The Criterion Channel’s decision last week to make a sleight of Albert Brooks movies available was just the ticket for a weekend of hilarity. There aren’t a whole lot of humorous films out there these days in a very sad and unfunny year. I’d never cottoned onto Albert Brooks during his 1980s and 90s heyday – he just seemed too conventional – but grew to admire his work, especially after seeing his 1996 Mother starring Debbie Reynolds. Now I’m in full Brooks adulation mode. Brooks is in the same league of younger 20th Century Jewish comedians like Woody Allen and Richard Dreyfuss – hyper, neurotic, narcissistic and sardonically funny. His films since the Nineties have been few and far between and nowhere as successful though he continues acting and doing voice work. I wonder why - maybe the earlier movies never did great at the box office? In Real Life (1979), Brooks spoofs the reality documentary by filming the story of a contemporary family (Charles Grodin is the dad) as it unintentionally disintegrates under the weight of its newfound notoriety. Brooks as the director is vain and Hollywood-shallow as he defies all around him – staff, producer, the family itself – who maintain the documentary won’t work out. In Modern Romance (1981) Brooks plays Robert Cole, a film editor, with Mary Harvard (Kathryn Harrold) his main squeeze. It opens with them breaking up over dinner because he’s adamant they don’t have enough in common. Then he drives himself crazy wooing her back, spying and stalking just short of criminality, until she acquiesces. But, of course, the relationship doesn’t end there. Lost in America (1985) (photo above), perhaps the best film of the five I watched, is the prototypical road movie but with a twist. Brooks and Julie Haggarty (always worth watching) are a Yuppie couple who are giving up on the rat race and hitting the road to find themselves. Their spiritual guide is the movie Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper 1969). But when Brooks as former ad man David Howard gives a thumbs up to an Easy Rider type biker from the window of his plush RV, the biker gives another kind of finger back. You get the idea. In Defending Your Life (1991) Brooks teams up with Meryl Streep. Both characters have died prematurely and end up in some limbo state called Judgment City where they’re put on trial over their life histories. This is the weakest of the films and too long but the sendups of modern hospitality (albeit in the afterlife) are amusing and Streep as Julia, who takes a romantic interest in Brooks, is incredibly charming and hilarious. Finally, in Mother, Brooks decides to retreat to his childhood home and move in with his mom Beatrice, played by Debbie Reynolds. It seems ridiculous for a semi-successful middle-aged writer to move home and redecorate his old bedroom like in high school. But the real delight is the dynamics between him and mom. Reynolds plays the oh-so-typical every mom - old school, a bit ditzy, and in her mind reasonable in a way their children find absurd. Attempts to bond between them are thwarted as the two are incapable seeing eye to eye. It’s not real conflict, just the frustration of two different generations trying to connect. Finally, a general observation on the films. The era the movies were made in – yes, I lived through it – doesn’t seem that long ago but I guess it is. And they look aged – from square shaped tinny cars to clunky phones, shoulder pads and feathery hair, to DOS computers. And it’s startling to see that at one time people dressed-up.
No comments:
Post a Comment