The Film Habit #23 - October 8, 2004

I’ve got a rather large stack of things I should be writing for CB right now, but the largest is this, so I guess I’ll start with it. Also in the queue is a review of Friday Night Lights, which I saw last night and am still not quite sure how to take. Is it an expose on the corrupt, twisted world of High School football, or is it a traditional sports movie where we are actually supposed to be rooting for the team? Hopefully I’ll have all that sorted out in my head by the time I get started putting keyboard to MS Word. In fact, by the time you read this, the review will probably already be up and you’ll all wonder what the heck I’m talking about.

Somewhere in there I’m also trying to find time to finish a DVD review of Born Rich, which is really easy to write about since I can just fill it with empty jokes about how much I hate rich people. Not that I’d do that. Add to that finding time to watch the annoyingly named I Heart Huckabees and the gleefully offensive Team America: World Police this weekend and then actually write about them and my plate is pretty full. I hope that Aladdin DVD takes its sweet time in arriving, since I don’t have room in my schedule to review it anyway.

Yes, I actually have a schedule now and that’s a pretty scary thing. It’s this big looming white board leering over my computer in the spare bedroom that doubles as my office, filled with infinite lists of pending reviews, upcoming screenings, and basically just a lot of things to keep me busy. It detracts from the overall look of the room, which otherwise is filled with Lord of the Rings posters and an honorably placed replica of Sting. It’s a good thing I love all of you.

Seeya Rodney!

Rodney Dangerfield died this week at the age of 82 and will no doubt be missed by some people. I don’t know if he’ll be particularly missed by me (after all he’s not exactly DeForest Kelly) but he seemed like a funny guy, did two sorta funny movies, and has googly eyes so I stuck him up in the site logo as a way to say goodbye.

Death though, has a way of making some people seem more important than they are. Since his death I’ve heard Rodney heralded as one of the most important forces in comedy. As a genius. As an innovator. As one of the twenty best stand-up comics of all time. Huh? Was he really?

Let’s step down off the death hype machine and really consider Rodney Dangerfield. What did he do? Well he was a comedian. Was he a good one? I don’t know, I guess he made me laugh a time or two. He looked funny. He invented a catch phrase that people have been overusing in his death. His stand-up act mostly consisted of self-deprecating one-liners about on par with the work of Don Rickles. Not particularly unique. His style (if not this raunchy content) was a throwback to an outdated era of comedy that people like Carlin helped make dead and buried… and thank god for that.

What about movies? Rodney made a lot of really funny movies didn’t he? Well, Rodney certainly made a lot of movies, 21 of them in fact. His most famous is Caddyshack, in which he was just part of a larger ensemble cast. His only decent starring role was in Back to School, which I guess is funny in that guilty pleasure Van Wilder sort of way. The rest of his movies roles were mostly crap. He had a small role in Natural Born Killers, he was the voice of a horrible animated dog, he made the movie Ladybugs. Those are the highlights of his movie career folks.

The truth is that Rodney was a fairly funny and talented guy who made a few people laugh. He’ll be remembered fondly and should be, but reverence for the dead doesn’t mean over-blowing their career into something it most certainly was not. Rodney is deserving of some respect (I just barely dodged the catchphrase there, I promised myself I wouldn’t use it… but the temptation is great), but not a place in history as one of the greats. Let’s acknowledge the man for what he did do, thank him for the times he did make us laugh and move on without lying to ourselves about how important he was. Somehow I don’t think even Rodney would expect more than that.

me with your all time top twenty stand-up comedians.

What to Watch

New movies come out each week. I don’t see all of them, but still feel qualified to tell you which movie you should watch. Feed your film habit from my picks. Next week brings relief, this week we wade through crap.

Taxi opens this weekend and is just about as bad as the trailer with the transforming super-cab would lead you to believe it is. It even hacks off the trailer’s only legitimately funny moment. You know, the part where Queen Latifah refuses to pick up white people. That hasn’t been done this year you know. Maybe not since she made Bringin Down the House. I’m almost compelled to rent the French version and see if it was also this bad. I hear it’s not.

But Taxi isn’t bad enough to make me recommend Raise Your Voice. It’s just the latest in that never ending string of Hillary Duff movies. I think this is her seventh just this month. That’s a little surprising since Friday will only be the eighth, but true I swear. Why doesn’t she take a lesson from the Olsen Twins and just release all her stuff straight to video, spare us the misery. Also, stay away from cocaine and eat something once in awhile.

Aside from a sneak preview of Team America World Police (playing in select cities in one showing Saturday evening) the only remotely palatable, legitimate release this weekend is Friday Night Lights. It’s a football movie with Billy Bob Thornton, and no he isn’t playing. Shame too, seeing that puppet-like hick bounding across a football field would likely be more entertaining than this movie. Friday Night Lights as is though is what we’re stuck with. It isn’t bad, the football playing itself is well filmed, only on field action is just about all the movie has to it. You unhealthily rabid football fans will probably love it. The more cerebral among us will only manage to sit through it.

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