Posts Tagged ‘Larry Miller’
Monday, July 6th, 2026
June 28, 1996
While the recently-minted superstar Jim Carrey was challenging himself (and getting paid well) with THE CABLE GUY, his ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE director was remaking Jerry Lewis’s 1963 movie THE NUTTY PROFESSOR. A challenge of a different sort, I guess, because it’s a big special effects movie. It was a huge hit (biggest comedy of 1996, and #5 movie overall), a comeback for Eddie Murphy, and even won an Oscar (best makeup for the legendary Rick Baker). Murphy is quite good in it. I always hated it though.
Sherman Klump (Murphy between VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN and MULAN) is a professor at Wellman College who is also heading the lab’s groundbreaking DNA experiments on hamsters. He happens to be quite obese, but he gets by, and he’s very good natured. I think people like him, with the exception of his less-than-one-dimensionally uptight boss, Dean Richmond (Larry Miller, RADIOLAND MURDERS), who hates his fucking guts and always stands around and/or hides in his classroom, making various outraged expressions at his activities.
The first joke in the movie (if you’re charitable enough to count it as a joke) is about Richard Simmons. In 1996 you couldn’t really address the topic of weight loss without the observation “Can you believe that Richard Simmons!?” So Murphy plays “Lance Perkins,” not so much a parody as an imitation of Simmons. That makeup is a disturbing image to open on.
I think a joke in the next scene will give you a better idea of the strength and quality of wackiness in this picture. A couple are sitting on the grass at the college when a hamster somehow crawls up the leg of the man’s pants. The woman sees the bulge it creates, apparently believes he has a large boner wagging back and forth, and is very pleased by this. This is only the first of many hijinks involving the unlikely number of hamsters roaming free on campus due to Sherman not noticing that his ass bumped the “for some reason this lever opens all of the cages at the same time” lever on the way out of the lab. Whoops. When he goes into the dean’s office to be dressed down for it he notices, but is stopped from pointing out, that a hamster dangling from the light fixture takes a shit right into the dean’s coffee.
Friends, welcome to COMEDY! Comedy is illegal today, but in 1996 it was a way of life! (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Barry W. Blaustein, Dave Chappelle, David Newman, Def Jam, Eddie Murphy, Jada Pinkett Smith, Jamal Mixon, John Ales, Larry Miller, Montell Jordan, Rick Baker, Steve Oedekerk, Tom Shadyac
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs | 23 Comments »
Thursday, August 22nd, 2024
August 12, 1994
CORRINA, CORRINA is a nice comedy-drama that deals with grief, love and some heavy race and class issues in a very light, warm-hearted sort of way. Is that bad? We can talk about it later.
Manny Singer (Ray Liotta between NO ESCAPE and OPERATION DUMBO DROP) is a recently widowed jingle writer in suburban Los Angeles, 1959. His 9-year-old daughter Molly (Tina Majorino, also in the seal movie ANDRE this summer – sorry, I had to skip a few things) is so not-over-it she refuses to speak, but he’s gonna be screwed if he doesn’t return to work, so he looks for a housekeeper/nanny to stay home with her. After some misfires he ends up with Corrina Washington (Whoopi Goldberg, also in THE LION KING and [briefly] THE LITTLE RASCALS this summer), who seems cynical at first but of course forms an adorable bond with the kid.
In 1994 I wasn’t interested in things this cutesy, and never considered watching it. Now I’m a middle-aged cornball, so I found it moving to see Whoopi turn that little girl’s cartoonish pout into a giggle. Majorino has a pitch perfect deadpan for the non-speaking portions and then a timid little mouse voice when she does talk (spoiler). She breaks your heart when she lays in the grass with her dead mom’s dress laid out next to her, one hand in its pocket, or when Manny lies to a deliveryman that Mrs. Singer is in the bath tub and she lights up and runs to the bathroom to see her. Damn, Manny. What a fuck up. So then you’re primed for the opposite emotion when she notices her dad slipping and referring to Corrina as “your mother” and she doesn’t point it out but breaks into a huge, toothy grin. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brent Spiner, Bruce Surtrees, Courtland Mead, Don Ameche, Erica Yohn, Jessie Nelson, Joan Cusack, Larry Miller, Lin Shaye, Patrika Darbo, Ray Liotta, Steven Williams, Tina Majorino, Wendy Crewson, Whoopi Goldberg
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Romance | 2 Comments »
Thursday, May 9th, 2024
May 6, 1994
The erotic thriller DREAM LOVER is so far the only movie directed by Nicholas Kazan, a writer who’s an Oscar nominee for REVERSAL OF FORTUNE and on my shit list for MOBSTERS. James Spader (SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE) stars as Ray Reardon, successful architect, charmer, admitted bad husband, but supposed to be well-meaning and sweet. At his divorce hearing he fires his lawyer and lets his now-ex Martha (Kathleen York, unaired DARKMAN tv pilot) have everything. Sitting in the courthouse afterwards they look like they’re on a first date that’s going really well. They talk about how much they still love each other but she can’t stay with him because he hit her. Which seems more than fair to me! He tries to downgrade it to a slap or accidental bump and justify it as a response to her cheating on him, and this does not offend her. She puts her head on his shoulder and tearfully promises that the woman he finds who’s right for him will be “the luckiest woman alive.”
He’s got this buddy at work named Norman, played by Larry Miller (SUBURBAN COMMANDO) in the classic Dennis Miller/Denis Leary/Kevin Pollack type role of the comedian playing a horny best friend who’s sexist in a supposedly lovable way. Norman invites Ray to a gallery show to try to set him up with a woman (Blair Tefkin, V, FRIGHT NIGHT PART II), and while trying to escape her he spills wine on Lena Mathers (Mädchen Amick, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME, SLEEPWALKERS) and she chews him out. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bess Armstrong, Blair Tefkin, erotic thriller, Gretchen Becker, James Spader, Kathleen York, Larry Miller, Madchen Amick, Nicholas Kazan, Paul Ben-Victor, William Shockley
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 17 Comments »
Monday, June 21st, 2021
According to IMDb, SUBURBAN COMMANDO had a limited release on June 21, 1991, before a wider one in October. Therefore, it is my misfortune to have decided to categorize it as a Summer of ’91 release.
Nah, I’ll be okay, but you will not be surprised to hear that this second Hulk Hogan vehicle from New Line Cinema is even dumber and shittier than NO HOLDS BARRED, and not as entertainingly so since it’s a family comedy instead of a brain damaged underground fighting movie. But I made it through and I know what it is now and at least I was able to see the big screen debut of one of today’s most acclaimed actresses in television and film.
The premise is that you got a bounty hunter guy from a poorly explained, generic bootleg Star Wars rip-off sci-fi universe who lands on earth and lives with a bad movie’s idea of a normal suburban family. ALF with muscles and worse jokes. In the opening you have some cheap looking Star Destroyer knockoff model shots as the great hero (or maybe anti-hero? it’s not really clear) Shep Ramsey (Hulk Hogan, GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH) flies in to save the president (Nick Eldredge, “S.I.D. #1,” Hill Street Blues) from their dollar store Darth Vader, General Suitor (William Ball, one episode of The Streets of San Francisco) who’s just a regular unimpressive dude in a black outfit and cape, no mask. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Burt Kennedy, Christopher Lloyd, David Michael Frank, Elisabeth Moss, Frank A. Cappello, Hulk Hogan, Larry Miller, Laura Mooney, Michael Faustino, Shelley Duvall, Steve Johnson, Summer of 1991
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 33 Comments »
Monday, April 8th, 2019
THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT is not the wacky SHARKNADO type bullshit that the title may bring to mind, but instead an odd, humble little character piece about aging, regret, loneliness and sacrifice. Its greatest strength is that it stars Sam Elliott (or as I call him, The Man Who Mentored Dalton and then Fought The Hulk). He plays Calvin Barr, who many decades ago gave up the love of his life (Caitlin FitzGerald, Rectify) for an important WWII tracking, infiltration and assassination mission that he could never tell anyone about, and in his old age has failed to either feel good about what he did or find another purpose for his life. Its second greatest strength is that it attempts the daredevil feat of telling us that outlandish alternate history tale, following it with his being recruited to save the world by finding and killing a sasquatch, and not treating any of it as something to laugh at.
Who does that? And who pulls it off? In this case it’s a first time feature writer/director named Robert D. Krzykowski. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aidan Turner, Caitlin FitzGerald, Douglas Trumbull, Ellar Coltrane, John Sayles, Larry Miller, Lucky McKee, Mark Steger, Sam Elliott, sasquatch, Sean Bridgers
Posted in Drama, Monster, Reviews | 94 Comments »
Monday, February 8th, 2016
RADIOLAND MURDERS is a retro comedy, a madcap murder mystery taking place in 1939 as a Chicago radio station has a gala live broadcast performed in front of an audience and a room full of big shot affiliates waiting to be impressed. There’s a big band and actors doing adventure shows and commercials while the writers, directors and sound engineers scramble to have something on the air after the boss just tossed out all of their scripts. Meanwhile, writer Roger (Brian Benben, I COME IN PEACE) is pathetically trying to woo back his wife Penny (Mary Stuart Masterson, GARDENS OF STONE), who thinks he cheated on her. It was a misunderstanding, but he’s too much of a doofus to make her understand.
And then he becomes the #1 suspect when people in the station start turning up dead. So he has to avoid the police, solve the mystery, convince his wife and finish some scripts. Kind of a rough day for him.
The DVD cover brags about an “All star cast!,” which is stretching it, but the huge ensemble cast does include an impressive lineup of character actors, some of them better known now than they were then. You also got Ned Beatty, Brion James (BLADE RUNNER, 48 HOURS), Michael Lerner (MANIAC COP 2), Michael McKean, Jeffrey Tambor, Stephen Tobolowsky, Christopher Lloyd, Larry Miller (FOODFIGHT!), Corbin Bernsen, Bobcat Goldthwait, Dylan Baker, Robert Klein and Harvey Korman (The Star Wars Holiday Special). Candy Clark and Bo Hopkins of the AMERICAN GRAFFITI saga show up together. Since there’s sort of a variety show going on at the center of it there are appearances by Rosemary Clooney, George Burns, Joey Lawrence (as a dreamy crooner) and even Billy Barty (WILLOW). Also Gary Anthony Williams, the voice of Uncle Ruckus on The Boondocks, made his first movie appearance. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Barty, Bo Hopkins, Bobcat Goldthwait, Brian Benben, Brion James, Candy Clark, Christopher Lloyd, Corbin Bernsen, Dylan Baker, Gary Anthony Williams, George Burns, George Lucas, Gloria Katz, Harvey Korman, Jeffrey Tambor, Joey Lawrence, Larry Miller, Leighann Lord, Lucas Minus Star Wars, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mel Smith, Michael Lerner, Michael McKean, Ned Beatty, Robert Klein, Rosemary Clooney, Stephen Tobolowsky, Willar Huyck
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Mystery, Reviews | 24 Comments »
