J.D. Hansel

1963

The Nutty Professor Review

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Wait a minute – isn’t this movie supposed to be … ya know, funny?  It’s amazing how, with one look at the DVD case, anyone would think this film surely was one of the worst ever made, yet a look online would reveal how highly regarded it is as one of the great comedies.  While I can easily understand why critics want to recognize Lewis for his talents, I just have to ask … really?  This counts as a good comedy?

The characters are insufferable.  The story is insufferable.  The hokey visual gags are insufferable.  Most of the other jokes are insufferable.  The ending is just plain stupid, and undercuts everything else in the movie.  The only thing about this movie that’s impressive is, much to my surprise, the filmmaking.  The way that it’s shot and edited impressed me, but even more impressive is the production design – the costumes, the props, and the sets.  Largely due to its brilliant use of gorgeous colors, this is a movie I would gladly show to anyone who wanted to see my idea of a pretty-looking movie, as long as I didn’t have to watch it with them.

The Birds Review

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With High Anxiety being my favorite Mel Brooks film, one would expect that I would be well-versed in the works of Alfred Hitchcock.  Quite contrarily, after watching Strangers on a Train for a film history class I took a few years ago, I was turned off by Hitchcock.  I felt like whenever he was trying to have me waiting in suspense, I found myself just waiting.  I put off watching his films for another day, simply because I didn’t feel like being bored, but I eventually felt like I may have been missing out on some important films.  I decided to give him another go, trying out one of the films he’s best known for, if not the film he’s best known for, The Birds.

While I had a little bit of a hard time getting into it at first (since its pace is almost annoyingly slow at times), I was quickly impressed more than I thought I would be by the characters and dialogue.  The conversations that the characters had when they weren’t dealing with a bird attack were actually very interesting for the most part, and it’s always good when character interactions are enough to keep me interested.  Then, during the now-cliché panicked bar scene – that scene in all the disaster movies with the flustered witness of the attack, the bartender who tries to keep things under control, the skeptic who happens to be an expert on the subject, and the lunatic who believes it’s the end of the world – I was delighted by how Hitchcock had perfected this kind of set-up.  The addition of the panicky mother made the scenes in the bar that much better.

Oh, and I suppose the scary elements are sort of an important part of this film, being its mark on the history of cinema and all, so I’ll briefly say that I liked them.  The scary scenes weren’t exceptionally terrifying in the sense I’m used to, but maybe that’s a good thing.  I despise jump scares, so it’s nice that Hitchcock did a good job at keeping me on the edge of my seat and fearing for the well-being of the characters I’d come to really like, all without relying on too many cheap gimmicks.  While the ending somehow manages to be both gripping and underwhelming at the same time, making for a movie experience that feels a little awkward, I think that this picture is nicely crafted work of cinema that’s creative, fascinating, and supplies just the kind of experience it needs to to make it into the film history books.

122 The Birds

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World Review

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Given my immense appreciation for comedy, I cannot help but appreciate an ode to comedy.  Comedy can be such a powerful force for good, making the burdens of life more bearable, and bringing important issues to light in a way that people can easily handle.  The beauty of comedy is that, even at its filthiest, it is a pure art form, in the sense it exists simply to bring about happiness.  When one considers the element of challenge in justifying the emotional investment required for film with the emotional reservation required for comedy (all on the part of the spectator, that is), it borders on miraculous when a good comedy film is released.  This is why I consider comedies to be one of the greatest cinematic achievements, if not the very greatest, known to date.

. . . And I guess this one’s okay.

By gosh, does it drag on.  I wouldn’t mind the run-time if I could enjoy any of the characters, but what the film lacks is a group of characters (even if it’s a very small group) that’s mixed in with these annoying, stubborn, loud, rotten, mercenaries.  Give me a Ferris Bueller or an Alvy Singer who will look me right in the eye and guide me through the insanity – this way the chaos becomes something to bond over with the movie as opposed to something that isolates me.  In spite of the presence of many great actors I usually enjoy (Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Jonathan Winters, etc.), the closest that the movie came to having a character I enjoyed was the police chief.  His life was so miserable that I was quite depressed during the scenes in which I had to hear his wife and daughter on the phone, so the part of the movie I found most uplifting was when it looked like he was going to get a new life.  That would have made the whole movie worth all the trouble.

I really do have several big problems with this movie, although I can’t quite call it a bad film.  Yes, I am bothered by how they wasted some great comedians (by using Stan Freberg, known for songs and voices, as a non-speaking background role).  I’m bothered by the needless subplots that focus on characters who don’t matter to me.  I’m bothered by how little I laughed during the movie, and by how few times they wrote halfway decent roles for women or those in minorities.  It bothers me that the screenwriters somehow, almost unfathomably, managed to make me dislike the characters to the point that I didn’t want to watch them, but still sympathize with them to the point that I felt bad when things went wrong for them.  There is much to dislike in this movie.  However, as much as I’m tempted to give it a relatively low rating, I’ll go easy on it.  Why?  Because by the end of the film, one thing is made very clear – laughter is one of the most important, magical, and precious things we have in this life, and this movie won’t let us forget that.

106 It's a Mad, Mad,... World