Wednesday, January 6, 1999
Upcoming movie lineup reeks with redundancy
COLUMN: You won’t miss much in must-see films due to unoriginal
plots
Judging from this year’s crop of Hollywood movies, studio
executives don’t think much of the viewing public. I realize this
is a strong statement, but as I glance over a list of some upcoming
titles coming out of Hollywood, I feel that the minor hyperbole is
justified.
This is not to say that there are no good movies entering
theaters in these next two months. To be honest, there are a few
titles I’m pretty excited to see, and I’m extremely cynical when it
comes to new movies.
My notable short "must-see" list for the next few weeks includes
Terrance Malick’s WWII drama "The Thin Red Line," Robin Williams’
comedy/drama "Patch Adams" and DreamWorks’ animated epic "The
Prince of Egypt." That’s just about it. The only other contender
would have been Stanley Kubrick’s "Eyes Wide Shut," but that film’s
release has been pushed back once again to February, so it is not
officially a holiday movie.
Everything else just seems like typical Hollywood crap.
Actually, perhaps I misspoke. It seems a wee bit worse than usual.
Hollywood has never been accused of treating audiences as smart,
but some new movies coming out insult the intelligence of even the
average Jerry Springer guest.
Speaking of Jerry Springer, his new film tops my list for
insulting new movie fare. Yes, you read that correctly. Jerry
Springer’s movie, "Ringmaster," opens this Thanksgiving weekend at
a theater near you. The movie is a fictionalized account of what
goes on behind-the-scenes at the average "The Jerry Springer Show"
episode, as if fiction could be any more bizarre or outlandish than
reality. Can’t you just hear the film executives behind this one
giggling at the public’s willingness to sit through garbage?
Another hit on the "worst idea for a movie, ever" list is
Michael Keaton’s "Jack Frost." Let me say, before I reveal the
synopsis of this film, I am not making it up. In "Jack Frost,"
Keaton plays a dad who doesn’t have time to pay attention to his
son. When he dies in a horrible car crash, he comes back to life as
his son’s snowman! Can you honestly believe this movie is even
being made? If that’s not the setup for a horrible, Showtime
original picture, I don’t know what is. The main problem, as I see
it, is that the studio system discourages creativity. Executives
are desperate to turn a profit, so like all businessmen, they turn
to the commodity that proved profitable in the past and then try to
repeat that product’s success. A group of suits at Warner Brothers
sat down and thought, "You know, we haven’t had one of those
fathers-who-ignore-their-sons-so-they’re-forced-to-by-some-bizarre-cosmic-turn-of-events
movies lately. Let’s do one." To which all the other executives
replied, "That sounds fine. But what kind of wacky shenanigans can
ensue? We’ve already done the dad who can’t lie story, the dad who
switches places with his son story, and even the dad who dies and
becomes a ghost story." So, of course, the only logical choice was
to have father turn into a snowman. I mean, it just makes
sense.
This same lack of creativity is responsible for a whole mess of
movies on this winter’s slate. Obviously, Gus Van Sant’s
shot-by-shot remake of "Psycho" is a product of an underactive
imagination. "Hey, fellas, I’ve got an idea. Let’s take a movie by
one of the greatest directors of all time, throw some mediocre
actors into it, and just reshoot the damn thing!"
As well, the new comedy "You’ve Got Mail" smacks of redundancy.
It stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, who teamed up previously in Nora
Ephron’s "Sleepless in Seattle," a romantic comedy-of-errors in
which a cute couple was separated and spent the entire film coming
together. Now, the duo is making "You’ve Got Mail," a sweet
romantic comedy in which they’re separated and spend the entire
movie coming together. Oh, and the director’s Nora Ephron.
If that’s not quite repetitive enough for the impatient
movie-goer with an attention span of four seconds, why not check
out "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer," so-named because the
filmmakers were afraid that "I Really Need More Money So I’m Making
Another Movie About What Jennifer Love Hewitt Did Last Summer, In
Which She Parades Around In The Rain With A Wet T-Shirt" wouldn’t
fit on the marquee. The film follows Hewitt’s character as she
tries to escape her memories of being attacked by the man whom she
thought she killed last summer (which is now two summers ago, for
you math people) by vacationing in the Bahamas. Of course, she
discovers that she is still being pursued by the random, lifeless,
fisherman villain from the first horrible edition of the
series.
Why do these movies get made? Isn’t the public hungry for
something else besides this same tired nonsense? Apparently not.
With great, original movies such as "The Opposite Of Sex" and "Zero
Effect" hiding in obscurity on the video racks while fluff such as
"Enemy of the State" prepares to make $40 million in one weekend,
it’s hard to feel encouraged for the future of the film business.
All of us who prefer to see new, exciting things on movie screens,
instead of typical Hollywood garbage, are going to have to look
harder and harder in the coming months to find something genuinely
worth seeing. But that’s just my opinion – I could be wrong.
Harris is a fourth-year history student and is the film editor
at The Bruin.Lonnie Harris
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