My Stepmother Is An Alien (1988)

Directed by Richard Benjamin, who also happened to act in a number of movies that I have enjoyed over the years, My Stepmother Is An Alien is one of those movies that I always wanted to check out one day. It was never a top priority though, because I assumed it wouldn't be very good. My assumption was correct. This isn't a very good film.

Dan Aykroyd plays Steven Mills, a physicist who manages to send a signal so far into space that it actually, unbeknownst to him, hits and disrupts a distant planet. Believing that this was a deliberate attack, the planet sends Celeste (Kim Basinger) to find Steven, steal his research, and eventually order the destruction of Earth. Celeste ends up becoming romantically involved with Steven, mistakenly thinking that is a good way to achieve her main objective. Steven's young daughter, Jessie (Alyson Hannigan), soon realises that there's something not right, especially when Celeste keeps talking to her bag (voiced by Ann Prentiss), and it looks like there won't be any happy ending for the main characters.

Written by Jerico Stone, Herschel Weingrod, and Timothy Harris, you'd be forgiven for expecting something decent here. Stone would later help to write Matinee, one of many superb Joe Dante movies, and Weingrod and Harris worked together on hits like Trading Places, Brewster's Millions, Twins, and Kindergarten Cop (although they also gave us the less enjoyable Pure Luck). This is not up there with their best work. Although there are a few small chuckles here and there, it is a poor comedy that makes the big mistake of trying to utilise Kim Basinger for both her looks and her comedic skills, the latter of which she simply doesn’t possess.

Benjamin directs with a strangely slapdash approach, hoping that the main premise will be enough to make viewers forget about anything else. Set-pieces are clumsily put together, occasional zingers are thrown into a laugh-sucking vacuum, and, perhaps strangest of all, nobody involved is really allowed to play to their strengths.

Basinger obviously looks beautiful here, and I do enjoy some of her acting work, but she is awful when it comes to trying to play up the comedy. Aykroyd fares better, but his character is so strangely oblivious to madness going on around him that it feels as if he is the punchline to an ongoing joke. The real joy comes from a fun turn from a young Hannigan, who has always been great, and a decent attempt  to keep delivering laughs from Jon Lovitz, playing the brother of the character played by Aykroyd. There is also some fun to had from Joseph Maher, as well as a teeny tiny Seth Green, only onscreen for a minute or so, but downright adorable.

It’s quite easy to see why this was given the green light, considering the concept and the people involved, and it is a shame to see very few people trying to do their best. From the cinematography to the Alan Silvestri score, everything around the central performances feels disappointingly lacklustre. Maybe it’s one to consider for a remake option, considering the massive room for improvement.

4/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Pure Luck (1991)

I have been in the mood lately to watch some undemanding '80s comedies, mainly movies that I remember seeing advertised, but didn't actually get around to watching. And I could have sworn that Pure Luck was a 1980s comedy, but it was actually released in 1991. The concept certainly feels like a very 1980s one.

A young woman (Valerie, played by Sheila Kelley) goes missing while on holiday. Her father (Highsmith, played by Sam Wanamaker) is distraught, especially as the investigator he has on the case (Campanella, played by Danny Glover) hasn't managed to find any solid leads. The fact that Valerie is one of the unluckiest people in the world makes things even trickier, but it also leads one man to come up with a theory. He knows someone employed by Highsmith who is equally unlucky. That man is Proctor (Martin Short), and a plan is formed. There's a chance that Proctor's bad luck will allow him to more closely follow the route taken by Valerie, and allow her to be found.

Based on a French film, La Chevre, Pure Luck is exactly what you might expect it is, a vehicle for Martin Short to commit himself to numerous pratfalls in the name of making viewers laugh. And Short is not the problem here. But I'll get back to him later.

Director Nadia Tass doesn't have a grip on the kind of comedy that would allow this movie to be all it can be. I'm not familiar with the original, which may well be a quirky and gentle comedy throughout, but this American take on the material feels too low-key and low-energy. It needs a sense of the bad luck piling up, allowing set-pieces to start small and escalate all the way to some grand finale. That never happens. The film isn't helped by the writing from Herschel Weingrod and Timothy Harris, two individuals who have worked together on a number of better comedies than this one. The problem is that they are aware of the focus of the film being on the physical side of things, and that keeps the dialogue as a lesser priority. The fact that the physical side of things isn't as good as it could be leaves you with a film that has no memorable sequences AND no decent dialogue. There's also a very strange section of the film that starts to change the rules, but it is soon dropped without any satisfying resolution.

Let's get back to Short anyway. I love Martin Short. He's a fantastic comic actor, arguably one of the very greats, and this lead role would seem to be ideal for him. It's not though, mainly because the whole film depends on him tripping, falling, and hurting himself in a variety of ways. He does what he can, but the lack of variety makes it soon feel a bit sad, watching someone throw themselves around for something not really worthy of their commitment to the cause. Glover gets the better end of the stick, disbelieving the ridiculous theory until he starts to see it play out in front of his eyes. He also has to pretend to be taking orders from Short for most of the movie, which allows for a couple of fun moments. Kelley does well with her small amount of screentime, also full of pratfalls, Wanamaker and Harry Shearer (who comes up with the central theory) are just fine, and Scott Wilson has a bittersweet turn as an opportunistic criminal who doesn't realise how much bad luck is about to rain upon him.

Pure Luck is absolutely forgettable, and I am sure that there are very few people who would seek it out. Fans of Short, maybe, and people like me. If you're in the latter category then I feel very sorry for you.

3/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Trading Places (1983)

John Landis is a great director. Well, he WAS. It's been a while since we saw him working at his prime, but Trading Places is one of his best movies. In fact, if Landis hadn't also given us a classic werewolf flick and The Blues Brothers then this could well have been his crowning achievement.

The story is quite simple. Two rich old men (the Duke brothers, played by Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy) make a bet over the effects of nature vs. nurture. To test their theory, they take their shining employee Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) and ruin his life. Louis loses his job, his fiance, his money and most of his self-respect in a series of humiliating trials all set up by the Dukes. At the same time, Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) is plucked from his hustling, hand-to-mouth lifestyle and offered almost everything that Louis had. The two have traded places, hence the title of the movie. Will Billy Ray become a success, or will he abuse his position to make even more money for himself? And will Louis turn to crime as misfortune piles upon misfortune?

Although it runs for almost 2 hours, with editing never being a strong point for Landis, this zips along at a cracking pace, with quality gags written into every scene, some subtle and some front and centre. This is partly thanks to the script, by Herschel Weingrod and Timothy Harris, but equally thanks to the performances from everyone involved.

Murphy is at his best, the early '80s was arguably the peak of his career, and he delivers almost every line with confidence and sass. Aykroyd just about avoids making you hate him during the opening scenes of the movie, although it's a close call, and it gets easier to enjoy his company as things unravel for him at greater and greater speed. Ameche and Bellamy are delightfully horrid schemers, playing brilliantly off one another from start to finish. Denholm Elliott also does well as the butler who starts off attending to Aykroyd and is then told to take care of Murphy instead, and Jamie Lee Curtis set many hearts a-flutter as Ophelia, the "hooker with a heart" who takes pity on Aykroyd and tries to help him out of his current jam. Paul Gleason is as good as he always is, James Belushi monkeys around in the third act, Kristin Holby is the fiance ashamed of Aykroyd's downward mobility, and there are a couple of cameos worth keeping your eyes peeled for (as usual with a John Landis movie).

For getting the best out of his cast, and treating the material so well, Landis has to be credited with doing a good job here. He certainly had a knack, at one point, of getting great scripts into the hands of the right people for the roles, which does half of his work for him, in my book. There's nothing spectacular here on the technical side, but it's all smooth and well put together. Most importantly, it's all constructed perfectly around the performances and the gags.

If you haven't yet seen this movie then I implore you to get to it as soon as you can. It's an enduring comedy that hasn't lost any of its power in the past few decades. And it then provides you with an extra laugh whenever you get around to watching Coming To America.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/Trading-Places-Blu-ray-Eddie-Murphy/dp/B00AEBB8EM/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2_twi_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1418340244&sr=8-1&keywords=trading+places