Shards from the Fractured Mirror: The Amateurs, Be Kind Rewind, Big Fat Liar, Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star, The Muse
For the last eight months or so much of my time and energy has been devoted to working on The Fractured Mirror, my upcoming book about movies about the movie business. I’ve posted much longer versions of some of the pieces that I’ve written for the book on this website but the vast majority I only shared with people who pre-ordered the book through Kickstarter and Backerkit or who donate to this site’s Patreon page.
I’m quite proud of the work I’ve done on the book, as well as the kooky assortment of movies I’ve covered so I figured that every month I would share a handful of pieces I’ve written for The Fractured Mirror with y’all. I’ve written up 206 movies so far and will cover 300 or 350 in total so I am very open to recommendations on movies to write about.
In conclusion, please donate to my site’s Patreon page. I desperately need the income and I’d love to share these new pieces with as many people as possible.
The Amateurs (2005)
In the suspiciously star-studded 2005 small town comedy The Amateurs an A+ cast is sabotaged by a C- script and a shopworn, D+ premise. Like far too many other lackluster sex comedies, The Amateurs asks what would happen if non-porn people were to do something innately HILARIOUS like make a pornographic film? With sex and penises and butts and boobs and everything?
National treasure Jeff Bridges leads a cast more befitting a Coen Brothers movie (Tim Blake Nelson, William Fichtner, Joe Pantoliano, Ted Danson, Patrick Fugit, Glenne Headly, Lauren Graham, Judy Greer, John Hawkes, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Isaiah Washington, Steven Weber) than a low-energy mediocrity like this as Andy Sargentee, an underachieving eccentric with big ideas but an exceedingly modest existence.
He’s a daffy dreamer in a small town that’s supposed to be half Mayberry and half Bedford Falls but feels instead like a sitcom conception of the kind of idyllic small American town that doesn’t exist anymore and probably never did.
Feeling stuck, Andy decides to make a feature-length pornographic motion picture on real film stock with his buddies and much of the wholesome small town where they live in a seriously misguided get rich quick scheme.
It’s Capra-light+amateur porn shenanigans disconnected from anything resembling reality. Call it Capra-porn.
Danson, Nelson, Fichtner, Fugit and Pantoliano costar as Andy’s aw-shucks collaborators and cast, a TV-ready assortment of genial goofballs who soldier on despite a near-complete dearth of knowledge about sex, movies, pornography, technology and human behavior that reflects the film’s own ignorance on these matters.
The Amateurs should at least have likability going for it. It stars Jeff Bridges and Ted Danson, after all, but is predictably clumsy and tone deaf when it comes to sex, sexuality, race and gender, not to mention weirdly skittish. The flat direction and Sears catalog wardrobes do the cast no favors. Seldom have so many artists of distinction squandered their talents on something so negligible.
Despite the frankly baffling presences of giants like Bridges and Danson this hokey, old-fashioned clunker’s title rings true. It finds a battery of seasoned old professionals wrestling nobly but unsuccessfully with an amateurish screenplay.
Be Kind Rewind (2008) (FM)
Eccentric man-child Michel Gondry conquered the competitive realms of music videos and film while retaining a defiantly homemade aesthetic. In a world of CGI and cynicism he is a true artisan and boldly sincere, a tornado of creativity unusually in touch with his joyful inner child.
Gondry’s 2008 buddy comedy Be Kind Rewind may be a studio comedy with a healthy budget and big, perfectly cast stars in the terrific twosome of Jack Black and Yaasin Bey, a twinkly-eyed Danny Glover as an avuncular video store owner, Mia Farrow as a favorite customer, Melonie Diaz as the fetching female lead and Sigourney Weaver in one of many homages to Ghostbusters. But it’s nevertheless both winningly hand-crafted and an understated tribute to the human urge to create.
Black and Bey have crackling chemistry as underdog pals Jerry and Mike respectively. Mike is the sole employee of an adorably rundown New Jersey video store that’s a ramshackle anachronism to everyone else and a little slice of heaven for movie lovers. Jerry is his wackadoo buddy. He’s a conspiracy-minded slacker who becomes magnetized after an incident at a power plant and accidentally ends up erasing all of the video cassettes in his friend’s store.
In a fit of desperation and inspiration, the daffy duo hits upon a very Michel Gondry solution to their problem.
Instead of buying more tapes or letting customers in on their dilemma, they make their own versions of the movies customers are renting with budgets that wouldn’t cover a Happy Meal but all the ingenuity in the world.
This brilliant premise affords Gondry an opportunity to recreate decades of American pop culture in his own idiosyncratic image. The gleeful lunacy begins with a miniature remake of Ghostbusters that makes up for what it lacks in polish with energy, enthusiasm and gleeful insanity.
When the result proves an unexpected neighborhood hit our heroes go on a wild spree remaking everything from 2001 to Boyz N’ the Hood to When We Were Kings to Gummo to the mostly forgotten Jerry O’Connell/Amanda Peet drama Body Shots.
With Be Kind Rewind Gondry made a big move towards the mainstream while retaining the personality, charm and almost preternatural resourcefulness that has made him a master of multiple mediums.
Time has been kind to Be Kind Rewind. It’s a heartfelt and hilarious throwback to the high concept buddy comedies of the 1980s that also anticipates the ebullient amateurism of Youtube, TikTok and fan films.
It’s a cult comedy that’s very purposefully out of time but also timeless and deeply nostalgic, a sleeper that stands up to multiple viewings every bit as much as the popular favorites it lovingly recreates.
Big Fat Liar (2002)
In the befuddling 2002 comedy Big Fat Liar fib-prone protagonist Jason Shepard (Frankie Muniz) watches a trailer for what appears to be a finished studio film also called Big Fat Liar based on a story he wrote for a class assignment that sniveling Hollywood producer Marty Wolf (Paul Giamatti) flagrantly stole. Yet much later in the movie our bratty hero mounts a D-Day-level campaign to sabotage Wolf on the first day of shooting Big Fat Liar, a science fiction comedy it previously suggested was completed and ready for release. Alas, Big Fat Liar has problems beyond plot holes expansive enough to fly the Spruce Goose through.
A sadistic Home Alone knock-off written by disgraced kiddie TV mogul Dan Schneider and directed by Shawn Levy, Big Fat Liar takes the broad, deafeningly loud sitcom aesthetic of its screenwriter’s Nickelodeon hits to the big screen through the tacky tale of a fourteen year old pathological liar who travels to Hollywood to confront the man who stole his big idea. Marty refuses to publicly concede that his future blockbuster was written by a child. This leads Jason to humiliate Wolf with a series of pranks.
Paul Giamatti terrorizing small children is comic gold. Giamatti’s glorious turn as a heel who dresses like a porn mogul and oozes oily contempt for everyone he encounters merits a place of pride in the pantheon of great performances in utterly unworthy movies. The initially juicy role of a producer who embodies everything that’s wrong about Hollywood plays to Giamatti’s unique genius for playing charismatic weasels and suffering for our entertainment. In its dire second half, Big Fat Liar unfortunately goes overboard in humiliating its heavy. The villain’s plight inspires pity rather than laughter. There are some comedies so bad and so lifeless that not even Paul Giamatti can save them. This is one of them.
Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (2011)
Happy Madison hit a new low with the rancid 2011 sex comedy Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star. It’s a failed vehicle that tried to elevate scene-stealing consummate supporting player Nick Swardson into a leading man in violent defiance of the universe’s will.
A uniquely unpleasant cinematic experience, Bucky Larson miscasts Swardson as the title character. He’s a rabbit-toothed adult virgin with a pageboy haircut, a Salvation Army wardrobe, the world’s thickest Midwestern accent and a micro-penis that is a source of horror and fascination for everyone who sees it.
Despite seemingly having only a vague sense of what sex entails, when Bucky learns that his parents were improbable porn stars he decides to get into the family business himself.
Bucky achieves instant fame as a novelty performer who ejaculates buckets of baby batter without ever actually penetrating any of his fellow performers.
Poor Christina Ricci has the misfortune to costar as Bucky’s love interest. It’s less a role than a sustained insult to the actress’ battered integrity. It inspires pity rather than amusement.
Bucky Larson is unrelentingly nasty and profane but its most repulsive aspect may be its unearned sentimentality. The reviled comedy’s attempts to make us feel for Bucky are ultimately more offensive than its need for us to laugh at him because they’re more dishonest. This curdled comedy’s cruelty is at least authentic. The same cannot be said of its disingenuous attempts to portray Bucky as a big-hearted innocent to root for as well as an embarrassing, oblivious idiot to laugh at.
The Muse (1999) (FM)
In Albert Brooks’ 1999 show business comedy of desperation and humiliation The Muse Sharon Stone memorably plays Sarah Little, the living personification of good fortune. She represents the ineffable, all-important X factor that separates Hollywood Gods destined to be remembered and celebrated forever like show-business pharaohs from failures doomed to die broke and unknown.
The Basic Instinct sex symbol is so confident and self-assured that professionals who should know better devolve into primitive superstition and see her as a literal muse with the power to provide divine inspiration.
She’s a modern muse for hire whose earthly realm is Tiffany’s and the Four Seasons rather than Mount Olympus who quickly takes over the life of her latest client Steven Phillips (Brooks).
The dyspeptic scribe’s once thriving career has hit a brick wall when his Oscar-winning hotshot buddy Jack Warrick (a casually hilarious Jeff Bridges) hips him to a secret shared by the biggest winners in the industry: when they’re stuck creatively they turn to Stone’s ethereal beauty for assistance.
Sarah has a roster of A-list clients that includes James Cameron and Martin Scorsese, both of whom contribute self-deprecating cameos, but her services come at a steep price. The beleaguered screenwriter soon finds himself running errands for the daffy diva, a reflexively disrespected gopher rather than a collaborator.
Steven grows increasingly apoplectic as Sarah takes a liking to Steven’s wife Laura (Andie MacDowell) and inspires her to start her own cookie business rather than devote herself exclusively to his struggling career.
Brooks’ emasculation at the hands of Sarah and show-business in all of its callousness and cruelty is a deadpan delight but things are less inspired at home and the movie doesn’t build to a close so much as it just sort of fizzles out.
The Muse is almost always amusing and often genuinely guffaw-inducing on a scene by scene basis but it feels shapeless and inert as a whole and the cookie business subplot angrily demands to be left on the cutting room floor.
Brooks is incapable of making an un-funny movie. He’s not just capable of greatness: it’s his default mode but this falls beneath the extraordinarily high standards set by his other films as a writer, director and star.
Set in a glitzy Hollywood world of wealth and fame, where even the has beens live lives of incredible privilege, The Muse is unmistakably bottom tier Brooks but his worst movie is better than most filmmakers’ magnum opuses. This is undeniably minor Brooks but it is full of major pleasures.
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