The A-word.
It's the bane of cinephiles, everywhere.
That book you love; the comic you remember; the show you used to watch; the game you lost an entire summer playing? Oh, someone's adapted it and it's getting made into a movie! Whether a cause for pre-emptive celebration or foreboding caution, it leads to only one thing: expectation. And expectation is the death of the 'clean' movie-viewing experience; no matter how closely the film sticks to its source material, or how much it tries to distance itself, it will be faced with the hurdle of comparison.
And while the movie industry loves the pre-built marketing buzz of 'now a major motion picture!', they loathe the comparative references which will be made from the first review onwards. Because many punters will expect to get exactly the same reaction from a completely different medium, to a story they already know. And therein lies the problem.
In this monthly series, we'll look back at some of the most respected and best-loved properties which have made the perilous journey to the big screen; often with some controversy, and almost always with far too much hype. This isn't so much a review of the films themselves, more an appraisal of their suitability as an adaptation.
Yes, that's right. I did wait until August of 2017 before starting to watch a TV series where the protagonists boast criminal records and drive around in a car named "General Lee", with a Confederate flag painted across the roof. I call it 'inappropriate synchronicity'.
Anyway, the TV-leg of Adaptation moves from the 60s to the 70s (just), with Warner TV's The Dukes Of Hazzard, a fondly-remembered favourite of many which was aired on BBC1 in the UK*1. That said, I should add at this early juncture that I don't recall watching it much in my youth (although I must have seen 'some' as can't have absorbed all my structural familiarity with the show by cultural osmosis alone, surely?). I remember it being 'a thing' with my contemporaries, but rarely to the point where it would be a subject for playground-reenactment. So what better a subject to take in properly for the first time, to contrast and compare…
The setup revolves around cousins Bo and Luke Duke, 'fighting the system' with their whiskey-bootlegging uncle Jesse and waitressing cousin, Daisy. This brings them into regular lighthearted opposition with the bent Hazzard County Sheriff Rosco Coltrane and even more corrupt County Commissioner, Boss Hogg. The boys get into scrapes every week, invariably resulting in a car-chase by the 30-minute mark featuring a ramp-jump, a miraculously intact front-axle and a subsequent fond lecture from Uncle Jesse. Daisy is The Girl One who wears hotpants.
So yeah, short version: The Dukes Of Hazzard is distracting fun, but I have no idea why it enjoyed the longevity or legacy it did. The main hurdle the show can't quite clear is the uninspired writing, leading to a transparently formulaic format, even for a Saturday-teatime*2 staple. As the main focus, the Duke family themselves are amiable enough, but much like The Avengers, Hazzard wasn't really meant to be watched in any kind of concentrated succession.
After that is the propensity for light slapstick and comedic gurning carried out by the authority figures in the shape of Hogg, Coltrane and eventually deputy Enos Strate*3. In short order, the bumbling law-enforcers cease being any kind of nemesis to the Duke cousins, and just turn into recurring comic foils. Fine for a half-hour sitcom perhaps, not so much for an already-baggy 50 minute lighthearted action series. While Hazzard was introduced to screens before the likes of more dynamic fare such as Knight Rider and The A-Team, it was still a contemporary of Charlie's Angels and CHiPs. Even back in the day, I struggle to see how this could compete; yet at 147 episodes, compete it did.
It isn't really fair to judge that entire canon based on the first season of course, when Warner were still hammering out the details, but I think I've got a pretty solid handle on the Duke boys. And after thirteen hours of southern drawl, plaid shirts and dryly laconic narration, I'm now itching to work my way through My Name Is Earl again…
For a programme whose USP was essentially an orange Dodge Charger with a Dixie air-horn and a 'Yeea-hooo!' sound-sample*4, The Dukes Of Hazzard did very well for itself. Whether it still holds up in the 21st century is a different matter, of course, which is why you'd want the film-version to be bringing something new to the mix, right..?
And so it came to pass that Warner Bros did so well with the 2004 movie redux of Starsky & Hutch that the next natural step was, of course, to keep S&H co-writer John O'Brien onboard and mine other TV back-catalogues for buddy-com mileage*5. The result of all this cashing-in is that Comedy™ is the main thrust of the 2005 cinematic adaptation of The Dukes Of Hazzard. And who better to lead the charge than Seann William Scott (the wildcard of the hitherto successful American Pie flicks), and Johnny Knoxville (the posterboy of the then-burgeoning Jackass) as Bo and Luke respectively?
And the modus operandi of both their previous series is very much evident in the big-screen reboot. The UK's 15-rating (PG-13 in the US) means that not only can the brawl-scenes and lewd humour be ramped up, they arguably become one of the main supporting pillars of a 103-minute punctuated car-chase. Country-royalty Willie Nelson stars as Uncle Jesse, and is fawned upon by pretty much the entire cast, while woman-of-the-moment Jessica Simpson dons the mantle of Daisy Duke*6. Unusually for this sort of thing, there are no gratuitous cameos by the original stars. In fact the closest we get to cast-reprisal is probably M.C. Gainey playing Rosco Coltrane, who appeared in a Season 4 episode of the TV run.
As a mid-noughties studio action/comedy, this is not remarkable in any way, but as an adaptation it's surprisingly workable*7. I can see why the old-school fanbase could absolutely detest Chandrasekhar's reboot, but as tonally ramped as the movie is, it's clearly been made with a core love of the series at a writing-level, at least. O'Brien and Jonathan Davis understand which aspects of the original can be amplified and which need to be pointed out with a raised eyebrow (the Confederate flag on the roof of the General Lee being a prime example).
The cinematic Dukes Of Hazzard isn't as bad as I'd feared, even if it's not quite as good as I'd hoped.
Although might I suggest that if Georgia's finest are ever resurrected again, the property piggybacks on another successful franchise? Dead Hazzard has a nice ring to it...
It's alright. Good in places, repetitive in others..
It's alright. Good in places, mechanical in others..
Both; they make an interesting counterpoint to one another.
Not in the TV episodes I watched, and I didn't hear one in the film either.
For the TV version...
Level 1: The show once featured the voice of Savage Opress. I mean, that's it, but it still counts.
For the film version…
Level 2: The movie stars Jessica Simpson, who appeared in a 2003 episode of The Twlight Zone called 'The Collection' alongside Forest 'Saw Gerrera' Whitaker.
*1The Dukes Of Hazzard only narrowly squeaks into the Adaptation bracket, fact-fans, as it is itself a loose reworking of the 1975 film Moonrunners. However, two reasons led to its inclusion here: 1) From a cultural perspective, Dukes is remembered by and large as its own thing, and 2 By the time I found out about Moonrunners, I'd already bought the DVDs. So, fuck it. [ BACK ]
*2 Of course, I 'remember' this being Saturday-teatime and family-friendly, which is what it eventually became. It first aired in the 9pm slot, though, which perhaps explains why the pilot episode has references to cousins marrying and uses an inflatable sex-doll as a prop for Daisy Duke's jailbreak, while the second episode sees the Dukes using an RV full of hookers as a distraction-tactic... [ BACK ]
*4 The exact recording of which is used roughly twice per episode, not including the one in the opening titles… [ BACK ]
*5 A general practice which has sporadically continued until this year of course, when I sincerely hope that the celluloid-pile-ups that were Baywatch and CHiPs have now driven the final rusty nail into the coffin of this lazy commissioning process... [ BACK ]
*6 And with the best will in the world, the Dollar-Mall Britney Spears is as 'theatrically challenged' as Catherine Bach was, so that sort of works at least [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Back in '99, while American Pie wasn't what I'd call a 'game-changer', it was at the forefront of ushering in a new wave of teen-comedies. Louder, brasher and cooler than those before it. But all these years later, has the franchise still got the heft to entertain? More importantly, does it still have anything to say?
The Plot: It's been thirteen years, and the East Great Falls Class of '99 are planning to get back together to compare notes and party. Along the way they discover that many things are different now, and that some things never change…
The Good: Seann William Scott and Eugene Levy, to be honest. Stifler is pretty much his old self, a swearing charmless oaf with a heart of gold, trying to fit in whilst trying not to look like he's trying. Although there are plenty of gags in the film, I found Stifler's to be the most engaging. Also on good form is Eugene Levy as Jim's Dad, now trying to come to terms with being a widower as well as a grandfather. His scenes are funny and often touching, and it's a shame that the bonding between Jim and his dad wasn't played up more, as it's pretty much the only character development in the whole film.
Elsewhere, the film is consistently amusing, if not laugh-out-loud hilarious, and there are some nicely executed farcical set-pieces. If you enjoyed the previous three instalments*1, then you already know what to expect, and you'll enjoy this. If you haven't seen the others, I'm not sure what you'll get out of AP:R, as the writers haven't really catered for you.
The Bad: Generally speaking, the film feels a bit forced. It spends a lot of time trying too hard, be it on the Outrageous Comedy™ or the overly sincere emotional plot-strands. There's not really a need for this film to exist, and the plot device of the school reunion is about as transparent as it gets. It feels like the makers of AP:R watched last year's Scream 4 and money-spinning nostalgia took control before anyone could point out that American Pie: The Wedding was pretty much a good point to close on. Still, AP:R works in that you laugh when you're meant to and roll your eyes when they try and make the characters look deep/troubled, but there's a feeling that renewing everyone's contracts one last time should have been for something more than this.
The Ugly: It gets a bit whiny and too much like hard work on more than one occasion. Messrs Herz, Hurwitz and Schlossberg appear to have looked at their slapstick, gross-out screenplay and thought: "You know what this needs? Some crying and handwringing to bring things the fuck down, a bit." And that's what they did. Pretty much all of the central characters arrive with their own baggage, which is fine, but there's not enough time in the film to deal with all the strands effectively, so there are a lot of forlorn glances and out-and-out fights that all seem to get neatly tied up at the end. Which isn't so fine. I wanted to enjoy the film more, but Stifler's idiot of a boss, Finch's arrest-and-bail scenario and Oz's idiot of a girlfriend threaten to frequently derail everything.
Worth £8+? In and of itself, not really, no. With the best will in the world, it's one of the most pointless revisits ever. Watch it on DVD with friends and drinks for best effect, but there's really nothing new here.
*1 I'm not including the straight-to-video spin-offs, but only because I haven't seen them, so I can't really comment.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
...oh, you didn't think that was my actual review, did you?
And so, January is here. In addition to the self-indulgent last-minute offerings for the Oscars, the traditional post-Christmas release pattern in the UK is for the fucking drivel the studios can't put out at any other time of year because they can't compete with mainstream blockbusters. And there are so many of those that January becomes the graveyard shift for movies. And 2012 is no exception.
Goon is weak. How weak? Look at the poster up there. Go on, click on it and have a look.
Imagine you're in charge of the UK marketing for this one. An also-ran ice hockey comedy starring That Stiffler. I'm not saying that no-one in the UK is into Canadian Ice Hockey, but it is, at best a minority sport. Add in the cinematic qualities of this particular gem, and your only real hope is to market it for the violence. Hence the poster-quotes from Loaded, Nuts, and some website I've never heard of*1. So, apart from the barrel-scraping demographic they're aiming at, even the people who "loved" this film could only bring themselves to give it 4 out of 5. Talk about damning with faint praise.
As for the film itself, as my other*2 review said, it's not really about ice hockey, and even though I know next-to-nothing about it, I get the impression that it's about as faithful to the game as Jurassic Park is to genetic research. The opening act seems to zip by (presumably) months in Doug Glatt's life, where a guy who can't skate somehow gets a place on a hockey team. The main thread of the film comes in fits and starts as we stutter over Rhea's 12-match (ie 12 week?) suspension. Glatt's family are seemingly abandoned half way through the film, and Jay Baruchel's Pat only returns because Baruchel co-wrote the film and wanted to get his face in at the end.
Seann William Scott does bring some charm to the film, but I've seen that so many times before it doesn't really matter any more. Shcreiber's nowhere near as aggressive or wily as his character requires him to be, and he just seems bored for the whole thing. Everyone else stumbles through and phones-in performances, including Eugene Levy as Jewish Dad™, and Jay Baruchel as Swearing, Excited Geek™.
It's not consistently funny enough to be a comedy, and there's not enough feeling for it to be a drama, even when the blood's spraying across the ice. I can imagine it going down slightly better with an actual hockey-crowd, but for the UK market, this should have been straight-to-DVD.
It's not the worst thing I've ever seen (and I'm sure I'll see worse this year), but if you get anything of substance out of it, I salute you.
*2 No offence to heyuguys, I just really haven't heard of you. I'll check you out but, y'know. I only wish you'd been brought to my attention by being quoted over a better film. *2 It was a piss-take. Don't quote me on the fucking DVD packaging.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
And so, January is here. The traditional post-Christmas release pattern in the UK is for the more worthy films to be aired just before the Academy Awards ceremony in February. With the festivities and their associated blockbusters out of the way, now is the perfect time to see actual film at the cinema, and 2012 is no exception.
With Goon, director Michael 'Take Me Home Tonight' Dowse brings us a tale of self-discovery and cameraderie, with the rough-and-tumble of Canadian and American mainstream sport as a background rather than the focus, per se. In many respects, it owes a lot to Rod Daniel's 1985 piece, 'Teen Wolf', with the many individual matches themselves being shown purely from the protagonists viewpoint, and often in a few minutes or less.
Sean William 'Dukes of Hazzard' Scott brings the role of Doug Glatt to life. Glatt finds his way from casual door-security work, onto the professional ice hockey circuit, not by being a gifted player, but rather by virtue of his talents as an enforcer, or the titular 'goon'. His mandate within the squad is to keep his violent counterparts on the opposing team in check. A role which he relishes at first, but with which his character struggles when he begins to extend into actually playing hockey, only to be reprimanded by his own manager and more sportingly talented teammates.
Indeed, this struggle is only one of many as Glatt is something of a lost soul, looking to find his raison d'etre. Raised in an orthodox Jewish family, the film paints him as almost an outcast from the offset, with his parents struggling to accept his job first as a 'bouncer', and later as a hockey player (in fact, the thread with Glatt's parents is never quite resolved in the film, making the dénouement particularly hollow).
Elsewhere, tensions rise within the team as Marc-André 'The Chameleon'Grondin plays Xavier Laflamme, the golden-boy of the team whose own focus and determination on the ice is slipping, and is taking out his frustrations on Glatt, whom he holds partially responsible for his waning star. A particularly touching scene sees Glatt making his peace with his enforced flatmate Laflamme whilst talking through an adjoining wall, reminiscent of two characters talking whilst in neighbouring prison cells. Of course, up until this point, the characters had been in cells, albeit of their own psychological making. Similarly, once Glatt moves north to join the Halifax Highlanders, a romantic interest emerges in Eva, played by Alison 'Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen' Pill, who is similarly confused with her position in life. The two disparate souls are brought slowly together, each being an antidote to the weaknesses and damage in the other's psyche. A particularly poignant touch from the director is the scene they share in Eva's car, with the snow outside representing her crumbling reluctance to commit to a relationship with Glatt, and the plastic cherry suspended from the rear-view mirror representing his implied virginity.
And finally, we have the St John's Shamrocks enforcer Ross Rhea, courtesy of Liev 'Mixed Nuts' Schreiber. Rhea spends most of the film as an observer, having been suspended for gratuitously violent conduct. We see Glatt's rise to fame from his eyes as he studies the matches which take place in his absence, knowing that their paths will cross eventually. Like the best grizzled old pro's, Rhea knows the time will soon come to hang up his boots for good, and it is the culmination of Glatt's story and Rhea's career that brings the film to its heart-stopping climax. As I intimated earlier, the film is less about ice hockey, and more about the violence that accompanies it. Blood is spilled frequently throughout the film, but always sparingly, save the final showdown between the last of the old generation, and the first of the new.
Each drop of blood that hits the ice is a metaphor for tears, sweat and dignity. Ice hockey is portrayed as a sport that is less about numbers and points, and more about agression and raw, primal truth. Goon isn't quite perfect, but it's a thoughtful reminder that the same can be said of any one of us. With determination, we should all strive for the goals within our reach.
I shall be sorely disappointed if The Academy fails to recognise the haunting and touching contributions that Scott, Schreiber and Grondin have made to celluloid.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
The Dukes Of Hazzard
The Dukes Of Hazzard
