"Groundhog Day," Harold Ramis, Film Review

"Groundhog Day," Harold Ramis, Film Review

It's often interesting to look at how films or novels are categorized for genre as this can sometimes give us ideas about how to describe our own work in genre terms.  Groundhog Day is listed as Comedy, Fantasy and Romance.

A lot of time, money and effort have gone into making this film and the end result is slick and well constructed, with memorable characters and themes that resonate further than those from the average Hollywood film.

WARNING:  MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Bill Murray's character, Phil, is the most fully described.  His producer in the film and intended love interest, Rita, is a bit wet – a kind of compliant man fantasy, although one who does a lot of face slapping.  Phil collects her attributes one by one, but they (French poetry, rocky road ice cream, toasting to world peace) seem more like a writer's list against a made-up character than the attributes of a real person.  Chris Elliott, who plays the cameraman Larry, is a kind of comic foil to Phil but not very developed.  A long way into the film when the partly reformed Phil asks Larry whether he has kids, the camera doesn't hang around for the answer.  Larry makes dismal attempts to chat up women, and is sold at a slave auction to an old lady for 25 cents.  Earlier, he makes eye contact with a waiter who we've been told is gay.  All in all, Larry seems to be an avatar for the script writer, with Murray playing the author as fantasy.

Phil's cynicism and quick wit drives the film.  And there is comedy from how painfully slowly his seduction of Rita progresses.  Almost every line in his sequence requires a new day and a new adjustment.  The two of them are so comically mismatched at the beginning that his (initially cynical) attempts to seduce her by 'being' her perfect man eventually transform him by making him that different and better man in reality.  Or at least that's what we're asked to stomach.

It's clear that a lot of repeated days have passed.  Phil learns the piano and gets to know every member of the village.

There's great casting in the film.  Eg the town officials listening to the groundhog to hear what he is telling them.

And the groundhog ritual itself works well as a symbol for the difference between small town and city American life and ultimately for American values as they really count.

Sentimentality lurks in this film but it is undercut by making it clear that Phil has tried every other option apart from true love – money, food, drink, women, and even suicide by numerous methods.

Only good deeds and the love of a good woman ultimately provide him with the satisfaction he wants.

The endless repetition, endless refinement and building of knowledge works well as a metaphor for man's search through a normal lifetime for the meaning of life.

It's just that you need ten thousand goes at a single day to get it right.

Personal Score: 7/10

This is part of a series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer.  The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

"The Princess Bride," Rob Reiner, Film Review

"The Princess Bride," Rob Reiner, Film Review

A series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer.  The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

WARNING:  CONTAINS SPOILERS

The Princess Diaries, directed by Garry Marshall, is a fun teenage princess Disney film, in the Cinderella mould, that doesn't take itself too seriously and has a lot of fun in working through the princess formula, with its storyline of balls, dresses and routes to the throne.  Anne Hathaway is the perfect Disney princess and she even manages to out-princess Elsa and Anna in Frozen.  True, it's a little lightweight for inclusion on the IMDB top 250 list, but there are a number of kids' films on the list and it hardly deserves its place any less than the Peter Jackson, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan films.  In short, I was looking forward to rewatching Diaries as a refreshing breather in my IMDB project.

Imagine my horror, then, when I checked more carefully and discovered that the film on the list was actually The Princess Bride, the dire costumed fantasy film directed by Rob Reiner.

Let's start with the positives.  Parts of Bride reminded me of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with the idea that two or more people combine their talents to become a kind of composite super-person.  In Kid, Butch is the brains and the Kid is the fast shooter.  When there's thinking to be done, the Kid relaxes and leaves it all to Butch to sort out.  In Bride, we have the swordsman, the body and the brain.  And the similarity is all the greater because, just like in Kid, the composite character is followed relentlessly by an almost supernaturally gifted tracker.

André the Giant looks uncannily like Javier Bardem caught in a huge fleshy frame.

Okay, that's the positives out of the way.

After a watching the film for a while, I found I had an unpleasant ache in my face, a condition I like to call Python-jaw, because I usually experience it while watching Monty Python films.  This ache occurs when I start to smile as I realize I'm in the presence of a joke – something joke-shaped has interrupted the narrative flow – but the joke isn't remotely funny – so I never make it into a real laugh.  Instead my face remains locked in its almost-smile until it starts to ache.  Python-jaw.

I had this unpleasant condition throughout Bride.  And while unfunny jokes are arguably better than no jokes at all – there's nothing I hate more than fantasy films played straight – it still didn't make for a very enjoyable hour and forty minutes.

As well as the Pythonesque (non) jokes, Bride shares other features with Python films such as its conspicuous lack of meaningful female parts.  True, the princess is played by a woman (who does little more than wait for her prince to come for her) but it's as though the director, like the Pythons, is plain scared of women.  At least the Pythonesque old crones who crop up from time to time are played by women here.

There are numerous catchphrases – that I'm told are loved and often repeated by Bride's many fans.  I shudder as I imagine guys (surely only guys) across the world saying 'as you wish' to other guys or to long-suffering Python-jawed girlfriends.

Cary Elwes is the wettest romantic lead I've seen for a long time, utterly unconvincing in all the abrupt character changes he is asked to perform.  His adoption as the replacement brain by Inigo and Fezzik is particularly laughable.

Oh well, I got through it and lived to write the notes.

Personal Score: 3/10

"Good Will Hunting," Gus Van Sant, Film Review

"Good Will Hunting," Gus Van Sant, Film Review

A series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer.  The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

WARNING:  CONTAINS SPOILERS

This is a dishonest film.  It's not even slightly credible how Matt Daman's character can do his construction work, drinking, brawling etc, and have book learning across maths, Marxist history, organic chemistry, etc.  He may be intelligent, but this is not how very intelligent, socially held-back people show their intelligence.

Similarly, Robin Williams's shrink is conveniently able to chief out Daman's character with his bench press weights, he can get him in a throat grip and has been abused himself.  It's too much to expect us to believe any of this.

It's just about plausible how Daman's character rejects relationships and opportunities before they have a chance to disappoint him back – but this is laid on too thick.

The manly speech from Ben Affleck on how he wants him to just disappear is ridiculous – much better was the man-to-man talk over the yellow cab in Taxi Driver.

They mention a real-life case of an Indian who sees a maths books, develops, theorems, and comes to Cambridge.  Now that would have been the honest film to have made.  It's so often the case that real life provides the honesty and integrity that fiction lacks – which is not to say that fiction can't build on those real life cases, of course, but just making up all this rubbish does no one any favours.  If you want to make a life-affirming film, you have to make the characters credible, else it means nothing.

Personal Score: 3/10

"The Graduate," Mike Nichols, Film Review

"The Graduate," Mike Nichols, Film Review

A series of film reviews where I give my comments on IMDB Top 250 films as a writer.  The idea is that over time these posts will build into a wide-ranging writing resource.

For more details about the approach I've taken, including some important points about its strengths and weaknesses (I make no claims about my abilities as a film critic or even the accuracy of my comments... but I do stand by the value of a writer's notes on interesting films), see my introductory post here.

WARNING:  CONTAINS SPOILERS

Snappy and funky – everyone and everything looks cool and even manages to make Simon and Garfunkel sound edgy and caper-y.

Good story and all the interest is in the affair with Mrs Robinson.  Interesting that the film is not titled 'Mrs Robinson'.

The choice of 'The Graduate' points to the theme of existential angst that Dustin Hoffman's character feels following a glorious school career and graduation.  He is shy and doesn’t know what he wants to do... Nicely summed up by the repeated image of him gloating aimlessly on a floater in his parents' pool.  

* His father's associate tries to tempt him – 'One word.  "Plastics."'  It doesn't tempt him.

Hoffman anticipates a bit of his Rain Man autistic act in the first half of the film.

Much of the pleasure comes from Mrs Robinson's eager predatory behaviour 

*  Her directness and her calm assurance.  'Waiter,' she says coolly when Hoffman fails to attract their attention. 

*  Her husband is also good.  'I was just telling Ben that he needs to spread some wild oats.  Do you agree?'  Mrs R. 'Yes.'

Less satisfactory are some unrealistic notes.

* He is supposed to be a big athletic, successful scholar and skillful debater ... yet it takes Mrs R. to liberate him and she is his first time with a woman

* The twists and turns with Mrs R's daughter are much less convincing, including the wedding heist at the end

Some themes echo with Biff and Willy's situation in Death of a Salesman.  The young man unable to negotiate a satisfactory compromise between his own desires and society's desires / demands.

Overall, it's pacey, bold, confident.  It looks and sounds great and there are some top performances, especially from Hoffman and Anne Bancroft as Mrs Robinson.

Personal Score:  8/10