Hyping Mediocrity

...Distasteful in a different way is Cujo Adapted by Don Carlos Dunaway and Lauren Currier from Stephen King's novel, it does very well what a horror film should-It terrifies you Most of the thrills, if that's the right word, come from watching a helpless woman, Donna Trenton (Dee Wallace), try to protect her young son, Tad (Danny Pin-tauro), from a huge, man-killing, rabid dog Credit is certainly due Lewis Teague, whose direction takes the shortest route to the viewer's gut...

...The cost to Zelig is simple maladjustment, it seems For which the cure, as in all of Allen's works, is the love of a good woman, in this case a psychiatrist named Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow) The filmmaker has little to say about the pathology of self-loathing or the hopelessness of trying to overcome cultural marginality and dissociation through imitation Allen cares more about the less interesting problems of being a celebrity, particularly the ironic (and insufficiently dramatized) notion that fame can paradoxically result from anonymity But the gap between the public and private self is less a psychic difficulty for Zelig than for the real-life Allen We barely glimpse the /director' actor's all too familiar complaints (about sex, parents and analysis...

...Zelig, Woody Allen's latest work, is a pseudodocumentary Through staged interviews, "past" and present, as well as artfully contrived "period" news-reels and doctored photographs that are cleverly integrated with authentic material, Allen (who wrote and directed) relates the fictional life story of the eponymous Leonard Zelig (Allen again) Supposedly a minor celebrity during the '20s and '30s, Zelig is now being "rediscovered...

...Paul Brickman also aims at the intersection of reality and illusion in his writing and directing of Risky Business At the beginning of the movie, Joel Goodson (Tom Cruise), a high-school senior worrying about his future (not unlike the older Benjamin in The Graduate), plunges into a fantasy sequence that starts with the pursuit of a voluptuous nude woman and ends with the ordeal of taking the SATs That clever interweaving of adolescent anxieties regarding sex and success is the high point of the film...

...This spectacle is the climax of a Rocky-like saga of making it in showbiz Actually, the plot of Staying Alive functions as a thin thread connecting the dance numbers-endless auditions, rehearsals, performances that blur together-accompanied by a soundtrack that is part Bee Gees, part Frank Stallone (yes, Sylvester's brother), and all Excedrin Headache Number Nine Like Flashdance, the movie is only a pretext for its soundtrack album...

...At least Dunaway and Currier, otherwise quite faithful themselves to their source, have changed the ending The novel left Tad dead and Donna psychologically crippled, the film allows the boy and his mother to survive more or less intact Although I'm no more a booster of the phony happy ending than I am of the fake downbeat finale, I sighed with relief when the lights came on after Cujo Come to think of it, I was just as glad when the other four films I've reviewed here were over...

...An equally clunky artifact is National Lampoon's Vacation Chevy Chase stars as Clark Griswold, who undertakes a disastrous cross-country car trip with his wife, Ellen (Beverly D'An-gelo), and their teenage children, Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall) and Audrey (Dana Barron...

...The rest of Risky Business is an arty New Wave version(backlighting, fancy cutting) of the schlocky teen exploitation flicks (Porkv's, etc ) that have recently been so popular Joel, chasing dollars as a member of "Future Enterprises" (the fictional counterpart of Junior Achievement), is trapped into testing his business theories when he wrecks his father's sports ear while his parents are on vacation To come up with the cash for repairs and not incidentally to relieve himself of his virginity , Joel teams up with Lana (Rebecca DeMornav), a hooker with the proverbial heart of you-know-what Together they undertake the pertect money-making project for Future Enterprises a house that is not a home (though it is Joel's), staffed by Lana and her professional cohorts and managed by Joel in his parents' absence...

...Known as "The Human Chameleon," Zelig was the "ultimate conformist" of his day A psychological and physiological freak, he took on the traits of whomever he happened to be near Next to a fat man, his normally slight build immediately ballooned, among bearded companions, he suddenly sprouted whiskers With Negroes, his features darkened, with Chinese, his eyes slanted Born a Jew, he became an archetype of assimilation, transforming himself into a Catholic in a Papal entourage, a Nazi at a Hitler rally The costs and benefits of fitting in with a vengeance could have been the subject of a biting black comedy It would be hard to think of a better vehicle (if not a more obvious one) than the experiences of a child of Jewish immigrants a half-century ago Unfortunately, the spectacle of a Jew who wants so much to belong that he joins the Nazis does not horrify Allen, as one would expect, or at least hope It serves merely as an excuse for some visual and verbal jokes that only reiterate the conceit of conformism carried to a ridiculous extreme...

...I consider myself a fan of this genre, but the visceral impact of Cujo is almost pornographic True, by the standards of contemporary "splatter" films, it isn't particularly excessive Nevertheless, what gore there is seems stunningly realistic, as do the scares, because they are frighteningly well integrated into the plot, which is in turn harrowingly pointed (No Halloween-type anonymous killer or interchangeable victims here) And the point is that Donna, according to King's highly suspect code of ethics, deserves to be cruelly punished, since a subplot has revealed her unfaithfulness to her husband (Darnel Hugh-Kelly...

...Brickman (who wrote Handle with Care) and the critics who have called Risky Business this generation's version of The Graduate apparently think it skewers the relationship between capitalism and sex It doesn't Like the exploitation genre it tries to rise above, Risky Business ultimately endorses its purported target Joel succeeds so lavishly as a pimp that he gets his father's car fixed and wangles his way into Princeton by procuring a companion for the admissions officer who comes to interview him at his house That is a morally dubious denouement to a film hailed by one supposedly high minded critic for its "inspired insights ". The final sequence of Staying Alive should give a clear indication of where its makers' minds were After six years, Tony Manero(John Travolta) has finally shaken his Saturday Night Fever, now he dances on Broadway for a living, not at discos for fun In fact, by the end of this sequel, he has become the star of a new musical called Satan's Alley He knows where his roots are, though, he leaves the opening night party behind and struts triumphantly down Broadway to the Bee Gees' title song, reprised from the original film As Tony swaggers along, Sylvester Stallone, writer (with Norman Wexler) and director of Staying Alive, zeroes in alternately on his crotch and his buns This homoerotic perspective is so evident throughout Staying Alive, one must wonder what audience Stallone had in mind Especially revealing in this respect is the big production number of Satan's Alley, the musical with the musical Clad in a fringed leather jockstrap, Tony plays a Nijinsky-like satyr cast into the underworld He quickly discovers that hell isn't other people in general, it's women in particular Hordes of scantily clad female dancers claw at him, trying to keep him down He fights them of f one by one and then, like Gnzabella in Cats, rises to the rafters, amid clouds of smoke, on a plat-form that resembles the mother ship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind And what a close call' Imagine the hell of suffering the attentions of attractive, voracious women...

...As absurd as it was, however, Flash-dance at least packed some wallop Staying Alive has the energy of a wind-up toy, whirring and grinding noisily without any punch The choreography is "showy" in the worst way, and repetitive to boot All of the story complications-backstage rivalries, romance thwarted by career conflict, and so on-are cliches to anyone who has ever seen any Hollywood musical, beginning with, say, the original (1933) Forty-Second Street The acting ranges from earnestly mediocre (Cynthia Rhodes as Jackie, Tony's true love) to earnestly awful (Travolta at his vulnerable puppy dog worst) to absolutely wretched (Finola Hughes-whose dancing is worse than her acting, and who looks worse than her character should-as Laura, the allegedly sultry temptress who temporarily steals Tony's heart...

...LOn Screen HYPING MEDIOCRITY BY ROBERT ASAHINA HOLLYWOOD'S recent output has been so dreary that reviewers, otherwise unable to meet their quota for quotable copy, apparently have talked themselves into hailing the meretricious as meritorious Only such frustration could account for the unwarranted praise accorded movies like Zelig and Risky Business But dross remains dross even when it glitters...

...The country they cross is TV land The R-rated language and flashes of bare skin can be excised easily (and no doubt will be when the network rights are sold) The rest of the film takes place in the realm of' 50s situation comedies, peopled by hapless dad, efficient mom, and wise-beyond-their-years kids, who are plagued by the usual accidents There's even a cranky maiden aunt and a rascal of a pooch that leaves his calling cards in inappropriate places at inconvenient moments . The level of the humor sinks lower still, the filmmakers stoop to plenty of gags about death and the disposal of corpses, incest, and animal abuse The tastelessness would not matter, I suppose, if the jokes were funny...

...In addition, Allen is regrettably preoccupied with parodying the documentary form Thus he includes interviews with intellectual stars (Irving Howe, Susan Sontag, Bruno Bettelheim, and Saul Bellow, appearing as themselves) whose self-consciously pompous commentary constitutes Allen's satire on the testimony of the "witnesses" in Warren Beatty's Reds Such material would better suit a short skit on Saturday Night Live, or a student project, than a feature film At any rate, in the end the real stars of Zelig are the cinematographer, Gordon Willis, the editor, Susan E Morse, and the other technicians responsible for the seamless weaving of fact and fiction...