Relentless silliness in the mountains of Italy… er… Colorado??? Right. The movie starts with a completely ridiculous opening sequence – people doing something that people just don’t do, and an accident that just wouldn’t happen… The rest of the movie is a bunch of the same stuff.
Tag Archives: John Lithgow
Buckaroo Bonzai
Every once in a while, a movie comes along that sets a new standard. No words or descriptions or praise or repeated viewings can really do justice to this. Who hasn’t wanted to be Buckaroo Banzai?
Footloose – 1984
Looking back, it’s amazing how ridiculous and yet moving this movie was. I mean, if someone tells you the plot, you have to laugh – really??? But, then when you watch John Lithgow’s transformation at the end of the movie, you have to think… well, I guess so. Kind of makes you see the Taliban in a whole other light – they’re in the USA too.
The Manhattan Project
Smart kid builds a nuclear bomb. This was intelligently done. It would be really easy to screw up a movie with this kind of plot. It’s been done countless times. Sure, the “steal the plutonium” scene was a little unbelievable, but it did work – the movie didn’t make any “leaps of faith” with respect to plot development, it let the intelligence of the characters move the plot along. (one thing though, if you smoke inside, it still smells for hours afterwards)
Homegrown
This movie is about a bunch of dope growers in northern California. Their boss gets killed, they don’t know who did it, and they decide to sell the crop… but they don’t really know what they’re doing. It’s a pretty funny movie – it doesn’t have much of the ‘whooo I’m so stoned’ type of humor, it’s sort of a dark comedy about a bunch of people in way over their heads. This theme has been done before, but this movie takes a somewhat fresh approach. I never had the feeling that I’d seen it all before, the acting, characters, and writing were all good, and I liked the ending & the way the plot wrapped itself up. I was surprised by all the big names in it: Ted Danson, John Lithgow, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kelly Lynch, Billy Bob Thornton…