Sometimes comic timing can save the day. A ragtag romp about a duo of Valley guys who embark on time travels through history to help bring order to a world gone mad, Stephen Herek’s Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (B+) shouldn’t be as charming as it is. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are gleefully goofy as the likable leads whose superficial encounters via a phone booth travel vessel with the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Socrates (their pronunciation of his name rhymes with “no gates”) provide funny fish out of water vignettes. George Carlin is amusing as the buddies’ temporal concierge. The effects are cheap and some of the laughs really obvious, but it’s mainly gleeful fun, like a feature-length crowd surf. There are many more triumphant films in this genre, but the movie’s distinctively dense leads help it coast into cult status.
Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (B) takes the haunted house movie to a whole new level with Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin as a recently deceased couple trying to co-exist in the same bucolic household with an eccentric family including a goth girl played by Winona Ryder, plus the titular sleazy demon (Michael Keaton under outrageous prosthetics) being summoned in highly charged situations for madcap mayhem. Burton is best when crafting fantastical worlds of eccentric creatures and human oddities, and this is a candy shop for him, full of purgatories populated with characters in various modes of cartoon-style deaths and physical sight gags galore. The story and characters are largely adrift, leaving only Keaton as a real standout in his commanding and wisecracking 17 minutes on screen. The production is wide-eyed, colorful and full of iconic costumes and practical effects. The humor is just a little rude and the effects just a little crude, and it makes for a fun and adventurous modern comedy.
Coming to America (B), directed by John Landis, is a classic fish out of water comedy with a contemporary twist. Eddie Murphy plays the naïf Prince Akeem of the fictional African country Zamunda who travels with his best friend (Arsenio Hall) to New York undercover in order to find his bride. Murphy is committed to the role as basically the straight man of the comedy but gets to unleash his inner stand-up by playing a bunch of supporting characters under clever prosthetics including the eccentric denizens of a Queens barber shop. Although there’s a through-line of a plot, it’s really a film of episodes representing varying levels of amusement. Landis does some effective world building with the exotic locations on multiple continents. Kudos to Murphy for lots of funny notions and for delivering some wry commentary amidst the madcap adventure. Ultimately there’s more lark than bite, but it’s mostly pleasant fun.
Back to the Future (A+), directed by Robert Zemeckis, is a triumph of imaginative storytelling as it creates its own universe of time travel and a most unusual intersection of one man’s destiny with his family. Michael J. Fox is the charismatic lead teenager who journeys from 1985 to 1955 with the help of an obsessed scientist (played with salty delight by Christopher Lloyd) and must manipulate events so his parents (Lea Thompson and Crispin Glover) fall in love. The complication is that our hero’s mom falls for him instead, and this potentially treacly Oedipal impasse yields more incredible comedy. Everything works here: the complex theories behind the science, the nostalgic fish out of water comedy, the tender and empowering moments, the Huey Lewis music. Zemeckis is a master of raising the stakes, providing an increasingly exhilarating tale. This is a good time from start to finish.
Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters (B+) is a marvelous confection about four exterminators of ghastly spirits (droll Bill Murray, goofy Dan Akroyd, uber-serious Harold Ramis and straight man Ernie Hudson) who must save New York from a Pandora’s box of supernatural creatures run amok. Sigourney Weaver is a treat as a possessed love interest, playing giddily opposite Bill Murray’s clowning. Despite the overindulgence in silly special effects, the acting ensemble makes this piece work by playing it super-serious. The biggest laughs are in the reaction shots: Of course that’s a skyscraper sized marshmallow man! And why wouldn’t there be demonic animals running in the street? Leading man Murray is a superb match for this material with his dry wit a ribald rapier to the funky fleet week of ghosts on the loose. Reitman corrals his grinning brigade into hilarious territory as the ‘busters take on haunted New York!
Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters (B+) is a marvelous confection about four exterminators of ghastly spirits (droll Bill Murray, goofy Dan Akroyd, uber-serious Harold Ramis and straight man Ernie Hudson) who must save New York from a Pandora’s box of supernatural creatures run amok. Sigourney Weaver is a treat as a possessed love interest, playing giddily opposite Bill Murray’s clowning. Despite the overindulgence in silly special effects, the acting ensemble makes this piece work by playing it super-serious. The biggest laughs are in the reaction shots: Of course that’s a skyscraper sized marshmallow man! And why wouldn’t there be demonic animals running in the street? Leading man Murray is a superb match for this material with his dry wit a ribald rapier to the funky fleet week of ghosts on the loose. Reitman corrals his grinning brigade into hilarious territory as the ‘busters take on haunted New York!