the groundhog day project

Watching Scary Movie to get the whole spoof genre out of the way. (And, to prove correct, Roger Ebert's notion that you just can't review these kind of movies properly.) Leave Zucker Abrahams Zucker behind, insert the Wayans, who enjoy a bit more crude humor, with some homophobia and violence against women thrown in. "Run, bitch, run!" "Oh my God, we hit a boot!" About the only bits that made me laugh so far, coming up on the 20-minute mark. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Rick Ducommun (Gus from Groundhog Day ) has a small part in this--Cindy's father. Buffy Gilmore's (Shannon Elizabeth) death scene is pretty good. "Please don't. I'm just a day player." Funny. ... I think the problem with spoof films as time goes on is that jokes take the place of character... or maybe it's just personal nostalgia. I've seen Airplane! so many times over the years, I think my expectation of the punchlines is funnier th...

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! adds a writer--Pat Proft--who wasn't with the Zucker Abrahams Zucker team before. He had worked on Police Squad! with them, but as far as movies go, he'd worked on five Police Academy films and Real Genius , among others. Pretty early on, it's already clear that this movie has far fewer non sequitur gags. And pretty much no puns. Four years from Airplane! to Top Secret! , another four from Top Secret! to The Naked Gun , and the difference between the latter two seems far larger than the difference between the former two. If I wanted to break down in a horribly detailed fashion the changes in joke delivery in film over the course of the 1980s, the changes here might mean something, but I think whatever it is is escaping me for now. Like, were the non sequitur gags and asides something we needed as a response to, say, some late-term Cold War societal pressures, and by 1988 those pressures were dying down? I don't kno...

The Zucker brothers and Abrahams again, this time Top Secret! I was surprised to learn--primarily because this movie was such a fixture of my childhood, my family having it on VHS and all--just now on Box Office Mojo that this movie apparently wasn't even in the top 13 movies its opening weekend (June 8-10, 1984). Though it would eventually make double its budget at the box office, there was some serious box office going on that weekend. #1 was Ghostbusters , making $13.5 million it's opening weekend. Gremlins , also in its opening weekend, was #2 with $12.5 million. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was #3 in its third weekend with $12 million... I wonder sometimes when I see a box office weekend like this--and I know how many of these movies we saw in the theater--how often my family went to the movie theater. Anyway... #4, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock I didn't see in the theater, but it made $9.6 million in its second weekend. #5 was Beat Street ... and ...

As Airplane! begins, I realize I was only four when I saw this movie the first time. Many of the jokes probably went pretty far over my head, but it's got so many that I still had a lot to appreciate. The Jaws opener, for example. It's one of those weird cases, for me, though, when I've seen the movie so many times over so many years that my memory of it is hardly genuine to that first experience. Each viewing alters the memory of the previous one and they stack up. I find myself just sitting here and watching, forgetting all about typing anything. Maybe I should stop using 80s movies for this blog. They're just too fun for me. As for some actual commentary, I'll refer to the old Groundhog Day Project standby--Roger Ebert. I rather like this bit from his review of the film because it seems like a line you might see in a review of many comedies today: Movie comedies these days are so hung up on being contemporary, radical, outspoken, and cynically satirical t...