Following a ridiculous amount of foot-dragging time, I’m finally able to speak on Miss Cleo’s most recent batch of flicks. Admittedly, I gave her quite the sorting task with the list I drew up, so it’s not like we’re always gonna get some deep, thought-provoking theme; sometimes a simpler theme is necessary. This time ’round, we’ve got a collection of literary adaptations from various walks of life. Like I said: simple. Let’s do this thing, kids. It’s been a while.
Back in ’73, Parisian stage-dude Jean Poiret debuted his new farce La Cage aux Folles. Therein, confusion and shenanigoats ensue when a young man brings his fiancee’s uber-conservative parents to a dinner with his father, the owner of a nightclub in Saint Tropez, and his gay lover. Given the play’s nearly 1,800 performances, I’d say it was a bit of a hit. 1978 saw a silver screen adaptation of the play, one that met with great critical and commercial success (it won a Golden Globe, was nominated for a few Oscars (not the foreign language ones, mind you), and is the tenth highest-grossing foreign film in the history of the American box office) and spawned a pair of sequels. In 1983, Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman adapted Poiret’s play into a Broadway musical that kept the original story intact. The musical enjoyed a spectacular run, earning a bevvy of Tony awards and spawning a few revivals (which also ended up winning some Tonys). This multimedia success eventually led to an American film adaptation in 1996.
The Birdcage, as this adaptation was called, was directed by Mike Nichols of The Graduate and Closer fame (amongst plenty others) and stars Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as the central gay couple and Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest as the bride-to-be’s conservative parents. The setting has been transposed to South Beach and everything has been anglicized, including giving the visiting parents a more official standing in the community by making the father a Senator who co-founded the “Coalition for Moral Order”. The main plot, though, is mostly unchanged, with Robin Williams’s son Val (born from a one night fling with M’Lday Christine Baranski) bringing his fiancee (Calista Flockhart) to meet his parents, hers in tow as well. In order to avoid shocking or offending the Senator, Val concocts a scheme to make his gay father look entirely normal. Snags are hit constantly, what with the couple’s live-in flamboyant housekeeper Agador (Hank Azaria), the slightly tempestuous mood swings of Nathan Lane, and the unexpected involvement of Baranski in the proceedings. Still, the evening goes bumpily but mostly successfully until secrets are revealed and the press gets in on the action.
My experience with The Birdcage is a touch complicated. I can definitely remember the trailers when it came out, both in the wild and then on the Preview Channel, and they played up the madcap comedic bits, especially Robin Williams’s performance. Over the years, I’ve heard plenty of people talking the film up, establishing it as apparently one of the best comedies of all time, and the silliness continued to take center stage. When I watched it, though, I saw a comedy very much in the style of Mike Nichols, one that certainly had its wild bits (for me, most of them involved either Hank Azaria or Nathan Lane), but the underlying tone throughout was one of nigh-grave seriousness. The foundational plot is always central, and Val’s efforts to hide his parents homosexuality are handled quite earnestly, even if the methods and outcomes are played for droll laughs. A strong whiff of cynicism pervaded the film for me, and it seemed clear that Val was being painted as a bit of a heel and his parents as devoted, willing to do anything for him. Then, following some strong set-up and farcical piling up of lies and shenanigans, the ending reveal fell decidedly flat for me, as if Val’s redemption was only thrown in as a happy ending for the audience. His character didn’t feel as though he’d actually learned or realized anything of value, he just had to be the good guy in the end.
So the earnest tone and an unsatisfying conclusion kinda undermined the film for me. I’m not saying it’s bad by any means: there were plenty of laughs and the moral of acceptance and openness is a positive and welcome one. Perhaps it was just talked up too much to hold up in my eyes, I don’t know, but I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I’d still definitely recommend it, though (and I’m sure Miss Cleo certainly would, as well, as she’s listed it as one of her all-time favorites on a few occasions, so there’s that, too).
Smash cut to Party Monster.
No other segue would do, really. This film is based on the 1999 “Club Kid” memoir Disco Bloodbath: A Fabulous but True Tale of Murder in Clubland by James St. James (nee Clark), which chronicles the Manhattan club scene in the 80s and 90s, focusing on the rise and fall of his rival, Michael Alig. Much like with The Birdcage, though, Party Monster also has adaptational underpinnings in a precursor film, in this case the documentary Party Monster: The Shockumentary. The story is a bit of a strange one: Resident South Bend outcast Alig heads to the Big Apple and gets involved in the club scene thanks to the aforementioned Mr. St. James. Alig then becomes a popular promoter on the scene and ascends to ludicrous levels of notoriety. As the parties get wilder and the costumes get louder, Alig and his crew falls increasingly into drugs, culminating in the murder of a friend/drug dealer.
Sure, there’s a general narrative arc, but the feel of the film tilts more toward flashy cultural pastiche. I was rarely sure of the passage of time (being unfamiliar with the whole scene, I found it difficult to peg just when things were going down to begin with, much less where they progressed to), some of the characters blended into each other (those damn costumes didn’t help much), and the meta framing device ensured that nothing was certain to have happened (this was likely done on purpose). Honestly, I almost gave up on this thing early on; the only reason I kept on with it was to see what Miss Cleo saw in it. I mean, the acting runs the gamut from fine to unnatural to preternaturally overdone, the film quality looks to be amateur-digital-camera levels (it was the production company’s first non-documentary feature to be shot digitally, after all), the editing leaves a helluva lot to be desired, and the characters are in no way appealing to me. Still, by the end, and once I figured out what the thrust of the film was, I didn’t hate it. …I just really didn’t like it.
Much of the cast is solid enough, especially Macaulay Culkin, who was in front of the camera for the first time since Richie Rich, but plenty were either wasted (like Chloe Sevigny, who barely has a part in the last act, and Marilyn Manson, who doesn’t even have a line of dialogue, just flailing about and slur-moaning in a drug-induced stupor) or strangely used (like Wilmer Valderrama) or overwrought (hi, Seth Green), and their affectations were downright obnoxious. (Fun bit of trivia: The “too gay to function” Damien from Mean Girls appears both as a club MC and as a rat. Yeah.) Some bits lend some interesting verisimilitude to the proceedings, like the use of the real-life Alig’s apartment for external establishing shots and the use of the Club Kids’ actual costumes, but everything comes across as veneer, as fake, as exaggeration, which is likely done partially on purpose. For me, though, as a whole, the film just plain didn’t work.
I had an easier time, though, with One Day.
This time out, the basis is a 2009 novel by English writer David Nicholls. The novel is segmented into twenty chapters, each detailing the lives of two people and their interactions with each other on the same day of the year, St. Swithin’s Day (July 15, for us Yanks), for twenty years. I can’t confirm this, but the use of that particular day, aside from being the feast day of the patron saint of Nicholls’s home county, may have to do with the superstition that the weather on that day will remain for forty days hence, so the characters’ colliding on that day recurs similarly. Something like that, anyway. (Sounded so much better in my head…)
The film follows the same structure, with M’Lady Anne Hathaway’s Emma and Jim Sturgess’s Dexter constantly bumping into each other one way or another over the years, all glimpsed during a single day of the year. The two minorly hook up on the occasion of their collegiate graduation but agree to stay friends. Over the years, the two go through various relationships with other people, all the while harboring varying degrees of feelings for each other, until they finally end up together, only to be separated by tragedy.
It seems that critics have been harsh on the film over the years, from lambasting Hathaway’s “subpar” accent (their words, not mine) to lamenting the seeming lack of emotional depth present in the book. For me, it wasn’t the greatest love story ever told, but the unique presentation and the likability of the leads (mostly Hathaway, honestly, but Sturgess wasn’t too bad himself) kept me involved, and the relatively realistic portrayal of a pair of people constantly failing to get together and struggling with life (as opposed to the obnoxiously over-sentimentalized, -romanticized, or -idealized tales Hollywood has had a tendency to pump out over the years) breathed some fresh air into my eyes’ lungs. Possibly the saving grace is the sharp script, which Nicholls adapted himself, keeping the witty banter between the leads and presenting situations and dialogue that I could actually see happening (characteristics that would show up later in Nicholls’s adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd in 2015). Overall, it’s a solid film, one that could easily fly under many a radar out there.
Speaking of which, until I looked through Miss Cleo’s extensive catalog, I’d never even heard of Hangman’s Curse. Figured it was worth a shot.
Based on the 2001 Frank Peretti novel, the film follows the exploits of the Veritas Project, a family of four who are tasked with various investigations. We see them successfully wrapping up a drug bust at the beginning, only to quickly turn around and be hired to investigate strange happenings at a high school, where athletes are hallucinating and going into comas after supposedly seeing the ghost of a bullied student who committed suicide years prior. This titular “curse” is seen as a supernatural act of vengeance from the bullied goth kids, but the Veritas Project finds the real scoop: it involves sugar, anger, and wolf-recluse hybrid spiders. Y’know, that old prank.
Apparently, the novel series and the film adaptation (as far as I know, the sequel book, Nightmare Academy, has yet to be adapted) have clear Christian undertones, and the unmasking of the allegedly paranormal incidents is meant to illustrate this in a subtle manner. I didn’t really get that strong of a religious vibe from this film, more like a made-for-TV affair aimed at teenagers, hence the lack of “adult” language and violence and whatnot. And it’s that kind of made-for-TV production value that kinda tanked the film in my eyes, making it seem cheap and hastily done. The acting ranges from the solid in the form of VP patriarch David Keith (you know, “Battlin’ Jack” Murdock from Daredevil (the movie, not the TV series) and Boone from The Indian in the Cupboard, among plenty of other roles) to some nigh-laughably stilted deliveries from some of the younger, greener cast members. The story is a bit overly convoluted for its own good, and the decidedly spidery climax is thoroughly entertaining, but likely in a way the filmmakers didn’t intend. Perhaps it would have been a different experience had I grown up with the book, but I can’t really recommend this to many, honestly.
On the flip side of that recommendation coin, we have Flipped, another film that glided under my radar like the superpowered offspring of a U2 and an SR-71.
This 2010 film is based on a 2001 novel by Wendelin van Draanen. Based on her name, I assumed WvD was as Dutch as one could be, but it turns out she’s the American-born (Chicago-raised, actually) daughter of Dutch immigrants. Go figure. At least I wasn’t too far off, right? The novel shuttles the reader between two young’ns’ perspectives as they reflect on their relationship.
Much like the novel, the film presents the story split between the two perspectives, giving the audience insight into both of their inner workings as they navigate their feelings for each other over the course of a few years. Though the book is set in the late ’90s, writer/director Rob Reiner (who formerly gave us a similarly split take on relationships with When Harry Met Sally…) opted to set the film in the late ’50s/early ’60s, likely to imbue it with a sense of Americana-laden nostalgia that fits fairly well with the wholesome story.
Honestly, I don’t usually go in for such scrubbed, wholesome, family entertainment (though the maniacal Dove Foundation felt the language was just too damn harsh for families, somehow…), but this thing was just too charming and well-written to dislike. All of the actors did well in their tasks, and it was nice to see John Mahoney (the erstwhile Martin Crane from Frasier) and Aidan Quinn in film roles again. Everything worked here, and the children actually acted like children for the most part, something strangely rare in films these days (or ever, really…). The soundtrack is also a gem, sporting classic tracks from the Chiffons, the Drifters, the Everly Brothers, Dion and the Belmonts, and even an appearance from Reiner hisself. It’s a fun, cute (I know, I know), entertaining romp that most would enjoy, especially if they let their overly-serious guards down for a second.
Speaking of overly-serious, let’s talk about Nicholas Sparks for a minute, shall we? Yeah, I wouldn’t want to, either, but it’s kinda necessary at the moment. Sparks and I have a tempestuous history, relating only to his film adaptations, ’cause I can’t be arsed to actually read any of his drivel. The Last Ride was insipid and boring, The Best of Me was laughable and incredibly trite, and The Choice was borderline decent until the ending just tore down any likability that somehow remained at that point. All of his films seem to just drip with melodramatic cheese sauce, usually revolving around some romantic tripe and ending up either in a fairy-tale finale or an overwrought tear-jerk. Despite an average Rotten Tomatoes score of 24% over eleven films (ranging from the abysmal (and deserved) 8% for The Best of Me to the mediocre 52% for the film I’m about to discuss), audiences somehow find their way to theatres to bathe in this ludicrosity, leading to a total global cume of over $889 million. Nearly a billion dollars went to these Lifetime-styled hackjobs! How does hope remain for our species?
Regardless, back in ’96, Sparks published his first novel, The Notebook, an instant best-seller that stayed on the rolls for over a year. It chronicled the long love between Noah and Allie, framed as a story told by an elderly, cancer-ridden man to an Alzheimer’s suffering woman. By and by, it’s revealed that the story he tells of young love is actually the story of their love, a tale used as a bit of a brain jump-start for his ailing wife of many decades. The film maintains this convention, but it isn’t exactly hard to guess the connection early on.
What gets me is the presentation of this ostensibly tender and lasting love story. No, not the whole flashback/story-being-used-to-remind-her-of-the-past thing, that’s all fine and saccharine. No, it’s how their affair actually plays out: See, they’re separated by socioeconomic differences (he’s an untamed poor guy, she’s a wealthy debutante; they come from two different worlds!), and she’s not even interested at first. She only agrees to go out with him after he threatens to plummet from the top of a Ferris wheel! What a guy! Over the course of the next few years, their relationship is definitely genuine, but they constantly fight and argue, they break up and start up with other people; hell, they even acknowledge, in the actual dialogue no less, that they fight 98% of the time! But, apparently, their love is an unstoppable force of nature, so they persist and pair off. How the hell is that beautiful? Touching? In any way good? I will give, though, that the nursing home scenes with James Garner and Gena Rowlands are fairly touching, something to be expected given the talents of the actors involved. This isn’t to say that Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams don’t do well, it’s just that their material is much sappier and trashier.
Something tells me the behind-the-scenes shake-ups played some part in the film’s awkwardness. Apparently, the rights to the book were acquired the same year as its publication, but didn’t make it to theatres until 2004. In that time, the director’s chair was occupied in turn by Spielberg (who would have cast Tom Cruise as the younger Noah), frequent Daniel Day-Lewis collaborator Jim Sheridan, Martin Campbell (known for GoldenEye and The Mask of Zorro), and, finally, Nick Cassavetes (Rowlands’s son, for the record). Cassavetes wanted someone “not handsome” to play Noah, so he went with Gosling. Sure, yeah, makes a whole load o’ sense there, eh? Lunatic… Hell, at one point, Britney Spears, of all people, was considered for the role of Allie! Multiple rewrites delayed production for years, and the hacky script shows all the scars therefrom.
Despite the gaggle of Teen Choice surfboards this thing garnered (pun intended), it left me just as empty and down as the other Sparks adaptations I’ve seen. I think I get the appeal for some people, but the story is just too lame and saccharine for my tastes, and everything is so damned self-serious that no fun can be gleaned from any crevice. Maybe the Bollywood remake Zindagi Tere Naam or the Bengali Niyoti would be more entertaining? Maybe, but the upcoming CW series following Noah and Allie’s relationship in post-WW2 times is bound to be pretty awful. Spare us, Sparks, for the love of god!
Allusions of Grandeur 