Movie Review: Stealing Home (1988)

A coming-of-age drama and romance, Stealing Home straddles a fine line between rich narrative and nostalgia overload in a wistful tale of broken dreams and first love.

As he carefully prepares for his next game, appreciating everything about the day, thirtysomething minor league baseball player Billy Wyatt (Mark Harmon) reflects on his life. Six months earlier his baseball career was washed-up and he was living in a scuzzy motel when his mother Ginny (Blair Brown) called to inform him of the suicide of Katie Chandler (Jodie Foster), his childhood babysitter, muse and first crush. 

Billy rushes home to Camden, New Jersey and in a series of flashbacks to his formative years recalls the adventurous, free-spirited Katie believing in him as a baseball star-in-the-making. As a young man approaching college Billy (William McNamara) and his best friend Alan Appleby (Jonathan Silverman) were enjoying life and Billy was attracting the attention of the Philadelphia Flyers when a family tragedy strikes. Katie helps Billy and Ginny emotionally recover and pick up the pieces of their lives. 

Once home after Katie's suicide, Billy reconnects with Ginny and the grown-up Alan (Harold Ramis) and puzzles over why Katie left her ashes in his care.

Deliberately playing all notes in the minor key, Stealing Home touches upon every aspect of nostalgic Americana. Baseball, first love, loss of virginity, idyllic and isolated beachfront locations, 8mm family films, the bond between best friends, a life-altering tragedy, and the fall from grace that must precede emotional atonement: all are woven together in the story co-written and co-directed by Steven Kampmann and William Porter.

Almost overburdened by a sense of contrived machine assembly, Stealing Home just about wriggles out with enough charm. The multiple nested flashback format and soft colours work surprisingly well to create the requisite dreamy mood. Most of the key events occur in the seminal post-tragedy, pre-college summer, with Billy and his friend Alan surrounded by family, friends and sexual firsts. Alan lusts after classmate Robin Parks, but she has other plans involving Billy. Later in the summer, older woman Lesley represents Alan's every wet dream. The multiple sexual awakening side stories threaten to distract from Billy's primary arc, but also serve to enrich his character.

At the heart of the film is the relationship between Billy and Katie. She is introduced in flashback only after her suicide is announced, with Jodie Foster bringing to life a young man's fantasy cool babysitter who could become so much more. Initially the six year age difference is a hurdle, but once Billy is seventeen Katie becomes both enchanting and enticingly available. From his vantage point her spirit is enterprising, fearless, selfless and ultimately seeking more than her world can possibly offer.

Baseball as Billy's destiny and natural calling permeates his past, present and future, although the film only visits the diamond on a couple of occasions. Billy is an intrepid base runner willing to steal bases at game-defining moments, his audacity a salute to the woman who believed in him more than she ultimately believed in herself.



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The Movies of Harold Ramis

All movies starring Harold Ramis and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Stripes (1981)

Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone (1983, voice only, uncredited)

Ghostbusters (1984)

Baby Boom (1987)

Stealing Home (1988)

Groundhog Day (1993, also Director)

As Good As It Gets (1997)

Knocked Up (2007)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Baby Boom (1987)

A sharp comedy probing the status of women in the work place, Baby Boom asks whether a woman can have it all. The answer is a yes hiding in a no, throwing doubt on the definition of "all". Baby Boom is a smart and funny cultural milestone.

Management consultant J.C. Wiatt (Diane Keaton) is a rising star at her New York firm, consumed by work, living the fast life, achieving success, and on her way to achieving the coveted status of Partner. Life is turned upside down when a distant cousin dies and leaves in J.C's care an unexpected package: a cute toddler named Elizabeth.

J.C. briefly considers giving the child up for adoption, but a bond forms quickly. She tries to juggle motherhood with her work, but her performance suffers and her equally work-obsessed live-in boyfriend (Harold Ramis) leaves to find a diaper-free environment. J.C. is eventually forced to accept humiliating work assignments and makes the decision to quit. She relocates to an old country house in Vermont, where her new life also includes a fresh business venture and some unexpected choices.

With the decade of greed in full swing and the movie Wall Street (also from 1987) offering a distorted definition of success, Baby Boom pauses and checks on society's priorities. It's a brave move from the writing duo of Nancy Myers and Charles Shyer to throw a baby into the hands of a high powered executive and alter her life trajectory for the better. That J.C. discovers the potential for her world to be a richer place with more Elizabeth and fewer meetings makes a statement, and offers a perspective not often championed.

Baby Boom is one of Diane Keaton's career peaks, and she excels in three dimensions. As the high-performance executive known as the Tiger Lady, Keaton gives J.C. a dominant presence, with the slightest twinge of self-doubt below the surface. Keaton then handles the awkward transition from executive to working mom with plenty of skillful comic timing, literally juggling baby and work, getting torn between two priorities. And when J.C. explores her new zone of potential comfort in Vermont, Keaton fights a rearguard action, clearly falling in love with a new reality but with lingering twangs of pining for the power suit.

Shyer directs with an eye for strong parallels, the sharp black edges of New York underlining J.C.'s rocketing pre-baby career trajectory, the softer, colour-rich environment of Vermont welcoming a new, softer, slower but no less rewarding phase of her life. The country bumpkin elements are slightly overplayed as J.C. adjusts to the pace, but the film always places its heart in the right place.

Baby Boom's one weakness is the absence of any meaningful counterpoint to Keaton and the J.C. Wiatt character. Harold Ramis as her initial live-in mirror image is transparent in both personality and presence, to the point of effective invisibility. Sam Shepard's rustic rural veterinarian arrives late and only ever hints at the romantic charms to be found in the countryside. The almost uniformly all-white, all-male power brokers in J.C.'s executive life include Sam Wanamaker, Pat Hingle and a young James Spader. They make the point about the homogeneity of men attempting to define what constitutes business success, but remain perhaps intentionally interchangeable.

Life can take unexpected turns, and variants of success can be found in the company of unexpected packages. Baby Boom is brave enough to weigh Partner against Mother, and succeeds as both comedy and social commentary.

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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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Movie Review: Stripes (1981)

A showcase for the comedic talent of Bill Murray, Stripes is only as good as its star. Murray's laid-back sardonic style creates good friction with the motif of military discipline, but Stripes suffers from having little to offer other than Murray's attitude.

John Winger (Bill Murray) abandons his job as a taxi driver, is abandoned by his girlfriend, and has his car repossessed, all on the same day. He convinces his friend Russell Ziskey (Harold Ramis) that they should join the army, and off they go to training camp. The fellow recruits include the overweight Ox (John Candy) and an assortment of the psychotic and the dim. Drill Sergeant Hulka (Warren Oates) tries to make soldiers out of them, with limited success. Hulka's platoon muddles its way to graduation before becoming embroiled in an unexpected incursion behind the Iron Curtain.

Much of Stripes was improvised on the spot, director Ivan Reitman keeping the cameras rolling while Murray made things up and the other cast members reacted. It's a sometimes fascinating viewing experience, but the struggle to create a cohesive movie out of essentially uncoordinated comedy moments is also clear. Stripes sags and surges, meanders and regains focus, ultimately providing an interesting but bumpy ride.

When it works, Stripes delivers scenes of comic gold. Murray's speech to rally his platoon prior to the graduation ceremony is classic, as is the platoon's performance in the ceremony itself. But in the final 30 minutes featuring the unplanned invasion of Czechoslovakia, Stripes loses its way in a groan-inducing attempt to superimpose superfluous action onto a comedy, with mostly embarrassing results.

The thin ice of material that Stripes skates on is exemplified by a deleted sequence (restored in the Extended Cut) that has Winger and Ziskey hitch a ride on a military plane to an unnamed war zone, where they are captured by undefined heavily armed mercenaries and threatened with death, but save themselves when Winger starts singing Quando Quando Quando. It's a nonsensical interlude, scraping by on Murray's improvisational talent and spontaneity. A mud wrestling match between John Candy's Ox and a bevy of near-naked models is also a punch line stranded by an absence of meaningful context.

Elsewhere in the cast, Ramis proves to himself that he is no actor, his uncomfortable performance as Ziskey crossing the line from comic to incompetent. Warren Oates performs his function as the crusty drill sergeant with good intentions, while P.J. Soles and Sean Young as the Military Police officers who develop relationships with Winger and Ziskey realize early on that they need to be comely rather than convincing.

Stripes is a one-man comedy routine expanded into a military farce. It is remarkable that it works as well as it does, and this is testimony to Murray's unique talent to deliver cool humour with perfect timing.

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Movie Review: Groundhog Day (1993)

An updated but nevertheless old-fashioned morality tale, Groundhog Day strikes a balance between attractively quiet charm and bright lessons in life. It also features some of Bill Murray's best work, a career landmark as he transitioned from mindless comedy to serious acting.

Pittsburgh television weatherman Phil Connors (Murray) does not hide the fact that he is cynical, egocentric and utterly self-centred: there is not much in life that makes Phil happy. His mood is not served when the station sends him for the fourth year in a row to the small town of Punxsutawney in February, to cover the Groudhog Day festivities, when the remaining duration of winter is predicted by a giant groundhog. Phil deems the whole event to be trivial and well beneath him, and is rude and less than sociable towards his travelling companions, producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) and camerman Larry (Chris Elliott).

Phil gets through the day as quickly as possible, films his segment, and heads home, but a blizzard prevents him from getting back to Pittsburgh. He wakes up the next morning and it is the start of Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney all over again: the events of the previous day will re-live themselves. Phil is caught in a loop, doomed to repeat Groundhog Day over and over.

After getting over the shock, Phil takes advantage of his situation. He uses the information that he learns from each walk-through to charm and sleep with Nancy, an attractive local woman, and then tries the same tactic with Rita. After days of mechanically memorizing her likes and dislikes and using them to his advantage, Phil thinks he is close to seducing her but she rebuffs him. Increasingly depressed and unable to find a way out of the endless repeating cycle, Phil attempts to kill himself in all possible ways, but no matter what gory ending he plans for himself, he always wakes up the next morning at the start of the same Groundhog Day. With not even death offering a way out, Phil has to delve deep into his approach to life and his interaction with others to try and find the right path out of Punxsutawney.

Groundhog Day is structured like a maze,with all paths but one looping back to 6am on the morning of the same day. Phil's challenge is first to know that he is in this maze, and then to find the only way out. Bill Murray has rarely been better, the personality of Phil perfectly fitting his grown-up screen persona of a man who has seen everything, has a snide comment for everyone, and is dismissive of the value of all things. Equally engaging is Andy MacDowell, who quickly gives Rita a combination of depth and smarts. She is first the victim of Phil's insensitivity, then the target of his childish lechery, and finally the path to his salvation, and MacDowell makes Rita believable in all three roles without compromising the fundamentals of the character.

The message behind the movie is both straightforward and textured, and includes lessons about the futility of life's apparent short-cuts and the grim cul-de-sac of dark mentalities. Ultimately, Phil only starts to make progress when he pays attention to the needs of the people surrounding him and to his own need to grow as a person. Lack of self-improvement, at any age, is condemnation to life at a stand-still.

Whether a metaphor for a mid-life crisis or a call to greater societal re-engagement with more human sensitivity, Groundhog Day delivers the good news. It's a day worth living, and a movie to be treasured.

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