Wayne’s World (1992, Penelope Spheeris)

Wayne’s World ought to be a no-brainer. Slick, soulless media exec Rob Lowe turns public access metalhead slackers Mike Myers and Dana Carvey into real celebrities; only they don’t like the deal they’ve made with the devil. Along the way, Myers meets metal rocker chick Tia Carrere, and they fall in like until Lowe tries to steal her away with the promise of success. It’s a ninety-four-minute movie; it shouldn’t be that hard.

Yet Wayne’s World manages to fumble entirely, all the way to the disastrous third act. The film’s “documentary crew follows around real people” bit, which director Spheeris profoundly underutilizes, ought to have defined World as a precursor to, you know, the early-to-mid aughts found footage. Instead, the movie completely forgets about it. Even though when Myers and Carvey are talking to the camera, they’re never more likable. Especially Carvey, whose performance is atrocious. No doubt, Spheeris is bad directing actors, but there’s not a single moment of Carvey footage in the regular film they shouldn’t have reshot. He looks inordinately uncomfortable the entire time.

Spheeris is only slightly better at directing his or Myers’s “SNL” gags. They’re some of the film’s more genuinely funny moments because writers Myers, Bonnie Turner, and Terry Turner can’t seem to find any situational comedy in the situations. The Turners have major sitcom credentials too, which adds to World’s inexplicable fumbling.

As for Spheeris. I always—read: when I was thirteen or fourteen—thought Spheeris got the gig because she was really good at directing American verité and musical performances. Based on the Alice Cooper performance in World, she’s not good at the latter. It’s unclear about the former because World’s got no reality after the first act or so, when they flex shooting on location in Aurora, Illinois. In the second “act” (World would be a frustrating and pointless narrative to chart), the action moves between various sets with some exterior establishing shots in or around Chicago. In another genuinely inexplicable move, all the doors open out. Not sure who was responsible for that choice, but it’s a bad one. When they all go over to see Lowe’s fancy apartment, and Carrere can get impressed, Lowe opens the door out into the hallway to let them in.

What.

Okay, Spheeris. In hindsight, it seems more like she got the job so a woman could co-sign on the foundational misogyny of the film. It’s sometimes friendly, validating misogyny, but, hey, Myers and Carvey are so cute it’s not like they’re bad guys. Especially not since Lowe was still on his rehabilitation tour with World. He looks like he wants to strangle his agent for talking him into the gig. And his outfits, which everyone says are great, are cartoonish in hindsight. Or they cut the scenes about him wearing suits for someone 6’ or taller.

Carrere is a heavy metal babe who’s going to go with whatever guy loves her for her looks AND her music. Though her big performance is a cover, which makes very little sense but it’s in the third act where nothing matters anymore. Carrere works her ass off in World. She’s not very good. Maybe her Chinese accent doesn’t help. But she knows it’s a primo gig, and she tries. As long as she’s willing to strip down and occasionally slut out, World’s a fine showcase.

Unlike Lara Flynn Boyle, who the film repeatedly humiliates as a gag because sad girls deserve to be publicly mocked and derided. Wait, she didn’t originate the part on “SNL”? I assumed she was a weird continuity carryover. It’s so much worse when she’s not.

Also, the movie’s super shitty to Colleen Camp for some reason. Like, screw you, Wayne’s World. You had to get Brian Doyle-Murray because Bill didn’t return your calls.

The best performers are Myers and Carvey’s film crew, who have a half dozen lines total but care about getting future gigs, especially Lee Tergesen. He’s a delight.

Myers and Carvey (mostly Myers) have enough stupid charm to get the thing through, but just barely.

An “SNL: Wayne’s World Best Of” is likely a better use of time. Probably not ninety-four minutes of it, but….

Poltergeist III (1988, Gary Sherman)

Poltergeist III is about as thrilling as watching someone wash a window. Literally. Outside ostensible protagonist Heather O’Rourke and special guest star Zelda Rubinstein, no one from the previous films returns. The film opens with O’Rourke living in Chicago with aunt Nancy Allen, a yuppie recently married to Tom Skerritt, presumably a widower with a teenage daughter (Lara Flynn Boyle). There’s a lot of setup with the family, and it goes absolutely nowhere. It’s probably better it doesn’t, as the writing’s so bad. Allen’s whole arc for the movie—which takes place over a single day—involves her not loving her family enough. Except the first act shows the opposite. She, Boyle, and O’Rourke are downright pals, turning getting to the morning carpool into a veritable action set piece.

The family lives in a combination skyscraper shopping mall; the exteriors are the John Hancock Building, some interiors there, some interiors elsewhere. It’s not a bad idea for a setting (it’s a Judge Dredd tower block), except every time the characters go somewhere interesting, the scenes are either super-short or off-screen. Skeritt works for the building, so he’s got passkeys, which will be necessary for teenage shenanigans, and Allen’s got an unlikely art gallery in the high-class shopping mall.

Except Allen makes her assistant, E.J. Murray, do all her work, which is where Allen starts getting unlikable. She never gets much more unlikable because her performance becomes weird about halfway through, as she seems incredibly resentful she’s appearing in Poltergeist III. It should work with the plot as her character eventually wants to run away from the haunted skyscraper. Still, neither Allen nor director Sherman can make Allen’s disgust in the project carry through into the performance.

However, Allen is a trooper. She gets through Poltergeist III and all its absurdities and inanities. Just when the movie seems like it’s going to focus on O’Rourke and surrogate big sister Boyle (who low-key resents having a tween charge), it instead becomes Skerritt and Allen running around the skyscraper. Sometimes they’re on their own; sometimes, they’ve got asshole child psychologist Richard Fire with them. Fire is O’Rourke’s doctor, and he hates her and hates her ghost stories. Like much of Poltergeist III it ought to be campy bad; instead, it’s boring, inept bad.

The best thing in the movie, objectively, is Alex Nepomniaschy’s photography. He shoots the building interiors beautifully. And doesn’t do too bad with the competently executed but terribly designed supernatural sequences, which are sometimes too silly to work and sometimes just too poorly directed. Even though director Sherman designed all the physical effects himself, he didn’t know how to shoot them. Bummer.

But the most amusing thing about Poltergeist III is Skerritt’s performance. Allen, Boyle, and some other cast members survive the film and never let it defeat them, but Skerritt is enthusiastic and eager in this terrible movie. Allen occasionally looks mad he’s putting so much effort into it. It never ever pays off, but it’s an exceptionally professional turn from Skerritt. The movie doesn’t deserve most of its cast members—I mean, only Fire is so godawful he deserves it—but Skerritt’s a champ for getting through it.

Poltergeist III is one of those “must be seen to be believed” pictures, but it’s also one of those “there’s truly no reason to see this movie” movies. It’s insufferably dull too. Editor Ross Albert holds shots too long (presumably because otherwise, the film wouldn’t run more than ninety minutes), and there are numerous action sequences where Sherman confuses tension and boredom.

Don’t see Poltergeist III. Watch paint dry or window washing instead.

Speaking of Sex (2001, John McNaughton)

Let me annotate the opening cast crawl with my thoughts at the time….

James Spader–great, love him on “Boston Legal.”

Melora Walters–from Magnolia, love her, she’s in nothing.

Jay Mohr–liked him in Picture Perfect when I saw it, now can’t believe I liked it…

Catherine O’Hara, Bill Murray… solid people.

So what happened? It’s actually not all John McNaughton’s fault, which is a big thing to say. I mean, I loved McNaughton when I was sixteen. He did Mad Dog and Glory and that film is a great “adult” film to appreciate when you’re sixteen. Especially if you love Richard Price. Then he did Normal Life, back when having Ashley Judd in a film meant good things, and I waited years to see it. It premiered on video and it sucked. It was terrible.

McNaughton’s direction is fine, though it’s the modern “comedy” directing that comes from commercials. The script is awful and the performances are awful. Spader is playing his character from Mannequin or something. Walters is awful and it pains me to say that. Mohr was fine.

Lara Flynn Boyle shows up and a lot of the weight of the first eight minutes is put on her. She can handle weight for about… no, I’m wrong. She can’t handle any weight.

I rented Speaking of Sex from Nicheflix and it’s probably the first film from there I’ve turned off. It’s never gotten a US or UK release and the DVD is from Germany. The Germans appear to have no taste in cinema, which is painfully obvious. I’m not sure Germany has produced a decent film since Das Boot. That’s twenty-two years.

And it was a TV mini-series.

So, all that excitement I had for the first three minutes, all that promise Speaking of Sex got from its cast, it’s all disappeared and I’m reminded of those fond days when I wanted to hide my head under a rock for ever saying nice things about McNaughton.

Sometimes, you find a jewel in a film that’s unappreciated in its country of origin. Sometimes you find a beautifully cast turd. And Speaking of Sex is a big turd.