Big Willie Weekend, 1996
I was hesitant to watch PHENOMENON again, but it’s fine. It’s a corny but harmless drama/romance with sci-fi elements, directed by Jon Turteltaub (3 NINJAS, COOL RUNNINGS, WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING) from a script by Gerald Di Pego (SHARKY’S MACHINE).
It stars John Travolta in his post-PULP-FICTION I’m Back period. GET SHORTY made the comeback seem permanent, but then nobody saw/liked WHITE MAN’S BURDEN, and it was followed by the middle-of-the-road sappiness double whammy of the angel movie MICHAEL and this. So it took doing his first John Woo movie to put a little more gas in the tank, at least for those of us wanting him to do movies we perceived as cool. PHENOMENON was a pretty big hit, though, and I didn’t hate it.
It’s set in a vast land of aged white farm houses with big porches, and with rusty pickup trucks parked nearby. This is what we learn from the opening credits montage and the very sentimental but not painful score by Thomas Newman (THE PLAYER) telling us how majestic and shit it is. Good ol’ wholesome small town utopia.
Travolta plays George Malley, a humble mechanic who enjoys gardening and has lots of friends who will hang out with him at the bar on his birthday. Unfortunately they do not include the furniture-making single mother he keeps asking out, Lace (Kyra Sedgwick, SINGLES). Maybe next time. (read the rest of this shit…)
