In my life I have mocked Arnold Schwarzenegger, Paul Verhoeven, Philip K. Dick adaptations other than Blade Runner, and Sharon Stone. But together they team up for a surprisingly good movie. Superficially there is a lot to make fun of in this movie, but that just adds to its charm. This probably has the best Schwarzenegger performance and the jokes land a lot more squarely than in Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers.
Speaking of Starship Troopers, according to IMDb’s Connections, Michael Ironside loses an arm in both ST and TR. Ironside is an actor I have a soft spot for because I loved “Seaquest: DSV” and he stepped in for Roy Scheider as the skipper of the submarine. And I have a soft spot for Roy Scheider because he was Chief Brody in Jaws. And I didn’t realize his name was Brody until I worked as a chef and one of the managers would call me “Chief” instead of Chef and I finally asked why. I seem to have digressed a little bit, what I was trying to say was that I don’t really appreciate The French Connection and soundtrack/score. So if you want to watch a gritty 1970s drama about a racist cop breaking up an international drug smuggling ring, then watch Total Recall, which is set in the future (cooler than the 1970s) involves crime on Mars (cooler than NYC) and the racism in TR is about mutants!
You’ve tricked and fooled your readers for years. You’ve tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You’ve introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You’ve withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it. But now, the tables are turned. Millions of angry mystery readers are now getting their revenge. When the world learns I’ve outsmarted you, they’ll be selling your $1.95 books for twelve cents.
Several years ago, as I am sure you all remember, I reviewed Charlie Chan in the Secret Service. In that review I noted how the reason I knew Charlie Chan was a real character was from this movie. There are five detectives invited to a dinner and then the murders start. The five parody detectives are based on some of the most famous ones ever. James Coco plays Milo Perrier, who represents Hercule Poirot. Peter Falk–Colombo–plays Sam Diamond, who represents Sam Spade, the private dick from The Maltese Falcon. Elsa Lanchester—Miss Plimsoll from Witness for the Prosecution—plays Jessica Marbles, who represents Miss Marple. The pair of David Niven and Maggie Smith—The Pink Panther and Professor McGongall, from the Harry Potter series—play the Charlestons, who represent the Charleses from the series of Thin Man movies. The Charlie Chan is called Sidney Wang and Peter Sellers—Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther series—goes into yellow face to play him.
This might seem like a Clue ripoff, but it actually came out nine years earlier. Maybe it rips off the actual board game Clue, I do not know. It certainly has more clever dialogue than the board game, but to be fair I might be thinking of Clue, Jr.
When I first watched it I was fully prepared to give this less than 3 stars, but I wanted to watch it again to give it another shot. Normally my rule is one shot and that is it. This took three viewings but I’ve finally decided that it’s very clever and essentially is good enough to justify the racism, sexism and homophobia in the film. That’s an important rule of comedy – you can be offensive, if you’re funny. Regardless, Alec Guinness needed more lines as the blind butler. Neil Simon wrote this so he could have written more lines for him, or maybe Robert Moore, as director, could have cast him as a different character. I was surprised to not find Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson parodied herein, but allegedly they were in the movie, but cut out of deference to the more famous actors playing the other detectives.
Now that I know so much more about the film, and have enjoyed rewatching it, I get it. My biggest gripe now is how harshly the film rants against the genre. The slapstick was time period appropriate, so it would be inappropriate to overly penalize something for being a tired trope when it was not yet one. This movie is fun and charming, with excellent casting. There really is just that one tiny little hurdle of Peter Sellers and yellow face… In the 21st century Charlie Chan movies seem extremely offensive. So what does that say about the man who mocks the offensive caricature? Peter Sellers would get a far greater benefit of the doubt, were it not for the Pink Panther films and the Pink Panther Strikes Again in particular. But this 1981 film actually is a contemporary of Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen. Having seen that movie, comparatively, this is only mildly offensive.
I guess you followed me. It’s one of those infinite time loop situations you might have heard about.
In our current political situation, many films seem poignant. So many of them seem to have warned against the future that we now live in. That sensation impacts how we view a film. Watching this movie 5 years ago might have felt more historical and less timely. Palm Springs has very little to do with our current political situation, but still feels insightful and timely because of how the quarantine and pandemic have made days run together. Reduced to its core, Palm Springs is an update on Groundhog Day. That movie is so ubiquitous that it has become a pop-culture meme. Groundhog Day has replaced Sisyphus as the pop-culture model of being stuck and forever having the same day as some form of punishment.
Today people treat Groundhog Day like a masterpiece, but when it came out it was just a clever comedy that received no Oscar or Golden Globe nominations. It did win a BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay. I like it, but don’t think that it’s amazing. I have it between Remains of the Day and Tombstone for movies from 1993. How a viewer feels about that movie will probably dictate how a viewer will feel about this one. The key differences between the two are that the stars are different people and that this is an R-rated movie.
Andy Samberg and Bill Murray were both very funny Saturday Night Live alumni. They’re famous and both delivered as expected. Cristin Milioti was much more of an unknown for me, but she was great in this. She went between being gross and charming; between smart and dumb; and between cold and emotional. The movie is only as good as those two make it, and they made it a very good one. The guy who is in everything is no longer Stephen Tobolowsky–Ned Ryerson. Instead it’s J.K. Simmons, whose method of being annoying isn’t bubbly friendliness, it’s hunting Samberg with a compound bow. I find that a very representative switch.
He was not my James Bond. That said, I loved Sean Connery the actor, and acknowledge that Sean Connery was a flawed man. When you type in “sean connery sexist” Bing wants to correct it to “sean connery sexiest man alive”. That is funny in a dark way.
And all of that is who James Bond was supposed to be. James Bond was not written as a hero or a role model, but Sean Connery made him so easy to root for. Still, his character’s sexism wasn’t okay in 1964, but it was more socially acceptable.
Sean Connery was more than James Bond, so I would like to take a look at the other roles that he did. IMDb hilariously puts in parentheses the role which most people are likely to know an actor from, and for Sean Connery this was The Untouchables. This is also darkly funny because the part of his performance that I remember best is his over the top death scene. Of his ~54 movies, I’ve seen him in 32 movies, and I wouldn’t put that in the top 5 that come to mind. Nor the top 10. Without looking, here are the movies that come to mind for Sean Connery in his amazing career.
Dr. No – Not the Best Bond, but the one that comes to mind first.
From Russia with Love – The Best Bond according to my Grandfather.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – I love this movie and vaguely remember seeing this with my parents in a movie theater.
Goldfinger – Now do you see how absurd 1987’s The Untouchables was?
Finding Forrester – “You’re the man now, dog.” If they wanted a modern hit, why not go with that one?
The Hunt for Red October – Or if they wanted a movie from the late 80s/early 90s, why not choose John McTiernan’s masterpiece?
The Rock – Or if you wanted to make people think of Bond without saying Bond…
Murder on the Orient Express – the 1974 one.
The Man Who Would Be King – He had several big post-Bond movies in the 1970s.
A Bridge Too Far – Like this one.
Never Say Never Again – The Bond movie that feels like a fever dream because you watched it as a kid, but then after rewatching every Bond movie you didn’t see it and wonder if you just imagined that this film existed.
Still not the Untouchables. For me I think of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, First Knight, that dragon movie he did after First Knight, the Lion in Winter, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds are Forever, Zardoz (which is only so late because I’ve tried to suppress it from my memory) and then, along with Entrapment, we have the Untouchables as “oh yeah….he was in that movie!”
He was in more movies than that, and he was generally good in them. He had the career that everyone wanted Bruce Willis to have. How many actors, real stars, not just Stephen Tobolowsky character actors who have been in over 200 movies, have you see 30+ movies of? Excluding Marvel movies, I’ve seen more of Connery than even of Samuel L. Jackson.
I think that Connery’s retirement makes this an easier death for me, than had he still been working. And now I should make a joke about Bond villains finally getting their wish. Instead of choosing one of his dry one-liners upon the demise of some villain, I will quote him from another movie, The Hunt for Red October.
Jabrody's Movielog 