Movie Review: Turner And Hooch (1989)

A police comedy with a massive dog as the real star, Turner And Hooch finds plenty of funny moments thanks to the antics of a perpetually frothing canine, but suffers from a pretty flimsy plot.

In the fictional Sacramento suburb of Cypress Beach, young, single and extremely tidy police Detective Scott Turner (Tom Hanks) generally has nothing to do. He is getting ready to take a higher profile job in the big city, and is showing his replacement Detective David Sutton (Reginald VelJohnson) the ropes. The peace and quiet is suddenly shattered when old geezer Amos Reed (John McIntire) is killed after witnessing suspicious activity at the local fish processing plant. Amos' dog Hooch, a massive slobbering French Mastiff, is the only witness to the murder.

Scott reluctantly takes Hooch in as his new roommate, and the dog promptly proceeds to make a gargantuan mess out of Scott's house while chewing out his car. Scott starts a relationship with local veterinarian Dr. Emily Carson (Mare Winningham), while Hooch proves his worth by identifying a prime suspect in the murder case. With the dog's help, Scott, Sutton and their boss Chief Howard Hyde (Crag T. Nelson) close in on a conspiracy centred at the fish processing plant.

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, Turner And Hootch proves the old W.C. Fields adage about never working with children or animals. There is a film here about some sort of crime, and Tom Hanks is as likeable as ever, but the only thing that matters is the big, uncoordinated, lovingly ugly Hooch (played by Beasley the Dog). The film is a showcase for the beast, and large chunks of running time are dedicated to Hooch being Hooch.

The best comic moments are fuelled by Turner's tidiness being an irresistible target for Hooch's antics. The dog methodically destroys anything that resembles neat, clean and orderly in Turner's life, and what he does not damage, he eats. The appeal of the film is in making Hooch lovable despite his unattractive drool and bulky clumsiness, and Spottiswoode succeeds in turning the dog into a sympathetic and loyal best friend.

As for the plot, it takes a back seat way at the far end of the bus. Both the nefarious activity at the fish processing plant and the romance between Turner and Emily are sketched in with thick lines, barely developed, and mainly serve to interrupt the fun with the dog.

Turner And Hooch is amiable entertainment, a woofing good time without much of a memorable bite.

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The Movies Of Mare Winningham

All movies starring Mare Winningham and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

St. Elmo's Fire (1985)

Turner And Hooch (1989)

Wyatt Earp (1994)

Swing Vote (2008)

Brothers (2009)

Mirror Mirror (2012)

Philomena (2013)

Geostorm (2017)

Dark Waters (2019)

News Of The World (2020)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: St. Elmo's Fire (1985)

A post-graduation coming-of-age drama and one of the essential Brat Pack movies, St. Elmo's Fire is crowded with stereotypes but nevertheless captures the angst of transitioning from the campus to the real world.

Seven friends in their early twenties are facing life soon after graduating from Georgetown University. Alec (Judd Nelson) and Leslie (Ally Sheedy) are living together, and while he is working as a political aid and ready to get married, she wants to wait. Kevin (Andrew McCarthy) is an aspiring writer and frequently hangs out with Alec and Leslie. Kevin's roommate is Kirby (Emilio Estevez), who has ambitions to study law but currently works as a waiter at St. Elmo's Bar, the group's favourite hang-out.

Billy (Rob Lowe) is the bad boy, a saxophone player with no career path, already estranged from his wife and infant child. Nevertheless, Wendy (Mare Winningham), a social worker, is deeply in love with him. Finally, Jules (Demi Moore) is a party girl and already sucked into a materialistic life she can't afford.

Alec can't help but cheat on Leslie as he waits for her to agree to get married, while Kevin harbours a secret crush on another member of the group. Kirby openly lusts after Dale (Andie MacDowell), a doctor who graduated a few years earlier, and starts stalking her. Billy and Wendy have a falling out, and she comes under pressure from her father (Martin Balsam) to marry a boring man and get into her family's greeting card franchise business. Jules seeks a short-cut to financial stability by starting an affair with her married boss. As the seven struggle to deal with the responsibilities of adulthood, their friendships are stretched to the breaking point.

The seven characters of St. Elmo's Fire are undoubtedly self-centred, over-dramatic, and generally quite irritating. Not one of them appears to have charted a logical emotional or career path, and their behaviour is more suitable to snotty high schoolers than university graduates. Allowing for the film's tilt towards the dysfunctionally exaggerated, St. Elmo's Fire does deliver some succulent drama. There is enough romance, lust, and irresponsibility going on to fill a few seasons' worth of guilty pleasure television, and director Joel Schumacher packages his movie with glossy wrapping paper and the nostalgia of early adulthood, when every little independent decision seemed like a monumental moment.

The script, by Schumacher and Carl Kurlander, creates characters that are vivid and memorable rather than unique. Each of the seven represents a broad societal pie slice, and there is no holding back on the amount of filling. Billy's rebel without a cause is all long haired, ear-ringed, unfocused imprudence, Wendy's goody two-shoes dresses like the Mayflower pilgrims, and Jules' slutty material girl lives life according to a Madonna soundtrack. Kirby's infatuation with Dale would qualify as a crime outside a movie script, but here is played for laughs, Kevin's dreamy-eyed long-haired aspiring writer drips idealistic romanticism, and Alec's out of control libido would condemn him as a sex addict. Leslie just barely qualifies as closest to rational, but even she quickly hops into a bed with a new lover at the first hint of a fight with Alec.

With the subtleties being pummeled, there is no need for textured acting, and no one ever accused the Brat Packers of excellence in the performing arts. Fulfilling the function of pretty faces representing their generation's excesses rather than intense dramatists, the seven actors dive into their strictly defined roles and embody them energetically, without ever moving beyond the obvious. Nelson, Lowe and Moore get to stretch the most, but even they are confined to stock displays of anger generated by hormones adjusting from the campus cocoon to the cold real world. Estevez, as a little boy lost in a horrible role, suffers the most.

The theme song St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion) is quite outstanding. Written by David Foster and performed by John Parr, it is overused throughout the film, but does capture the energetic anguish of responsibility. In St. Elmo's Fire growing up is hard to do, but at least it looks and sounds good.

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Movie Review: Brothers (2009)

Yes, war is hell, but soldiers who survive the battlefield just trade in one agony for another when they return home. Brothers is an intense story of post-traumatic stress disorder, and the destruction unleashed on the home front when veterans fail to cope with the aftermath of combat shock.

Sam (Tobey Maguire) and Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) are brothers. Sam is a Marine on active duty, a perfect husband for his wife Grace (Natalie Portman), a fun father for his young daughters Isabelle and Maggie, and a model son for his father Hank (Sam Shepard). Tommy has just been released from jail, a loser whose life has so far amounted to exactly nothing.

Sam is deployed to Afghanistan, where his helicopter crashes into a lake. Reported to be dead, Sam is actually captured by the Taliban, tortured, and eventually forced by his captors to beat to death a fellow captive American soldier. Meanwhile, Grace believes that she is a widow, and needs to piece together her life and help Isabelle and Maggie deal with their dad's death. Tommy starts to help Grace in her recovery, and gradually becomes a surrogate father figure for the children. Tommy and Grace are slowly but surely drawn together.

When Sam is rescued and returns home, the new normal in Grace's life is again destroyed. Sam is not the same person who went off to war, and his traumatized mind finds it almost impossible to deal with the reconstituted reality of his domestic home, building to a treacherous crisis with his wife and brother.

To make its point, the Brothers screenplay by David Benioff does push the horror of war. Sam is tipped into the mental darkness after being forced at gun-point to kill a fellow Marine; while dramatic, this is much more than most soldiers who develop PTSD have to endure, but Hollywood is rarely known for choosing pastels when vivids can be manufactured.

Compensating for the excesses in the script, the acting performances and particularly the three main leads elevate Brothers to a delectable, slow-melt drama. Jake Gyllenhaal delivers the most intriguing transformation, as the brother who blooms when life unexpectedly hands him a purpose and a responsibility. Gyllenhaal allows Tommy to even surprise himself, and is most poignant when pushed back out of Grace's life upon Sam's return.

Natalie Portman enhances her reputation as a dramatic actress, in a performance less showy but no less intense than 2010's Black Swan. For the sake of her daughters Grace has to maintain a semblance of normalcy when Sam is reported dead, and then unexpectedly finds it even more difficult to welcome an unhinged husband back into her life. Portman keeps her performance controlled while conveying simmering anguish, and an undercurrent of unease for allowing herself to be happy with Tommy.

Less interesting but still solid is Tobey Maguire, who goes from effective Marine to traumatized veteran without much of a change in expression, although his best acting is physical: Maguire's awkward stance and glassy eyes upon his return home speak volumes without saying a word.

Sam Shepard and Mare Winningham (as Hank's wife) add plenty of earnest supporting talent, and the scenes between Shepard's old-school traditional retired soldier Hank and Gyllenhaal's good-for-nothing Tommy are deliciously uncomfortable.

With an efficient running time of 105 minutes, director Jim Sheridan maintains momentum with scenes of what should be tranquil domesticity regularly disrupted by the nibbling forces of crushed expectations, mis-trust, doubt and jealously. When the shooting stops, the brain damage kicks-in, and the casualties just continue to mount.

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