Little Shop of Horrors (1986, Frank Oz)

I begin talking about Little Shop of Horrors with a confession—I didn’t like it as a kid. I think I saw it a couple times on video, but a full decade before I was willing to give musicals a chance. Now, of course, I can appreciate the absolute glory of the film’s musical numbers, particularly in the first half. Director Oz, choreographer Pat Garrett, production designer Roy Walker, cinematographer Robert Paynter, editor John Jympson, the entire cast, they do a phenomenal job. The film opens—after a text crawl—with its Greek chorus, Tichina Arnold, Tisha Campbell, and Michelle Weeks and it’s excellent, but then the film brings it up another dozen notches with an elaborate, full-set (Pinewood Studios set so a gargantuan one) number, which also brings in protagonists Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene—it’s truly wonderful stuff.

Also when I was a kid I didn’t like movies shot on sets. They had to be shot on location, something I’d forgotten about but was—as I recall—solely so my best friend and I could dismiss things out of hand.

I was obnoxious.

Anyway. The movie’s mostly great. Around the halfway mark, it becomes a special effects spectacular, with a giant otherworldly Venus flytrap (voiced by Levi Stubbs) singing duets in real-time with Moranis. There are bigger effects sequences as the plant grows and grows, thanks to Moranis’s willingness to provide it with human blood then flesh, but nothing’s more impressive than the puppeteers keeping it all in time. It’s phenomenal work. And exactly the kind of thing I should’ve appreciated as a kid (being a Muppet fan). Maybe it was the pan and scan.

While the story is about this carnivorous plant promises Moranis fame and fortune—instead of early sixties skid row squalor, the film’s got a separate arc running simultaneously: revealing Greene can belt out a song like nobody’s business. Throughout the film, outside the musical numbers (but also in most of them), Greene does a blonde bimbo voice—she’s never a blonde bimbo caricature, mind you, she’s just got the voice and the character’s behind it. She sings a full solo in the bimbo voice, but when it comes time for her big romance number with Moranis, Little Shop reveals her full range and it propels the film. Just when the film’s going to need it the most, because the third act is mess.

It’s not a mess, just messy. There aren’t great cameos—the first two acts have John Candy, Christopher Guest, and Bill Murray (with Steve Martin basically doing a giant extended cameo as Greene’s sadist boyfriend, the local dentist)—instead we get Jim Belushi. I mean… Jim Belushi? He’s fine, but… Jim Belushi? Candy’s got a funny scene as a radio show host, Murray’s a pain seeker who enrages Martin with his desire for torment, and then Jim Belushi. Little Shop manages to avoid caricature in every one of its principals—including the Greek chorus—for the last stunt cameo to be a disposable one from Belushi. It’s a very weird miss, especially since it comes after an extended break from stunt cameos so it’s not like they needed another one. They could’ve gone out with Murray and Martin’s simultaneously revolting and exhilarating scene, but instead Belushi in a throwaway.

So, messy.

Obviously, in the intervening years since release, we—the royal we, lots of people knew at the time because it’s a stage adaptation—know the film’s got an entirely different ending than originally intended and shot and there are some rough tone shifts in the third act. It doesn’t help the “Moranis gets famous” arc is too rushed (and a much better place for a stunt cameo), especially since Greene doesn’t participate in it even after they become de facto business partners.

The resolve is abrupt but decent, with Oz finding a good enough tone, seemingly aware he’s just got to get to the end credits and they can run a song medly and it’ll all be fine.

Great performances from Greene, Moranis, and Martin. Martin’s an Elvis bad boy who’s the perfect combination of vile and jackass. Moranis is the shy orphan who doesn’t realize he’s come into his own; he does well on the singing, but he’s never the actual star of the sequence, it’s Stubbs or Greene. Greene’s breathtaking. Her character arc’s not great but it’s good enough under the circumstances and, wow, can she belt. There’s one number where she’s holding this note and ostensibly Moranis is keeping up with her but it’s like… what noise was he actually making because how could he keep up.

Stubbs is awesome as the plant.

And it’s impossible imagine anyone but Arnold, Weeks, and Campbell as the Chorus, who also suffer in the third act (but at least they get to go out on a great number).

Little Shop’s a delight and a big success. Even with the messy third act, changed ending, whatever, it’s an achievement for Oz and his crew, Greene, Moranis, Martin, and company.

Hard eye roll at my nine year-old take on this one.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988, Frank Oz)

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels manages to have a full, three act plot–with all the twists necessary for a confidence picture–but it also is constantly funny. Oz juggles his two leads but mostly relies on Steve Martin for the more immediate humor. With Michael Caine, Oz and the screenwriters tend to be a lot quieter… letting the humor build. Martin gets the gags.

Deciding the better performance–between Caine and Martin–is difficult. Caine has a lot more to do in terms of range, but Martin has to be doing something almost every frame of film.

I’ve seen Scoundrels before, but I never fully appreciated the film’s successes. For example, Oz uses montages a couple times to hurry the plot along and each scene in the montage is hilarious, but the film never pauses to laugh at itself. It never loses momentum, even during the more outrageous gags.

And Scoundrels has a lot of potential speed bumps. The first act alone has a micro-three act structure built into it, as the focus transitions from Caine to Martin (it shifts throughout the film). Then there’s the appearance of Glenne Headly, who arrives during the second act. She’s an essential player and is absent during the first act. Actually, Headly probably gives the film’s best performance.

Anton Rodgers and Ian McDiarmid, who both have big parts at the start, slowly fade away. Rodgers in particular has some fantastic scenes. Barbara Harris is great in a small part too.

Scoundrels is outstanding.

What About Bob? (1991, Frank Oz)

What About Bob? is a special movie. It’s absolute dreck. Coming from screenwriter Tom Schulman, I suppose its lack of quality shouldn’t have been a surprise, but I think I was operating under the assumption producer Laura Ziskin wouldn’t let it get too bad. I mean, production wise, it’s got good people–Anne V. Coates is good editor and Michael Ballhaus has done some truly great films. I mean, sure, Frank Oz isn’t great shakes, but he’s competent.

So why’s Bob so awful? First, and easiest, it mocks mental illness. Though Bill Murray’s performance is atrocious and he’s never believably mentally ill for a moment in the movie–it’s a real problem, Murray playing the character as a totally sane, totally self-aware jerk (he just wants to make Richard Dreyfuss miserable)–he is supposed to be mentally ill. And the viewer is supposed to laugh at him. Second, it’s never believable the supporting cast would welcome him into the fold, knowing he’s a patient of Dreyfuss’s prominent psychiatrist. It’s ludicrous.

It’s got to be one of Murray’s worst performances (one can hear the paycheck deposit), but there’s a lot of terrible acting to go around. Julie Hagerty’s “acting” is something special, but Charlie Korsmo is even worse. He’s got to be one of the worst child actors I can remember. Just terrible.

Oddly, Kathryn Erbe’s steady, even though her writing is as bad as everyone else’s.

Dreyfuss has some moments and they’re mostly visible, where one can see he’s at least enjoying himself (for the most part, he isn’t). The rest of the time, he looks mildly embarrassed, but no more than the viewer who remembers his good, better and unspectacularly poor films.

Oz’s direction isn’t bad. The movie looks beautiful and Oz is competent when it comes to framing shots, especially all the (slightly) moving camera shots–mostly the camera following people as they go over to other people. And he also convinced me, somehow, if I kept watching, it’d get better (it never, ever does–the ending is just as awful as everything else in the movie).

What’s scary about Bob is how light-hearted it seems to be. It’s insensitive and garish. If it were from a better filmmakers, I’d try to find some stronger words… but Oz doesn’t strike me as particularly smart and Schulman is quite obviously, based on this one and his other “writing,” a functional illiterate.

The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984, Frank Oz)

There’s something–well, actually a lot–missing from The Muppets Take Manhattan, but when I started the sentence, I was going to write “good songs.” None of the songs are terrible, but when the best song in the movie is the one to advertise the then upcoming “Muppet Babies” series… okay, I’m being a little mean… the “Somebody’s Getting Married” song sequence is really nice. But the rest of the songs are just there. Well, maybe not… I am remembering another good sequence, but the problem is the film is better remembered, than actually engaged, because the story’s so slight, it brings the movie down. But the rest of the songs–those aren’t very good, with the two exceptions and then the “Muppet Babies,” which is cuter than it is good.

Like the other movies, Manhattan uses celebrities in cameos, occasionally to good effect (Dabney Coleman and Gregory Hines), but the cameos are usually throwaways–bits to give the opportunity for Elliott Gould, for example, to show up–instead of actual story content. There isn’t really any story content in Manhattan, because it takes forever to decide what the movie’s crisis is going to be… until the last half hour even. Before that point, it’s all build-up–through possible crises (the Muppets breaking up, Miss Piggy getting jealous)–and the build-up is really boring. The mid-section makes the interesting choice of getting rid of the all the Muppets except Kermit, Piggy in a reduced role, and Rizzo the Rat. I’m not sure if they were grooming Rizzo or something… it sure seems like it, but I think it’s instead just another indicator of The Muppets Take Manhattan’s damning problem–Frank Oz.

As a director, Oz does a mediocre job. He creates a handful of charming scenes, but none of them are particularly special. As a screenwriter, along with a couple other jokers, he breaks the Muppets up and only uses, for the majority of the film, them in vignettes. These vignettes are the best part of the movie, because it’s the Muppets doing what the Muppets do… which should be, I don’t know, the movie… right?

The movie relies a lot on the human cast, particularly Juliana Donald as the object of Miss Piggy’s jealousy–while Donald is fine, she treats the role like a guest spot on the show rather than a person interacting. The other supporting cast are fine too, but their roles are even less import.

The New York locations and setting provides for a lot fewer good scenes than it should; besides a large, amusing Central Park sequence, most of the film takes place indoors. The opening titles suggest a big city adventure–as well as the Muppets, not a reduced cast of Muppets, having that adventure–and Oz delivers a movie centered around a coffee shop.

There’s no grandeur to the movie, nothing exciting overall, and it’s a pleasant disappointment.