Pretty Worthless

...by Beth Austin In the 1954 film On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando plays a dockworker named Terry Malloy whose brother is in cahoots with the vicious leader of the dockworkers’ local...

...It’s easy for a third-grader, or a filmmaker house, without an ivy-clad all-boys school or a Ferrari with a third-grader’s moral sophistication, to set out in sight...

...The movie, notable for its greatest-hits approach to English literature, never explains how this extraordinary young man sprang from the loins of an overbearing, embittered father and a mealy mouthed zero of a mother, but it wholeheartedly endorses his raging case of adolescent self-pity (no one understands me, there’s no place for me in this cold, cold world...

...In his parents’ absence, the plucky child manages to save his home from burglars, reconcile an elderly neighbor with his son and grandchildren, and, finally, bring his own family back home-where they belong-in time for Christmas...

...It’s making the love of a buck and a comfy job more important than love of your fellow man...

...And that’s it...

...Same deal in Defending Your Life...

...The send you to bed without your supper...

...she asks him...

...She wants “the fairy tale...

...was an advertising ex- No one is asking ecutive...

...In general, when thirtysomething parents track down the elusive babysitter and head out to the lars...

...And Dad, the Mr...

...With his invincible credit card, he vanquishes shopkeepers for her along Rodeo Drive, scooping up every item in sight as Roberts’s smiles (and eyes) grow bigmall to see one of today’s blockbusters, they get not just an evening of lighthearted entertainment for their 14 bucks-they get a subtle validation of an “I’m OK, You’re OK’ view of society...

...Even a movie like Rain Man, which takes on themes that seem guaranteed to disturb audiencesautism and institutionalization-manages to cause no pain...

...Radicchio ad absurdum Much more, indeed...

...cries Karl Malden, playing a Catholic priest also shamed by Edie into doing the right thing by the dockworkers...

...Don‘t worry-he doesn’t suffer for long...

...But, as Do The Right Thing proved, tackling such issues unsettles audiences, a risk most filmmakers never run...

...But their dreams, an act of it’s jarring, and somebetrayal that can only what frightening, to hurt, not instruct, their see the cheerful moral children...

...George bly attempting to create Bailey would never order in their chaotic have gone to work for home...

...But none of them asks what these good families And exactly what are good for...

...Who wasn’t moved by the scenes late in the movie when Charlie and Raymond warm up to each other...

...In the latest afterlife extravaganza, Defending Your Life, Albert Brooks doesn’t have to minister to lepers, save the rainforest, or even donate blood to reach a higher level of being...

...Holthe real world lurking beyond the threshold...

...In Reversal ofFortune, Ron Silver portrays Alan Dershowitz as a loving father and a model lawyer-brilliant, dedicated, and deliberately inattentive, not to the fee or celebrity involved, but to the moral implications of freeing Claw von Bulow...

...At first, Rain Man presents the familiar plot: Cold troubled capitalist seeks gorgeous compassionate SWF to share nice car, difficulties with father...

...Parenthood is in many ways an exception...

...It’s disheartening to realize that, in a nineties movie, Atticus Finch would be considered a bad parent because he risks his family’s safety for his work...

...But The Things That Really Matter have changed...

...Although he resists falling in with the crooks, Terry also has no interest in trying to stop them...

...What that boy needed was a swift kick in the pants...

...choice is between maintaining an upper-middle-class Each of these movies projects a Bush-era vision of lifestyle and a slightly less upper-middle-class the perfect family-warm, white, well heeled, and inlifestyle in which his wife would need to get a job...

...But-and here’s Rain Man’s painkiller-who wasn’t subtly relieved when Charlie realizes that he can’t care for his brother adequately (the guy can’t even toast his own waffles, for Chrissake) and decides to ship him back to that wonderful institution, where he’ll be so much happier...

...The cinematic legacy of the Reagan era divides roughly Beth Austin is a Chicago writer...

...If you can handle such a feat of cognitive dissonance, compare that movie to the blockbuster Batman...

...At least the characters played by the likes of Jean Arthur, Katharine Hepburn, and Rosalind Russell had useful lives and independent minds...

...These decisions are never simple, never rates even a cameo in these movies...

...that women exist to help men get beyond their fear of intimacy and commitment...

...Today’s movies show boys what it takes to win a girl in much the same way Steve Martin famously advised Americans on “How to be a Millionaire and Never Pay Taxes”: “First,” he said, “get a million dolAgain, there are exceptions...

...What more do you want me to do?’ “Much more,” Edie fires back, almost snarling, “much, much, much more...

...On one hand are what could be characterized as outward-looking films, in which the main players try to save or avenge their friends/town/city/planet...

...Roberts’s mission is to use her feminine softness and her unstinting sexual healing to turn Gere from a cold corporate raider into a creative entrepreneur and a family man...

...It’s OK, the movie tells us...

...Family-cen- but they are filled with excitement and satisfaction to tered films make no distinctions: Whether you’re try- which Hollywood these days seems oblivious...

...Of course, Kevin is a juvenile delinquent compared to the adolescent paragon at the center of Dead Poets Society...

...As long as you lived, you’d remember you ran out and threw this country of yours to the jackals...

...Today’s female characters exist exclusively to bring white male stars in touch with The Things That Really Matter...

...Pretty Worthless Whatever happened making movies that make a difference...

...When an investigator from the crime commission tries to question him, Terry more or less sums up his philosophy of life: “I don’t know nothin’, I ain’t seen nothin’, an’ I ain’t sayin’ nothin...

...he merely realizes what he wants...

...Home Alone develops this theme so cannily that it promises to replace E. T (another kids-good, grownupsbad epic) as the top film moneymaker of all time...

...and that personal relationships are the single most important facet of life...

...You know what’s wrong with our waterfront...

...Like Edie, Roberts wants much more from her man than he is prepared to deliver-but what, exactly...

...In Albert Brooks’s cosmology, self-sacrifice isn’t the highest good...

...Watching these movies, one pictures the filmmakers as disgruntled eight-year-olds being trundled off to bed, screaming and vowing revenge...

...In fact, as a moviegoer-and a wife and a mother and a journalistI find them not just empty, but insidious, because they leave us feeling so good about our insulated selves...

...It’s the love of a lousy buck...

...Forget giving him space to experiment with his art...

...In relationships, they learn, people need never make any painful demands on each other...

...Getting the girl-in other words, doing the right thing-almost costs Terry his life, but by the time 1990’s number two movie, Pretty Woman, rolled around, the price of a heroine had dropped to $300...

...The problem is that home is all that matters...

...Is evtinted visions of home, the blacks who validate Tom eryone’s moral sense blunted by materialism...

...We barely learn what the characters do to pay for their loft apartments, grilled radicchio, and Mexican ceramic tile floors...

...As adults, they’ve made good on those childish threats by creating a slew of movies in which kids always know best...

...Boy,” he observes, “are you a fruitcake...

...Keep the antique car, but send the brother back...

...Cinema very tame Consider To Kill a Mockingbird...

...In When Harry Met Sally, the seal is so tight that any real human being would surely suffocate...

...But making the right career move still isn’t enough for Gere to win Roberts...

...stop her from getting on that plane...

...girls learn what kind of girl is worth getting...

...Dances with wives The people who start life being boys-and girls-have always looked to the screen to learn about life and love...

...Meaningful Hollywood to churn work...

...He comes into his own only when his family manages, accidentally, to leave for Paris without him...

...He lifts her up from the slums to a luxury suite with a sweeping view...

...Richard Gere-whose ambition is not to work on the docks but to own a shipyard-at first wins the girl, Julia Roberts, by, literally, paying for her...

...He decks her out in jewels and whisks her away in a private jet to San Francisco for the opera...

...The Reagan years’ other moral legacy to Hollywood is more inward-looking: the exaltation of “family values,” in which the family itself has become our only value, the single bright ray in an increasingly murky world...

...He just has to admit he loves Meryl Streep...

...tact...

...But much more threatening to the relationship than Terry’s lack of money or brains are Edie’s weird ideas...

...And sometimes the only facet...

...Don’t look for it out an undifferentiated in these films...

...When was the last time you saw a Mr...

...into two categories...

...In MK Smith Goes to Washington, Jean Arthur urges Jimmy Stewart, “Don’t quit...

...To its credit, the movie drives home the lesson that Gere’s work is not only worthless but dehumanizing...

...Few movies take on the hard and dramatic issues that confront contemporary American blacks even as gingerly as A Raisin in the Sun did in 1961...

...Instead, he Zuzu, just as Bogie wastes his time fiddling with a wacky invention just would never have let Ingrid Bergman’s love for him because it might cure cancer...

...It should be noted that his big while if it cuts into quality time...

...In trying to produce ”family” movies, today’s popular filmmakers have confused niceness with morality and ended up creating a moral universe that stops at thc front door...

...Today, his daughter Scout would quickly set him straight, convincing him to ditch the case because nothing could be more important than spending more time at home...

...It’s all there: the sepia- chardonnay-r Atticus Finch driving a BMW...

...She’s educated and has a shot at escaping the docks...

...The mother’s flatness of one screen commitment to her job couple and family afleaves her children fee- ter another...

...Of course, Brooks and Streep are utterly insulated from the real world-but then again, so are almost all movie couples...

...Potter, or of Gary Cooper, who made it almost to the end of High Noon without firing a shot...

...But families are world of childhood-playing ball with your pals in the not all alike, and each person must find a balance becrimson autumn leaves-is superior in every way to tween the understandable desire to seal relationships the world of work...

...But a look at the heartwarming blockbusters of recent years indicates that, in general, we hold these truths to be self-evident: that a parent’s highest responsibility is to provide complete emotional and financial security for his child...

...Because of its apparent conflict between career and family, To Kill a Mockingbird sends a message that today’s movies, with their emphasis on quality time, sincere relationships, and parent-child bonding, never approach: A vital part of loving your children --of loving anyone-is living a life they will admire, which can mean risking yourself and even your loved ones to do the right thing...

...In the penultimate scene, Brooks forfeits his chance to apotheosize not because he’s been selfish and dishonest all his life, but because he didn’t bed the willing Meryl Streep even though he really wanted to...

...The female character, however, can’t pull off her hero’s redemption alone...

...it’s the stupidest move you can make...

...if she falls for Terry, she probably never will...

...You bright, centered, and probably don’t remem- resilient children grow ber, because beyond up, will they consider paying the bills, his job their debt to society had nothing to do with paid in full if they his family life-r, for merely produce 2.2 that matter, with any- perfect replicas of body’s life, since he themselves...

...I’m trying to keep you from getting hurt,” Terry mumbles...

...Instead, they take after Dirty Harry, whose readiness to blow holes through villains seemed to be all that stood between San Francisco and the apocalypse...

...Everybody thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor,” lectures Marie, the character played by Carrie Fisher, “but they couldn’t all possibly have good taste...

...Harry’s friend Jess, an intense journalist, launches into passionate praise of Jimmy Breslin, calling his writing “a wake-up call to the city of New York”: “He’s saying we’ve actually got people in the city, people on welfare...

...And as would a Jean Arthur, Roberts sets her man straight (at the same time helping him get over his resentment of his capitalist dad...

...But the past few years have seen a dramatic narrowing of the issues and themes addressed in the movies...

...She flings his offer of a mere relationship right back in his face: “No wonder everybody calls you a bum...

...Look Who b Talking, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Dead Poets Society, and Home Alone all feature children struggling to bring their insensitive, inadequate, or just plain bad parents in touch with the Things...

...No one will be shocked to hear that this bloody-buddy genre has its moral deficiencies...

...Don’t grab a measly chance like this to save a few piece-ther men could-but not you...

...The outside world intrudes only once, when Harry and Sally double-date with their best friends...

...In the end, they wind up together, divinely happy...

...Eventually, he chases after her to carry her off-in a silver stretch limousine...

...Only Spike Lee seems consistently willing to consistently confront a range of issues related to race...

...And funny thing about men-they start life being boys...

...When was Martin doing at the these exceptionally office, anyway...

...Shouldn’t everybody care about everybody else...

...once they grasp these Things, the stars win the prize...

...He has to realize he doesn’t want to live without her and then commit...

...Trend spotting is, of course, a risky business, and there are some exceptionsthis year’s Oscar-sweeping Dances With Wolves comes to mind, as do other films such as Glory, The Hunt for Red October, and Guilty by Suspicionto confuse the rule...

...The calm, dependable, unbelievably wise and loving parents who once populated Hollywood have been replaced by a passel of unstable neurotics who need a good 12-step program-r a good 12-yearoldto bring them back onto solid family ground...

...Still, when the parents make moral choices, family happiness is always the paramount issue...

...Making it with Meryl Women aren’t the only victims of cinematic morality in the nineties...

...Still, you don’t have to be a graduate of NYU film school to see that the warm, fuzzy movies celebrating friendship, family, and the occasional dog are also lacking morally...

...Smith puts it in his homey, genderspecific terms, “Now, we’re not gonna have a country that makes these kinds of rules work, if you haven’t got men who’ve learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose...

...In films made by whites, blacks are almost universally portrayed as warm, centered, and soulful-so much so that it is positively refreshing to find that 1990’s number five hit, Total Recall, features a lying, treacherous black man...

...The idea that tackling a problem at off from the world and responsibility toward the work can be just as much fun and even more satisfying greater community...

...As On the Waterfront amply demonstrates, Hollywood has never been a hotbed of complex moral thinking...

...He pursues her, bewildered...

...The movie’s central moral issue remains a tough one: Should Gregory Peck follow his conscience and defend a black man charged with rape, or should he turn his back on the case to protect himself and his young children from possible retaliation by an angry town...

...When Steve Martin has to pick between time at the office and time with his kids, it’s a simple cost-benefit analysis: Money, although very good, is less valuable ing to cure cancer or invent toys, none of it is worththan family time...

...today, they include nothing beyond personal relationships...

...He’s perfect-brilliant, athletic, well mannered, charming, artistic, and unaffectedly sweet...

...you love your relatives, you’re committed to doing the best by them, so go ahead and institutionalize them...

...Think back: Away from your VCR, when was the last time you heard a somber Rick reminding the audience that larger obligations give life meaningthat, when you get right down to it, “the problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world...

...Children who put their parents back on track show up throughout these family-oriented movies: The Shirley Temple genre has triumphed...

...As have a conversation with him, the self-pitying fear of Home Alone’s Kevin would say: I don’t think so...

...Boys watch for whatever quality or action of the hero gets him the girl...

...In that movie, we do get to see parenting from both sides of the spared rod...

...This year’s New Jack City takes a stab at exploring the connections between the drug culture and the underclass (though those issues ultimately get‘buried by the movie’s buddy-cop format...

...from poison-gas extermination, Vicky Vale (Kim Basinger) cavils, “It doesn’t have to be a perfect world...

...These heroes are not descendants of George Bailey, who through example and hard work kept Bedford Falls from the clutches of Mr...

...The purest example of this disregard for work is the It’s equally hard to picture Gary Cooper ordering sentimental blockbuster Big...

...Enter Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman)not a woman or a minority but close, an autistic savant-who effectively teams up with her to bring his brother Charlie (Tom Cruise) in touch with those Things again: the importance of family and commitment...

...It’s a nice nineties fairy tale, but don’t try this at home...

...Home Alone’s winsome little hero, Kevin, is a terrific and resourceful kid whose light is hidden under the bushel of his family’s disapproval...

...Good legislation...

...Since well before Edie drove Terry to blow the whistle on the crooked local, Hollywood has been using women to make heroes out of men...

...Smith waving the Constitution on the Senate floor, expostulating, “I wouldn’t give a red cent for all your fine rules, without there was some plain everyday, common kindness under ’em-and a little looking out for the next fella...

...he requires too much maintenance...

...Gere may turn to more productive work, but he doesn’t sacrifice one thread of his thousand-dollar suits-which is fortunate, since, to deliver the fairy tale, he has to prove over and over again that he’s Roberts’s knight in platinum armor...

...The defenestration of a corrupt union boss...

...He looks amazed...

...When the father insists on placing his sensitive, artistic son on the premed track, the boy is forced to take the ultimate step in parent-rearing: suicide-which the movie treats as an act of Christ-like self-sacrifice, not of self-indulgence...

...Potter so he’d nutty professor, won’t have more money and get a good job at a good time to shower on little wage...

...As Atticus Finch, Peck never wavers, even though his obedience to his conscience nearly costs his children their lives...

...But keeping her, in both senses of the word, is another matter...

...She’s putting herself on the line to clean up the waterfront, and she expects no less from Terry...

...Blacks are also put on earth-or at least on screen-to help white males “find out more about themselves...

...Enter Edie (Eva Marie Saint...

...Compared to the bloodbaths of the cop films, these movies are refreshing not only because they’re generally fun to watch, but because of their emphasis on love and sincerity within relationships...

...A little looking out for the next fella is precisely what filmmakers are leaving out of their family-oriented pictures-a dangerous signal to be transmitting to our kids (at whom most of these movies are aimed), since, as Mr...

...despite their flaws, most of the parents seem well intentioned...

...The redoubtable Edie would never have settled for such moral interior decorating, as Terry learns to his peril...

...Gere doesn’t sacrifice to give Roberts what she needs...

...Sally rolls her eyes, and the conversation fades out, overlaid by Harry and Marie’s discussion of window decorating...

...I’m only trying to help you out...

...The legal heroes of today’s films take a different tack...

...When Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) has to rush off to save Gotham City ger and bigger...

...He changes for her and he fights for her, but in the movie’s most thrilling moments, he’s always buying for her...

...This vision of blacks as conduits to The Things That Really Matter reaches an apogee in 1990’s number one, Ghost, in which medium Whoopi Goldberg (a two-fer, a black female) gives up her body to the spectral Patrick Swayze so he can get in touch with Demi Moore just once more...

...the relationship commandments: Be wise, loving, reIn his grown-up incarnation, Hanks makes a ton of sponsible, emotionally available, and financially semoney and gets the girl, but those benefits prove insuf- cure, or your kids, girlfriend, or autistic brother will ficient compensation for the loss of his childhood...

...In fact, string of uplifting biin Honey, I Shrunk the ographies, say, Mother Kids, the parents are Teresa: The Black censured for pursuing Hole of Calcutta...

...Are Hanks’s coolness by slapping him five but who never moral people truly as scarce as moral movies...

...All photographs courtesy of Photofest...

...At least lywood needs to realize, as its audience does, that Big presents an unpretentious portrait of home: The good relationships require moral judgment of the highboyish Tom Hanks lives in a simple, middle-class est order...