Tag: Teri Hatcher

The Big Picture (1989, Christopher Guest)

At its best, which isn’t often, The Big Picture is a vaguely charming Hollywood satire about young director Kevin Bacon discovering making it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But also not. Because Picture skips over Bacon’s “making it” period, other than being a dick to best friend Michael McKean and driving a Porsche instead of a quirky AMC Gremlin. The AMC Gremlin has a lot of personality onscreen; unfortunately, the film never makes it feel like Bacon’s car. But Bacon’s real success, working with soulless Hollywood producer J.T. Walsh and his gang… not on screen. We see the build-up to it, but not the actual scenes.

Then it’s just fall out.

I’m not sure where Picture’s at its worst. Probably when Bacon runs out on girlfriend Emily Longstreth to hook up with starlet Teri Hatcher, only to discover Hatcher’s got a boyfriend (something the film never addresses again), then comes home and forces Longstreth to break up with him. Unfortunately, Bacon’s already got a paper-thin character, so it makes him unlikable for a long stretch. His eventual redemption won’t even come from within; the film will bring out one of the more successful—though not really successful—big swing performances to facilitate it.

Blaming Picture on Bacon’s too easy, though. He’s just playing the role as written.

Most of the time, Big Picture’s a toothless, tepid, inconsistent, lackadaisical mess. The hopefully intentional anti-climactic third act should give the film a lot of character, but Picture doesn’t have the cameos for it. Instead, it’s a Hollywood satire where the best they could do is Eddie Albert and Elliot Gould for cameos. And Gould’s co-star Jason Gould’s dad; the film oddly doesn’t address nepotism. Though there’s a lot it doesn’t address. Longstreth’s not Hollywood, so she’s okay. Bacon’s fellow film student Jennifer Jason Leigh’s too avant-garde for mainstream, so she’s not Hollywood. But the other women are all pretty terrible. Hatcher’s an unthinking succubus, Tracy Brooks Swope’s a soulless studio exec-wannabe, Fran Drescher’s a greedy wife.

Thank goodness Longstreth’s an angel of redemption. She’s also way too good for how the movie treats her. For the first act, she’s an accessory to Bacon in his scenes. In the early second half, during their breakup, she shows some personality, but then she ingloriously exits so Bacon can complete his move to the Dark Side.

It’s unclear if Picture forgets its subplots and supporting cast members or if it just didn’t have the budget for them. It’s a Hollywood movie where they’ve got limited time on the lot.

Again, since Bacon’s just playing the part as written—an Ohio farm boy who can’t be expected to be responsible or accountable when fame and fortune are in grasp—it’s not really his fault. He’s not believable as a film school wunderkind who desperately wants to make a Bergman movie, mainly because Big Picture doesn’t acknowledge he’s trying to make a Bergman movie (without having any insight into the subject, which is a whole other thing).

Longstreth’s fine. The part doesn’t let her be good. She’s outstanding a few times, especially in the movie fantasies Bacon occasionally has to pad time. He’ll imagine he’s in a noir or something. Bacon’s clearly miscast in the scenes, and Longstreth’s great in the one she gets to play in.

Speaking of miscast… poor Walsh. He’s an obviously capable actor in a part he’s entirely wrong for. The script doesn’t help him either.

Don Franklin’s legit good as his flunky. It’s too bad he doesn’t get more.

McKean’s sort of around as Bacon’s conscious for a while. He and wife Kim Miyori are expecting their first child, providing a contrast to Bacon’s pursuit of Hollywood success. McKean—who co-wrote—is the best of the main cast.

Hatcher’s fine as the succubus. Not her fault she’s one-dimensional. The movie asks a lot of Leigh, and she delivers most of it, but it needs her to be a magician, and Picture frequently proves magic isn’t real. Hollywood or otherwise.

Guest’s direction is middling. He relies on David Nichtern’s not quirky enough score too much for personality. Then when movie music becomes a plot point, Nichtern’s score is an obvious missed meta opportunity. Ditto Jeffrey Sur’s competent but unimpressive photography (McKean’s a cinematographer trying to make it, and Bacon promises he’ll take him along to Hollywood).

Martin Short’s got an extended uncredited cameo as Bacon’s agent. He’s the best thing in the otherwise bland Picture.

Frasier (1993) s06e05 – First, Do No Harm

Oh, thank goodness, first-time “Frasier” writers Jordan Hawley and William Schifrin never have another credit on an episode. I didn’t recognize their names on the titles and wondered if they would be new regular writers this promising season. No, they are not. Whew.

Twenty-plus years on, “Frasier” has aged pretty well. I remember a few writers whose names regularly turned up on cringe-to-problematic episodes, but usually right in the middle and never too bad. It was the mid-1990s NBC, after all. But this episode stinks. Starting with Kelsey Grammer never finding the right moment to tease new mom Peri Gilpin about her ruffled appearance. Luckily John Mahoney can drive home the point. It’s after a random stranger (Randy Pelish) tells Grammer he’s missed on the airwaves. Only the joke is Pelish is really weird. Then there’s a joke about Mexico.

So it’s ableist, sexist, and racist before the credits are done.

The main story isn’t any better. Grammer starts dating Teri Hatcher, who’s playing the daughter of Mahoney’s best friend. Hatcher’s too hot for Grammer, and he can’t figure out why she’s with him (it’s a big question because they have a soul-crushing lack of chemistry together). She’s also got a lot of mental health issues going on. David Hyde Pierce suggests maybe she’s in it for the free therapy. So then the episode becomes about Grammer weighing good sex and unpaid therapist hours.

Meanwhile, Mahoney’s convinced he’s a great matchmaker, so he starts parading Jane Leeves out on the balcony for his friends to inspect.

In the first scene, the laugh track sounds off, and while there are some laughs thanks to the cast… a bunch of the laugh track laughs aren’t laughs. They’re mocking people with real things going on, including your boss trying to auction you off to a stranger. So it’d be better if they faked a laugh track than they found a studio audience of such terrible people, even in 1998.

Hatcher’s good a couple times but only a couple. She and Grammer have, again, absolutely no chemistry. He’s not even lustful and pervy, and “Frasier” is often about Grammer being lustful and pervy. He clearly does not like working with Hatcher. She’s better at the physical comedy, which is all problematic, than the dialogue. It’s a rough episode.

There’s also this hilarious sequence where Grammer and Hyde Pierce are talking about Hatcher’s mental health problems—as your therapist or therapist boyfriend apparently does—and Hyde Pierce is making microwave popcorn and putting Tabasco on it. Director Sheldon Epps (who I was expecting more from, but maybe he saved the script, who knows) showcases Hyde Pierce’s process, but neither microwave popcorn nor Tabasco sauce fit the character.

Whatever. At least the writers never come back.

Tango & Cash (1989, Andrey Konchalovskiy)

The scary thing about Tango & Cash is its ability to improve. Not sure who wrote or directed the end of the second act, when Kurt Russell gets to act opposite people besides Sylvester Stallone and you remember it’s actually an achievement to make him so unlikable for so long, but it’s a lot better. During the sequence where Teri Hatcher gets to be profoundly objectified, the editors even manage to string together a subtle—for Tango & Cash—suspense sequence. It’s not great, but it’s about the only time in the movie you think anyone involved with it should be trusted with a video project more complicated than… not a wedding, but maybe a graduation?

And the editors are not unprofessional, incompetent editors. Tango & Cash is just so incredibly bad there’s no way to make it right.

The film’s got a single credited screenwriter—Randy Feldman—but he didn’t actually write much of what’s onscreen. The strange part is there isn’t a full list of script doctors; there must’ve been some kind of blood pact. There’s a couple moments I’m convinced are Jeffrey Boam but he swore none of his material made it. There’s also the single credited director, Konchalovskiy, but we know Albert Magnoli came in and did a bunch.

So there are failures at every level but the big problem is Stallone’s atrocious. He can’t land any of the jokes. Even if seventy-five percent of his jokes weren’t homophobic one-liners he murmurs to himself at the end of every scene, he wouldn’t be able to land any of the jokes. The direction’s bad, regardless of who did it, but there are giant terrible action sequences and those would require some kind of competency to execute. So, again, it’s not incompetent. The writing is incompetent. The directing is just uninspired and insipid.

But no one could get a good performance from Stallone in this part, which seems to be him demanding another shot at Beverly Hills Cop, complete with a Harold Faltermeyer score. Faltermeyer adds some Fletch to the Axel F and, voila, Stallone as a rich, Armani-clad Beverly Hills cop who only does the job for the action. Russell’s the rough and tumble one here, not owning a shirt without a torn neck.

They’re going to terribly bicker banter at each other for ninety or so minutes of the runtime (there are like five minute end credits, thank goodness) and you forget either Russell or Stallone has ever been in a good movie, much less given a good performance. Hence why it’s so noticeable when Russell all of a sudden gets a lot more engaging—because without the charisma black hole of Stallone’s performance, Russell can still shine.

Relatively speaking. It’s still all terrible.

And then it does get worse again. The third act’s awful.

No good performances; an uncredited Geoffrey Lewis and a Clint Howard cameo are the best and it’s not Hatcher or Michael J. Pollard’s fault. Jack Palance does more than the part or movie deserves as the Mr Big. He’s not good but he’s not boring. Lots of bad and boring in Tango & Cash.

Though with Brion James’s performance… it’s hard to be bored as one watches a performance as bad as James’s. Finding out Stallone thought it was a good performance and gave James more scenes—same thing happened with Robert Z’Dar, who is also laughably bad—explains some of Tango & Cash’s badness. The disaster starts to make sense at least.

The movie’s got an interesting place in Hollywood history—it’s the last Guber-Peters Company movie after they found a new peak early in the same year with Batman then they screwed over Warner Bros. (between Batman in the summer and Tango & Cash at Christmas)—but you certainly don’t have to watch the movie for that kind of trivia.

There’s no reason to watch Tango & Cash and there never has been. Unless you’re measuring its accelerating rot rate over time. But even then why bother.

Heaven’s Prisoners (1996, Phil Joanou)

I probably read Heaven’s Prisoners, the novel, about eighteen years ago; I don’t remember it. But I’m sure this adaptation is faithful to the events of the novel because this movie is a mess and there’s no good reason for it.

The novel can have space for a mystery and a character drama, but–at least under Joanou’s exceptionally bad direction–there’s no way the movie can have enough room. A decision needed to be made, whether they wanted to make a mystery, an alcoholism drama or a revenge thriller and no one seemed willing to make it. So instead of Heaven’s Prisoners, the film, succeeding, it fails.

It’s not a complete failure. Alec Baldwin is a problematic lead, but decent enough. Had he and nemesis Eric Roberts switched roles, the film would have been amazing, Joanou or not. Roberts is still great as a bad guy.

Also phenomenal–a word I rarely use–is Mary Stuart Masterson, who really gets the short end of the adaptation stick. In order to match the novel’s conclusion, the screenwriters fail her character. It really is one of the worst adaptations… the narrative structure, an abridging of the novel, is disastrous.

Bad acting from Kelly Lynch and laughably awful from Teri Hatcher make for painful scenes, but they don’t really do more damage than the direction.

Joanou somehow manages to suck the life out of New Orleans and Louisiana’s swamps, making them incredibly boring.

Inappropriate and bad music from George Fenton hurt it too.

It’s still worthwhile.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Phil Joanou; screenplay by Harley Peyton and Scott Frank, based on the novel by James Lee Burke; director of photography, Harris Savides; edited by William Steinkamp; music by George Fenton; production designer, John Stoddart; produced by Leslie Greif, Andre Morgan and Albert S. Ruddy; released by New Line Cinema.

Starring Alec Baldwin (Dave Robicheaux), Kelly Lynch (Annie Robicheaux), Mary Stuart Masterson (Robin Gaddis), Eric Roberts (Bubba Rocque), Teri Hatcher (Claudette Rocque), Vondie Curtis-Hall (Minos P. Dautrieve), Badja Djola (Batist), Samantha Lagpacan (Alafair), Joe Viterelli (Didi Giancano), Tuck Milligan (Jerry Falgout), Hawthorne James (Victor Romero), Don Stark (Eddie Keats), Carl A. McGee (Toot) and Paul Guilfoyle (Det. Magelli).

RELATED

Soapdish (1991, Michael Hoffman)

Zany. Soapdish is zany. At its most amusing, it’s a rapid-fire, carefully scored (Alan Silvestri’s score is essential, given how it establishes the movie’s mood) set of fast scenes with decent laughs. Garry Marshall is hilarious, Carrie Fisher is even funnier. Cathy Moriarty is terrific. So where’s the big problem? Well, Soapdish‘s most amusing parts are not its best parts. There’s an inconsistency, as the best parts are those with Sally Field and Kevin Kline. There’s not quite enough “good” parts for Soapdish to be anything but a zany comedy about soap operas. It is not, for instance, really a good soap opera about soap operas. It’s very aware of itself and its limitations.

I’m not sure a movie with Soapdish‘s melodrama would work as a straight story, so the zany approach isn’t a bad one, it just allows for some mediocre and broad performances. Robert Downey Jr., for instance, has a funny character. Even if it were someone else, the character would still be funny. When it comes to the zaniness, Soapdish is real cheap. Fisher and Marshall, it’d be hard to replace. Downey, anyone could do it. Whoopi Goldberg’s character tends to span both sides and she does a good job and immediately establishes herself as vital. But Elisabeth Shue? I’d forgotten she was in the movie. She can’t hold her own in the scenes with Kline and Field, since Kline’s so good in general and Field’s very self-aware as a trapped TV star. Shue just doesn’t bring anything to the film. Her character on the soap is mute and, basically, so’s Shue.

The movie’s not unsuccessful, it just isn’t deserving of what Kline and Field bring to it. It’s ninety-five minutes of missed opportunities. The movie’s constantly changing tone and pacing and there’s never a chance to believe the characters. Teri Hatcher–who’s actually kind of good–switches from a villainous role to a good one for no reason other than… she needs something to do. The script needs an agent and she’s it.

There’s also a lack of comedic payoff with one major subplot at the end and the movie sort of fades out on earlier smiles. Had the movie really gone for the concept, it’d have been a better result. But at a certain point, it’s just clear–for example–there’s nothing to Downey’s character. He’s not smart, he’s not ambitious, he’s one-dimensional and he’s kind of boring. The movie coats itself in absurdity, trying to disguise it’s never going to suspend the viewer’s disbelief… but then it stops (rather than ends) and it’s very clear it didn’t quite work.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Michael Hoffman; screenplay by Robert Harling and Andrew Bergman, based on a story by Harling; director of photography, Ueli Steiger; edited by Garth Craven; music by Alan Silvestri; produced by Aaron Spelling and Alan Greisman; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Sally Field (Maggie), Kevin Kline (Jeffrey Anderson), Robert Downey Jr. (David Seton Barnes), Cathy Moriarty (Montana Moorehead), Elisabeth Shue (Lori Craven), Whoopi Goldberg (Rose Schwartz), Teri Hatcher (Ariel Maloney), Garry Marshall (Edmund Edwards), Kathy Najimy (Tawny Miller), Paul Johansson (Blair Brennan), Arne Nannestad (Director Burton White), Sheila Kelley (Fran) and Carrie Fisher (Betsy Faye Sharon).

RELATED

Resurrecting the Champ (2007, Rod Lurie)

The biggest problem with Resurrecting the Champ, besides Rod Lurie, is the Champ himself. Not Sam Jackson, who’s actually the least irritating he’s been since Loaded Weapon or so, but the character and his function in the film. At some point during the late second act, Champ is a decent movie about a guy growing up, realizing he’s got to take responsibility for his actions and realizing it isn’t going to be easy. If anyone can screw up an easy story like that one, it’s Rob Lurie, who demphasizes the finally (after the first ninety minutes) interesting relationship between estranged married couple Josh Hartnett and Kathryn Morris, who have a ludicrous backstory detailed in expository dialogue, but actually develop a rather tender relationship–albeit one centered around disappointment–by the last twenty minutes of the film. It’s a previously uninteresting aspect of the film made interesting, much like Hartnett’s actual journalistic pursuits. The scenes between him and Jackson, with the ominous something in their futures, are mostly okay. Boring, but okay. Jackson is doing an impression of an Oscar-hungry role here, shuffling around, not yelling, maybe not even swearing. The problem with his performance has little to do with the actual performance… he’s not believable as a former boxer. Especially not when there’s that constant, Lurie-friendly use of flashback. Lurie is the most overly melodramatic, goofily sentimental director working today–The Contender, The Last Castle, and now Resurrecting the Champ. He’s insincere, so much so, any viewer can tell.

None of these problems phase Hartnett, however, who turns in an excellent lead performance. Hartnett always shone in ensembles or as the sidekick, but Champ gives him a whole lot to do. The script’s obvious and mediocre, but Harnett’s acting is not. It might help Lurie managed to fill the cast with good actors (except Teri Hatcher, who under-stays her welcome by three seconds… any more and it’d have been intolerable). Except the film never works with it. Alan Alda is good as Hartnett’s boss and there’s some great stuff between them, but it’s hardly in there. Alda being the only one, besides Morris, who can tell Hartnett’s without content. By the end, filled with the lame friendship with Jackson and some convenient inner turmoil over his relationship with his father, Hartnett finally gets some really good scenes, those family scenes. Even if the kid playing he and Morris’s son is bland enough to be in a Mentos commercial.

As a visual director, Lurie actually isn’t terrible. There are some well-composed shots, maybe even thirty percent of them. Still, the film looks too crisp, like poorly lighted DV (did I mention Hatcher was terrible already?), and it’s real impersonal. The characters spend more time outside than they do in; the most effective scene at Hartnett and Morris’s house is in the backyard, when the age difference gets to play well into the story, instead of being vanity casting.

Lurie wrecks the film’s third act. The film’s actually in decent shape and he and the screenwriters go after it with a baseball bat. A lame voiceover (big shock from Lurie) almost undoes Harnett’s performance, but it can’t. It’s a great performance; it’s a shame it’s in such a lame film.

Oh, and the Peter Coyote scenes (Coyote’s in a ton of makeup) are great.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Rod Lurie; screenplay by Michael Bortman and Allison Burnett, from an article by J.R. Moehringer; director of photography, Adam Kane; edited by Sarah Boyd; music by Larry Groupe; production designer, Ken Rempel; produced by Brad Fischer, Marc Frydman, Mike Medavoy, Arnold Messer and Bob Yari; released by Yari Film Group.

Starring Josh Hartnett (Erik), Samuel L. Jackson (Champ), Kathryn Morris (Joyce), Alan Alda (Metz), David Paymer (Whitley), Rachel Nichols (Polly), Dakota Goyo (Teddy), Teri Hatcher (Flak), Ryan McDonald (Kenny), Harry J. Lennix (Satterfield Jr.) and Peter Coyote (Epstein).

RELATED