Part 6 of 8
All previous posts in my Summer of Spielberg project have followed a single aspect of Spielberg’s film career. While the subjects of his films are very diverse, there are a handful of themes that he always seems to revisit time and time again. This week, the collection of films I’ll be looking at is slightly more eclectic. The idea is that these are not the projects normally brought up when the oeuvre of Steven Spielberg enters the conversation. These are the films that have more or less fallen by the wayside, and I have gathered them together in this post, where they shall find a home. Yes, some of these films have made quite a bit of money, but none of them are seen as his best work by just about anyone. Instead of my usual rambling, I will be discussing each film in a manner similar to my Director Profiles; with a brief review, and then a grade. Let us begin our journey into the deep cuts of Steven Spielberg.
1941 (1979)
I think every director wants to make a really great comedy at one point or another. Yeah, you can make all the thought-provoking dramas or big-budget blockbusters you want, but there’s something special about being able to say you gave the gift of laughter to the world. Spielberg got his chance in 1979, immediately after he struck critical and commercial gold with Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At this point, he likely could have made just about any movie he wanted. 1941 is the film he chose; a large-scale slapstick comedy about American panic in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attacks. The film boasts a huge ensemble that includes Dan Aykroyd, Ned Beatty, John Belushi, Christopher Lee, Nancy Allen, John Candy, Slim Pickens and Toshirō Mifune. Here is one of those comedies that believes the bigger and louder everything is, the funnier the final film. As many other movies throughout time have shown, things just don’t work that way.
1941 is the worst film of Spielberg’s career; a brutally unfunny slog with so little focus and discipline it’s a wonder the final film even holds together during playback. The only version I could get my hands on was the 146-minute director’s cut, and I’m impressed anyone could have the endurance to get through it. Watching this film for two and a half hours is like watching a caffeinated child tap dance for an equivalent amount of time. This film is trying so hard to entertain you, but it comes across as horribly strained. There is no main character here; there is just a long list of goofy caricatures that each get about 20 minutes of screen time, and every once in a while they fall down to try and make you laugh. 1941 is a film chock full of stories you are supposed to care about, but as a consequence you end up caring about absolutely none of them. This is obviously a film that Spielberg learned from—it failed miserably with critics and at the box office—as his next directorial effort was the fantastic Raiders of the Lost Ark. This was just a horrible misstep in every way, but every director needs at least one.
(Grade: D)
Always (1989)
Did you know Steven Spielberg directed a movie titled Always? Until a few months ago, I certainly didn’t. Well, he did, and the result is a curiosity indeed. It’s hard to be mad at this film—it does nothing to offend anyone—but it is as forgettable a movie as I’ve ever seen. Spielberg is a director who is normally able to create a few striking moments even in his weakest films, but Always simply sits there and never makes an impact. It takes a potentially interesting story and wastes it on far less interesting characters. When the film’s emotional “catharsis” arrives, the audience is left wondering why they aren’t feeling anything. Is this really the guy who made an entire generation weep at the end of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial? If it is, it’s hard to believe.
Always is a remake of the 1943 film A Guy Named Joe, which is about a fighter pilot who dies in combat and must return to Earth to watch as the love of his life falls for another man. Only now, the subject of the film is an aerial firefighter played by Richard Dreyfuss. When he dies, he is sent back to Earth to teach the young Ted Baker (Brad Johnson) how to fly and such. Only Dreyfuss doesn’t really treat his ghostly abilities with all that much weight. In fact, he’s shockingly nonchalant about the whole ordeal. (“I’m dead? And I can influence the actions of those I knew in life? Yawn.”) When he is supposed to be mad that Johnson is falling in love with Holly Hunter, he seems little more than slightly irritated. That is the film in a nutshell: Always had the potential to be a moving story about love and loss and all that, but for one reason or another it never even comes close. Awful strange for something that was supposed to be a passion project for Spielberg and Dreyfuss.
(Grade: C-)
Hook (1991)
For one reason or another, people seem to really hate—and I mean hate—Spielberg’s Hook, which would end up being his final attempt at family-friendly fantasy. I’ll admit that it’s not his greatest work, but I kind of enjoyed the film for what it was. When stacked up against some of Spielberg’s other films it is weak by comparison, but I think the reaction would be slightly different if Hook were released today. The film tells the story of Peter Banning (Robin Williams), a grown adult who is so busy with his work that he barely has any time for his children. He has little patience for the immaturity of his kids, and he seems to have forgotten that being part of a family is a good thing that should be cherished. When his children are kidnapped and taken to Neverland by the evil Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman), it is revealed that he is actually the grown-up Peter Pan. Now he must try to regain his Pan-like powers in order to face off against Hook.
The most problematic thing about Hook is that it doesn’t have all that much imagination when it comes to the Peter Pan story. Instead of adding a genuine twist to the legend, it just kind of lays it out there in an entirely predictable way. (It doesn’t help that the oft-ridiculed Neverland sets don’t add up to much.) Yet the film is elevated because of the characters at its center, and a surprisingly strong performance from Robin Williams. Williams is an actor with two modes: 1) dramatic, where he is normally great, and 2) comedic, where he turns into a grating robotic clown. Hook would seem to be the kind of film where we’d see the latter, but Williams—with the exception of a few unfortunate scenes late in the film—tones it down quite a bit and makes Peter a somewhat mature character who must be lured into childhood. The best scenes come when Williams fears that he has lost the love of his son, and his constant internal wrestling is more compelling than some give it credit for. It’s just too bad most of the fantasy elements are such a snooze.
(Grade: B-)
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
It’s hard to see anyone thinking Catch Me If You Can is Spielberg’s greatest film, but it very well may be one of his most eminently watchable. It is no more and no less than a fascinating story, wonderfully told by a great director. Leonardo Dicaprio plays Frank Abagnale, a young man who conned millions of dollars worth of checks in his teenage years alone. Meanwhile, an FBI agent (Tom Hanks) follows his trail the whole way. The film does not try to be a grand statement in the vein of Spielberg’s greatest films; it simply lets the characters be the characters they are. That there’s not a whiff of pretension makes the film all the more entertaining.
What sells the film is the seemingly effortless yet captivating performance of DiCaprio. He plays a character both incredibly charming and haunted, and it’s a thrill to watch him lie his way out of any given situation. Like many of Spielberg’s protagonists, he is a man whose family issues have come to affect his current life. Only this time, he’s not so much a man as he is a boy who thrust himself into the less-than-pure life of manhood. Catch Me If You Can is an incredibly entertaining film about a character who was always looking to be anybody but himself.
(Grade: A-)
The Terminal (2004)
The Terminal came at the end of Spielberg’s three-film love affair with Tom Hanks, and it is in this film that Hanks gives one of the most engaging performances of his career. On its face, the role of foreigner Viktor Navorski is ridiculous for Hanks to play—he normally plays characters that symbolize the “apple pie and baseball” values of America—but beneath the seemingly ridiculous accent is an incredibly good-hearted character that the audience can’t help but root for. When he arrives in New York, he is told that for various reasons he is a) not allowed to leave the airport, and b) not allowed to return to his home country (the fictional Krakozhia). That means he must spend about nine months in the terminal in New York with nowhere to go. While others are constantly on the move, Viktor is forced to stand still and call this place his home.
This is a mostly touching comedy despite its tendency to strain credulity. The Terminal is not a film aiming for outright verisimilitude; its goal is to build an entire universe within the normally-restricting confines of an airport. That begins with the set—constructed especially for this film—which seems to have a life and history of its own. Spielberg is able to pull off something of a magic trick with this environment: what begins as a prison eventually turns into something of a playground. When Viktor first finds himself stuck, it seems as if nothing but limitations surround him. But even in the most claustrophobic of spaces, there are people to meet and stories to be told. (Eventually the audience may just want to leap into the screen and run around the terminal with him.) While some moments feel contrived and—for lack of a better term—Hollywood-y, The Terminal is ultimately a touching film, even if it is a bit slight.
(Grade: B)
Next week: Spielberg returns to the genre of science fiction with A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report.
No comments:
Post a Comment