Reel Thoughts

An All-Star Let Down

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Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

I know it's 20 years old, but I rented Little Shop because I'm going to be co-directing it at an area high school, and I wanted to get some ideas. I had never seen this movie version all the way through, so I thought, what the hell? I'll give it a look.

I'm not going to talk much about it in my usual critical terms other than to say what I liked and disliked. If you don't know the musical or the movie, essentially nerdy flower shop employee Seymour (Rick Moranis) buys a strange plant from a Chinese dealer after an eclipse. He then uses this plant to attract business to the failing store: except there's one small problem. The plant, named Audrey II after the sweet but vacant Audrey, Seymour's co-worker and pine-for love interest, is only interested in eating human flesh and blood. The plant promises Seymour big things if he can deliver supper, so Seymour gives into this temptation.

The Broadway play is quirky all by itself really, but this film version takes the quirkyness to some even odder places thanks to director Frank Oz. The ending is totally rewritten to be happy, which is lame and undermines the play's original intent, and many of the songs don't make it, which is a shame, because that means the Doo Wop girls are underused. The best part was Steve Martin as dentist Orin and a cameo by Bill Murray as a dental patient who gets off on pain (not in the original musical) and the scene they share together.

Otherwise, it just seemed like an overly campy big budget mistake. The scenes were really choppy, and the acting wasn't all that great. There were too many additions and subtractions for my taste, too. I never bothered to watch this all the way through until now and apparently for good reason. It did give me some ideas though.

All in all, I would recommend the stage version to anyone over this movie version. (If I were to rate this movie, btw, it would be a 5 or "mediocre").

Posted Sunday, January 28, 2007 12:48 PM by pippin06 | with 0 comments

A Boring and Inferior Sequel

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Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)

So, now we come to it. Immediately after a second viewing of Desperado, I plunged into this film, mostly for the sake of my beloved Johnny Depp. I should have known that if I wasn't crazy about the first movie, I probably wasn't going to be crazy about this one either.

As it turns out, this movie was a complete yawnfest with bad storytelling and no innovation. The two cardinal rules of sequels are 1) Recycle as much as possible and 2) More is better. This movie leaned heavily on the first rule and not so much on the second. While it is impressive that Robert Rodriguez took on not only writing and directing but also editing and scoring, it wasn't enough to make me appreciate this sequel or the series as a whole.

Let's start off with the ridiculous plot. Johnny plays a rogue CIA agent looking to profit from an inevitable coup d'etat of the Mexican presidency by a drug cartel run by a man named Barillo (Willem Dafoe). In order to set a plan in motion that will not only derail the coup but also result in money for him, he goes about hiring El Mariachi, whom he learns about from some guy played by Cheech Marin. Here's my first problem. Cheech died in the first movie. He was the bartender in the bar where Buscemi (Steve Buscemi) first tells the story of El Mariachi. Yet, I guess he has a twin brother or something because he's back this time around. Was that supposed to be funny? It wasn't.

Now cut to El Mariachi and Antonio 8 years later. His hair is shorter, and he's hiding out in a village because apparently, him and Carolina, who he married and had a daughter with, caused quite a stir as some sort of deadly Bonnie and Clyde vigilantes attacking drug cartels and their members, including one run by a General Marquez. Well, the good general didn't like this, so he ended up killing poor Carolina and their young daughter. Thusly, El Mariachi is again despondent and ready to seek revenge, and lo, Agent Sands presents him with the opportunity.

It really is all downhill from there, with a good deal more recycling of things we saw in Desperado. None of the gun battles were more impressive than in Desperado, which boggles my mind. The payoff was even less satisfying. The peripheral characters, such as Billy (the guy with the dog), cluttered the whole thing up, and the acting was not good. Antonio didn't have many lines to work with, so I don't fault him. In fact, the actor who did the most talking was Johnny, and while I appreciated his quirky interpretation of this character (he even said savvy...was this released before or after the first Pirates of the Caribbean?), it didn't do anything to help this movie other than a few funny lines, such as, "Are you a Mexi-Can or a Mexi-Can't?"

All in all, I really don't know what this movie was supposed to convey other than offering a new vehicle for El Mariachi, but apparently, he can only be motivated by revenge from the death of his loved ones, which makes the character extremely uninteresting, and as I hinted at in the last entry, two-dimensional.

This movie, therefore, I rate a 3.5 because I don't think the idea was a good one, but it wasn't quite so preposterous as to be given a 3 (otherwise known as the WTF rating). In order to get a 4, the idea would have to be intriguing, even if the movie was not, and this idea was not intriguing. So, I plant it squarely in the middle (see, I am capable of giving low ratings). Obviously anything I rate a 5 or less has absolutely no chance of passing the test (unless it was Matrix Revolutions, but that's another story). In the end, I really did not enjoy this series...but, of course, I already said that. I guess I just can't say it enough.

Posted Sunday, January 28, 2007 1:11 AM by pippin06 | with 0 comments

Revisiting "Desperado"

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Desperado (1995)

I rented this movie on my first trip to the video store in over a year (hey, I can borrow so much, I haven't needed to go). I decided to watch this movie again when I made up my mind that I wanted to see its sequel, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, which I will blog about next. I had seen this movie once, a long time ago in college, and remembered very little of it except for a lot of acrobatic gunfire from dreamy Antonio. It didn't leave much of an impression on me then, so I don't know what possessed me to pick up this series again.

Well, actually I do. Given my latest new and improved interest in Johnny Depp, I have been watching or rewatching many of his movies. The sequel intrigued me, and I felt I couldn't watch that without watching this one again, to refresh my memory.

Turns out, it didn't really matter. The two movies are not very connected. And my second viewing of Desperado didn't leave me feeling any more impressed than I was the first time.

Antonio plays a gun-toting mariachi who seeks revenge for the murder of his girlfriend and the maiming of his left hand. The body count is high, the direction stylized, and, of course, there is an interesting twist and the chance meeting of a new lady love, Carolina, played by Salma Hayek.

I never saw nor was aware of El Mariachi, Robert Rodriguez's first rendition of this movie. I understand from limited research that the former version, filmed for a limited budget and all in Spanish, is a superior film. Maybe one day, I'll pick it up. I saw Desperado the first time by chance. It was on TV; I think I had Showtime back in those days, so I watched it. I didn't realize that it was, for all intents and purposes, an English language remake of El Mariachi with Antonio playing this character and at a higher budget.

Desperado is an artsy attempt at a modern pulp western. It isn't the greatest movie because the plot is extremely disjointed. This one made more sense than the second one, which I'll get to in a minute. The acting was somewhat two dimensional, and unless I missed it by not watching the first movie, I never understood why El Mariachi lost love and partial limb and was set on his quest for vengeance in the first place. Bucho explained that innocents lose their lives in his business (which I guess is drug dealing/cartels by one small clue), but I couldn't accept that as an explanation. And, the connection in the end made me more confused rather than less.

I'm not a big fan of Westerns, though I am a big fan of Antonio. I think he did a fine job with this character, more than any other actor in the film. I was also mildly entertained by the fancy gunwork and by Antonio and Salma's chemistry.

Yet, I didn't find myself liking this movie more than the first time. I guess it wasn't meant to be. I like a certain narrative progression, which was completely lacking in this movie, and a certain level of satisfaction when the movie ends. I did not experience said satisfaction, even despite the abstract and somewhat original touch of Rodriguez's direction.

If I were to rate this flick, which I am, I would give this a 7 as shaky. There are some major flaws as stated above, but I still felt entertained. Desperado does not pass the test, however. This movie is just not my style on so many levels, and I don't know if I'll have any interest in El Mariachi either. At least I gave it a try...twice.

Posted Sunday, January 28, 2007 12:47 AM by pippin06 | with 0 comments