From the Vault: That Thing You Do!

My Own Worst Critic is leaving on vacation Saturday and will have little time to post between now and Oct. 2. So I’m sharing some reviews I wrote in college for The Hoya, Georgetown University’s newspaper. Rereading these old reviews, I noticed several things:

1. I wasn’t as bad a writer as I remembered. A little caustic perhaps, but respectable.
2. I seemed to remember that I was the lead movie critic at my college paper, but judging by the movies I was given to review–Hackers, High School High, That Thing You Do!–I may have been overestimating my position.
3. I really liked using fart and vomit imagery back then. This is something I should re-explore.

He’s back. Just when the world thought we could escape his ubiquitous dopey smile and his late 50s paper boy hair cut, Tom Hanks returns to the big screen. He very well may be taking over the world. As proof, he is not only starring in big budget, quality family films, but he’s also directing. His first stab at conquering humanity is a new movie about a fictional 60s rock n’ roll band and their hit song, called That Thing You Do!

Reliving Game 6 for the First Time

I was nine years old when the ball went through Bill Buckner’s legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. I watched the game, but I don’t remember it; despite my t-ball prowess (I led the league in building mounds in the outfield), I was not a sports fan at the time. But I do remember my brother’s response. He cried, slammed his bedroom door shut and punched some things in his room. He was 11. Even my parents, who weren’t baseball fans, were kind of somber after that game.

Now, after being a devout Red Sox fan for the last dozen years, I know what Red Sox pain is like: I remember the sweeps at the hands of the Indians in the playoffs, the disastrous series against the Yankees (when Mussina almost threw a perfect game) in August 2001, and of course the nightmare of Game 7 of the ALCS in 2003. But all that doesn’t compare to what it must have been like for fans on October 25, 1986, when the Red Sox went into the ninth up two runs, and had the Mets down to their last strike.

Game 6, a tiny little speck of a movie that came out last year, attempts to recapture the weight of that moment, the anticipation, the anxiety, the excitement and the angst that Red Sox fans felt. It does so in the most curious way: it tells the story of a playwright (Michael Keaton) whose breakthrough play is debuting that night on Broadway. Wait, what the hell? Aren’t Red Sox fans supposed to be plumbers and state cops? If that’s not enough, the guy’s a New Yorker.

What is the Best High School Movie?

As regular readers of this blog know, I love Entertainment Weekly. I get especially moist when they publish their lists. Their latest, the 50 Best High School Movies, is no exception, but for one glaring flaw: they named The Breakfast Club the best high school movie of all time, when the clear choice is Dazed and Confused (which they put at No. 3).

I wouldn’t be writing this post if I were just quibbling with the order of the list. I am more disturbed by their exaltation of The Breakfast Club because what that movie represents. It is an embodiment of the “big lie” of teen movies: the myth that cliques are mutually exclusive entities.

Worst Boston accents on film…

In response to longtime reader bro’s question on whether any movies have good Boston accents, I have decided that, with your help, we can generate a list of the 10 worst Boston accents in movie history. Here are my nominations, in no particular order:

• Robin Williams, Good Will Hunting
• Tom Hanks, Catch Me If You Can
• Tim Robbins, Mystic River
• Joe Pesci, With Honors

For a list of Massachusetts-based movies, click here.

Dear, Dear… The Departed

I saw a commercial for The Departed for the first time tonight, and while few things get me more excited than a new Martin Scorsese movie, I’m a little skeptical of this one. Watching the trailer only confirmed my fears.

For starters, the casting is highly suspect. Scorsese continues his ill-advised obsession with Leonardo DiCaprio. In this one, he’s an undercover cop infiltrating a Boston gang. I don’t expect much for DiCaprio has yet to prove he can convincingly play an adult. Taken individually, I very much like the key members of the cast: Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin. But put them all together, and you have more faux-toughness and scenery-chewing than Sawyer’s flashbacks on Lost. And judging from the trailer, the Boston accents, with the exception of Wahlberg’s, are universally awful. Nicholson’s is especially bad.

18 Questions for the Creators of Little Miss Sunshine

MOWC note: Do NOT read this review if you haven’t seen Little Miss Sunshine. It will spoil the movie and won’t make any sense anyway.

I saw Little Miss Sunshine last night and I may have a fuller review soon, but in the meantime, I have a few questions for the writer, directors and producers of LMS:

1. When the family gets ready to leave on the trip to the beauty pageant in California, why exactly must Dwayne come?
2. What diner anywhere in the United States includes numerous entree items for under $4? Seriously, tell me. I’ll eat there.

The Mystery of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

There’s something strange about the casting of Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer as sidekicks in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but it took me a while to put my finger on it. Both of them have reputations as serious dramatic actors, but that’s not it; Downey, for one, has been in more comedies than dramas, and Kilmer has been in more terrible action movies than he’d like to admit. And it’s not like acclaimed actors don’t make silly comedies–DeNiro and Nicholson have made millions serving as the heavies opposite goofy comic leads. What makes Kiss Kiss Bang Bang different is there is no Ben Stiller or Owen Wilson to lighten up their gravitas. KKBB relies on its dramatic actors to serve as comic foils to each other.

But as odd as the pairing seems, it’s also easy to imagine how Downey’s and Kilmer’s careers could have taken different paths, paths that would have led to them to become natural partners for a comic action vehicle like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Downey’s neurotic acting style is tailormade for a sidekick role: he’s like a smarter, less physical version of Chris Tucker. And producers have been trying to turn Kilmer into a star for years; if any of Kilmer’s action movies had even been tolerable (or profitable), he would currently be playing the kinds of roles that go to Nicolas Cage and Bruce Willis.