it was even nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars!).

I made sure to make this one of my milestone movies and it is a more than worthy addition to this site.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5

Joe's Apartment (1996)

Like Weekend at Bernie’s, Joe’s Apartment has a special guilty pleasure quality to it. This was MTV’s first film and, since I was in my teens at the time it was produced, it was a big deal for my generation. MTV has gone on to create countless movies and most have sucked, but there was and still is something special about the initial novelty of Joe’s Apartment.

Perhaps it was because MTV was still hip and worth watching at the time, or maybe it was because MTV was in tune with the current generation’s sense of style and humor, but somehow I connected with this film. It stars Jerry O’Connell, who was popular from the show Sliders at the time, as Joe, a recent college grad looking to make it in the Big Apple. Unfortunately, Joe doesn’t exactly land on his feet. He’s strapped for cash and only manages to secure a disgusting apartment in one of the most dilapidated buildings in New York by pretending to be a dead tenant’s son.

A powerful senator wants to turn the block the apartment sits on into a super-maximum security prison and is using thugs and lowlifes to drive tenants out of the complex. Joe just happens to be the last person in the building and the thugs don’t feel like being friendly about giving him the boot. Fortunately for Joe, his slobbish tendencies and messy lifestyle has won him the affection of the thousands of cockroaches living in the building. Not only do they defend him from the thugs, but they can sing and dance as well.

The biggest source of humor for the film is the antics carried out by the roaches, all of which were animated into the film in all their scenes. They are able to talk and do any number of anthropomorphic actions, but they just keep this a secret from humans, who have long sought to destroy the creatures because of their reputations as pests. Joe and the roaches reach a cautious mutual understanding that is tested several times during the course of the film.

Joe spots a girl in an alley and is instantly smitten. He eventually meets her and they start down the path to becoming an item. Things go awry when the roaches ruin Joe’s attempt at a romantic evening with the girl. She freaks out and runs away. It just so happens that this girl is trying to turn the area around Joe’s apartment into a public park and her dad happens to be the senator with plans for a prison. Everybody ends up at odds, leaving the roaches to try and sort everything out.

The fact that all the roaches were animated is impressive. CGI was still coming along at the time and traditional animation must have taken forever. Also, kudos must be given to Jerry O’Connell for being daring enough to take on a role that forced him to shout at an empty room and at things that weren’t there. It takes a lot to be able to make the situation believable and O’Connell pulls it off nicely. There is never a disconnect where he seems unfocused or lazy in his approach.

Joe’s Apartment is far from Oscar quality, but the original songs by the roaches are cute and oddly endearing. MTV managed to make cockroaches loveable (at least for one film) and showed that they were capable of making movies too. It expanded their entertainment potential and paved the way for future cable TV productions. It’s weird and gross at times (the roaches’ humor is mostly crude) but for those of us who grew up during the 90s, Joe’s Apartment is a part of the nostalgia for that era.

I for one enjoy the film as something of a guilty pleasure, but there’s really nothing guilty about enjoying this film. You just need to have the heart of a teenager for 80 minutes and you’ll have yourself a good time.

RATING: 2.75 out of 5

Weekend at Bernie's (1989)

I’ll admit right off the bat that this film has very little appeal or merit outside of being something of a quirky cult classic. I happen to enjoy Weekend at Bernie’s though. It takes a plot that has certainly been used before but shakes things up a bit by making the action completely ridiculous and absurd. What it lacks in uniqueness, Weekend at Bernie’s makes up for in physical comedy and sight gags, a nice throw-back to more innocent comedies of yesteryear.

Larry and Richard are lowly accountants for a major New York firm who discover a major accounting error that will save the company a ton of money. Apparently someone set up an insurance policy that would defraud the firm for millions of dollars. They notify the head honcho of the firm who seems happy about the news and invites them to his posh beach house for Memorial Day weekend. The two are stunned and eagerly agree.

Turns out, their boss, Bernie, is the one trying to defraud his company for millions of dollars so he and some of his associates can make some easy money. He tells an associate to come by his beach house Memorial Day weekend and dispatch of the two accountants so that no one ever finds out about the scam. Instead, his associate hires an assassin to kill Bernie as well, due to his getting sloppy in acquiring the money.

Memorial Day weekend arrives and Bernie is killed first, only to be discovered by the two hapless accountants. At first they are dumbfounded and depressed- their weekend is totally shot! Then, Larry decides that they’ll just cover up the death so they can spend the weekend living the high life for a change. This involves many goofy scenarios of rigging up Bernie’s body to a number of contraptions to make him look alive.

It’s all fun and games until Larry and Richard discover that they too are being sought by an assassin and spend the rest of the weekend trying to avoid certain death. This brings on even more hilarity as Bernie’s apparent survival of the assassination frustrates the assassin to keep trying different ways to off the already-dead man. It’s cheek and the blank faced Bernie makes it all the goofier.

Most of the comedy comes from the charade of Bernie being alive. The body undergoes a number of bizarre situations that make it harder for Larry and Richard to keep the act up. But fortunately, just when it seems that everyone is on to them, the people who call themselves Bernie’s friends react as if it’s just crazy old Bernie living it up like he always does. Certainly, it’s not the kind of reaction that would occur in real life, but it’s only meant to be campy, absurd fun. And it is!

While Weekend at Bernie’s would never be deserving of any serious awards, it is a fun little film that gets high marks for both physical and black comedy. How often are you able to laugh at a dead body getting slammed around and manipulated for personal gain? The answer is not very often, which is why Weekend at Bernie’s is a fun little guilty pleasure of a film that will likely be remembered longer than some Oscar winners.

The first half hour or so of the film is completely forgettable, but once the dim-witted accountants hit the beach with a corpse in tow, the movie takes flight. Not quite dumb enough to be considered a “stupid movie,” Weekend at Bernie’s lands squarely in the middle of the pack as a guilty pleasure and is worthy (in my mind at least) of the cult classic following and fondness that it has developed over the years.

RATING: 2.75 out of 5

An American Tail (1986)

This animated classic is a piece of nostalgia that I am dearly fond of. Before even watching it for the first time in a few years I knew exactly how this film would rate. That doesn’t mean I didn’t give this film a fair assessment though. The animation, the music, the emotions- just about everything in this film is marvelous.

An American Tail is the story of immigration and hope. The Mousekewitz family lives in Russia under a time of great duress. They decide to flee to America, where everything is supposed to be better and they will be free from the tyranny of cats, who have tormented mice relentlessly in their homeland. Along the way, the only son gets lost at sea but makes it to America, only to start a frantic search to find his family. He is helped along the way by a number of colorful characters. Some are good and some are bad, and all of them have some kind of symbolic quality.

All of the mice represent the immigrants from Europe to America during the turn of the century, a period of significant immigration. Cats are the antagonists, representing the worst in Americans. They seek to eliminate the mice, doing anything they can to drive them from their homes. Some of them pretend to want to help the mice by offering them employment as indentured servants in mills and industry. A very few number of cats are actually kind and caring, thought they fit very awkwardly in with the rest of their kind.

It’s not really the cheeriest depiction of how the US handled immigration and I’m not sure it’s an entirely fair one. Producers David Kirschner and Steven Spielberg are both Jewish and Spielberg has a knack for highlighting the plight of the Jews when possible. It’s not that I don’t believe Jews and immigrants were mistreated, it’s just that the extent to which they are mistreated in this film seems suspect to me. For every case of abuse and exploitation, I’m sure there is an example of an immigrant who found a happy niche and succeeded in the New World.

But that’s really the only complaint I have about this film. It will easily go over a child’s head but it is an interesting side note for adults to ruminate on while watching this delightful film. The animation is very rich and I even would go as far as to say that it is better in quality than what Disney was producing at the time. Instead of glossing over everything, An American Tail isn’t afraid to be very detailed about the grit and grime associated with the slums of the New World.

The music is also fantastic. The film is full of memorable songs that get stuck in your head and stay stuck for years. It’s one thing to have catchy songs in your animated film, but to make them so enjoyable and endearing is something special. If you’ve seen this movie, you know what I’m talking about. I you haven’t seen An American Tail, you don’t know what you’re missing!

Plain and simple, An American Tail is a darling of a film that is perfectly suited to be watched by children and adults and will surely become a favorite for all ages. Even if you think you’re too “grown up” for a film like this, you’ll be surprised. An American Tail will melt your heart again and again.

RATING: 3.75 out of 5

First Knight (1995)

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

I don’t know if this has come up yet, so I want to share something with you: I am not a big Richard Gere fan, so many of his films I see are likely to have their ratings tainted by subjectivity. Just a fair warning. Anyway, First Knight falls into some of the standard pitfalls that King Arthur films succumb to, but it goes further than other interpretations do in getting things horribly wrong.

Many Arthur films screw up in a number of excusable areas. First, they typically set the Arthur story too far into the Middle Ages, with shining armor, valiant knight and glorious castles. In fact, Arthur existed in the 5th or 6th Century when things were not as opulent and glamorous as the romanticized tales have led many to believe.

Secondly, most Arthur films really overdo the kinship of the Round Table. Depictions of gorgeous stone or wooden tables abound and the knights were all dashingly handsome. In reality the round table probably didn’t even exist. The knights were really a kind of rag-tag band of wandering men who fought for justice. Their relationship was probably close, but not as glorious as we’ve come to believe.

Finally, almost all Arthur films, and most films with knights and swords, use horrible swordplay for their fight scenes. As heavy and cumbersome as real swords would have been, the parrying and quick swordsmanship defies physics. It’s all stage and film trickery meant to make the fights look cool and more dangerous.

But like I said, all of these items are excusable because they have been commonplace in presentations of the Arthur legend for quite some time. First Knight has bigger problems on its hands.

For starters, Gere plays Lancelot very poorly. Gere is only 5’11” and many of the actors in the film are of a comparable height. Guinevere is only a few inches shorter than Lancelot, though you can hardly tell because of her hair and all. King Arthur is several inches taller than Lancelot, which is a historical no-no. Lancelot, by legend, was a very tall man, towering above many of his peers. This little goof really jars your suspension of disbelief if you know your Arthur at all.

Along with Gere’s height, his performance of Lancelot is completely void of any accent. Literally every single character but Lancelot speaks in an appropriate British accent. The fact that Gere refuses to even try to pull off an accent is a major point of contention with me. They have voice coaches for a reason. Use them.

The dialogue is very wooden, unsatisfying and predictable. This is a huge detriment because most Arthur stories include very beautiful prose and really capture the beauty of the romanticized Arthur legend. This is compounded by the fact that the acting is rather unbalanced. Some actors perform up to par, but most either overact or under-act their roles. This leads to a bizarre up and down feeling when processing the lines.

The special effects and stunts are all a little to modern as well. Camelot is presented as a gigantic city with opulent towers and brilliant colors. It’s all too over the top and came right out of left field for me. A stunt involving a runaway carriage was also rather hokey. It was essentially set up as a medieval car chase, with all the predictable elements of the bad guy jumping on top, crashing through windows and breaking off of doors. Sorry, been there and done that a hundred other times without the added cheese of a medieval setting. There was also a gauntlet prop that Gere ran through in exchange for a kiss from Guinevere that was easily far beyond the design of anything from the Middle Ages.

The love story is altogether unconvincing and they go about Arthur’s death all wrong. Somehow, the writers found it a bright idea to have Arthur snuffed out by relatively minor character from Arthurian legend. The man, Malagant, never amounted to beans in Arthur histories and his position as an evil conqueror and murderer was just confusing.

In the end, First Knight gets a lot of things all wrong, but still manages to look pretty. Ironically, many of the castle locations are shot as old and overgrown with vegetation even though these structures would have been new at the time. Girls will swoon over the sappy love story and guys will sit there with a glazed look on their faces. While it doesn’t quite do enough damage to itself to drop too far in my rankings, I would advise against seeing this film unless you seek an example of how not to present the Arthur legend.

RATING: 2.25 out of 5

Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation (1986)

In many ways, this is just a repackaged copy of the first Care Bears movie. It’s part sequel, part prequel and ultimately more memorable than the first (at least in my mind). Two kids receive comfort from the Care Bears and they in turn help the Care Bears stop a dark and evil force that wants to eliminate caring from the world.

We’ve been here before, but something in the execution clicked more for me in Care Bears II. I often had blended the two together in my mind and forgot some of the particulars. The film begins with True Heart Bear and Noble Heart Horse taking care of the young Care Bears and Care Bear Cousins as they try to avoid the dreaded Dark Heart. The Great Wishing Star bestows special powers upon these two and all of the little ones in tow (thus explaining how the Care Bears got those symbols on their tummies).

When Dark Heart strikes out on a new conquest against caring, True Heart and Noble Heart leave the cubs in the hands of two young children from a summer camp that had all but given up on caring. Taking care of the cubs gives them a purpose and they enjoy it. When they return to camp, they find that Dark Heart has set up his base there and is posing as a young boy (among many other things he can transform into).

In just a short time, the Care Bears and their Cousins are mostly grown up and willing to take on Dark Heart in order to keep caring in the world. They are over-matched and their existence is threatened by Dark Heart's powerful magic. Only the return of the elder True Heart and Noble Heart can make them strong enough to defeat the villain, which can always be assumed in a kids' movie.

The animation is just as good as in the first film and the music is a bit more memorable, but it is essentially the same story as before, just with a few different elements thrown into the mix. I prefer it to The Care Bears Movie, but most viewers will find little difference between the two. It provides a solid message of the importance of friends and caring to its intended audience of young children and goes by in a breezy 76 minutes, so parents won’t be bored with the subject matter either.

Good lesson, fun songs but the same basic story as before, so no increase in the rating from the first installment.

RATING: 3.25 out of 5

Bio-Dome (1996)

Before there were stupid Will Ferrell movies there were stupid Adam Sandler movies. Before there were stupid Adam Sandler movies, there were stupid Pauly Shore movies. Bio-Dome is one of those stupid Pauly Shore movies. The only difference between this and some of Shore’s other cinematic craptastrophes is that it promotes being responsible caretakers of the Earth. Aside from this, Bio-Dome fits into one of two categories: brainless juvenile humor flick or total guilty pleasure.

Bio-Dome pits Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin against a team of scientists trying to make environmental progress by secluding themselves inside an artificial closed ecological system in the Arizona desert. Shore and Baldwin (as Bud and Doyle) think the Bio-Dome is a mall, so they stop to go to the bathroom. After sneaking inside, they are unwittingly locked in with the scientists after the unveiling ceremonies for an entire year.

Bud and Doyle live by the motto “Just because we’re stuck in a bubble doesn’t mean we can’t cause any trouble.” And they do just that! Their slacker tendencies and disrespect for the experiment lead them to turn the Bio-Dome into little more than the wreck the Earth has become after throwing a large-scale party and letting people in through the back door.

To repent for their environmental sins, Bud and Doyle decide to help the Bio-Dome team save their mini-environment. This involves a lot of clever plugs for ways to help clean up the Earth. Along the way, Bud and Doyle flirt with the attractive female scientists and crack numerous sophomoric jokes, often involving crude humor. A few jokes are even totally random and make no sense whatsoever, including a montage of work set to the Men Without Hats song “Safety Dance” that includes a midget in medieval attire (just like in the music video). It also features a very early appearance of the acoustic-metal-comedy band Tenacious D.

As silly and thin as the soul of this movie is, it is a redeeming quality. Bio-Dome came out around the time of a resurgence in Earth-friendliness and capitalizes on this by milking its pro-environment stance for all its worth. Is it exploitation? Hard to say, but the clash between Bud and Doyle and the uber-smart scientists is worth a few laughs.

For some, Bio-Dome is a piece of nostalgia and a guilty pleasure worth revisiting once in a while. It’s better to make that once in a great while, but the film is mostly harmless if you feel so inclined to watch it. Bio-Dome is ripe for making fun of MST3K style, but it can also prove to be a semi-entertaining 90 minutes of brainless nonsense.

No one will remember Bio-Dome for any amount of greatness, but you can’t escape the fact that its “so bad it’s good” cult following illicit a few chuckles, groans and smiles whenever mentioned. Arguably Shore’s most remembered film, Bio-Dome is a part of the cultural lexicon of the 1990s and can’t be completely ignored, useless as it may be.

RATING: 2.25 out of 5

1408 (2007)

Based on a short story by horror legend Stephen King, 1408 stands tall against its recent horror genre peers. You see, 1408 is a different kind of horror film. While most films in the genre these days go for shock and terror by barraging viewers with violence, bloodshed and graphic anatomical gore, 1408 goes back to the roots of horror. The thing that drives this is simply the fear of the unknown.

John Cusack stars as Mike Enslin, a paranormal investigator who makes a living writing about haunted locations across the country. He himself is a skeptic and does not believe in ghosts or God, but has no issue with taking people’s money by writing his fantastical and false reviews and accounts of his stays in “haunted” places. One day he gets a postcard from a hotel in New York that simply advises him not to enter room 1408. Taking it as a challenge, he attempts to book the room but the hotel staff repeatedly attempt to block him from staying there for any amount of time.

Enslin confronts the hotel manager, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who also attempts to keep Enslin from staying in room 1408, but Enslin’s determination wins out in the end. Enslin is led up to 1408 personally by the hotel manager, who refuses to enter the room and leaves quickly. Enslin thinks this is all part of a ruse to excite him and get his mind running overtime before beginning his stay.

The freakiness begins almost immediately. At first the scares are innocuous enough to draw chuckles out of audiences. The room starts off with a few very basic and predictable happenings that have been used many a time. If they are clichés, then they are masterfully used clichés, because somehow we know that room is just warming up, playing games really. Such things would generally be freaky to us if they happened in real life, but seeing a skeptic who knows all the tricks try to rationalize what he is experiencing is darkly amusing.

Eventually, 1408 quits playing cutesy little scare games and unleashes its arsenal upon Enslin. The scariest thing about this is that neither Enslin nor the audience has any idea what this room is capable of. Having dispensed with the standard spooks, everyone is treading in dark, unknown waters. With serial killers, monsters and aliens it’s usually easy to figure out what will happen based on the conventions of their kind. A haunted room is not typical and there is no way of knowing what is coming next or whether or not we have seen everything the room can do to its victims.

Samuel L. Jackson’s character puts it best when he says “It is an evil f--king room.” Eventually Enslin stops trying to rationalize everything he’s experiencing and focuses solely on surviving, which proves to be a hellishly daunting task. The torments he faces are all disturbing, bizarre and virtually free from any gore. This film puts the adolescent torture-porn sub-genre that’s so popular these days to bed and focuses on mature thrills and chills.

The fear of the unknown is only part of this masterfully carried out film. Not knowing what the room is capable of is enhanced by what the room actually does. Everyone has been to a house or hotel that gives off a creepy vibe or their mind gets overactive when their alone in the house, so seeing a fairly unassuming looking room turn evil is doubly creepy. Instead of a dark and shadowy room with moldy carpet, stains on the tile floor in the bathroom and marks on the wall, 1408 just looks like an old hotel room. If it decided to leave you alone, you would have no idea that this room is pure evil.

The fear of the unknown along with the creepiness of evil being something all-too-familiar to us compounds in 1408 for some great moments. John Cusack really performs admirably as the sole star of the film. It is very difficult in film to isolate one character and keep him or her interesting, but Cusack performs deftly and really anchors the film. It is a vast departure from his normal work in films, and is more in the vein of his performance in Identity. His seeming normalness enhances the terror and he is very convincing.

While there are a few slow parts and some things don’t work as well as the filmmakers planned and hoped for, 1408 is a success. It provides old school chills that prove you don’t have to resort to gratuitous violence and relentless carnage to make people squirm. I hope the likes of Eli Roth and the folks behind the Saw franchise took notice, because genuine terror need not come from a knife or other sharp instrument. Sometimes the scariest things imaginable are just on the other side of a door.

1408 isn’t likely to put an end to the popularity of torture-porn films, but it does offer a ray of hope that horror films haven’t completely lost touch with their roots. Bravo.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5

The Notebook (2004)

I’ve never been a big fan of romances because all too often they fall victim to clichés and stereotypes in the worst ways. Whether it’s the all-too-perfect mushy dialogue or the highly unlikely turn of romantic events, romance films rely on women’s lack of caring about these things in order to see a love story play out that they wish were their own. Often times this brings big bucks too. The Notebook was a very popular and very successful romance film a few years ago and I was pleasantly surprised to see how unlike other romances it was.

For starters, this film doesn’t focus explicitly on the couple’s time together. Most of the film covers their time apart and the issues they faced during this time. They coped with the separation and even had come to terms with it when their lives were suddenly and unexpectedly thrown back together. Their reunion is anything but harmonious and that’s what is so remarkable about this film. It is one of the few honest portrayals of love I’ve seen outside of a traditional drama.

The Notebook shows both sides of love. There are the romantic and thoughtful moments we’re accustomed to seeing, but there are also dark places that love can lead us: obsession, denial, despair. Granted, not all of these moments are deftly acted by such the film’s young stars, but they get it right more often than not, so kudos to Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling. The passion they display is one of a kind and the freewheeling, playful side of love they show is actually done right for a change.

But the story doesn’t just exist in the defining moments of their youthful love. As with real life, the story goes on. The real story is a mix of joy and sadness and is so different from anything I’ve seen before in the genre. Author Nicholas Sparks understands that happy endings aren’t real endings, which I appreciate.

One thing I definitely enjoyed (especially coming off the previous review) was the fact all the clothing looked like the characters actually wore it. Everything seemed real: the clothes, the sets, everything. I liked the choices for on-location shots and the filmmakers didn’t overdo it on the music either. Nothing too sappy or melodramatic. It was all pretty well in line.

There’s really not a whole lot more I can say or get into without giving away much about the film (which I am not in the business of doing). The only other thing I can say is that the older actors in the film did an impeccable job and were just as good, if not better, of conveying a deep-seated love that solid movies are built around.

The Notebook is a solid film and I definitely recommend it, if you are into the romantic side of the movie spectrum. Good stuff here.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5

Hairspray (2007)

I’ve run into a slight problem while trying to write a review for this film. I still remember it very clearly, so that’s not the problem. I hit a roadblock in trying to compare this movie-musical to its original incarnation, which I have not seen. Hairspray is a movie-musical based off of a Broadway musical which was based off of a non-musical cult film from Director John Waters. Waters is one weird dude and his films typically reflect that. Waters had little to no involvement with this musical version and I think that was a mistake.

Even though I have never seen the original Hairspray and have only seen bits and pieces of Waters’ work, I was expecting more of his signature weirdness to come through. Instead, we’re treated to a glitzy Broadway confection that fancifully portrays a coming-of-age story during the early days of civil rights and integration. It’s bright, it’s loud, and it’s Broadway.

If you're new to my site, allow me to point out to you that I am not a big Broadway fan. At least not neo-Broadway. Movie musicals based on bright fluffy Broadway hits don’t turn my stomach, but they bore me to tears. I’ve never been a big glitz and glam kind of guy and all the Hollywood tricks that serve to cheese up an already cheesetastic production grow on my nerves with amazing quickness. Silly transitions, extra digital grading, overdone lighting- it’s all just too much for me to appreciate.

Combining the excesses of Broadway with the excesses of Hollywood grinds my gears. It’s gross, it’s gaudy, and it’s gratuitous. People complain about the excess of blood, gore and nudity in today’s string of successful torture porn films, like the Saw and Hostel series. Yet, nobody calls films like Hairspray on their needless excesses. In fact, most embrace them. Hypocritical, paradoxical- I don’t quite know what to call it. Basically, the excess of schmaltz and camp pull me out such films.

While I understand that Broadway likes vibrant colors and crisp looking costumes, I found myself unable to get past the fact that virtually all of the clothing in the film looked like it had never been worn before. The colors I can get past, because I don’t know if those styles didn’t exist back in the day, but when only a few characters actually look like they live in those clothes, my suspension of disbelief checks out.

The inclusion of John Travolta as an obese, middle-aged woman also didn’t earn any points with me. I do know that in the original version of Hairspray, a notorious cross-dresser played the part now played by Travolta, but Travolta just seems to be there for the yuck-factor. Of course it’s funny to see a famous actor dress up like a woman, but the joke overstays its welcome rather quickly. After the first few scenes, seeing Travolta in a fat suit had no effect on me.

Overall, it just feels like this film is missing something and I think it’s the edge that John Waters’ films are known to contain. By adding songs and removing Waters from the creative process, it seems like they watered down the tone of an otherwise better film. And we all know that hairspray and water don’t work well together.

To really give an accurate review I’ll need to watch the original Hairspray and then re-watch this version. Until then, my rating is mostly subjective.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5