Movie review - "Swing Shift" (1984) **

I've got a theory that movies that are endlessly cut and recut have a basic story flaw. That's my take on this one where Jonathan Demme was famously sacked by Goldie Hawn.

It's got a great idea - women working in World War Two. Solid feminism - women working for the first time, being liberated financially and sexually. 

But it's dragged down by being so fair and nice. Ed Harris is nice. Hawn's life before the war is quite pleasant. He joins up.

Kurt Russell wants Goldie. He asks her out a bunch of times which makes him an arsehole.  I didn't like him and I didn't like her. Then he shags Christine Lahti and I didn't like them.

The problems are so easy to be fixed. Just make Hawn's husband horrible. Have her be liberated by the war. Discover the joys of decent sex, money, working. Private Benjamin did it better. 

The movie also is annoyingly expensive - huge sets, factories, ballrooms, extras. Not needed.

It's fun to see people like Holly Hunter, Roger Corman, Stephen Tobolowsy. But the film doesn't work. It's not enjoyable.

In fairness, the film was heavily rewritten and changed from what Demme intended - see here. But I'm not sure even with those changes it would have worked.

Book review - "There's No Going Back The Life and Work of Jonathan Demme" by David M. Stewart

 Solid biography of the director - I'm surprised there hadn't been one before now. It packs a fair bit in - his publicist, flashy dad, who had progressive politics and was a bit of a sleaze, like his son, really, who didn't always treat women well. Like his Australian first wife who he refused to allow produce.

Demme broke in as a publicist, worked in New York, interned for Joe Levine, benefited from a wealthy background, move to London, did some work on Eyewitness, then hooked up with Roger Corman, stayed with Corman a few years. Obviously talented, so much so that people kept giving him work despite a lack of hits. Indeed, he only had a few hits throughout his career. Quality of his work seemed to slip after Philadelphia with too many remakes but in his defense his focus seems to have been split, doing a lot of producing and documentaries, being involved in Haiti. A heavy smoker which is why he died relatively young.

I'm not a huge Demme fan. Something slightly lacking in the book. Maybe a layer of depth or something.

Chevy Chase Top Ten

 1) Community - brought him back and he repaid them by bad mouthing the show

2) Foul Play (1978) - terrific male lead to Goldie

3) Fletch (1985) - put it on the Underhills

4) Spies Like Us (1985) - great partner to Aykroyd

5) National Lampoon's Vacation (1983) - very solid family man stuff

6) Caddyshack (1980) - I think this is how he imagines himself

7) Funny Farm (1988) - a little stressful to watch at times but charming

8) Ellie Parker (2005) - look, I genuinely liked his role in this, he was very good

9) Three Amigos (1986) - atypical work but a lot of fun

10) Oh Heavenly Dog (1980) - I loved it as a kid, have not seen it since then, don't want to risk ruining the memory

Goldie Hawn Top Ten

 In honour of her birthday

1) Foul Play - charming comedy-mystery. Farrah F would've killed it.

2) Private Benjamin - incredibly good. Really feminist third act.

3) Butterflies Are Free - Hawn's early roles were all the same but she's gorgeously entertaining in them. I'll pick this one.

4) Shampoo - a film I like better once I grew up. She's great in a terrific cast.

5) Deceived - no one remembers this thriller but I really liked it.

6) Overboard-really fun, sweet movie.

7) Protocol - used her star power for some good old Frank Capra consciousness raising

8) Housesitter - I wish she'd work more with Steve Martin

9) The Sugarland Express - Spielberg's first

10) First Wives Club - fun, she teams well with the others, they should've reteamed them

Movie review - "Foul Play" (1978) ***1/2

 Really fun Hitchcock style light thriller with Goldie Hawn terrific value as the woman who gets involved in an assassination plot. It's a thriller first - there is a very high death toll, and Hawn is in a lot of peril.

Some scenes do not age well - Hawn beating up dwarf Billy Barty, the albino killer. But it remains funny with a wonderful star, excellent male lead (Chevy Chase adapting very well and making one wish he'd played more male leads to female stars), superb support cast (Brian Denney as Chase's partner who practically has "I will be killed in the third act" on his head. Hawn's rape obsessed best friend, Dudley Moore hilarious as a horny conductor, Burgess Meredith as a karate snake owning landlord, Rachel Roberts as a baddie, the two little old ladies playing rude scrabble... Higgins did great support characters), and several impressive set pieces.

This movie just wants you to have fun. It's very endearing, even Barry Manilow on the soundtrack.

Movie review - "Everyone Says I Love You" (1996) **1/2

 This is an end of an era film for Woody Allen in a way. The last time he really experimented with form, doing a musical. (He used to try to mix up the form every few movies - meta rom com, sci fi, Fellini-esque, pseudo documentary - but after this basically stopped taking visual risks).  It's a lively piece with some fun numbers and tunes.

It was also the first time he had some spectacularly awful casting - Julia Roberts and Woody are an utterly mismatched pair. I love Julia Roberts, her acting is lovely but she's totally not suited to being with Woody; it started a depressingly long trend where he was teamed with much younger actors and where that age difference wasn't the point of the story. The flipside of that is that this has some really nice casting - Drew Barrymore's role was something of a turning point for her, she'd normally played vixens as a grown up but the "good girl" type she plays here would be a lot more lucrative for her; Natasha Lyonne had her first lead role with this; it's early parts too for Natalie Portman, Billy Crudup and Edward Norton. Goldie Hawn plays the Mia Farrow role. Tim Roth is hilarious as an ex con.

The musical conceit has the actual actors singing - like what Peter Bogdanovich tried to do with At Long Last Love. Like that this is a shaggy dog story among the rich - Allen's feels like it should have been set in the 30s, with its (mostly) super rich protagonists living a la la lifestyle, but was set in the present in day, presumably for cost. 

It ambles along. There's some funny jokes. The last half hour is  a drag because the key subplots have resolved (Barrymore is back with Norton, Roberts has dumped Allen) and the climactic number is between Allen and Hawn (who we've hardly spent time with). It was having a good time until then.

Some scenes make me a little awkward, I admit, considering the allegations against Allen: Natalie Portman running around on the beach in a swimsuit when she was very young; super young Lyonne being sexually precocious at 17 (I think - though is she meant to be older than Drew Barrymore?) and telling her father she wants to get marriage.

Movie review - "Shampoo" (1975) ****1/2

 I didn't like this when I first saw it but I was too young and the film was on TV and had been censored so I was unclear about some things, like how Julie Christie shocked the guests at the part and what Warren Beatty did with Carrie Fisher (did he take a dump?) but as time has passed I appreciate more and can see how good it is.

I don't think it reinvented the wheel - it took a very very old restoration comedy (the rooster in the henhouse) and gave it a new sheen, with Hal Ashby's low key direction, Robert Towne's witty script (I know Beatty is credited as co writer, I just feel he's more an editor and credit hog), perfect cast, fresh set up (male hairdresser in Beverly Hills), and Warren Beatty in the most perfectly cast role of his career. By the late 80s he would be too old for these roles but he is utterly at home in the mid 70s and it has an added tang knowing he co starred against so many ex-girlfriends.

Beatty plays a super stud who drives around Beverly Hills on a motorbike, sleeps with all these women, is great at his job... but it's also reassuring because he's a mess at business (he can't get a loan to start his own shop), he is longing for Julie Christie who he can get but not permanently, and his life is a mess. The women have sexual drive for him - Beatty was most effective as a hapless lust object pursued by strong women and in over his head amongst the world.

Goldie Hawn is charming as is actress girlfriend, Julie Christie is fascinating as his true love (no great catch in a way, with a drinking problem, and a disdain for hard work, but very charismatic), Jack Warden is imposing as the affable but tough businessman, Lee Grant is electric as Warden's wife, Jay Robinson effective as the salon owner, and Carrie Fisher makes a smash debut as the precocious teen (smart beyond her years but not as smart as she thinks she is). The only really dud one is Tony Bill in what is admittedly a thankless part as the director keen on Hawn.

The music is excellent, as is Ashby's direction. It lost a little pace in between parties for some reason - I'm sure it's structural.

Movie review - "$" (1971) **1/2

 Warren Beatty tries his hand at a caper film which is what Kaleidoscope should have been. Despite being teamed with Goldie Hawn the public didn't really go for it - but then they rarely did for Beatty films unless he played a lust object pursued by a vivacious woman. I think because he did not portray dynamism on screen.

It's about a bank security expert and his hooker girlfriend robbing safe deposit boxes held by crooks including Robert Webber and Scott Brady (a great late career turn for him) plus a German. Gert Frobe is a banker.

This isn't a bad movie. German setting different. Little yuck to have all these Americans ripping them off. There's a nasty German killer, mind.

The tone of this never quite works. It's not that sexy or fun despite Hawn. She's with Beatty at the beginning - they're a couple - she sleeps with people. Maybe more of her would've helped. I don't find Beatty a compelling screen presence. He's fine, just not compelling. 

Richard Brooks wrote and directed it. The subtext of "money" is really, really hammered in - like there's scenes in a strip club with slides showing money projected against the wall and sounds about money playing while there are silhouettes of strippers.

Movie review - "Town & Country" (2001) *

It's a tribute to Warren Beatty's appeal to studio execs that he got this green lit at $50 million and to his ability as a procrastinator to get the cost up to $100 million. No stunts, present day setting, no action, a trifle about adulterous middle aged people. It's a French style comedy that amazingly cost so, so much money.

Beatty, to be fair, is quite animated, doing double takes and running around and dressing in a polar bear outfit. He seems to be more comfortable here than in Love Affair because the script has made more allowance for his age - he ha grown children (one of them Josh Hartnett) and he's married (Diane Keaton).

He's irresistible to the ladies still - Natassa Kinski is a cellist who plays nude for him, Goldie Hawn is the cuckolded wife of his best friend (Gary Shandling), Andie McDowell is an eccentric belle, Jenna Elfman is into him.

Maybe one star is too harsh - it's not awful. At least not the first half. It's pleasantly shot. There's good actors. I smiled once or twice. Charlton Heston has fun as McDowell's nutty dad.

I think I was just offended so much money was spent on it. Maybe that's unfair, to review the budget rather than the film, but it's how I feel.

Also a lot of it is lame. The action takes place over months. It's not a nice, tight farce. The second half gets wonkier and wonkier and it finally ends.

Book review - "A Lotus Grows in the Mud" by Goldie Hawn (2005)

At first I was disappointed this wasn't a more standard bio - I would've loved to read more (actually, make that I would've loved to have read something) about films like Butterflies are Free, Shampoo, First Wives Club etc etc. This is less conventional - it's a series of non-chronological diary entries, reminiscences, encounters, reflections, poems.

Once I accepted the book for what it was, rather than what I wanted it to be, it was enjoyable - it feels authentically "Goldie" if you know what I mean: sweet, reflective, very hippy-new-age-ish like you'd expect from a former dancer and child of the sixties.

And there is plenty of solid memoir stuff: growing up, essays on her parents (very evocatively depicted), sexual harassment encountered while a dancer, an attempted molestation as a child, working on Laugh In, adventures making Cactus Flower (Walter Matthau was a grump, Ingrid Bergman a dream), turning producer with Private Benjamin, her side of the story on Swing Shift (she's defensive, argues the cuts were pushed by the studio, but agreed they were necessary), holidays with the kids, some gushing over Kurt Russell, brief mentions of her first two husbands, working with Peter Sellars. Some of it was a bit cringey (eg visiting Africa, India) but it was consistently interesting, like its writer.

Movie review - "There's a Girl in My Soup" (1970) **

In his book The Season, William Goldman wrote a chapter on sex comedies on Broadway during the 1967 season, which included this - he says it was one of the best, not particularly high praise, in part because it had a decent number of laughs and its contemporary quality: the fact the hippie girl had a rock star lover, and ended up choosing him in the end, and everyone actually had sex instead of teasing it out.

This film adaptation is quite racy - Goldie Hawn shows off her boobs and bare backside, Peter Sellers goes down on a girl, everyone has lots of sex. The women are very good looking, Hawn is perfectly cast and does her best in what was already a tired conceit: the manic pixie dream girl who captures everyone's heart (she played it in this, Cactus Flower and Butterflies Are Free - all based on Broadway hits).

The piece is hurt greatly by Peter Sellers who hams it up and gives a sketch comedy performance - he never seems for a moment to be a real person with actual feelings (even by the standards of sex comedy). It's distancing. Also much of the material is repetitive. And the age gap between the guy and the girl is a bit yuck.

Movie review – “Overboard” (1987) ***

Sweet corny romantic comedy complete with a silly concept and two likeable stars in Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. (This is the sort of film that only works with stars.) Goldie flaunts her body like its going out of style, and since it’s excellent good on her.

 The film has a lovely family feeling and it passes the time just fine. You could imagine this being made from a Norman Krasna screenplay in the 30s with Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea. (Adding to the old Hollywood feel is the presence of Roddy McDowall in the support cast.) 

Like many Gary Marshall films it goes on too long and has a dragged out climax.

Movie review - "Wildcats" (1985) **

Some 80s high concept comedy: Goldie Hawn coaches an inner city high school football team (that's urban slum inner city not yuppie inner city). It might have been funnier (if less believable) if Goldie was more of a Private Benjamin type but she's an entirely competent coach, just a female one. 

This follows the sports movies template - intial disbelief, then acceptance, then struggle, recruit a star player, start to win, scary threat before climax, final victory. I love this template and those cliches. I just wish there was a joke or two (maybe a love interest for Goldie), although it passes the time pleasantly enough. 

James Keach is in good form as the ex - although why is it so horrible for him to want his girls to attend a private girls Catholic school? (They don't paint it as an evil place just a bit stuffy). One of the pleasures of watching sports films some time on is seeing if any of the cast went on to have futures - in this case there are two, Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes (who has a funny moment trying to seduce a middle aged black female judge), although the biggest support role goes to the Refridgerator Perry.