What's Up, Doc?

You like screwball comedies? I like screwball comedies. I like it when everyone wants the McGuffin (or McGuffins, as the case may be), and hijinks ensue. I like it when the operator drives the poor sap crazy with her machinations. And I like it when the operator discovers, much to her surprise and delight, that she has a heart of gold.

And I really like when the whole thing is set in San Francisco, one of the greatest and most photogenic cities in the world.

So really, the only way WHAT’S UP, DOC? could have dropped the ball would have been to have one of its characters leap out of the screen and punch me in the nose.

Here’s the deal: four people bring four identical overnight bags to the same hotel. One holds rocks that mean a lot to an academic because he intends to use them in an important presentation; one holds rocks that are important to everyone because they glitter nicely in the light and are surrounded with worked gold; one holds underwear, which matters to the person who owns the underwear; and one holds a cache of top secret documents which may or may not be the Pentagon Papers. The movie is pretty much a game of musical overnight bags, the loser getting stuck with the underwear, and away we go.

Director Peter Bogdanovich does a great job of keeping all the balls in the air, perfectly executing classic screwball bits while keeping track of the locations and ownerships of various bags, hearts, and miscellaneous bits of clothing. He casts great actors like Barbara Streisand, Madeleine Khan, and Austin Pendleton in critical roles, and they help buttress a weak Ryan O’Neal leading performance as the hapless academic who’s no match for (really) anyone.

WHAT’S UP, DOC? made me laugh out loud. When I wasn’t laughing, I was rolling along quite pleasantly. This is solid screwball, lots of fun, and a good time at the movies.

How to Train Your Dragon

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is a perfectly fine children’s entertainment.  It does well with standard themes of divergence and acceptance, courage in the face of expectations as well as of danger, and the father/son dynamic.  It’s exciting enough for older kids and not too scary for younger, and it kept my kids talking about it for the rest of the evening.

Here’s the setup: young Hiccup lives in a Viking village constantly beset by dragons.  Unfortunately, he’s the smart and skinny kid in a brawn-centered culture.  He’s never going to wield a 75-lb mace in battle against a flying menace, so how will he find his place as a true Viking?  Ok, the title gives it away, but still.  The film tells its story briskly, hits its beats right on schedule, keeps things moving along.  I watched it while juggling three kids, two sodas, one of those enormous tubs of popcorn, a box of stale nachos and inedible cheese sauce, and a packet of Raisinets.  That’s multiple trips to the bathroom, more than one shushing, and two detours to the lobby so my preschooler could practice his “frog jumping” as the mood struck (Hey, that’s why we sit in the back.).  It was still fine.  When a story speaks to familiar themes and rigidly adheres to standard structure, you don’t need to see every scene to stay with it.

So enjoy the artwork and dig HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON for what it is.  There are worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

Fellini's Roma

There’s something you need to know about FELLINI’S ROMA and you need to know it right up front.  FELLINI’S ROMA isn’t about anybody.  There’s no hero, no villain, no 2^nd act crisis and 3^rd act resolution.  Nothing happens; at least, not in the sense we usually mean when we discuss narrative film.

FELLINI’S ROMA isn’t a documentary, either.  It doesn’t set a scene, introduce us to players, and watch events unfold in a (hopefully) dramatic and interesting way.  It’s just – well, it’s just Rome.

But it isn’t just Rome: not really.  It’s Fellini’s Rome, or the parts of Rome that Fellini finds most interesting.  There’s Rome the Romantic, an idealized city that exists as not much more than a fantasy in the minds of Italian schoolchildren in the countryside.  There’s Rome the vulgar, Rome the sad, Rome the painted whore under an umbrella, slowly baking in scant shadow.  There’s the Rome of the hippies, of the workingmen, of the Church, and of the ancients.  There’s even the Rome of the apostates and the casually lost, the bright young men with futures and the masters at the top of their games.

FELLINI’S ROMA is like a slideshow, an experience meant to create a feeling of Rome rather than of a character in Rome.  If you can relax your expectations and go with it, it offers something of the experience of the wandering tourist.  Perhaps you speak the language; perhaps you catch only bits and pieces.  Scenes flash by on the road or in the piazza, and you come away not with a series of photos or cleverly written travel piece, but with a feeling, an impression of what it means to live there, what it means to visit, what it means merely to pass through on your way to someplace else.

Will you enjoy it?  I don’t know.  Should you see it?  Absolutely, for FELLINI’S ROMA will give you a sense of the city like no other.  It’ll give you a sense of the city as felt by a man who has contemplated it, dreamed it, lived it for years.  It’ll give you a sense of Rome.