Prime Time: Spaceballs (1987)

There was some recent news that put Spaceballs at the forefront of my mind. First of all, we're apparently getting a sequel. Second, Mel Brooks just turned 99 a few days ago. Both of these things reminded me that it had been too long since I last watched Spaceballs, despite owning it on both disc and digital form for some time.

Everyone should know about this by now. It's spoofing a very famous sci-fi franchise (hence the sequel, now there are so many other moments to mine comedy from). Bill Pullman is the reluctant hero, Lone Starr, travelling through space with his furry companion, Barf (John Candy). With a large debt hanging over their heads, the two end up incentivised to rescue Princess Vespa (Dapne Zuniga) and her metallic handmaid, Dot Matrix (voiced by Joan Rivers). That leads to them all trying to stay one step ahead from the powerful and dangerous Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis).

Directed by Brooks, who also co-wrote the thing with Thomas Meehan and Ronny Graham (the latter giving himself one of the best scenes in which he plays a minister), Spaceballs benefits from a great cast that includes those already mentioned, including Brooks himself in a couple of different roles, and Dick Van Patten, George Wyner (superb as Colonel Sandurz), Michael Winslow aka the human sound machine. There's also room for very brief turns from Stephen Tobolowsky, John Hurt, Rhonda Shear, Rick Ducommun, an unrecognisable Dom DeLuise as Pizza The Hutt, and a few other familiar names.

I still have a soft spot for Spaceballs, mainly thanks to Pullman and co. in the lead roles, but most people would admit that it's far from top-tier comedy from Brooks. It's time, however, to be a bit more honest about how far it is from his best work. Spaceballs isn't that good. The jokes are more miss than hit, although they work on an eye-rolling "dad joke" level, the thin plot feels exactly like what it is (an excuse for the gags), and some of the makeup and effects are absolutely awful. This is the start of Brooks spoofing something because it is popular, as opposed to the masterpieces he crafted when spoofing movies that he appeared to have genuine affection for.

There are good moments here and there (anything with Rick Moranis is usually good enough to make viewers smile, and the gags that reference Alien and Planet Of The Apes are nicely constructed), and I defy anyone to tell me that they wouldn't enjoy spending some time in the company of 1980s Pullman, Candy, Zuniga, and Rivers. It's just a shame that nobody seemed interested in making this the best that it could be. It's sporadically amusing, but it mainly feels lazy, and if I want to watch something lazy that will also make me laugh then I'll just spend time looking at my middle-aged spread in a mirror.

I'm not going to rate it like I hate it though, because I don't. That soft spot doesn't simply disappear because a rewatch has reminded me of so many negatives. It's sustained by small pleasures as simple as Candy wagging his tail in excitement or a literal display of radar being jammed.

6/10

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Hairspray (2007)

Hairspray (1988) was my mild cinematic introduction to the wonderful world of John Waters. I had heard of him before then, having seen an episode of The Incredibly Strange Film Show that had host Jonathan Ross interviewing the great man, but it would be some time before I started to delve deeper into his filmography. To be honest, I still need to see a LOT of his pre-Hairspray films, often forgetting that I haven't seen them because of already being familiar with some of his more (in)famous moments.

Despite Hairspray being quite possibly the tamest film that Waters has ever done, I was still surprised when it was turned into a stage musical. And when that musical version was adapted into a film I was more than just surprised, I was ever-so-slightly outraged. This was also before I was more at ease with the internet. I had less spaces to verbalise my anger and metaphorically stamp my feet about the whole thing. Thank goodness.

Because Hairspray is a lot of fun. Directed by Adam Shankman, it's a film that retains the simple, and wonderful, plot of the original film, adds a selection of decent tunes, and allows a number of stars to have a great time playing larger than life characters.

Nikki Blonsky is Tracy Turnblad, a young girl who dreams about a chance to dance on her favourite local TV dance show, hosted by Corny Collins (James Marsden). That chance comes to her at last, unbelievably, and she starts to do well on the show, which makes her an enemy of Velma Von Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer), who has been doing her best to ensure that her daughter (Brittany Snow) is the star dancer on the show. Tracy also finds herself in trouble when she becomes active in the growing movement to end racial segregation.

With a tweaked screenplay by Leslie Dixon, and the play by Mark O'Connell and Thomas Meehan to work from, Hairspray works so well because it translates the (I assume) upbeat and fun sense of the live show to the screen with canny casting and vibrant production design throughout that provides 1960s Baltimore as the setting for the proceedings, as well as populating the city with plenty of colourful characters.

And what a cast of characters we get. Blonsky is a sweet lead, and does well with the singing and dancing. Her parents are played by John Travolta (Edna) and Christopher Walken (Wilbur), and both of them have a lot of fun with their characters. Marsden is also having a whale of a time, playing Corny Collins as a sweet and cheesy host with the most, while Snow and Pfeiffer attack their "baddie" roles with great relish. Amanda Bynes, Elija Kelley, Zac Efron, Queen Latifah, and Allison Janney fill out the cast, with all of them given enough good moments to make them worth spending time with.

As unexpected as the origin of this movie is, just be thankful it got made. I still prefer the original, it's a bit sharper and more twisted, but this is a brilliant reworking of the material to appeal to a potentially much wider audience (who might also eventually check out the 1988 film).

8/10

You can buy it here.
Or, in the ol' US of A, buy it here.

Annie (2014)

Yes, I was as dismissive as a lot of other people when I heard that we were about to get another remake of Annie, the musical that gave us the songs "Tomorrow" and "It's A Hard Knock Life", and starred a little red-headed girl being annoyingly precocious. The 1982 movie isn't, as far as I can recall, that great a movie anyway, so I just didn't see any point in going back to that well. And when I saw the first trailer for this movie I was slightly smug, safe in the knowledge that this was a movie that I needn't prioritise, what with it having the potential to be absolutely bloody awful.

Well, I can always admit when I'm wrong (because it happens so often, unfortunately), and in the case of Annie I was wrong. It's not going to be one of my favourite movies, and it suffers from many of the failings that the original movie had, but this is a fun, energetic, musical that should keep the family entertained for the duration.

Quvenzhane Wallis takes over the titular role, and just fine she is too. She's an orphan who lives with the constant hope that one day she will be reunited with her parents. Meanwhile, she is stuck in the care of the bitter Miss Hannigan (Cameron Diaz), a nasty drunk who regrets the opportunities she missed out on in her past. Jamie Foxx is Will Stacks, the character substituting for Daddy Warbucks here. Stacks is a billionaire business tycoon trying to become mayor of New York, and when his approval rating jumps up after he's filmed saving Annie from being hit by a truck his staff decide that he could benefit even more if he offered Annie a temporary home.

I started to warm to this version of Annie in the first few scenes. In fact, the very opening moments provide an amusing little fake-out before moving in to a credit sequence that nicely riffs on the well-known musical numbers with a makeover that feels genuinely appropriate for the new audience without seeming horribly desperate. And everything kept ticking over nicely, for the most part.

There are two main problems that prove insurmountable for director Will Gluck, who also worked on the screenplay with Aline Brosh McKenna (with help from the past versions of the tale, of course). First of all, this isn't a musical full of the best songs. I'm sure many musical fans will disagree, but I've always found Annie to have more filler than thriller, to put it simply. Two good songs just don't cut it, especially when one of those isn't really all that good as opposed to just being one of the most familiar. The second big problem is Cameron Diaz horribly overacting in the role of Miss Hannigan (and let's not even mention the horrible backstory given to her). I've been kinder to Miss Diaz than most, over the years, but she's sorely miscast here, and an undeniable weak link in the cast.

Wallis is bright and sweet in the main role, just about avoiding feeling too precious, Foxx is a lot of fun as the rich man who tries to keep his defences up at all times, Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale are both good as the advisors who watch things unfold from two very different perspectives, and David Zayas and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje do well as two men, one a store owner and one in the employ of Stacks, who try to help Annie as much as possible.

Overall, the flaws in this version are similar to the flaws in the previous versions. The fact that it tries so hard to win viewers over with a better cast, for the most part, and ever-so-slight adjustment of the twee factor means that it's far from the worst family movie to come out in recent years, even if it will never be one of the best.

6/10

http://www.amazon.com/Annie-Blu-ray-UltraViolet-Digital-Copy/dp/B00R878NI4/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1420223100&sr=8-5&keywords=annie

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