Movie Review: Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

A romantic comedy with a twist, Grosse Pointe Blank follows a cold-blooded but sympathetic hit-man as he attends his high school reunion to pursue his dream girl while dodging bullets.

Martin Blank (John Cusack) is an independent assassin for hire, receiving his missions through his assistant Marcella (Joan Cusack). Fellow hit-man Grocer (Dan Aykroyd) tries to convince him to join a cartel, but Martin wants to maintain independence. Starting to feel depressed and jaded Martin's mood is not improved when a couple of his missions are bungled. His shrink Dr. Oatman (Alan Arkin) is of little use.

After being nagged incessantly by Marcella, Martin agrees to attend his 10 year reunion at Grosse Pointe high school in a Detroit suburb, but only after his next target happens to also be in the same city. He uses the opportunity to try and win back the love of Debi (Minnie Driver), the sweetheart he abandoned on prom night ten years prior. He also bumps into other high school friends including real estate agent Paul (Jeremy Piven). As he makes progress in wooing Debi, Martin realizes that Grosse Pointe is crawling with hit men, and that he may be a target.

Set to a continuous soundtrack of mid-1980s hits, Grosse Pointe Blank takes a sardonic look at the love life of a killer. Directed by George Armitage with John Cusack co-writing, the film goes into rarely explored territory where killers need affection too, and laughs, love and hot lead collide. It doesn't necessarily always work as intended, but enough emotional mayhem registers to make the film stand out.

With so much going on some parts of the narrative kookiness understandably land awkwardly. Unless blatant satire was the goal, Debi's ability to look past Martin's profession and love him anyway was never going to be an easy sell. The music soundtrack also occasionally overreaches and gets in the way. While the selection of hits from the 1980s is a boon to fans of the decade, stretches of the film introduce a new track every 10 seconds, the songs disintegrating into useless snippet territory. And finally the big reunion scene is a messy series of encounters that seem to start and stop at random and offer nothing new.

But for the most part Grosse Pointe Blank delivers an irreverent mash-up of wild action, romantic pursuit, career depression and caustic comedy. And the genres somehow rub against each other at the right angles, the film emerging as a unique hybrid refusing to adhere to any preconceived notions of formula. Rarely has a love story with a high school backdrop been interrupted by an intense gunfight between two assassins culminating in a bomb placed in a microwave. And of course the battle happens to take place in a mini mart that displaced Martin's childhood home, just to add to the hero's depressed sense of aggrieved angst.

John Cusack brings his persona of intense cool to Martin Blank, and provides the film with its critical centre of gravity. None of the other characters are too important to matter. Even Debi is reduced to lazily orbiting Martin's disorderly life, Minnie Driver unable to exert much pull on the proceedings other than work through Debi's residual anger issues.

Grosse Pointe Blank bravely goes back home, and with a wicked smile gleefully breaks all the rules.

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Movie Review: Trading Places (1983)

A social comedy set in the world of business, Trading Places is an early vehicle for Eddie Murphy's burgeoning talents and an entertaining romp through the lineage versus social environment debate.

In Philadelphia, filthy rich and racist brothers Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) own a large commodities trading firm. To settle a bet about nature versus nurture, they decide to ruin the life of their firm's haughty general manager Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) while elevating streetwise bum Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) into his role. Valentine is bailed out of jail, installed in Winthorpe's swanky apartment, scrubbed down, provided with the services of butler Coleman (Denholm Elliott), and given free reign to run the firm.

Meanwhile, Winthorpe is framed for petty theft and drug trafficking, locked out of his apartment and has his accounts frozen. His fiancée Penelope (Kristin Holby) dumps him and he falls in with prostitute Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis), the only person to believe his story. Billy Ray thrives in his new environment while a desperate Winthorpe starts contemplating a life of crime. But once the two men learn of the Duke brothers' chicanery, they join forces and plot to turn the tables.

Directed by John Landis as a loose modernization of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, Trading Places followed 48 Hrs. to help launch Eddie Murphy into superstardom. The film enjoys plenty of laughs, foul language and a deep cast, while the Duke brothers enliven the villainy meter and present a boo-worthy representation of the worst that the 1 percent have to offer.

Murphy lets loose and dominates the film, easily upstaging the top-billed Aykroyd. The character of Billy Ray Valentine may be altogether implausible as a rough diamond too easy to polish from street bum to corporate suit, but Murphy makes the most of it, his motormouth and quick-witted presence overcoming any character gaps.

Trading Places is at its best in the scenes catapulting Billy Ray from a prison cell to the corner office, while Winthorpe is simultaneously drop-kicked from a cushy upper crust life to a prostitute's derelict apartment. The Dukes play the role of hidden puppet masters and dramatically change two unsuspecting lives, creating plenty of room for comedy. Billy Ray can't hide his instincts to steal property from his own new palatial home, while Winthorpe's downfall starts with a petty theft set-up at the stuffiest of men's clubs. As Winthorpe nears bottom, Ophelia offers hope that among the downtrodden, there is more and better humanity than within the ranks of back-stabbing crooks in suits.

The final third of the film gets away from Landis and drifts off-topic, leaving the social aspects dangling in search of more adolescent laughs. While the wild train ride featuring Winthorpe, Billy Ray and dirty tricks operative Clarence Beeks (Paul Gleason) is fun, it also has little to do with the premise. And Landis is caught with a climax on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange that may be technically feasible but proves beyond the director's capabilities to explain. Landis settles for not bothering, and is satisfied with a rush to retribution.

Despite moments of sloppiness Trading Places is edgy fun, a glossy rags to riches meets riches to rags laugh fest given extra spark by an emerging comic star.

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Movie Review: Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

A simple two-person character study, Driving Miss Daisy enjoys excellent central performances but rides an utterly linear path to nowhere in particular.

Georgia, 1948. Daisy Werthan (Jessica Tandy) is a stubborn 72 year old rich Jewish woman, living alone in her big house with her faithful kitchen servant. When she crashes her car in a driveway mishap, her son Boolie (Dan Aykroyd), a local businessman, insists on getting her a driver, and hires the elderly Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman). Hoke is amiable and professional but nevertheless it takes Daisy several weeks to admit that she needs help. Eventually she succumbs and accepts to have Hoke drive her to all her errands and visits.

Daisy initially treats Hoke as the hired help and barely trusts him. But over the years she warms up to his company, and teaches him to read while he helps tend to her vegetable garden. Their friendship deepens and together they witness episodes of racism and antisemitism as the South goes through radical social changes.

An adaptation of an off-Broadway play directed by Bruce Beresford, Driving Miss Daisy is a small, modest film, an intimate look at a friendship that evolves over 12 years against a backdrop of social upheavel. The focus on the complexities of relationships in the crusty elderly years is refreshing, and the film remains stubbornly faithful to a low-key pace and tone, consistent with the greying years.

Daisy and Hoke are interesting enough characters to carry the film. Daisy is now rich but has never forgotten growing up in poverty, and she goes out of her way to avoid demonstrations of wealth. She is also headstrong, humourless, and set in her ways. Hoke is a survivor, keenly aware of the social position occupied by an older black man in the deep South of 1948. He is nevertheless full of wisdom, pride and unafraid to (always respectfully) express opinions that contradict his employers.

The film establishes its premise and central characters in the first 30 minutes, and then sputters and occasionally stalls down the dusty backroads of history. While Tandy, Freeman, and (more surprisingly) Aykroyd are never less than excellent, the Alfred Uhry scripts struggles to find a narrative thrust. Driving Miss Daisy defaults to a series of vignettes, Hoke in the front seat, Daisy in the back, exchanging sometimes sharp but often superficial views as the years pass them by and the car models are updated. The little episodes add up to a deepening friendship, but precious little emotional resonance is actually generated.

In an admittedly weak year, Driving Miss Daisy won the Best Film Academy Award, ahead of more celebrated movies such as Born On The Fourth Of July, Field Of Dreams and Dead Poets Society. Beresford was not even nominated for Best Director. Sometimes, an uncomplicated drive in the country remarkably seizes the day.

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Movie Review: The Blues Brothers (1980)

A bombastic musical comedy, The Blues Brothers is a raucous exercise in unconstrained charisma. The story of two hip brothers seeking to raise money for an orphanage is just a good excuse for automotive mayhem and buoyant musical performances.

Released from jail after serving three years for robbery, Jake Blues (John Belushi) is picked up by his brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) driving a repurposed ex-police car. Together they visit an orphanage run by nuns, and discover that the institute will shut down unless a $5,000 tax bill owed to the City of Chicago is settled within days. Jake and Elwood decide that they are "on a mission from God" and set out to do the only thing they know how: reunite their old blues band and perform a show to raise the required money.

They track down their old bandmates, who are all initially skeptical but ultimately game. Along the way, Jake and Elwood manage to enrage the police and the local neo-Nazi chapter, while a mystery woman (Carrie Fisher) does all she can to blow the brothers to smithereens. Hotly chased by their pursuers, the reunited Blues Brothers bungle their way into a show at a rough country and western eatery before finally landing a gig at a lavish hotel to give themselves a chance at raising the funds in time.

The Blues Brothers is a celebration of excess. Perfectly mixing music and comedy, director John Landis packs in over-the-top auto chases filled with wild stunts and crashes involving a ridiculously large number of cars, along with several long, energetic music numbers. He also milks every drop of star John Belushi's stratospheric star power, and unapologetically delivers an over-budget 133 minute musical comedy about very little. It is all disproportionately larger than life, and it all works.

Inspired by Saturday Night Live sketches and capitalizing on Belushi's post-Animal House popularity, The Blues Brothers is more an attitude and a cultural landmark than a narrative-driven film. Co-written by Landis and Aykroyd, the film achieves a cool vibe, with the two lead protagonists quickly achieving cult likability by sticking to their principles and their dark suits, hats, and shades, achieving hyper self-awareness and simultaneously remaining oblivious to the carnage unfolding all around them.

The highlights are many. The performance at Bob's Country Bunker is the perfect irreverent set-up, a place where the blues band has to quickly pretend to love country music, and where chicken wire protects the band from beer bottles hurled at them to signify derision and appreciation. Carrie Fisher's mystery woman bursts into the movie at regular intervals with ever more destructive weaponry, harbouring all of hell's fury. James Brown, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin among others show up for extended and dynamic musical cameos, sparking career revivals. And Landis somehow makes it perfectly logical that by the end of the film, an army of law enforcement vehicles, a militant group of neo-Nazis, and the Good Ol' Boys country band and their RV are all in hot pursuit of the Blues Brothers.

Aykroyd and Belushi are as smooth as any film buddy couple can be, whether acing their cool test, escaping from hundreds of police cars or performing their unique music-and-dance routines. In addition to Fisher and John Candy, the supporting cast is peppered with blues performers thought to be well past their prime, until the film propelled them back into the limelight.

The Blues Brothers is a spectacular success, but with a dark cloud hovering on the horizon. Within two years of the film's release date, Belushi was dead from a drug overdose, and Landis was charged with manslaughter for the tragic deaths of Vic Morrow and two child actors on the set of The Twilight Zone, caused by pyrotechnics bringing down a helicopter. Every type of excess, as it turns out, has its limits.

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Movie Review: 50 First Dates (2004)

A romantic comedy with a clumsy premise, 50 First Dates reunites Adam Sandler with Drew Barrymore, but is weighed down with thin material and too many juvenile elements.

In Hawaii, marine veterinarian Henry Roth (Sandler) is a renowned womanizer, carrying on quick affairs with ladies on vacation mode and dumping them with regularity. After a sailing mishap he washes up at a secluded beachfront diner and meets the attractive Lucy Whitmore (Barrymore). They chat and make a connection. Following up the next day, Henry is shocked that Lucy does not remember him. He learns that a year ago she was in a car accident, suffered a brain injury and is now unable to retain short-term memories. Every day for Lucy is a blissfully unaware clean-slate repeat of the day before her accident, orchestrated by her family and friends.

Henry meets Lucy's fisherman father Marlin (Blake Clark) and dimwit brother Doug (Sean Astin). They eventually start to trust Henry as someone who cares for Lucy, and he convinces them to try a new approach, allowing Lucy to watch a video every morning explaining her circumstance and then letting her live through a new but real present day. And every day Henry waits for Lucy to get over the shock and sadness and then proceeds to win her affection. But finding long-term happiness with someone who cannot build new memories will not be easy.

Sandler and Barrymore clicked in 1998's The Wedding Singer, and they do share a sweet chemistry and easy affinity. Her natural perkiness and his inexpressive confidence mix well at a comfortable rather than spark-inducing wattage, quite suitable for a romance that is more about building a relationship than the mindless pursuit of lust.

But unfortunately Sandler cannot help but populate too much of the film with low-brow humour to appeal to his core fan base. The numerous scenes with Rob Schneider as Henry's idiot friend, Sean Astin as Lucy's lisping and steroid-inhaling brother, and Lusia Strus as Henry's sexually ambiguous work colleague are as infantile as comedy gets, and appeal only to Sandler fans with a mental age of five and under. A large walrus and a small penguin also get plenty of screen time.

Although the best laugh does involve Barrymore, Schneider and a baseball bat, tellingly Barrymore barely appears in any of the scenes with the inelegant co-stars, as if Sandler was engineering two separate films at once, one full of shallow antics for the morons in the crowd, and another a romance for the couples. The many puerile moments both undermine the cuter romantic elements and reveal the shallowness of the available ideas. Stripped of the padding, 50 First Dates would barely find an hour's worth of material.

The parts of the film that do focus on the two central characters are merely adequate. Director Peter Segal nudges the back half of the story towards some modestly thoughtful scenes exploring how Lucy could be prodded to live in the present despite her condition. Barrymore is fine as the woman who has to re-learn about her life every morning, but Sandler brings little to the film apart from his stock lethargic persona. Neither character is provided with any sort of depth or backstory. Dan Aykroyd has a small role as Lucy's doctor, and Maya Rudolph appears in one scene.

50 First Dates holds some promise for a pleasant evening but turns out to be gawky, pimply and rather crude.

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The Movies Of Dan Aykroyd

All movies starring Dan Aykroyd and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

1941 (1979)

The Blues Brothers (1980)

Trading Places (1983)

Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom (1984)

Ghostbusters (1984)

Into The Night (1985)

Dragnet (1987)

Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

Pearl Harbor (2001)

50 First Dates (2004)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: 1941 (1979)

An attempted war comedy, 1941 is a debacle of almost unimaginable proportions. Steven Spielberg momentarily loses his touch and presides over an obnoxious bomb.

It's December 1941, one week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In Los Angeles, civilians and the military are both on the edge of disorganized hysteria, anticipating an attack on the west coast. Indeed, a Japanese submarine is prowling the waters off California, and sub commander Akiro Mitamura (Toshiro Mifune) wants to make a name for himself by bombing Hollywood.

The US military men stationed in the area include Major General Stilwell (Robert Stack), more interested in watching Dumbo than leading his men; the slightly crazed Captain "Wild" Bill Kelso (John Belushi), randomly flying his fighter plane over California seeking phantom enemies; tank commander Sergeant Frank Tree (Dan Aykroyd), who knows how to inspire with words but not with actions; Captain Loomis Birkhead (Tim Matheson) who desperately wants to get Stilwell's assistant Donna (Nancy Allen) into an airplane to get her motor running; and the hot head Corporal Chuck Sitarski (Treat Williams), who is desperately vying with dance-loving waiter Wally Stephens (Bobby Di Cicco) for the attention of hostess Betty Douglas (Dianne Kay).

Spielberg's first and perhaps most serious major flop, 1941 is a thunderous failure, a remarkable calamity considering the talent on both sides of the camera and a budget of $32 million. There really is no plot to speak of. The screenplay by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale fails miserably to create any characters or events worth even remotely caring about. With astounding speed the film degenerates into an excuse for excess in search of broad slapstick-style jokes, with most of the attempted humour falling embarrassingly flat. The whole exercise takes on the unmistakable air of an unmitigated disaster.

The opening scene, a funny take on Spielberg's Jaws, deserves recognition as the only idea to hit the target in the entire two hour running length. Otherwise, long minutes that feel like hours pass by with no meaningful laughs, as an enormous amount of destruction is thrown at the screen to no effect. With a cast that also includes John Candy, Warren Oates, Slim Pickens, Ned Beatty, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Christopher Lee and Lionel Stander, 1941 achieves quantity over quality in all respects. Characters scream, over-act, fight, punch, riot, brawl, shoot, and frantically wave their arms in the air, all to no avail. The events on the screen bear no resemblance to rational film making, and a weird disconnect settles over the film. Someone actually thought that all this would be funny. Instead, it's just humiliating for all involved.

1941 features an orgy of wanton destruction, Spielberg mistaking a child's tendency to spectacularly annihilate stuff with good farce. Never has so much on-screen hardware been so spectacularly destroyed to so little effect.

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Movie Review: Dragnet (1987)

An attempted comedy that falters early, Dragnet never gains the necessary thrust and spirals ever downwards in a torrent of bad jokes and predictable set-ups. Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks do their best to maintain watchability, but they are just about flattened by the coarse material.

Sergeant Joe Friday (Aykroyd) holds his job with the Los Angeles Police Department in the highest regard, and is extremely proud of the City, its citizens, the police force, and the rule of law. Robotic in his mannerisms and strictly by-the-book in his actions, Aykroyd has to break in a new partner, Detective Pep Streebek (Hanks). Soon they are assigned to investigate a series of bizarre crimes perpetrated by a gang calling itself P.A.G.A.N., including the theft of the entire run of the latest edition of Bait magazine, owned by porn publisher Jerry Caesar (Dabney Coleman).

Friday and Streebek infiltrate the People Against Goodness And Normalcy and find a community of anarchists engaging in ritual human sacrifices. They rescue a virgin, Connie Swail (Alexandra Paul), who recognizes the reverend Jonathan Whirley (Christopher Plummer) as the evil cult leader. Friday loses his job due to over-enthusiasm in arresting the well-respected Whirley, leaving Streebek to find a way to rescue his partner's career and stop Whirley's nefarious plot to control both smut and godliness.

Intended as either a homage or a satire of the famous television series, Dragnet works as neither. The movie struggles against a pervasive stiff dumbness that no amount of star power can remedy, the script (on which four writers laboured, including Aykroyd) failing to generate any spark or wit. The entire exercise is meant to showcase Joe Friday's by-the-book method as a source of laughter, but instead of glittering Friday locks up all the entertainment into his cement personality, leaving the movie with an icy core.

Rather than saving the day and overcoming the lack of central warmth, Tom Hanks as Streebek is given little to do, since it's difficult to play the foil for a frozen cube. In the meantime, all the events are contrived to the point of abject boredom, as director Tom Mankiewicz lurches from one unfunny set piece to the next, with humour that would not get past most eight year olds.

The few good moments are provided by the smallest roles, Christopher Plummer chewing on juicy religious connivance, Dabney Coleman enjoying a Hugh Hefner-inspired bathrobe role and Alexandra Paul spraying her lack of talent all over the screen but nevertheless having fun with a wide-eyed performance as The Virgin Connie Swail.

Dragnet conclusively thumps its head against the bottom of the barrel with a dumbfounding showdown in which an army of bad guys suddenly wield machine guns and engage S.W.A.T. teams in a massive fire fight that would make Rambo proud. The superfluous battle, utterly not in keeping with all that came before it, is just the final admission that while Dragnet may have been seeking just the facts, what it found was a floundering debacle.

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Movie Review: Ghostbusters (1984)

The irreverent comedy of the 1980s, Ghostbusters celebrates its lack of meaning and amps up the nonsense. With Bill Murray cresting his narcissistically-jaded-to-the-point-of-barely-conscious persona, the film is a bombastic romp through urban absurdity.

New York parapsychologist Professor Peter Venkman (Murray) has the sketchiest of credentials, and spends his campus time performing shallow experiments as a guise to lust after attractive blond students. Summarily fired, he teams up with two fellow paranormal academics Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Dr. Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) to create Ghostbusters, a squad to capture troublesome spirits on the loose.

Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.

Just in time: a building along Central Park is the designated gateway for the return of the demonic spirit Zuul and the god of destruction Gozer, and the advance party consists of all forms of mischievous ghosts causing havoc throughout the city, providing the Ghostbusters with brisk business and celebrity status.

Venkman: We came, we saw, we kicked its ASS!

Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) lives in the building and, upon seeing spirits in her fridge, becomes a Ghostbusters client. Venkman is initially more interested in bedding Dana than helping her, but when both she and her tweedy neighbour Louis (Rick Moranis) are possessed to prepare for Gozer's return, the Ghostbusters have a real fight on their hands to save the city from rampaging spirits.

Venkman: Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown.

With special effects that appear campy even for the mid 1980s, Ghostbusters distances itself from any accusation of trying to be serious. Director Ivan Reitman just allows Murray to do his thing, the droopy eye-lids and expressionless face not concealing a brain overheating to find the next low key ironic comment on the unfolding carnage. Aykroyd and Ramis wrote the script, and park themselves deferentially to the side or behind Murray's antics.

Venkman: We've been going about this all wrong, this Mr. Stay Puft's okay, he's a sailor, he's in New York, we get this guy laid we won't have any trouble.

Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis get into the swing and provide utterly cartoonish support. Weaver plays her possessed role with undisguised relish, Reitman making the most of the air blower, Weaver's wild hair and flowing red, and slit-up-to-there, dress to create a lasting image.

Venkman: Nobody steps on a church in my town!

Ghostbusters celebrates a resurgent New York City, the only place where the sudden appearance of an army of ghosts is not that surprising, and a city that seeks and craves heroes, the wackier the better.

Venkman, upon seeing Dana turn into Demon: ...OK, so?..she's a dog...

The commercial success of the film was further boosted by the runaway hit theme song, Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr. exploding as a global anthem, Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! and I ain't afraid of no ghost! becoming all-time pop culture touchstones, despite not even being part of the movie's script.

Ghostbusters strikes a major chord of cool fun, a dizzy comedy packed with an energetic and positive spirit.

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