Back in 1990, I walked into a movie theater cold, and was treated to Tune in Tomorrow. It is a very clever film adaptation of Mario Vargas Llosa’s 1977 novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. It stars Barbara Hershey, Keanu Reeves, and Peter Falk. Set in 1950s New Orleans, it features a great score by Wynton Marsalis, much of which is in situ in clubs and restaurants. It also has a beautiful pastel themed art direction that captures the period in all its rose colored nostalgia. Tune in Tomorrow is a sweet and funny comedy that should delight everyone.

So why did it bomb? Why do critics generally dismiss it? Why has no one I know ever seen it? I think I know the answer to this question. The problem is with me. There are many films that I think are anywhere from good to classic that other people dismiss. A partial list will do: Medicine River, Krippendorf’s Tribe, French Kiss. And the problem seems to be that these are sweet and funny comedies. Had they been made in France, well that would be fine. The French are into that sort of thing. So films like My Best Friend, Romantics Anonymous, and The Dinner Game get a fair hearing because the French are allowed to make such movies.

But big budget comedies are somehow not okay in America — at least as long as they aren’t Dumb and Dumber or one of the Farrelly brothers’ films. It’s a strange thing. “Critics” like to complain that Hollywood doesn’t make films for adults, but when Hollywood does make films geared toward escapist fun for adults, these same people savage the films. Apparently, films for adults are supposed to be limited to deadly serious films like Schindler’s List.

I’ll admit, I tend to like French comedies (and generally, European ones) more than American comedies. They tend to be more emotionally complex. They also tend to have relatively low budgets. It seems that Hollywood can’t make a film only for adults; they also worry if it will play with the kids. And God help us when Hollywood decides to remake one of these foreign films. A good example is the remake of The Dinner Game. The original was basically just a filmed play. Almost the entire thing took place in a single location. But the remake, Dinner for Schmucks, became some kind of bloated frenzy, designed to appeal to the only demographic Hollywood is really interested in.

But Tune in Tomorrow really is worth watching. I fully admit, the film would have been better if the French had made it. But I doubt the great care in art direction and music would have been shown. It really is a beautiful film to watch and hear. It was clearly a prestige film — just look at the cast for some of the minor roles: Peter Gallagher, Elizabeth McGovern, Dan Hedaya. I suspect that the studio intended to kill it, because I would have thought it would have played reasonably well. It’s hard to say. But lucky for you, the whole thing is available on YouTube — at least for now.

The other night I watched It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — Stanley Kramer’s almost three hour long, hundred star comedy. I saw it on television when I was very young. And I remembered it as being somewhat funny. But mostly, I didn’t remember much of it at all — just the scene where Sid Caesar and Edie Adams are locked in the hardware store, and the scene where Spencer Tracy and Dorothy Provine figure out what the “big W” is. Otherwise: not much. But it is a classic and I’m especially interested in how comedy ages.

Because the film is so long, it has an intermission after an hour and a half. And it is a good dividing line for the film. From my perspective, the first section is near perfect. The action and comedy all work. In fact, it looks easy. And this is with some actors who I really don’t like (Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney). But the second section goes to hell. Well, that isn’t exactly true. The first half hour of the second section is very good. But the last forty minutes of the film is a real slog.

About the only thing that I took away from William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade was that a third act should be resolved as quickly as possible. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World breaks this rule of thumb in a big way. The ending goes on and on and on. It culminates in a ridiculous sequence when all the male leads are stranded on a very high fire engine ladder. It is excessive for no real purpose. And looking at it over fifty years later, the special effects are terrible. This is made even worse by the fact that other effects earlier in the film were rather well done.

On top of all this, the film has a very dark ending where every major character is in jail and all the men are also in traction. But it does go along with the overall — incredibly cynical — take on human nature. According the film, all people are greedy and selfish and, as a result, irrational. Still, if everyone is guilty and the only difference is that some of us encounter temptation, then how can any of us deserve to be punished — given that we would all do the same thing in those circumstances.

This is a thematic problem that I have with a lot of modern narrative art. I know that a lot of my friends think of me as something of a Pollyanna. But I think that people are a good deal more decent than we give them credit for. My friend Will likes to point out that most of the politicians that he hates — like Bush the Younger — would probably be great neighbors. I think he’s right. It’s generally external factors that set us against each other. In the film, it is just greed.

But there is more. The police are onto the group of treasure hunters from the very beginning. But it seems, through most of the film, that somehow everything will come together. But it doesn’t. Instead, the film is like watching the universe expand until it tears itself apart. There is no feeling of resolution. We just watch these people behave badly for hours and then get punished. It’s not so much bad as pointless. And it poisons the earlier parts of the film that were entertaining.

There are two exceptions from the rest: characters who weren’t just motivated by greed. First, Spencer Tracy as the police captain. He’s actually driven to his bad behavior by various forces in his life. It is hard to blame him. And then, as though the filmmakers just wanted to make it all the more painful, his major complaint is addressed, but he doesn’t learn of it in time. The second character is Dorothy Provine as Milton Berle’s wife. She’s the only one who learns anything — namely, that chasing after the money was a big mistake. She too has a pitiable life. But there is no redemption or escape for either character. In fact, things go the worst for Tracy — even though he is one of the least guilty.

It’s tempting to suggest people watched the first two-thirds of the film. But I don’t think that works. Ultimately, you want an ending and whether you put yourself through the final half hour of tedium or not, you only get a “stop.” But the film might be enjoyed just to watch for the roughly fifty cameos. Or if you really think all people are awful and they deserve to be punished, maybe you will love it. As for me, I feel like I did more than waste three hours. I feel like I got soiled.

I’m in the process of making a video about The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, so I thought I might put some of my thoughts down here. It was an amazing show. It was on for five seasons with highly unequal numbers of episodes. You might be under the impression that this is common today, but it was much worse back then — at least in terms of some shows. The first season had 26 episode, but then the next had 53. And then 33, 21, and 34. That’s a total of 167, although Wikipedia says there were only 163. Who know? It was a lot of television: almost 70 hours!

I suspect that the reason the number of episodes was so chaotic is that the production of the show was similarly chaotic. It was clearly made on a shoestring. And it shows that wit and charm can take you a long way. There are any number of things that just aren’t properly done. I discussed this to some extent last month, Image Inconsistency in Rocky and Bullwinkle. But it is more than that. For example, during the long (1:20) second standard end credit sequence, Rocky’s mouth rarely moves when he’s talking. It’s remarkable that a show of which more than 20% is made up of recycled content didn’t take more care with these parts. But I think they were just too busy pumping out episodes.

By far, the most iconic aspect of the series is exactly one of these “canned” segments, “Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!” It is part of a broader aspect of the series that looks back on older styles of entertainment. We see this in the almost unbelievably brilliant “Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties” and the Rocky and Bullwinkle serials — some of which were as long as 40 “episodes.” But there are also a lot of references to theater. Some are rather subtle like the janitor who has to clean up the parade that sometimes starts “Peabody’s Improbable History.” But mostly, we see a lot of vaudeville, and that is where the “rabbit” sequences come in. Along with them, we see Bullwinkle fail to juggle, sing, dance. But also: the “Mr Know-It-All” sequences mock the “professor” kinds of acts that were common, and as you can see in the film The 39 Steps.

There are five “rabbit” gags, and they ran in the following order during the first five episodes of the series: bear, lion, tiger, rhino, and flying squirrel (Rocky himself). The three middle ones are pretty much the same. Rocky responds, “Again?!” And then, at the end, he says, “Now here’s something you’ll really like!” The differences are just the reveal and the reaction. For the lion, Bullwinkle says, “No doubt about it; I gotta get another hat!” For the tiger, Rocky asks sarcastically, “Wrong hat?” And Bullwinkle says, “I wear a seven and a half!” And for the rhino, it’s just Bullwinkle, “Oh! Don’t know my own strength!”

Since the bear sequence is the first time we — or Rocky — have seen Bullwinkle try the trick, Rocky starts, “And now…” What is especially interesting about this is that Rocky disappears from the screen right after Bullwinkle says, “Nothing up my sleeve!” Was it fixed when they used it again in episodes 5, 12, 19, and for the rest of the run of the show? Of course not! It’s also a bit strange that at the end, Rocky introduces Mr Peabody.

The fifth version — the Rocky sequence — is where the flying squirrel’s impatience finally bubbles over. And it uses an entirely new performance for both characters. Rocky replies to Bullwinkle, “That trick never works!” And Bullwinkle counters, “This time for sure!” On pulling Rocky out of his hat, Bullwinkle says, “Well, I’m getting close.”

None of this is meant as a criticism. I think The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show is an amazing accomplishment. It holds up remarkably well, 55 years later. There are certainly aspects that do not age so well like the racial stereotypes, but even they are generally sympathetic unless you are German or Russian. The main thing, though, is that they let their creativity fly and didn’t get bogged down in the details. There is a lot to say for that.

I finally got around to watching 47 Ronin last night. There is much to like about it. It is beautiful to look at. The costumes, sets, and cinematography are all first rate. Actually, the whole film is professionally made. And that is mostly a bad thing. It’s all finesse — no inspiration. I know that I’m very much interested in the form of narrative art. But watching this film, I’m sure most people were thinking, “Oh, this is the point in the film where…” The third act action sequence is beautiful to look at, and wonderfully choreographed. But it just lays there on the screen. Did anyone care watching it? I doubt it.

A big part of the problem is just that there isn’t a single interesting character in the film. The closest we come to one is Ko Shibasaki as Mika — the lord’s young daughter who would rather murder her oppressor than kill herself. The film doesn’t even manage to create interesting villains. The main villain is Lord Kira. He is played by Tadanobu Asano — a great Japanese actor. And here, he’s a joke. That can’t be his fault. There is pretty much nothing in the script for him to work with. So director Carl Rinsch must have just told him, “Grin menacingly!”

Similarly, Rinko Kikuchi as Witch seems constantly off. She did have one amazing scene where she manages to be simultaneously sexy and frightening while trying to get Mika to kill herself. Otherwise, her direction seems to have been, “I gave you different colored eyes! What more direction do you need?!” Really. I don’t think I’m overstating this.

All I can think is that Rinsch was only really interested in the technical side of the film. So he gave scant attention to Chris Morgan’s screenplay. You may know Morgan because of his formulaic scripts for the later Fast and Furious films. Apparently, Hossein Amini (The Wings of the Dove) was brought in to fix the script. Clearly, there was not enough time. The screenplay is as weak as can be imagined.

I question the whole idea of making the forty-seven ronin story into yet another film. This time, we get the “twist” of some mythological beings and the half-breed so that Keanu Reeves could star in it. But it is kind of hard to get too excited by the story: a revenge plot followed by mass suicide. Hardly the kind of thing that Americans like. As for the Japanese, they have to be sick to death of this story.

So there are basically two reasons the film didn’t do well at the box office. First, no one is really interested in the story. Second, the film is boring. Last year at this time, Kirsten Acuna of Business Insider tried to explain this much more complicatedly, Why Keanu Reeves’ 47 Ronin Was a Huge Box-Office Bomb. She claimed that it was wrong to release the film over the holidays because there was so much competition. But would that really be a problem if the film had been, you know, good? Then she claimed that its production delays hurt the film. This is typical insider nonsense. Why would the audience care that the film came out a year later than it was scheduled? And then she claimed that it was Keanu Reeves’ fault because, “The last time Reeves’ commanded a huge blockbuster north of $400 million was 2003’s The Matrix: Revolutions.” But people didn’t go to see The Matrix: Revolutions because of Reeves; they went because they wanted to know if The Matrix: Reloaded could be redeemed by the last one. (It wasn’t. And does she really think The Matrix was successful because Reeves was in it?!) What’s more, Reeves has shown himself to be a very good box office draw since that film and even since that article.

Ultimately, technique in any art form only takes you so far. This is why almost no one can get through Finnegans Wake. It doesn’t matter how amazing the technique and how clever Joyce was, the novel really doesn’t have any characters — at least any we can know well enough to care about. In that way, 47 Ronin is the same. It’s a shame too. Because 47 Ronin is obviously a film in which great technical care was taken. But if you want to see a big budget Hollywood take on the genre, you should stick with The Last Samurai. Although really: just rent Ran or Samurai Rebellion.

In my continued mining of older films that I think are likely suspect, I watched Clint Eastwood’s 2002 thriller Blood Work. What I remembered was that it was a fairly enjoyable film with a really stupid third act. Now I would have to say that I was probably over-selling the film. It is entertaining enough, but it is more like a Movie of the Week than a theatrical film. And it made me realize that this is largely true of Eastwood’s whole career as a director. It is only his great reputation as an actor that has allowed him to direct what are mostly fairly careless films.

The one thing that Eastwood is know for as a director is that he shoots fast. He doesn’t shoot a lot of takes and things move along quickly. As a result, it is amazing that Blood Work cost $50 million to make. Other than the actor salaries, I can’t imagine that more than a million dollars are up there on the screen. Maybe most of that money was just Eastwood’s salary. Because by and large, the cast is made up of television actors. And given the way that Eastwood shoots, that’s probably for the best. He needs people that can give an acceptable performance in two takes. And that’s largely what he gets.

The one clear exception is Wanda De Jesus — she could have used a lot more takes. This is not a slight. She certainly seems to be a perfectly competent actor. But hers is the only part that really requires depth. Every other character in the film is straight graphic novel fare. And her performance seems constantly off. I image Eastwood like Ed Wood after De Jesus asked for another take, “What’s to shoot?! It was perfect!” But another problem is the script.

Again, this is not a slight toward screenwriter Brian Helgeland. For one thing, he co-wrote the excellent script for LA Confidential, which is a marvel of condensation. But the script for Blood Work is almost nothing but exposition. It made me think that Eastwood is as impatient with writers as he is with actors. Helgeland made some good changes to the novel, most especially Buddy, the Jeff Daniels character. But the main problem is the same as it always was: a supremely weak third act. After the plot twist, it disintegrates into mindless action — like John Woo, but thankfully not as long.

There is a strong tendency in films to fall apart in the third act. It is as though the story has gone on long enough and filmmakers have decided to simply end it — regardless of what damage they must do to character, the preceding plot, and good sense. In the case of Blood Work, the serial killer seems to think that he can now be known by sight and by name and yet “get settled” and continue on with the game he’s been engaged in with the Eastwood character from the beginning.

In addition to this, we get an incredibly tedious denouement right out of Dirty Harry. As Eastwood scowls down at the killer, he might as well say, “Make my day!” It’s the same look that Eastwood had during the whole of Gran Torino. Eastwood is a limited actor, but we like him. So the film is reasonably watchable because of that and the addition of Daniels and Paul Rodriguez as the resentful detective. But given that there are so many other films that are better and more enjoyable, there isn’t much point in watching it.

In 1995, I walked from my place on SE 12th St in Portland to the Bagdad Theater — one of the best things in the city: a microbrewery that showed cheap movies. It was during my days of 16 mm filmmaking and I went to see films just to see how it was all done. On display that night was French Kiss. I knew nothing of the film. I think I was expecting something like Kiss of the Spider Woman. It wasn’t just because they both had “kiss” in the title. I associate “kiss” with film noir. The point is, I was expecting something with a little grit, not a Meg Ryan romantic comedy.

There is something very special when you see a film cold and it works for you. I loved the film. It starred Kevin Kline with his bad French accent and it took place in France and it had a lot of French music. What’s not to like?! It’s also quite interesting in that the first, second, and third acts all have distinct looks to them. That really does help. It is also a perfect Hollywood script. Adam Brooks nails his act transitions with Meg Ryan dumped on the phone as she sits on the kitchen floor setting up the second act, and then the reveal of the necklace that slams the plot into the third act. I don’t think there was a more perfectly structured script in the 1990s except for maybe Tony Gilroy’s Dolores Claiborne.

From the first time I saw it, I thought that French Kiss was pretty much a modernized version of one of my all time favorite films, It Happened One Night. I mentioned this to Andrea and she scoffed at the thought. “It’s just that they are both about two people who are forced to travel together for the length of the film,” she said. So I let it drop. But last night, I watched the film again and I think I was right.

Certainly it is true that the main thing is that they are road movies. But what’s critical is that they don’t like each other but are secretly attracted. Throughout the first two acts, we’ve gotten the impression that Meg Ryan was trying to get rid of Kevin Kline. But that isn’t the case. She knows what he’s after from the cab ride from the airport onward. She knows that he will be back, so they are bound together from their first meeting — even though they aren’t always together, just as is the case in It Happened One Night. And Kline — just as Clark Gable before him — starts by seeing her only as the repository of his second chance at life, only to slowly come to see her as a critical element in that life.

There are other aspects that link the film. But I think the biggest is that the hero and heroine are equals but not in the usual ways: they represent different classes. Ryan is the model of bourgeois values, and Kline represents the fallen decadent rich. And because it is a Hollywood movie, they fall in love and learn good bourgeois values. The twist is that they may end up in his country doing what he wants to do, but they are living in her world. In that way, it is much easier to see them living happily ever after than I ever could Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night.

Regardless, it doesn’t really matter. I fully admit that French Kiss is not a great film like It Happened One Night. For one thing, its firm stance in favor of bourgeois values was hardly needed in 1995, whereas it was in 1934. But even after 20 years, French Kiss still works. It is still as delightful as when I first saw it. Contrast that with Green Card. Twenty years is a long time for a romantic comedy to survive. In another 20 years, I may have to rethink its non-great status.