The Sunshine Boys (1975)

I really disliked The Sunshine Boys, and if I'm honest, I'm not quite sure why I watched it. I generally like Neil Simon – I at least think his shtick is funny, but that is not true of The Sunshine Boys. Where are the jokes? This film is just grumpy old men crabbing at one another as an exasperated (but always cute) Richard Benjamin tries to wrangle them. Walter Matthau was nominated for Best Actor for this and George Burns (and this is insane) won a Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in this. His performance is almost nonexistent. I tell you I am baffled.

"When you go away to college you can dress like David Bowie"

I watched Footloose this morning and it was so. Good. I loved it. Being a kid that went to a church like John Lithgow's and wasn't allowed to dance or go to the movies during this time period (the 1980s: my formative years), watching Footloose was a revelation of sorts.

The movie doesn't really have much in the way of plot: the good guys and the bad guys are really all the same under the skin. The forces of chastity mount in a small town that's called Bomont (obviously the namers of the town had white-trash spelling issues). Dancing is outlawed in the town until Windy City boy Ren McCormick comes to the small town with his mother and says what everyone is thinking: that we want to dance, goddammit, we're kids, and we're not gonna let anyone stop us. The movie has some brilliant sequences, but to talk about them I really must discuss the most important thing in Footloose and that is THE MUSIC.

It's nothing short of awesome. Aside from having SIX top-40 songs on the soundtrack (all originals), the way the sequences are cut, that is, the way the songs are used is nothing short of fantastic. The opening credits are set to Kenny Loggins' "Footloose" and are quite original in their own right. "Almost Paradise" is the love theme... I never even knew it came from that movie originally. The scoring is great too. Ren and Ariel's first kiss starts out like this: the sweet tinkle of the love theme on a music box; then Ren and Ariel move in to kiss and the orchestra swells with the same theme, and then just as their lips meet Rock & Roll takes over again and an electric guitar lets out a long victorious wail. The guitar fades out after a few second and we're left with the strings again as they part. It's the kiss that's electric and the music knows. It's killer.

My favorite sequence has got to be "Let's Hear It for the Boy," where Chris Penn's Willard character learns to dance. The music is so infectious. I was already loving the film, but when Chris Penn started getting some rhythm I couldn't help but tap my feet. Finally I just said "fuck it" and got up in my apartment and danced to the rest of the song. I couldn't help myself.

Funny Girl: Part II

Just got off the phone with Allan. He makes me want to be a better, different person when I talk to him. It was a very good conversation. I was glad.

I have returned from a morning screening of the 1975 film Funny Lady, the sequel to the hit movie Funny Girl about commedienne Fanny Brice and starring the Barbra Streisand.
Can anyone guess what the ratio of males to females in this theatre was? I'll tell you: it was 8:1. No joke. I counted. Gay men and Barbra Streisand... I'm sure there are books to explain the obsession.
Funny Lady sucked. Funny Girl had it's problems, but the sequel has swallowed all of the original's problems and created another monster. This is a bloated mess of a film with not a bit of direction. It was easily 40 minutes too long, and just didn't know how to end. Babs is good, but she's been much better, and the plot is just an utter mess. There is one knock-down, drag-out great number called "How Lucky Can You Get?" and James Caan is hot (I've always had a thing for the James Caan of the 1970s), but that's it.