Netflixed
The Great Outdoors (Howard Deutch, 1988): The set-up of this John Hughes-written comedy (the grown-ups come off better than the kids) is programmatic. John Candy drives to the cabin leading a partially successful Coasters sing-a-long; Dan Ackroyd zooms up with lobster in his vanity-plated Mercedes. Not quite a pussy and asshole, instead of going Team America on each other they learn to yada yada. Your favourite Canadians are in funny form — particularly Candy, though the jokes about his appetite now seem like gallows humour.
All Good Things (Andrew Jarecki, 2010): Kirsten Dunst intuits she won’t win awards for this, so for our sakes she works in star mode. Ryan Gosling feels obligated to make his character’s unravelling cohere, but unlike Dunst, Jarecki doesn’t know what to feed him. Our favourite feminist holds the movie together until we flash forward eighteen years and he’s marooned in eyeshadow.
Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010): The lil’est vampire is a little more human in this remake, while the murders are more memorable. Still, the main attraction is Richard Jenkins’s attempt at the pathos-per-minute record. He gets close.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Michael Bay, 2011): This is okay besides the human characters, the robot characters, and the “comedy”. That leaves myth synthesis, plus more coherent action scenes, making this more entertaining than reading the plot summary. I don’t mind that Bay attains gravity by co-opting most of recorded history. Hey, Homer did it. Would’ve sold Achilles playsets and toys if he could.
The Unbearable Molly Brown (Charles Walters, 1964): As in Forrest Gump, a hint of satire is overwhelmed by a torrent of goop. Debbie Reynolds overacts to make up for being miscast, which never works. It’s less that the movie is ten years late for her than that it’s ten years late for everyone.
