Old Films Reviewed

If you are a happy bachelor who wakes up married to a hot Italian woman after a drunken evening, what do you do?
1. Divorce her
2. Tell her that you aren't married (she doesn't know English, so it might work)
3. Decide you don't need a life of carefree parties, women and your faithful butler, and enjoy married life.
4. Kill her.

Well, with a title like this, you would think option #4 is the way to go. But don't jump to conclusions.

Stanley Ford (Jack Lemmon) is a successful cartoonist with his own column and a happening bachelor life. Then in a drunken moment of confusion, he offers a diamond ring to the girl popping out of his friend's bachelor party cake. Also present were a judge and notary and plenty of witnesses. Fast forward 8 hours and his hangover includes a spouse.

He immediately wants out, but his lawyer refuses to give him an annulment until he has given the marriage a chance. So he is forced into awkward social situations including spilling a tureen of soup onto himself in front of his boss.

Of course his cartoon strip changes angles and suddenly he has a new audience. Everyone that sees him on the street comments about how their wife/mother/in-law read the strip and thought it was hilarious. Meanwhile his new wife is planning to move her mother in, redecorating, and buying pets. Stanley doesn't know what to do. He misses being a bachelor. His life, his home, and his work have all changed.

Then he comes up with a solution. He can 'kill' his wife. He talks to several experts and makes a plan. Unfortunately after the comic strip is published with him murdering his wife, she disappears. Suddenly, Stanley is facing murder charges.

My Take

I liked this movie. It was comedic, but the jokes were still funny to a 2009 audience. It even has a good message about marriage...and its not that you should try to murder your spouse. This movie will leave you with lots of laughs.

So, this is a movie for people that don't like dialogue. The only spoken 'words' were proper nouns like a name or perhaps title. I can't imagine how this film made Raquel Welch famous. Maybe it was because she spent the entire film wearing a two piece fur bikini. Daniel doesn't think she is even an actress, she is just a body that got lucky. A body with an amazingly tiny waist.

Supposedly its a love story. That's what Daniel says. I admit, I did not watch it at all. It was so stinking boring to me. Anyway, its a love story between Loana of the Shell people and Tumak (an outcast from the savage Rock Tribe).

Tumak gets in a fight with his dad, the leader of the Rock Tribe, and gets kicked out. Loana and some other Shell women (who are all blonde by the way) see him, and Loana nurses him back to health. Unfortunately, Loana was sort of engaged. Anyway, Tumak's presence causes too much drama, so the Shell people send him away and Loana goes with him back to live with the Rock Tribe.

One of the silliest scenes is where Loana and Tumak are with the Rock people and they get to a body of water, so she jumps in. The cave people start enjoying themselves then a giant dinosaur bird thingy (sorry, not an expert) comes and attacks. Clearly, if you ever try to enjoy yourself, you will be attacked by a big monster bird reptile.

Anyway, I suppose the ending was happy enough. There was some sort of initiation of war between the two tribes, and an act of God, i.e. volcano eruption, stops the war and ends up combining the two tribes.

I know, I just ruined the ending for you. I am not really sorry, you don't watch this movie for the story. You watch it to be amazed at the unshaven men, and surprisingly groomed women.

Anyway, if you like watching really fun claymation special effects this is a great film for you.

Holy cow, two posts a week apart. The crazy part is that neither one was scheduled. The whole 'old' rule might be modified since we now have a toddler in the house and its either something that's flashy and has lots of music or after bedtime (which means we don't want to read subtitles). Its too bad though, there are some really good foreign films out there.

Anyway back to the movie...

Plot
This is a movie where Lucille Ball and Bob Hope play young people. Its a stretch. I mean, come on, Lucy was in her late 30s when this film was released in 1950; she was born in 1911. This is also one of the movies she made before she got her own show. Don't ask me how they thought she deserved her own show from this.

Regardless, the story is about the Floud family a neuvo riche family that made it big in the frontier in Butte, Montana in its pre-statehood days. They go to England to find a man for their daughter {though at this point she would have totally been a spinster}. One guy fancies her and decides to invite them to his country home to meet his family. Small problem, he has neither a country home nor family. No worries, his friend has a country home and he knows an acting troop he can hire to play his family for the weekend.

Enter Humphrey (Hope) the hired actor playing the butler. Humphrey is nowhere near conventional, but Ma Floud believes he can fix her husband so he can act like a true gentleman. She sends atelegram announcing that she was bringing home a "gentleman's gentleman." The entire town assumes a Lord or Duke or some such is coming back to marry Agatha (Ball). This is where the real problems begin.

Suddenly Humphrey has to act the Lord to the townpeople, but still be a butler at the manor all while actually being an actor.

My thoughts

Well, I don't feel enriched or even necessarialy entertained by watching the movie. The best part is that Bob Hope looks incredibly like Kelsey Grammer best known for his role as Dr. Fraiser Crane. Aside from that the humor was almost exclusively physical comedy. If you LOVE those funniest home video shows, you will probably enjoy this movie. If you can't stand them you wonder when there will be humor. I mean Bob Hope was known for his jokes. Lucille Ball was known for more physical comedy, but this physical comedy was just not funny.

Also, why didn't Humphrey have an English accent? EVER? He would throw a few horridly pronounced words in something that sort of resembled a British accent, but it was not consistant and it was not good.

Bottom line, it was an ok movie but its not worth your time. The whole "romantic comedy" concept is brief and it made me wonder how in the world Lucy ever got her own TV show. Trust me, this film does no one justice.
If you think of watching this show because you enjoyed I Love Lucy

This 1958 film is an old fashioned romantic comedy. Of course, that's very different from modern romantic comedies, but it wasn't horrible.

Plot:
James Gannon (Clark Gable) is the city newspaper editor. He is rough around the edges, but he knows his job and he is good at it. A request from a local professor teaching a journalism class is folly to him. Why would you go to school to learn how to edit? Its a waste of time. His reply letter of course lets Professor Stone (Doris Day) know what exactly he thinks of college journalism courses.

The only hitch in this is Gannon's boss, the editor-in-chief. Gannon of course had given his boss a copy of the letter he sent to Professor Stone, and the boss was not happy. He tells Gannon he he must go to the class. So Gannon goes to talk with the professor before class starts and tell her that he will do the guest lecture.

Gannon doesn't get to the class early enough and find Professor Stone starting class, and reading his scathing letter. Lets just say, she wasn't happy with direct insults to education.

Gannon, while not classically educated, recognizes a beautiful woman and decides he likes Miss Erica Stone, regardless of her less than satisfactory choice in career. So, James Gallagher is born. Mr. Gallagher is a simple blue collar worker that is taking night school so he can write a company newsletter. Its the perfect cover. Professor Stone is impressed at Ghallagher's raw novice talent and takes him on as a protege.

Ghallagher falls for Stone hard. He tries to steal her away from Dr. Hugo Pine, even though Hugo is not a romantic pursuit and is collaborating on a book with Stone. He discovers that Stone is the daughter of a famous small town newspaper editor (modeled after William Allen White who was actually from my small town hometown). Towards the end Ghallager sees the validity of education and realizes he is in love with Stone. Of course before he can confess that he is Gannon and possibly be with her, Stone finds out his identity in an effort to get Ghallager a job.

My Thoughts:

Well, this story line is similar to others. In fact if you have seen many Doris Day movies, she does several films with Rock Hudson that have a similar plot.

I did like that Stone's father was supposed to be William Allen White, just because I grew up in small town Kansas and actually went to William Allen White Elementary School. Of crouse, that had nothing to do with the film really. Just a personal enjoyment.

I also enjoy Doris Day playing a college professor. Lets face it, in the 50s there weren't that many college professors that were female. She had to have shown that she was at least as good as competing males for the job (though her famous father might have helped her out).

I don't like that Clark Gable is in his late 50s and looks like he is in his late 50s. He makes Doris Day look really young, aside from the old lady hair that was popular in the 50s and probably also used to make her more legitimate as a professor. Afterall, bleach blondes aren't typically thought of as educated women.

I guess overall, I liked the movie. It made me think, "Education is important!" It does a good job showing that having an academic background will make you a better worker on the job. I support that theme for sure.

Sorry we have been less than faithful dear old blog. Lets just say, summer isn't really movie time in our house. Also, Danno is taking a super hard Calculus II class. That means we have to do things not interesting to him so he will study longer. It also means that when he gets a break, a video game is more likely to appear than a movie. Such is life.

Probably once the class is over, and its either REALLY hot, or it gets cold again, we will be back at em. I will try to finish up the posts that I have started and not completed and schedule them every week or so, just to fill in the gap we are taking. You know, one that is announced unlike most of them.

Many children of the 80s grew up quoting this movie. The fact that people even know the 'truffle shuffle' is proof that this movie was, at least at one time, a major hit. The Goonies is a Steven Spielburg film so even though it was made in the early 80s, the effects are still pretty nice.

Anyway on to the plot and such.

This movie is about a group of loud obnoxious neighborhood kids, whose parents have been hit by the recession and are losing their homes. The icing on the cake is that their homes will be destroyed for a nicer newer country club by the biggest jerk in school's father.

The dreamer of the group Mikey (Sean Astin) has high hopes that they can save their homes by following a treasure map and finding the lost pirate treasure. His cohorts all have fun nicknames: Mouth (Corey Feldman), Data (Jonathan Ke Quan), and Chunk (truffle shuffle extrordinnaire Jeff Cohen). Since they are just kids, Mikey's older brother goes to retrieve them, and ends up joining them on thier adventures. His crush Andy and her friend Stef also join them.

The group follow the treasure map to a "Summer Place" where the Fertelli Gang have a money printing operation and thier hideout. Under the fireplace in a basement room is the entrance to some old caves. The kids, minus Chunk who was distracted by a freezer full of ice cream, go down to the caves and find rooms with pipes going into buildings followed by the bottom of an old wishing well. Chunk is sent to get help but is intercepted by the Fertelli's. After a humerous confession he is tied up with an "it." The it is called Sloth and is the somewhat deformed but really strong younger brother of the Fertelli clan. Chunk and Sloth bond over some chocolate before escaping.

After several close calls with the Fertelli's the kids take a crazy water slide into a large cave with the pirate ship. The ship has lots of treasure, but the Fertelli's are not complete morons and catch up to them making the kids walk the plank and hand over all the gold in thier pockets.

Never fear, 'justice' and Sloth prevail saving the kids, and no one even dies. This is a family film you know.

As a kid I loved the movie, once I got married I was surprised that it was two hours of screaming children. Of course, now that I have a screaming kid of my own the screaming is more tolerable. But, be prepared for lots of screaming.

Overall I rate it four stars, with a special bonus star for the preteen and young teen group. Just be aware, PG ratings in the 80s meant you will hear the occasional 4 letter word (we are talking the s word, and the h word, but not the f bomb).

This is a movie that inspired many remakes; the most recent remake was You've Got Mail. If you liked that movie, I recommend watching the film that inspired many.

The Shop Around the Corner is a film centering around a little store that sells leather goods. Alfred (James Stewart) is the long time employee of a little shop, and he has a correspondence "friend." He met her via a classified ad that was looking for someone to write to and asked that all letters be addressed "Dear Friend."

Meanwhile a girl Klara comes asking for a job, impresses the boss and is hired. Alfred and Klara don't get along very well and almost every interaction is full of sass. Time passes in the shop and Alfred who had been with the shop for nine years starts losing favor with Mr. Matuschek (played by Frank Morgen, I recognized him as the Wizard of Oz). Alfred also keeps writing his "Dear Friend" and gets to the point where he plans on meeting her, and probably getting engaged. Unfortunately, to do that he needs to make more money. He sort of implied to Dear Friend that he is more important (read wealthy) than a shop clerk.

He goes in to ask Mr. Matuschek about a raise, and get fired! He is stunned, and everyone else in the shop is sad. Alfred is now jobless in a poor economy (like today). He hasn't the heart to show up. He goes with one of the other shop clerks to the restaurant where they were to meet, and asks the other clerk to give a note to his Dear Friend. The other clerk recognized Klara immediately and starts trying to warm Alfred up to the idea that Klara will be a good match.

The ending is really good. In fact, its just a feel good movie. I won't share it, since it is different, and for some reason I tend to only give spoilers for movies I dislike. SO go, rent it or check it out from your local library and enjoy this feel good movie.

Four Stars for feel good romance.