An American Werewolf in London (1981)

I enjoyed An American Werewolf in London so much. It's quirky and amusing and campy, but it's also very violent and rather merciless in its gaze. The direction is pretty great, and it's a pleasure to be looking at a naked David Naughton as much as this movie wants me to.

Weirdly enough I just watched John Landis's 1983 movie Trading Places and really liked that too. This is a director to whom I have definitely paid no attention, but he really knew what he was doing.

Trading Places (1983)

Trading Places is a very funny comedy that I enjoyed a ton. It's a cross between the stupid 1930s comedy $1000 a Minute and Calderón's classic La Vida Es Sueño, and it works. The cast is excellent. I fucking love Eddie Murphy and there's just no getting around it. He is so goddamn funny, and this shows off his talents perfectly. There is an unnecessary blackface scene, and Murphy says faggot too many times, and there is also a male/male rape joke involving a villain in a gorilla suit, but listen, this is a funny movie, unlike some garbage like Splash or something – a movie that has plenty of its own problems, mind you. I thought this was great.

Look for tons of excellent actors in very small parts, including James Eckhouse as a cop and Giancarlo Esposito as one of the guys in jail with Eddie Murphy. 

I watched Trading Places on DVD, but I am sure it must be available via VOD.

Little Shop Is an AIDS Play

Little Shop of Horrors is a weird fuckin' movie. In the first place, I really object to the fake flowers and the fake-looking plant and the fake sunsets. I just don't know why you wouldn't try to make things look more realistic. This film also involves an ending that totally differs from the stage show. I don't think I mind that quite as much. 

But... the important insight I had while watching this film is that I think Little Shop is an AIDS play. And if it isn't, this is certainly an AIDS movie. It's so weirdly about trying to process the violence of the medical profession, which in this play is represented by this strange dentist who is a drug addict and also a sexual sadist. The Bill Murray–Steve Martin sequence really seals that deal for me. Murray plays a kind of masochistic pervert, and he plays the character as a gay man. And then there is, of course, the blood. The plant takes over the whole world by feeding on Seymour's blood, and then it causes Seymour to hurt others, and it threatens and devours the heterosexual relationship at the play's center. 

(For the record I don't think AIDS causes anyone to hurt anyone, and I don't think it's devouring heterosexual relationships – or gay ones for that matter – I'm just saying that's how Little Shop is processing AIDS.)

This is a musical by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised about this, but I certainly had never thought of it before. 

Oh also Ellen Greene. Her performance is honestly incredible. Totally original and weird and genius. We are lucky to have her performance on film.

The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)

This script is legitimately terrible, and The Muppets Take Manhattan isn't funny at all. Joan Rivers and Gregory Hines each have funny bits in it, but mostly this is just absurdly bad.

Just as an example of how terrible this thing is, at the end of the movie – which one might expect to be a moment when the muppets, in fact, take Manhattan – the muppets are performing their college show on a Broadway stage but then we move inside the show, in which a real minister is apparently marrying the pig and the frog. This is in the Broadway show they're doing, but also lots and lots of muppets are there, including the entire cast of Sesame Street. The pair are married and then... the movie's over. The plot of the movie is completely given over to the wedding ceremony, and whether or not the show the muppets were doing for their Broadway audience was a success or not, we shall never know. I am imagining, however, that their show was a success, because for some reason people in the muppet movies seem to enjoy the muppets' musical performances – except, that is, when the plot dictates otherwise...

Four Weddings and a Funeral It Isn't

Frank Oz's Death at a Funeral, which looked from the trailer to be a very funny, very silly British comedy about a funeral, doesn't quite achieve its ambitions. Now, I love me some funerals; they can be great opportunities for hilarity in the movies. And the movie has a cool cast: Matthew MacFadyan, Rupert Graves, Peter Dinklage. But the execution is less than deft. Frank Oz just isn't a very good director (what was that last movie of his—The Score?—what crap). The scenes don't hang well together, and the various plots have very little to do with one another. There is a tired old gag about hallucinogens being mistaken for valium. And, worst of all, lots of humor having to do with an irascible old man (you know how I feel about old people) and one joke having to do with this old man needing to go to the toilet.

It's not a bad movie, and it's mildly funny on occasion. I didn't hate it. But I liked Shrek the Third better and it had waaaay more tasteless jokes.