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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
 Posted - 08/25/2008 : 8:51:42 PM
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(Management: Greetings and salutations. You will note that it is Management bringing this introduction, not our erstwhile reviewer. It seems, of late, that Brad has been getting a bit too uppity. His reviews have been too long, too self-congratulatory, and prone to having, shall we say, flexible standards. You may recall that, during his last review, he locked your humble Management in the broom closet when I was simply trying to do my sacred duty. Well, we will have no more of that. Louie the Henchman caught up with Brad (after a longer-than-expected chase), and has strapped Brad to his chair.
And now the punishment begins.
Since Brad has shown an interest in Disney movies of the late seventies and early eighties (late in Ron Miller’s time at the company), we have decided to aid him. To that end, we have selected a couple of films that we are sure he will enjoy. First up is Midnight Madness.
Brad pointed out that Disney in the late seventies was leery of jumping on the auteur bandwagon, continuing to operate as an old-system studio. He also stated that Disney was in trouble around 1979, forgetting that they had produced some money-makers over the previous ten years. The Rescuers, in particular, was quite popular.
In any case, Disney did indeed take on independent writers and directors. Ron Miller had seen a forty-minute film called Junior High School, which was wonderfully amusing, quite hip, and filled with up-to-date music numbers and priceless shenanigans. Miller noted that Junior High School’s writer-directors, Michael Nankin and David Wechter, were all but fresh out of high school themselves, and he offered them time and money to make a full-budgeted feature.
How well did it do? Well, just keep in mind that Disney took their names off the project, supposedly to distance themselves from a film showing college boys imbibing alcohol and having mild sexual humor. However, it must be noted that Disney would refrain from association with this film until 2004.
We are confident that Brad will be his usual, long-winded self. So we shall direct you to an alternate review, which is much more succinct: http://www.badmovieplanet.com/3btheater/m/midnightmadness.html . Keep in mind, however, that this reviewer liked the film. Brad? Do you like Midnight Madness?)
Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’ve seen Junior High School in bits and pieces on YouTube, and it’s overrated. What the hell was Miller thinking when he hired those two on? I can laugh at Roger Ebert once again, knowing that he predicted that Nankin and Wechter had good careers ahead of them, only to see them go nowhere fast. Check ’em out on IMDb.
(Management: Ah ah ah, Brad. You mustn’t get cross. Oh, and please don’t squirm. Those tie-straps holding you to your chair are quite durable. And if you somehow break free, we have Louie standing by with a cattle prod, and he will put it in a place that was not designed for having a cattle prod in it. Now that we have the particulars in place, take it away, Brad!)
You sadistic bastard.
Ya know, compared to seeing this, Louie’s cattle prod may actually be a more pleasant alternative.... Orrrrr, ummmmmmm, maybe not.
The film starts without the Disney logo (even today, on a Disney DVD). We see an unremarkable shot of the L.A. skyline, then jump cut to the same shot at night, as an over-the-top music sting plays, and the title appears in a “goofy” font.
Next, we go to a college campus, as two Sweet Young Things rollerskate their way through the hallowed grounds and an uber-cheesy disco number plays on the soundtrack. Nope, this movie didn’t date, did it?! The SYT’s have plastered-on smiles, and I suspect that neither of them did much acting before or after this movie. I found the brunette to be cuter than the blonde. In later days, one might say, “Two girls here? Wink wink nudge nudge,” but it’s doubtful the filmmakers even thought of this (it’s much too subtle for them; Junior High School had a female gym teacher with the name “Ms. Van Dyke” written in large letters on her shirt). After a full minute of this, we go to a football field to see a Jock (Brad Mirman) doing dumb-jock stuff. Seriously. (I’m not going to go into too much detail on the visual gags here; it’s too painful.) The SYT’s roll up, handing him a green envelope, then wheel off. Next, we go to a classroom, where a Nerd is being nerdy. Oh, good God, it’s Eddie Deezen. (cringe) The SYT’s hand Deezen a white envelope, while I predict that he won’t be doing anything outside his normal schtick (the scary thing is, I don’t think Deezen acts this part; he may well be this nerdy and God-awful annoying in real life). Next, we go to a sorority, where the SYT’s come in and give a red envelope to one of the sorority members (Maggie Roswell). The staging of all this is very clunky; it literally looks like someone gave a couple of high-school kids a film camera and told them to have at it (not too far from the truth).
Real quick, let’s point out a couple of things in the opening credits. First off, the music is by Julius Wechter, the father of one of the writer directors, and the composer of “Spanish Flea.” “Spanish Flea” is much better than any of the score here; to put that in perspective, I’ve never liked that song. Second, the cinematography is by Frank Phillips, the cameraman for The Black Hole. The photography in this movie is flat and uninteresting; it looks like it was shot by someone who knows basic lighting and composition techniques, but nothing more. It has a flat TV movie look, and I read that at least one reviewer thought Midnight Madness was indeed made for TV. The DVD was full-frame, but I caught little tell-tale signs that the top and bottom of the screen were meant to be masked off. Phillips had shown he could handle lensing jobs; he wasn’t one of the great cinematographers, but he could make a shot interesting. I’ll assume he leaned on his shovel and collected a paycheck this time around. (For all The Black Hole problems, and for all the grief I heaped on Gary Nelson, at least he knew how to make things look good, and Phillips seemed happy to help him there.) Next up, the Produced by credit: Ron Miller. Ron, ya shoulda stuck with being ambitious (it’s possible that The Black Hole’s failure at the box office, however mild, broke Miller’s confidence, at least for a year or two). Finally, the writer director credits, for David Wechter and Michael Nanking. I’ll take great pleasure in singling out these two for this movie’s problems, as it’s evident they are squarely to blame for its many, many failures.
While I was ruminatin’, the SYT’s arrived at a drive-in restaurant, where a Fat Slob (Stephen Furst) is busy being a rude Fat Slob. This is way over the top, with Fat Slob finally throwing his tray of food out his window, sending the car hop running away crying. Um, yeah, right. The guy would have already paid for his meal, and I imagine most car hops, having seen this sort of thing before, would roll their eyes at him and get to cleaning up the mess. Oh, and this drive-in restaurant serves its meals on dinner plates with salt and pepper shakers (not packets and paper bags), and the chocolate malt is in a glass. Right. Anyhoo, the SYT’s give Fat Slob a blue envelope and take off, as Fat Slob continues to be a Fat Slob (I’m not exaggerating). We get to the final credits, and the disco theme mercifully fades out.
SYT’s reach their final destination, a building on campus with “Counseling” over the door. Inside, a student counselor, Adam (David Naughton) is trying to buck up the spirits of a nerdy freshman named Flinch (Joel McNeely). Flinch is nerdy, but not so nerdy as Eddie Deezen. (Of course, no one is as nerdy as Eddie Deezen; I don’t think Eddie Deezen is as nerdy as Eddie Deezen!) The acting here says “high school play,” not “motion picture from a major studio.” Anyhoo, the SYT’s give Adam a yellow envelope. Adam asks what’s going on, but the girls get all coy and leave.
That night, Adam makes his way to a large apartment building and gets to a flat on the sixth floor. The SYT’s show him in, and we see that Jock, Nerd, Sorority Gal, and Fat Slob are already here. Oh, it’s shown (very obviously) that there’s no love lost between Fat Slob and Adam. The SYT’s put on a slideshow, giving a Cliff’s-Notes history of game-playing in the world (a pretty awful one at that), then state that these five are about to participate in a Big Event (Adam rolls his eyes at this, and I can’t blame him). Then we reveal the mastermind (sic) behind this whole thing.
Ewwwwwwww!!
Imagine an emaciated Peter Jackson (with an afro) after spending a year without bathing and stripped of all talent, and you have an idea of what this guy looks like. I say again, Ewwwwwwww! When the five students see him, they all yell, “Leon!” with contempt. Leon reveals why they’re here: he has challenged them to compete in what he calls “the ultimate game, The Great All-Nighter.” The five players will select their teams and basically go on an all-night scavenger hunt. They’ll start at sundown, work out a clue to tell them to go next, go to that location, then seek out another clue, lather, rinse, and repeat, until one team is able to find the finish line. Simple enough, but Leon (or the filmmakers) spells it out more tediously, assuming the characters (or the viewers) are too dense to get that summation. Around here, we learn the Sweet Young Things’ names: brunette is Candy (I have no problem with this name: the smartest girl in my high school class had that name; she was also one of the prettier and friendlier girls there*), and blonde is Sunshine (now, I do have a problem with that name. Sunshine. Yuck). At the end of the game, the winner will receive a trophy and bragging rights.... And that’s it.
*[Pssssst: you may want to skip over this, but let me go into detail about Candy. No, nothing prurient, but it’s a semi-funny thing about her. When we were in the high school band, we had three girls playing flute: Shannon, Bonnie, and Candy. Our nicknames for them were, “Sexy (Shannon), Hickey (Bonnie), and Sweetie (Candy).” I have no idea where “Hickey” came from, but Sexy was (and still is) a good description of Shannon, and Sweetie was a good moniker for Candy. Actually, “Sexy” and “Sweetie” could’ve described all of them— I’d better get back to the review; Louie is giving me the evil eye.]
The five potential players get up and storm out, complaining about how this twerp has wasted an evening for them. Candy and Sunshine (blech) fawn over Leon, making me wonder what kind of EE-vill spell he put on them to keep them from noticing his unkempt and unwashed appearance and bad teeth. (Seriously, just looking at him, I wondered — but didn’t want to know — how he smelled. Ick!) Leon reveals that he has been planning this game out for a full year, and he was careful in selecting the players: come Friday, all five of them will be “dying to play.”
The next couple of scenes are meant to explain why these people will be so hot to play. First up, we see Deezen as head of the debate team, making an incredibly nerdy argument against having football on campus. Jock and some of his buddies from the football team come in and pelt him with rotten fruit, in a bit of slapstick Komedy that would have me looking to slit my wrists if my hands weren’t tied down.
Next, Sorority Girl (whose name is Donna) is throwing a membership party, and it’s revealed that she is one of only four members of this house. The other three are a butch-looking girl named Berle (I kid you not) and Peggy and Lulu, two extremely fat twin sisters. The jocks crash the party with a beer keg and ruin it. Donna swear she will have her revenge!
Back to the Counseling office, where Adam is trying to help out Flinch once again (is this kid his only, uh, client?). Flinch is complaining about problems with schoolwork, and we get a none-too-subtle joke that Flinch is asthmatic (because inhalers are funny! Right?). Flinch also reveals that he’s never had a date. This is done in a clunky way, and if I were an 18 year-old in need of guidance, I would not want it from a guy who recoiled in horror when he realized I was a virgin. Anyway, Adam tries to buck Flinch up with some platitudes, telling him to go for the gusto and never walk away from a challenge. That’s a direct quote.* He doesn’t actually give any matchmaking tips, he just sends him on his way (and his delivery of his lines are incredibly insincere). After Flinch leaves, in comes a pretty young lady named Laura (Debra Clinger). Adam gets all shy and stutter-y around her. Ohhhhhh, right right right right. See, Adam needs to take his own advice and get up the nerve to ask her out! And he’ll learn how to do that by the end of the movie! Anyway, Laura asks if Adam’s gonna play Leon’s game. Adam hems and haws, implying he’s not interested. Laura counters that this is a good way to prove he’s “going for the gusto,” giving a guilt trip that might have worked on an eight-year-old with brain damage. Of course, this lights the fire under Adam. Yes, dammit, he’s gonna play that game! Oh, and he picks Laura to be his first teammate. The music in his scene is ultra-sappy and sentimental. Let’s get this out of the way: the entire score Mickey-Mouses through every scene (appropriate for a Disney flick, yes?) and has a dashed-off, amateurish feel. How fitting.
*[My petty side loves to be able to apply a little logic and shoot blowhards down with their own words. I would’ve taken great pleasure in asking Adam what I should do if someone “challenged” me to shoot heroin.]
We go to Fat Slob’s house, where Fat Slob is sitting around, doing nothing, with four friends of his. And I do mean, doing nothing. Let’s see, there’s Fat Slob, whose real name is Harold, his ditzy blonde girlfriend Lucille, his smart-ass “friend” Melio (Andy Tennant), a Hispanic guy whom we’ll learn very late in the movie is nicknamed Blade (he toys with a switchblade in just about every scene he’s in, cuz we all know that Latinos always carry switchblades, right?), and his autistic and/or retarded (seriously!) friend Barf (Brian Frishman). No kidding, the guy’s name is Barf. By the way, I don’t remember the names of the actors playing Lucille or Blade, nor do I care to look them up. I mention Tennant and Frishman because they’ll have some fairly interesting trivia later on (and because they are the only ones in this movie who seemed to have any fun making it). We have a lugubrious Harold’s Theme, played on (what else?) a tuba. Harold goes right on bein’ the Fat Slob until his father calls him into the study for a dressing down.
Harold’s Dad’s study is filled to the top with awards (oooooh, not so subtle, Nanking and Wechter!). Note that a lot of these trophies look very flimsy, and in a movie whose makers knew what subtlety was, this would be an interesting bit of character; here, though, it was just the filmmakers being cheap. Anyway, Dad spells out in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS that Harold never does anything, then compares him with that “bright, enterprising young lad” Adam. Dad notes that Adam is competing in the Great All-Nighter, and he orders Harold to play. Harold brings up a good point: he ain’t Adam, can’t Dad accept him for what he is? Dad looks at Harold and snorts with contempt. (In a better movie, this would have spun us in an interesting direction. Here, it’s a throwaway joke, telling me a lot about the writer-directors’ mindset. More on that shortly.) Dad puts it in stone: Harold’s playing, and that’s final.
Adam and Laura hook up with Marvin, a black guy (filling out the movie’s racial quota) who loooooooves to tinker with his Jeep (maybe this is nitpicking, but Marvin’s vehicle ain’t no Jeep: it has the Toyota logo on the grille. I’ll give the movie a mulligan and call it a Jeep anyway). Marvin isn’t interested; he wants to work on his Jeep all weekend. Adam puts down Marvin’s Jeep, using the sort of reverse psychology that would work on a six-year-old— Never mind, it worked on Marvin. His dander gets up and he says he’ll pick Adam and Laura up Friday.
Back to Harold, who is working on convincing his crew that competing in the game will be a good way to show Adam up. Melio brings up a good point: what makes Harold so sure he can win? Harold opens the garage door to reveal “a little present from my father”: a blue van with flame decals. The composition of this shot was ugly as hell, cluing me in that Frank Phillips was sleepin’ on the job (and I can’t blame him). Anyway, this sucker has a “turbo-charged engine,” an observation bubble up top (neither of which seem like they’d be all that much use), a car phone (which would be useful, and was pretty neat-o in 1980)*, and last but not least, a superty duperty computer which can “solve any clue in five seconds flat.” That’s pretty impressive: a computer that can read Leon’s mind. (Even more impressive is that, in 1980, a two-megaHertz computer with 48K of memory was state-of-the-art, let alone this thing.) Melio notes that Harold’s dad will kill him if he doesn’t win. Harold assures them, they’ll win.
*[Big surprise here; we’ll learn soon enough that Harold’s team has no problem with cheating. I’ll give away something here: the computer will burn out fairly early. So, why doesn’t Harold use the phone to call up a friend and get some help with the clues? Maybe it’s because the directors didn’t think of this? Maybe?]
Back to the Nerds. Deezen (whose character’s name is Wesley) convinces his fellow debaters (who are almost as nerdy as he is, but one suspects that the actors playing these guys would be ordinary joes out of costume) that competing in the All-Nighter could show the football team “how real men compete.”
Then we go to the jocks, who are seated in an Italian restaurant, guzzling beer and burping (cuz it’s FUNNY, ya hear me? Burping is FUNNY!). One of the jocks (played by Dirk Blocker, Dan Blocker’s son) tells Head Jock (whose name is Lavitas) that the team has better things to do on a Friday night, so why get in this game? The other jocks agree, until Lavitas shows a picture of Wesley vowing to win the game. The jocks decide to get in and show Wesley up, we have a groan-inducing bit of slapstick, then....
Cut to the sorority. Can you guess what’s gonna happen? Donna says that going into this game can put the jocks In their place (same position Wesley took). Berle agrees (and overacts badly). The Fat Twins look at each other and giggle insipidly. Get used to this; these two will have that same stupid giggle in just about every damn shot they’re in.
So, they’re all in, and this begs the question: Why? I’m with Dirk Blocker: why the hell bother? There’s nothing in it for each team except bragging rights, and what kind of bragging rights are they, anyway? If this was an established game, some underground campus tradition, no problem. If Leon was a rich kid with nothing better to do with his time, but who was good at cooking up stuff like this, I could buy it. But it’s clear that nobody likes or respects this creep! He’s a bad joke to them! So who gives a damn about winning his stupid game?!
This is never addressed, so the entire premise behind this movie falls flat on its face.
The night before the game, Harold sneaks into the van and starts hiding bags of marshmallows and Oreos in the sun visors (I imagine the Oreos would slide right out, but hey). Melio saunters in and catches Harold in the act. Harold reveals that Lucille is nagging him to go on a diet, but “you know I can’t go all night without food.” See, he’s fat, and it’s FUNNY! Uh huh.* He begs Melio not to rat him out, and Melio gives him his word, clearly not meaning it.
*[Actually, most people would want something to eat, though not necessarily snack food, when going on an all-night jag.]
At long last, it’s Friday. Adam and Laura prepare to head to Marvin’s place, and Adam whines about not having a fourth member for his team (what, he couldn’t find anyone in the last few days??). Ah, in walks Flinch, decked out in a tux. Flinch tells Adam he got a date, then admits that his mom set it up. He asks Adam for any ideas on where to go. Adam goes to meet Flinch’s date, and this is where my blood pressure starts to skyrocket.
Flinch’s date is a very nerdy girl, who probably looks perfectly normal in real life, but was made up to look as unattractive as possible, including having a mouthful of braces. Note: the girl is clearly nervous about this date. Adam slams the door in her face and tells Flinch he’s coming with them, in a Komically exaggerated way. Laura (who is supposed to be this movie’s conscience) agrees, saying Flinch will thank them later.
(pause)
Jesus.
Mary.
Joseph.
The Magi.
The shepherds.
And all the angels.
(long pause)
What the hell IS THIS?!?!?!!
First off, I’d want to know where Flinch’s mother found this girl. But, on the other hand, Flinch has agreed to take her to dinner, and like I said, she’s nervous. So, does Adam tell Flinch, she’s not your type but be a gentleman and show her a good time? No, he slams the door in her face and leaves her there! What do you think that’s gonna do to that girl? And this creep is a guidance counselor?! Dear God in Heaven! Our Hero is no better than Harold! He’s just subtler in showing what a bastard he is.
In case you haven’t guessed, cruelty humor makes my blood boil. Now, if a character has shown that they deserve to be humiliaed in some way, it’s okay. But when a movie kicks the puppy, and enjoys it, then I start to wish I could have a half-hour alone with the filmmakers, along with full legal immunity. Nanking and Wechter, you sons of bitches. You know what, that’s it. I’ve had it. I’m outta here—
(Management: Louie....)
All right! All right! I’ll watch the rest of this stupid movie, you little jerk!
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Edited by - BradH812 on 08/26/2008 7:38:39 PM
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2008 : 8:54:34 PM
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So, they get to Leon’s apartment, and the SYT’s give each team sweatshirts matching their team colors. Note that Flinch is in his tux, implying that Leon’s gang didn’t know he was coming. Also note that the Jocks’ shirts are too small. Komedy! But in all other cases, the sweatshirts fit the players perfectly. Ay yi yi. Leon has a T-shirt reading “Game Master” and the SWT’s wear black shirts with “Game Control.”
This movie’s gonna get pretty bogged down, so let’s give a chart for each team. Print it out and keep it handy, if you like:
Yellow Team (the “good” guys), yellow Jeep
Adam, Laura, Marvin, Flinch, and Scott (Scott will join the group later on)
Blue Team (the villains), blue van
Harold, Lucille, Melio, Barf, and Blade
White Team (the nerds), four white mopeds (noticing a pattern here? Whutta co-inky-dink!)
Wesley, and Debaters 1, 2, and 3 (that’s how they’re listed in the credits)
Red Team (sorority), red pickup truck
Donna, Berle, and the Fat Twins
Green Team (jocks), green VW Beetle
Lavitas, Blaylack (Dan Blocker’s character), Kudzu, Gerber, and Armpit
Okay, let’s recap. Flinch. Melio. Barf. Blade. Berle. Blaylack. Kudzu. Gerber. Armpit.
Blech.
I’m gonna call Lavitas Head Jock for the rest of the review; Blaylack is the only Jock worth naming, really; his name will figure in a mildly funny joke later on. By the way, these clowns call their group “the Meat Machine,” and their green Beetle has “Meat Wagon” stenciled on the side. (Sob)
Leon tells them that they have to call in at each location they go to so he can track them. Remember this; the movie won’t. Then Leon hands out the first clue and says, “See you at the finish line... Wherever that may be!”
All the teams except Blue get going. The first clue is fairly decent, kind of a warm-up clue (problem is, none of the other clues will be more complex). It’s an easy-to-solve word puzzle that works out to “See the stars” and a series of numbers. As each team works out the clue, we note that (a) Nanking and Wechter thought their audience would be really stupid, requiring spoon-feeding of every single clue, and (b) the acting in this movie Is really atrocious.
While the word game isn’t too bad, “See the stars” is much too vague. Yellow figures it means a map to celebrities’ homes; Green thinks it means a wax museum, and White thinks it’s the Walk of Fame. All reasonable conclusions. Red’s pretty dumb; they think it’s a local disco! Huh?! (Banging my head against the wall).
Harold hangs back and plays Hare in the race. Lucille yells at him to get in gear, and she’s right. Doesn’t Harold want to win this game? Harold finally agrees and types the first clue into the computer.* The computer works it out: “See the stars” means to go to Griffith Park Observatory, and the numbers are telescope coordinates. (My BS meter just went to 9.7.)
*[Out of all the signs that Nanking and Wechter had no idea what they were doing, this is one of the two most obvious ones; I’ll get to the other one later on. Good filmmakers focus on details. You know, stuff that seems trivial, but can add atmosphere or verisimilitude, or just a nice little wink to the audience, letting us know we’re in good hands. An example of this is a scene in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, where Captain Nemo is playing the organ. James Mason didn’t know how to play the organ, but he studied and replicated the movements for one scene, and the result was that it really looked like he was playing Bach’s Toccata in D-Minor. Midnight Madness does the opposite. I’ll assume Stephen Furst isn’t a good typist. So, he could have practiced hunting and pecking for a half hour to get his typing right, or they could’ve brought in a competent typist for the insert. Nope. Harold’s typing doesn’t match what appears on screen at all; in fact, it’s clear that he’s punching random keys. I don’t think this was contempt for the audience; it seems more likely that these two guys were genuinely that clueless.]
By the way, here’s a rule for aspiring screenwriters: make the villain tough to beat! Don’t make him an idiot. That only works in Warner Brothers cartoons, and even then it’s clear that if Taz ever gets the upper hand, Bugs is gonna have a serious problem. But if Harold were revealed to be a competent player hell-bent on winning, he could’ve given Our Heroes a run for their money. Idiots.
We return to Leon’s apartment, where Leon has a slew of police scanners, CB’s, and so on, reporting on traffic conditions, etc., in L.A. Leon lights up a map of L.A. (and it’s a very amateurish cartoon map), and we see that all the markers showing the teams are perfect replicas of the teams’ vehicles. Huuuuuggggghhhnnnnn. Leon’s landlady, Mrs. Grimhouse (yes, that’s her name, and yes, she’s played in very broad strokes as a Mean Old Landlady, so I’m callin’ her MOL from here on), bursts in, telling Leon that everyone in the building has been complaining of the noise, and if she gets one more complaint, he’s evicted. I’m not familiar with apartments in L.A. Would a big complex like this have one landlady? A superintendent would be more par for the course. Anyway, Leon is clearly scared of her, meaning that he doesn’t have a ton of money to find a new apartment or house if he gets thrown out. I’m just pointing this out; it’ll come into play in the Afterthoughts. Finally, she gives another snort of contempt for Leon and storms out.
We go through some bits of Komedy involving each team going down their blind alleys. The only thing worth mentioning here is when the Red Team is at the disco. A guy tries to pick up Berle, and she immediately punches him out. Kinda violent, don’t ya think? Oh, and the twins start dancing, because fat girls on a dance floor are FUNNY, I tell ya, FUNNY! I shared Donna’s look of horror when she saw them.
Anyway, the Yellow team finally figures out what “See the stars” means and starts for the observatory. About this time, Harold arrives at the observatory and calls in, rubbing how fast he got there in Leon’s face and promising to be at the finish line “in about an hour.” Yellow Team gets to the observatory as Blue Team is leaving, and Harold stops and laughs at them, then honks his horn, which (I swear I’m not kidding), plays “Ninny ninny boo boo” when it honks.
It’s revealed, through clunky dialogue, that Marvin has figured out what the numbers are. Oh, and Our Heroes spot the Green team coming in; looks like they solved the clue, too. Adam makes it to the telescope to find a bratty ten-year-old kid looking through it. Adam tries to coax the kid away for a moment, but the kid refuses, overplaying his part of the brat. The kid’s dad comes up and threatens Adam, noting that the kid is “studying Venus for his term paper.” We get the kid’s POV to see that he’s really being a peeping tom, watching a lady in her apartment getting undressed, as “sexy” saxophone music plays. (Gag.) The kid boasts, “If I’m lucky, I might get a view of Venus’s two moons.” (Sob.) It’ll be shown in about ten seconds that Adam has some knowledge of astronomy. So, why doesn’t he point out to the kid’s dad that Venus doesn’t have any moons? That kid’s goosed would be cooked right there. Because It’s Not In The Script. Anyway, we see the Green team making their way toward the telescope, and then Adam notices that Venus is in another part of the sky.* He points this out, and the kid ducks the question, getting his dad to go with him and look at another exhibit. And his dad is too stupid to realize he’s being played. (Ya know, I really like movies where everyone in the cast is not a COMPLETE FREAKIN’ MORON!)
*[Call me a nitpicker, but this room with the telescope is lit fairly brightly. That’s about the worst possible way to light a telescope dome. Anyone who’s done any stargazing will tell you that it should be as dark as possible, or lit with only red lights.]
Adam looks through the scope, makes a lame joke about what he sees, then gets Marvin to punch in the coordinates. Adam ends up looking at the announcement board on a local bank. The board flashes, “To unlock the next clue, find the 8800 keys.”* At this point, the Jocks enter the room. Head Jock shouts at Adam to get down from the telescope and let them have a look. Adam tries to bluff his way out of it (and to me, this is a form of cheating. The guys found what they were looking for, and you’ve already found the clue, so let ’em have it, ya jerk), but they see right through this. So, Adams gets off the platform after sending the scope back to its previous setting. Of course, none of the Jocks notice this. Head Jock gets up and starts looking through the telescope and the “sexy” sax starts to play. And I start to weep.
*[Did you notice that the telescope is pointing downward in this scene? To get an idea of just how bad this movie is, keep in mind that I’m glossing over most details like this. So, here’s the short version. You know how, with great movies, you can often tell who directed them? Watch a movie directed by, say, Alfred Hitchcock or Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick, for five minutes, and you know who was behind the camera. Well, this movie is the opposite of that. You can’t go for more than a minute or so without having a moment that makes you wince in pain. And to make matters worse, this is supposed to be a comedy.]
Anyway, it’s back to Game Control. We’re told through dialogue and that stupid map that it’s a little later on in the night. All the teams have made it to the observatory and are now working on getting to the next location. At this point, a husband and wife, and the husband’s mother, burst in, complaining to Leon about the noise. The husband is played by John Fiedler. Fiedler was a regular at Disney, voicing Piglet in the Winnie the Pooh cartoons, so I’ll assume Ron Miller asked him for a favor. Anyway, Leon is able to quickly (without a bit of credibility) entice them into sitting back and watching the game as it unfolds.
The Blue Team drives along, and we see the computer giving the solution to the next clue: the 8800 keys can be found at a local piano museum. Um, you need a computer for that? Anyway, they get to the museum and pile out. Harold hangs back and starts stuffing his face with marshmallows. Lucille gets suspicious and starts into the van. Harold panics and hides the goodies in the computer CPU (reference what I said about how the villain shouldn’t be an idiot). Lucille buys that Harold hasn’t been eating, despite the fact that his cheeks are bulging and he can’t talk for several seconds. Bright one, isn’t she.
Harold and Lucille go in to see Melio clowning around. Harold gets mad and yells at Melio to get with the program. This I could understand.
Adam and Company are on their way to the museum when Adam spots his little brother Scott waiting for a bus to San Francisco. They pull over, and Adam berates Scott, asking what Scott’s doing out here. Scott is played by (ready for this?) Michael J. Fox! (Years later, he described this movie in total thus: “The less said about it, the better.”) Adam notes that their parents are out of town, leaving him in charge of Scott, and he’d haul Scott home right now if he weren’t in the middle of this game. As it is, Scott’s gonna have to tag along. Fox has no dialogue in this scene, but his acting is better than anything I’ve seen in the whole movie so far (still not very good, but better). Adam manhandles Scott, dragging him back to the Jeep. One other note: Michael J. Fox (credited as “Michael Fox” here) is the only one in the cast who actually looks the right age, around 15. The others all look like they’re in their mid-twenties or older.
Back to the piano museum, where Harold is having a conniption over not being able to find the clue. The others are tired out. Barf looks at one of the pianos and starts playing the rhythm to Heart and Soul (and Brian Frishman overmugs the hell out of this scene). Melio listens to this for a few seconds, shrugs, and starts playing the melody on an organ. All right, this is kinda cute. But they couldn’t let it go at that. Melio then jumps to his feet and starts dancing around the room. All right, this is kinda stupid. I know that Andy Tennant got his start as a dancer, and one suspects that the directors just let him indulge here. This goes on for about thirty seconds, but feels like it lasts much longer. Harold is about to clobber Melio when Lucille finds the clue... in plain sight in the middle of the room. Wonderful observational skills there, kids! It’a a toy piano on a stand, under a board that has a line of music titled “Leon’s Theme.” Lucille states what the notes are, but assumes they’re a scrambled-up word. So they write up the notation and start back for the van to ask the computer for its answer. Note that they do not do the first thing any sane person would do: play the melody on the piano, as they’re clearly meant to do. Harold has a brief run-in (and unfunny) run-in with Adam, then heads for the van as the Yellow and Gream teams go in. Scott hangs back; when Laura asks him to come along, he says, “This game is stupid. Who cares about it anyway?!” Two things: first off, this is moment number two showing us the directors had no idea what they’re doing. Most of the actors in this thing would disappear shortly after it was made, but Fox roared onto the scene a few years later, showing he was a deft comedic actor. His performance here is seriously lame. Conclusion: bad direction! Second, Scott is right! His words echo my sentiments perfectly.
Harold’s crew gets back to the van and try to enter the clue into the computer. The computer shorts out, and Harold is horrified to find that the computer’s innards are coated with melted marshmallows. After a Komedy Kut of Harold’s reaction, Harold looks over to see that (adding insult to injury) Melio has stolen his stash of Oreos. The shot of Melio munching on a cookie is supposed to be funny, but I found it more strange.
Back to the piano museum. The other four teams are all here now, milling about, trying to find that in-plain-sight clue. Green team spots it, and Head Jock gives a mild surprise, revealing he knows how to read music. He plays the tune on the piano, and Blaylack recognizes it immediately: the Pabst Blue Ribbon jingle. There’s a smile-inducing moment (the second one I’ve seen in this movie, forty minutes in). Blaylack’s eyes bug out and he blurts out, “The next clue must be at the Pabst Brewery!” Everyone else in the room yells, in unison, ”Thanks, Blaylack!!!” Two smiles, forty minutes in.
More pain? Sure, why not? Most comedies of this sort last ninety minutes (if that). Midnight Madness runs a butt-numbing (and mind dissolving and spirit-crushing) 112 minutes. Ye gods!
Green team, Yellow team, and (I presume) White team haul ass to the Pabst Brewery. We get some supposed Komedy when it’s revealed that Blaylack all but worships at the Pabst altar. We also get another bit where Adam tries to tell Flinch to have confidence again.
Meanwhile, the Red team stops at a red light near a carnival. The fat twins (who not only don’t care about the game in the least, but are incredibly stupid) jump out of the truck and go on a spree inside the carnival. Sigh. Okay, Red team is gonna be out of the action for a while, and we’ll cut back to them from time to time, but let’s just get this part of the story out of the way now. Donna and Berle will go chasing off after the fat twins, following the trail of sold-out snack bars. Seriously! They’ll finally find them on a guess-your-weight attraction, and there will be lame fat jokes galore.* They’ll get back to their truck, to find that Donna parked in a tow-away zone, and a tow-truck driver is loading their truck up, ready to haul it off. Tow-truck man will laugh at them, but then Berle will somehow get in the cab without his knowing, and the Red team will steal the tow truck and get away. I’ll get back to them when they rejoin the game later on.
*[Oh yes, about those fat jokes. Nanking and Wechter seem to be very fond of fat jokes. LAME fat jokes. Now, I’m at least fifty pounds overweight, and have been the butt of some very hurtful taunts in my time. Lately, I’ve grown a thicker skin about them. Nowadays, I’m more inclined to play along and laugh, provided that the joke is funny! I cracked up whenever I saw Chris Farley or John Candy cutting up, and Fat Bastard in Austin Powers nearly had me on the floor. But this movie doesn’t even make jokes. It just says, “Hey, look! Fat people! It’s FUNNY!” I’d really like to have a word or two with our illustrious writer-directors.]
Back to the Blue team. Harold is driving around, not having any clue where he needs to go. Lucille points this out. Barf has gotten all the letters on index cards, and he’s trying to make a word out of them. Harold asks what Barf has come up with. Barf’s response: “Fagabeefe.” That’s pronounced “fag-a-beefy.” No, not exactly PC. But it sounds so weird that I cracked a smile at it.
The Jocks go on the guided tour of the brewery. It felt a little funny watching a Disney flick that was so blatantly hawking a brand of beer. (It didn’t work out too well; last I heard, Blue Ribbon was discontinued several years ago.) Blaylack goes way-y-y-y-y over the top, showing his craving for beer, forcing the other Jocks to hold him back from grabbing bottles of beer off the bottling line and chuggin’ them down.
Meanwhile, the Yellow team is queuing up for the next tour, and Scott notices a small bar nearby. Oooooh, I do believe Michael J. is about to get hisself in some trouble, and hilarity will ensue. Not. By the way, note that guided tours are still in motion, though it’s probably around 11 at night by now.
The Jocks continue on the tour to a bridge overlooking a giant beer vat. Blaylack jumps off the bridge, into the vat, going for a swim. I’m not kidding. Let’s go ahead and get the Green team’s side trip out of the way. The other Jocks will look for Blaylack, who will eventually climb out of the vat, eight sheets to the wind (amazingly, Blaylack will not suffer from alcohol poisoning, which would certainly take place considering the amount of brewski he sucked in). They’ll get him back to the car (with bits of Komedy as he makes drunken quips and passes out) and head out, thinking they’re effectively out of the game. We’ll pick them up when they return to the main story.
The bartender at the bar calls Security when Scott tries to swipe a beer. Adam tries to defuse the situation, but his diplomatic skills leave a lot to be desired, and Our Heroes get thrown out on their asses, near the loading dock. Adam is ready to knock Scott over the head, but then, whaddaya know! A group of forklifts puts several pallets of beer cases in place, and there’s a big drawing of Leon with the word balloon “Mr. Carson’s Obese Male Child.” I’m serious; to get the clue, they needed to be at the loading dock (which would actually be an employees-only area) at this precise moment. This puzzle is pretty easy to work out — it stands for Johnny’s Fat Boy, a local restaurant — but Our Heroes get all wide-eyed, amazed and proud of themselves for solving it. (By the way, Johnny’s Fat Boy is clearly a riff on Bob’s Big Boy. Okay, so which restaurant is it? It’s a chain, right?
There’s a quick cut back to Harold’s team in the van. Barf and Blade try to fix the computer (with no success, whutta surprise), as Lucille whines and berates Harold, with Melio egging her on. I have to wonder, why did Harold bring Melio along? This guy is more interested in making Harold’s life miserable than in actually winning this game. (Again, I’ll note that Andy Tennant is one of the few people in this movie who seems to enjoy himself.)
There’s a quick cutaway to the Red and Green teams, then to Leon’s apartment, where more tenants come in to complain, but are instead enticed by this phenomenal (sic) game. Then we go back to the Blue team. The cutaway was done to show some time passing. Harold continues to drive aimlessly, Barf is now playing with the computer wiring, and the others have conked out. Harold wakes up Melio and asks him to pass the Oreos, and Melio loudly outs Harold’s Oreo jones, waking Lucille up. Lucille starts doing her thing, being an annoying nag, and I gotta wonder: she saw the marshmallows in the computer earlier, and there’s no way she didn’t see the cookies earlier. And NOW she knows about Harold breaking his diet? She ain’t just dense, she’s somewhere between a neutron star and a small black hole, yes? I did like the slow-burn look Stephen Furst gave. One figures that any minute now, he’s gonna clock Melio one (sadly, this never happens). About this time, Barf spots Adam’s team, which just so happens to be passing by.* They follow at a distance, finding out where Our Heroes are going. (By the way, the bag of Oreos was full earlier, and now it’s empty. Melio must have one helluva metabolism to eat them all and not look like Harold.)
*[This will be a regular thing in the movie, when one team happens to run into another one. In a city that’s five-hundred square miles, with a population of three million. Right.]
Adam’s team gets to the restaurant and pile out. Harold waits till they’re inside, then pulls in, getting an idea. They get to Marvin’s Jeep and start siphoning off the gas; Blade uses his switchblade to let the air out of the tires (note that he doesn’t actually slash the tires; he just lets the air out. Uh huh). It’s obvious what they’re doing, but Harold spells it out for the blind members of the audience.
They head for the restaurant entrance, and we get the first honest-to-God laugh-out-loud funny gag in the movie. Amazingly, it’s a fat joke. As Harold goes up the sidewalk, his teammates do a double-take then start cracking up. Harold asks what they’re laughing at, then he sees it: he’s standing right next to a life-sized mural of Johnny’s Fat Boy, in exactly the same pose. It’s an old joke, but I will admit that finally, finally, I had a good laugh.
Yellow and White teams are already here, waiting to be seated (it’s never explained how the Nerds got to the loading dock). The menu board has a little addition: “Leon’s Special: Have a seat and enjoy! Look between the two giant melons!”
Oh, God, please, no.
Yep.
The teams are seated, and they all order trays full of melon slices. Yes, the waitress is a busty lady in a low-cut top that shows plenty of cleavage (a locket is shown dangling between— you know). I buy the restaurant having fresh melons (we used to have a Shoney’s Big Boy in my hometown, and it’s a close parallel to this restaurant; while its specialty was burgers, it was more of a sit-down restaurant, and one could order fruit salads and the like). I don’t buy it being so small; it’s clear this was a hastily-dressed set. Anyway, we go through about a minute or so of lame gags where the teams wonder what the two giant melons could possibly be, then rack focus to the lady’s rack. There are two moments that ease the pain somewhat First, we see Wesley putting two halves of a cantaloupe on either side of his head. The sight of Eddie Deezen’s head being the meat in a melon sandwich got a smile out of me. Also, we notice that Flinch has ordered a plate of spaghetti and is wolfing it down. Maybe this was a joke, but I found myself respecting Flinch a teeny bit more: he knows he’s gotta go all night, and he may not sit down again for a while. So what does he do? Grab a bite to eat.
At long last, the teams notice the, uh, two giant melons. We then go through (ack!) the gag of the teams getting her attention then poking their noses right between the breasteses. Finally, Harold goes ape and sweeps all the dishes on his table to the floor. The waitress slips and falls, and the locket comes off (in a VERY badly done bit). The teams get ahold of the locket and read the message on it: “Hug me.”
Oh please.
As the teams file their way out, Lucille notices a plush Fat Boy doll and begs Harold to buy her one. Harold (understandably) is all for keeping moving, but Lucille gets all pissy (and, natch, Melio stirs the pot a bit), so Harold relents and buys her a doll. Unfortunately, this will be important later on. |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2008 : 8:55:55 PM
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Adam’s team figures that the clue must be an anagram of “Hug Me,” which stands to reason; Leon seems to be fond of word games. Flinch jumps to the forefront and starts rattling off anagrams. In a badly contrived bit, he pauses after “Hugem,” and Adam figures it out: Huge M. And there’s only one place in the city with a big huge “M”: the “M” on top of the sign of Miniature Golf World! Of course!
I was about 12 years old when I first saw Midnight Madness, and even then my bullsh!t detector went haywire at this point.
Laura blurts out, “I can’t believe we got all of that from Hug Me!” Then we get a nauseating bit where the music swells and Adam and Laura can’t work up the nerve to embrace. (gag)
Okay, so the next locale is (snicker) Miniature Golf World. Uh oh! Looky what we got here! Marvin’s tires are empty... and Marvin overacts the hell out of this bit. Harold pulls up and pauses here to gloat, then his team bug outta there. Since Adam’s supposed to be the leader, he’s gotta come up with a plan. He tells Marvin to call the auto club and get the tires refilled while he and Flinch try to hitch a ride to MGW; Laura will stay with the Jeep and make sure no more harm comes to it — oh, and Adam adds as an afterthought (Ack! Alliteration ahead!) that she should also make sure Scott stays out of trouble. Woo hoo, great master plan, Adam! Only a Great Leader such as yourself could come up with something so brilliant!
So, the three guys head out, and Laura looks around to see that Scott has wandered off. She finds him petting a dog that’s been shut up in a car outside the restaurant. Scott makes some faux heart-tugging comments about the dog being left behind like this. Laura chides him that he had her and Adam worried (despite the fact that Adam didn’t know Scott was missing, and despite the fact that he couldn’t have gone more than fifty feet). Scott snorts at this, saying that Adam doesn’t even know he exists. Wechter and Nanking try to pile it on here: today is Scott’s birthday, and Adam forgot all about it. Cue the violins!* Yep, here’s the big moral conflict of the movie. These guys took Screenwriting 101, they did. Of course, they made a “C” in it. For what it’s worth, Michael J. Fox comes within shouting distance of giving a decent performance in this scene, which puts him in Oscar territory compared with most of the other actors.
*[By the way, that review on badmovieplanet reminded me of another screw-up this movie commits. Remember, Adam and Scott’s parents are out of town. In other words, they forgot about Scott’s birthday, too. But they don’t get called onto the carpet for it.]
Meanwhile, Adam and Flinch stand by an empty street, hoping to thumb a ride. Flinch has his thumb stuck out, although there are no cars going by (quite lame). Adam gives him a look, and Flinch gives a look back that says, “You got a better idea?” This wouldn’t be all that lame, except that I do have a better idea: start walkin’! An old car slowly turns a corner and pulls up. It’s driven by an elderly man; his wife beckons for them to hop in. Adam and Flinch get in the back, and yes, the old couple start driving at about five miles an hour, cuz old people driving slow is funny, I tell ya, FUNNY! On cue (and I do mean ON CUE), the street fills up with cars passing this slowpoke.
After a quick shot of Harold and Company approaching the putt-putt course, we go back to Leon’s apartment, where there’s about a dozen tenants who have gathered here and are watching the game play out. One of the audience starts taking bets on how the game will pan out; if this had been thought through, one could imagine THIS being the real reason behind the game. MOL bursts in, gloating, reminding Leon of her promise to kick him out if she heard one more complaint. “There’s the complaint,” she says, pointing to the crowd. No longer scared of her, Leon gloats and points out that no one in here is complaining. Faced with this, MOL gives a this ain’t-over grunt and storms out. By the way, there’s a brief mention of Leon taking a phone call from Donna; somehow the Red Team has managed to nearly catch up with the others. But here the movie reminds us, oh yeah, the teams are supposed to call in at each location, to prevent the very sort of cheating that Harold just pulled! After this scene, the whole idea is dropped altogether.
You know, considering that Leon planned out this whole thing for a full year, he’s sloppy as hell, yes?
Back to Adam and Flinch, ridin’ in the slo-car. Adam has a laughably contrived gloomy moment where he tells Flinch they may as well give up. Huh? Some hero! A couple of setbacks like this, and he’s ready to go home! Flinch dresses him down (rightfully so, but he’s much too lenient on this hypocrite). Then he throws his inhaler out the window, cuz it ain’t manly to have an inhaler (never mind that it doesn’t matter how manly you are: if you have bad asthma, you need an inhaler; The Goonies had a similarly annoying moment), hauls Adam out of the car, then strides out into the middle of the street with his thumb stuck out. Goooooood one, Flinch, you ain’t gonna get hit, nope.
Amazingly, he doesn’t get flattened. Instead, he’s able to slow down a car driven by two cute young ladies (of course), and he elbows his way in, Adam jumping in the back. The two girls laugh at this, forgetting that Flinch is basically carjacking them. Smart girls, eh?
Harold’s team enters the putt-putt course and find a message waiting for them: Play an entire round of golf; do not go to the 18th hole. Harold makes a beeline for the last hole, over Melio and Lucille’s protests (for once, these two show a hint of brains, guessing — as does anyone with an IQ over 50 — exactly what’s gonna happen.
Here, we rejoin the Green team. They’re ready to pack it in, figuring they’ve fallen too far behind to catch up. Then Blaylack says he’s gonna be sick. We have the standard Komedy reactions from his teammates, then Head Jock pulls into a parking lot and everyone hightails it out of the car, just before Blaylack pukes his guts. Note that Blaylack is still in the car when he worships the porcelain god, but this is never addressed; later on, these guys will pile right back in, no problem. Anyway, one of the Jocks just so happens to spot Harold’s van — they’re in the Miniature Golf World parking lot. Looks like the Jocks are back on track, having skipped two locations. Oh, by the way, Blaylack is perfectly sober after this. Right. They hop on in, and we see that the Nerds have also made it here.
At this point, Adam and Flinch pull in. Flinch hangs back to give the girls his phone number, then gives himself a satisfied smile. Ya know, the way Adam’s been “encouraging” Flinch all this time, you’d think he’d indulge him and give an attaboy smile. Nope. He’s clearly impatient with Flinch, rolling his eyes. Fine upstanding guy, our Adam.
Harold hits the ball into the 18th hole, and out pops a message. Hmmmm, I wonder what that message will say? Harold gives it to Barf, who reads it out loud: “Dear team, I told you not to cheat. Now if you want to find the clue, you have to go back and start all over. Love, Leon. P.S., you lost your ball.” That last insult-to-injury bit got a smile out of me, and I can understand Melio laughing his head off at Harold.
Adam and Flinch are paying to get their club and ball when Laura, Marvin, and Scott pull up. Didn’t save too much time with your master plan, didja Adam. There’s a bit of “drama” as Adam and Laura are reunited, then they get back in the game. Harold sees them coming in and winces in frustration. Not his night, is it. (You know, it might have been an interesting idea to make Harold the hero. He could be the slacker who is forced to take on the faux wise-big-brother on campus, and some interesting — and maybe even funny — stuff could happen. Alas, the filmmakers aren’t nearly that clever.) Oh, then Harold and his team are stuck behind a family of screaming brats (at one in the morning).
Once again, don’t put up a lot of obstacles for the villain. It’s the hero you need to make things tough for. Barf has a line that, while not really a laugh, isn’t a disaster; it’s of the Patrick/Spongebob variety, and it’s halfway decent. For the record, if there is one convincing performance in this movie, it’s Brian Frishman as Barf. Barf’s a one dimensional character, but Frishman is believable as a guy with a mental glitch of some kind (retardation, or more likely a form of autism).
Adam and Company get to a hole, and Scott tries to “help” Adam by telling him about the hole he’s about to tee off on. Adam basically tells Scott to can it; it’s supposed to make Adam look bad, but I found myself agreeing with him. There’s a very clumsy bit where Scott distracts Adam; it was only on the second viewing (yes, I watched this twice to try and get everything) that I realized that Scott made an honest mistake and didn’t do it on purpose. Nice goin’, Nanking and Wechter.
The Nerds are teeing up on another hole when the Jocks burst in, shove Wesley aside, and start to play through. There’s a clunky bit where Jocks take the Nerds’ ball and throw it into the little pond (you know the one; it’s on just about every miniature golf course out there). The Nerds protest, with Eddie Deezen continuing to be Knucklehead McSpazatron. To tell you the truth, I found the Jocks’ reaction (to imitate the Nerds’ debating) to be halfway decent. Anyway, they play through and find the next clue: “Look At Xylophones Initially (530 AM)”. They cheer themselves on and get back to their car, as we see the Nerds fishing through the pond for their ball.... and they have waders on. Dear Lord, give me strength. (Note that the other teams didn’t even have to play the round of golf; they could have gotten a good vantage point and cribbed off the Jocks.)
The Jocks haul outta there. The Sorority Girls come in, see the VW going out, do a U-turn and follow them out. So, all the teams are now neck and neck. Uh huh.
Our Heroes go over the Look At Xylophones bit, overacting and spoon feeding the audiences as much as possible. They figure out that the clue means LAX (I’ll assume you know what that stands for; the filmmakers spoon-fed us that too). They decide to figure out the 530 AM part on the way, and get started. Then stop; they’re out of gas. Nice one Marv, ya didn’t check the gas gauge when getting the tires filled?
The five teams make their way to LAX (and we learn that it’s now 2:30 in the morning). We see a street sign revealing what the 530 AM stands for: it’s the AM radio frequency for Airport Info. The Nerds are the only ones to see this and get a hint from Leon, who breaks into the regular broadcast and tells the players to look in Terminal 3. Green and Red teams miss this sign through a contrived bit, and Blue team misses it due to Harold’s stupidity. It’s never mentioned why Our Heroes miss it.
The Nerds get into the airport, where they are confronted by a group of obviously fake Hare Krishnas. The “Krishnas” try to get the Nerds to take a brochure, and after a lame bit, the Nerds take one then throw it away without looking at it. Yep, there’s a picture of Leon on the front. In case we don’t get it, we see the lead “Krishna” phoning in to Leon. About this time, the other teams come in.
Let’s skip ahead about a minute or so. Adam and Laura search the gift shop, and Laura takes Adam aside to talk to him (unsuccessfully) about paying attention to Scott. The “drama” in this movie is worse than the comedy, mainly due to the awful acting. Oh, and we see Scott trying to be a juvenile delinquent. I don’t think James Dean or Malcolm MacDowell have anything to worry about.
The “Krishnas” continue to try and get the players’ attention, until Harold finally knocks the brochures out of the lead guy’s hands. Barf sees a brochure and blurts out that Harold’s on the cover. Of course, we get all the teams pushing past each other trying to get a brochure. The clue’s obvious as hell: check the lockers.* So the teams all race to the lockers to find that five of them are color-coded. Each team finds a small gift wrapped box. They take their little presents and book out of there
*[This reminds me, didn’t Leon say the players would have to unravel “complicated” clues? Let’s see. A fairly simple anagram, an easily worked out message, a jingle, another easy-to-solve word game, a lame joke, another anagram, yet another simple word puzzle, now this. Oh, and a couple of bits of blind luck. For the record, the rest of the clues will be a simple rebus, playing a videogame, a message telling the players where to go next, another lame pun, then another direct message.
Complicated clues my ass.
Back to Harold’s van. There’s a faintly amusing bit where Lucille does the unwrap-it-carefully-and-save-the-paper routine for a few seconds before Harold grabs the present and rips it open. Inside are a rubber ball and three polaroids. This is the rebus I mentioned above. Melio gives a clearly bogus answer to this puzzle, then laughs when Harold calls him on it. At long last, Harold attacks him, though Melio is allowed to stick around and cause trouble. Oh, and after this, Harold’s team abandons the puzzle altogether and starts driving around aimlessly again!
Say, Management, I know you’d never be this generous for me, but could you show Food some mercy and—
(Management: Way ahead of ya, Brad, we’re keeping him stocked up on old towels.)
Say, let’s throw it back to Our Heroes, shall we? They’re grabbin’ a bite to eat while they try to solve this “complicated” puzzle. Adam is drinking a Dr. Pepper, and he’s careful to make sure the label faces the camera. I’ll assume that either the Dr. Pepper company paid David Naughton a little extra, or it was part of his original contract. Anyway, he figures out what the pics and ball mean: Pinball City, a local arcade. Remember what I said about one of the locations being a generic goofy-golf course? Same thing here.
Pinball City isn’t a particularly large or impressive arcade; when I was a kid, the big arcade in town was an Aladdin’s Castle at the local mall, and it was nearly as big as Pinball City. Lest we forget, we’re in a city of three million, not forty-five thousand. Oh, and the arcade’s owner? He’s played by Paul Reubens. He’ll use his Pee Wee Herman voice in this movie. Thanks, guys, thanks a lot. Our Heroes quickly figure out where they’re supposed to go: a fortune-telling machine called “Madame Leona”. At least Adam is sensible enough to roll his eyes at this lame bit. It’d be interesting to be an ordinary schlub putting a nickel in this thing and getting instructions for playing this game. Anyway, the fortune teller directs them to the Star Fire videogame. “Beat the machine to get the next clue.”
Ahem. Beat the machine? Coin-op shoot-em-up videogames in 1980 were unbeatable. Anyway, they get to the Star Fire game* and start playing. Adam tries first, and he doesn’t last long. The other players start taking turns, as Scott drifts back, smirking at them.
*[In case you don’t remember this, or are too young Star Fire was indeed a real videogame. I never played it, but I saw it played a few times. It was one of the earliest first-person shooters, and one of the earliest full color raster-graphic games. It was also a shameless — incredibly shameless — rip-off of Star Wars. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that George Lucas sued Exidy’s ass off for pulling this stunt, except that the official Star Wars videogame (c’mon, guys, you know the one I’m talkin’ about!) had a similar format... but they amped the pace up and improved the control quite a bit. There’s another quirk about Star Fire that I’ll mention in a moment, which shows just how incompetent the writer directors really were.]
We get a brief, strange cutaway to Harold’s team wandering aimlessly (mostly to show passage of time, I suspect), then go back to Our Heroes.
They’ve played out nearly ten dollars’ worth of games (meaning that they have to have been playing for at least a half-hour). Laura sees Scott grinning at them,* and she goes to him and tells him to cough it up. Scott reveals that he’s been playing Star Fire “every Saturday of my life” (pretty neat trick, kid; you’re 15, and Star Fire had only been out for a year). He boasts that he can beat it in one shot. Laura presses him to win the game for them, and he refuses; he has some pride. Laura entices him, saying that if he wins the game, then surely Adam will appreciate it. (Is there anyone here who doesn’t know exactly how this will go?) Scott relents rather quickly, and Laura brings him up to the game. (Again, Michael J. Fox’s acting is not at all impressive, but it’s better than most of the other performances in this movie. Chalk that up to bad direction.)
*[Management may get Louie on me, so this’ll be quick. In this scene, Scott’s leaning up against a Death Race 2000 game; like Star Fire, it was made by Exidy. I wonder if anyone at Disney realized that Death Race 2000 was an extremely violent and controversial game at that time?]
Scott’s game-playing prowess doesn’t seem all that much better than the others’, but hey, it’s not like Informed Attributes are strangers to bad movies. Oh, and how does he win the game? He plays fairly well for about thirty seconds (in real time), then the screen goes blank and says “You win.”
Well, that sucked!
The videogame screen suddenly turns into a regular TV screen,* and we see a movie of Leon (remember, these were the days before camcorders were household items) very badly disguised as an alien. He says (in an awful attempt to sound otherworldly) that the finish line is somewhere in the Bonaventure Hotel.
*[Once again, my BS meter redlined when I first saw this movie, around 1983. I remember thinking, “It’s too bad they didn’t wait a couple of years and then use the Star Wars videogame. They could, say, get a high score, enter a certain set of initials, then the machine could make this announcement in text on the screen.” Well, guess what. Star Fire could do this. It was one of the first games to have high score initial lists, and it could indeed pop messages up if you entered certain codes! I found that out after two minutes of research! Okay, the internet wasn’t around in 1980, but Nanking and Wechter could have, you know, talked to Exidy about the little details their game boasted. In other words, I did more research for this review than they did when making the movie itself. Idiots.]
Anyway, Our Heroes crowd around Scott and start slapping his back and giving him some attaboys... except for Adam. He runs to the door and tells the others to get a move-on. Cut the violins!* Was anyone surprised by this? See, we need Scott to go ballistic and have something show Adam the light. Right? Right?
*[Notice how I’ve said that several times so far? Whenever I say it, it’s not in sarcasm. The composer literally cues the violins at every one of those moments. And I missed quite a few.]
They drive along and stop at an intersection. Scott gives his best angry face (something Michael J. Fox wasn’t too good at doing then), jumps out, and runs off. Adam is ready to let him go(!) but Laura brings up that Scott “swallowed his pride” to help them. Um, how’s about this, Laura? Adam just chose to let his kid brother run around downtown Los Angeles at 5:00 in the morning! Some big brother, huh? Marvin turns around to try and find Scott, but when Adam protests, Marvin stops, yells “I’m not driving!” and gets out of the car, along with Laura and Flinch.
Whoawhoawhoawhoa waitaminute. Marvin, that’s YOUR Jeep! And there are three of you and one of him! Tell Adam to go along, or get HIS ass kicked to the curb!
Ding dang flip flop flip idjit dope dummy doofus MORONS!
Adam blesses them out then lights off the finish the game on his own. Laura shouts at Adam, reminding him today is Scott’s birthday. For some reason, that shows a hint of getting through.
Ya know, Adam’s not the Flawed Hero Who Needs To Mend His Ways. Nope. Adam’s an asshole. Pure and simple.
We go back to the arcade. Red team is at work beating the videogame. (It looks like they’re doing this on the first try. Scott’s prowess at playing the thing just faded quite a lot.) The Jocks sneak in and watch, eavesdropping and hearing Leon’s message. They then beat feet back to their car, hoping to get a head start— Ha! Gotcha! Noooooo, they don’t do that! They form a defensive line at the entrance, refusing to let the sorority girls out. The Fat Twins get to a target-shooting game and start firing racquetballs at the Jocks. The Jocks run behind a counter and grab a bunch of prizes to throw. (You know the ones. You spend ten bucks playing Skee-Ball, take the tickets you won, take them to the counter, and trade the tickets in for a plush animal or cheap plastic toy that would cost a buck fifty at Wal-Mart.) Arcade Owner Pee Wee tries to break it up, giving a dry run for the “Can’t We All Get Along” speech. No go; the Sorority and the Jocks start throwing crap, and the free-for-all is on. (And in case you haven’t noticed, no, the Sorority Girls do not take this chance to get on the road again.)
Scott sits and sulks on a bench by the curb, when Harold’s van just so happens to pull up, as Harold angrily yells that he just wants to find the finish line. Ah so, this is Scott’s Moral Decision. Come to the dark side, Luke! He goes forward, offering his knowledge.
After a quick cut of Marvin, Laura, and Flinch wandering around looking for Scott, we go back to Game Control. All this bouncin’ around is makin’ me dizzy. There are now about two dozen spectators in the apartment having a full-blown party. MOL bursts in, with the police, demanding that they arrest Leon. It’s never mentioned what charge it is. The sergeant in charge comes in, asking what’s going on. He quickly gets intrigued when he sees an old-style police radio here, and he asks Leon about it (note that this is an on-duty policeman). Leon mentions his Great All-Nighter, and quickly starts to convert the sergeant. It is hinted at that Leon used that old radio to break into the Airport Info broadcast. Whatever charge MOL cooked up, the police would now have a legitimate reason to bring Leon in. Of course, this is glossed over.
The Yellow team is about to give up on finding Scott, when Adam comes back and calls them over. Oh, how sweeeeeeeet, now the asshole is one of the Good Guys again. (Gag) Cue the violins! We have a shot or two of them looking for Scott (and their bit of calling Scott’s name while driving slowly down the street got old ten minutes after it first showed up on The Brady Bunch) intercut with the interior of Harold’s van.
Harold’s team crowds around Scott, trying to look intimidating. Seems Scott’s had a change of heart. Melio mentions to Scott that “You don’t owe your brother anything.” I know this movie was released theatrically, but the composition of this scene tells me that it was shot in Academy aperture. Anyway, Harold comes forward, trying (very lamely) to softsoap our Scott. When Scott refuses to talk, Harold finally (FINALLY!) goes nuts, grabbing Scott’s hair, pulling it, and screaming at him. At long last, Harold is being the bastard he’s supposed to be. Scott blurts out the location, and Harold has Melio and Barf throw Scott out the back of the van. We see a close shot of that plush doll Lucille begged Harold to buy hitting the ground. Plot Point Alert! (Oh, and if you look carefully, you can see that Melio threw the doll out.) They take off, letting Scott land in a heap on the ground, just as Our Heroes pull up. Scott blurts out that he told Harold where the finish line was. Adam doesn’t care about the game anymore, he’s just glad Scott’s okay. The brothers embrace. Cue the violins!! Oh, by the way, if I were Adam, it wouldn’t be okay. If I had a little brother and Harold pulled that crap on him, I’d follow the blue shirted jack-ass to the hotel and give him an ass-kicking he’d never forget.
This movie has another 22 minutes to go. (grunt grunt grunt)
(Management: Trying to escape again, are we? Louie, do yer stuff!)
OOOOOWWWWW!!!
(Management: Now finish the movie, Brad!) |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2008 : 8:56:46 PM
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(whimpering)
Okay, back to the torture.
The Nerds make it to the arcade, where a full-blown riot Is now taking place. The Sisters and the Jocks are still throwing crap at one another, and the other customers (yes, at five in the morning) are high tailing it out. No, the owner didn’t call the police to break this up. Anyway, the Nerds find out about the videogame and get to it. Eddie Deezen does some annoying line-reading, and then Blaylack spots the Nerds at the machine and throws a small plastic horse, hitting the game’s screen and shorting it out. Note that (1) the horse was much too small and light to do any real damage, and (2) Blaylack deliberately destroyed the machine. No, the Jocks do NOT get arrested for vandalism. The Nerds start throwing stuff, and the Jocks finally decide to get outta there. They pile into their car, and as they’re pulling out, they bump into the Sisters’ truck, which Donna didn’t bother to put the parking brake on. The truck rolls off a ledge and is totaled in the crash. The Jocks laugh at this and peel out. (Note that either Donna or Wesley could have the Jocks’ lunch now, simply by reporting them. No, this doesn’t happen.)
Back to Harold’s van. Lucille suddenly realizes the doll’s gone. She pesters Harold to go back and get it. Harold, understandably, refuses. Melio takes Lucille’s side and acts like an infant about it. (Remember, Melio was the one who threw the doll out in the first place.) He then whispers an idea into Lucille’s ear. Lucille grabs the steering wheel and forces Harold into a U-turn (and it’s a miracle she didn’t cause the van to crash).
Our Heroes are ready to pack it in, go back to Adam’s place and watch the sun rise. Uh oh, Harold’s van comes up, and Harold gets out to grab the doll. He freezes when he sees Our Heroes. Our Heroes look at each other and grin: they’re still in the game. They take off for the hotel, and Harold rips the doll apart, gets back in the van, and gives chase. Okay, what’d Harold forget to do? Hmmmmmmmm. He should’ve kicked Melio’s sorry ass out. I’m sure I won’t spoil the movie by saying Our Heroes will win the game, but Melio just lost it for Harold, and nearly got the five of them killed in the process (Lucille’s just as bad; she risked five lives for a three-dollar doll).
Back to Game Control. The sergeant has now been converted entirely. MOL loses her temper, grabs Leon’s radio and smashes it, insults the sergeant, then tells him to “do your duty!” The sergeant brings two cops in and tells them to arrest.... MOL. Amazingly, this is legitimate: Leon has MOL dead to rights on a petty vandalism charge.
Back to the arcade. The Sisters and the Nerds are arguing with one another. They spell it out for us: the Nerds have transportation, but they don’t know where to go. The Sisters know where the finish line is, but their truck is a write-off. (Again, I think that last fact would be much more important to Donna than this stupid game by now.) Uh oh, I smells a deal here, I does! Next shot, the Nerds and the Sisters ride down the road on the mopeds. Eddie Deezen tries to be the leading man, and Donna is amused, not repulsed, by this. Right.
Leon gathers up all the spectators and tells them, we’re moving Game Control to the hotel for the finish. Everyone piles into their cars and gets underway. Oh, and the cops (who are still on duty) go along, dragging MOL with them.
We see the sun rise over the Bonaventure Hotel, and I had to cackle with delight. Not because of anything in this movie, but out of recognition. In my review of the pilot for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, I noted how the filmmakers had used a modern steel-and-glass building to suggest future architecture. I didn’t realize it then, but the building was the Bonaventure. Oh, and they filmed a couple of interior shots inside the hotel. All in all; Buck Rogers, for all its many, many faults, made better use of this building than Midnight Madness does. We then get a montage of the teams en route to the hotel, then....
Leon and the spectators arrive at the Bonaventure and make their way to the room. It’s made clear (through a couple of lame jokes) that no one at the hotel is in on this; also, Leon wasn’t here at anytime the previous day, nor did he really case out the place earlier. Unfortunately, this will be important in a moment. Anyway, they enter the room, and everyone crowds around Leon. The cops plop MOL on the side of the bed, and she watches and sulks.
We get some more Komedy as the teams get to the hotel. The Nerds and the Sisters are the last ones to get there. They pedal their mopeds around the lobby (!), prompting the desk clerk to run to the security chief (a VERY poor imitation of Dirty Harry, with sunglasses and cigar), telling him that “Hell’s Angels are taking over the lobby!” (sob) Security Chief tells his men to throw these clowns out. The Nerds and the Sisters are dumped outside, and Wesley just so happens to spot the employees’ entrance. They get in and magically don bellhops’ and maids’ uniforms in about two minutes! The Nerds go in as the bellhops and “help” a wealthy guest to the elevator in a very unfunny (and, to my mind, very mean-spirited) joke.
Harold and his team see Security heading their way, and they duck into a room labeled “Main Power Room.” No, there’s no lock on the door. Harold waits for the guards to pass, and he notices, labeled clearly, the elevator controls. Plot Point Alert!
Then we get a couple of shots as all the teams go tearing ass around the hotel like chickens with their heads cut off. Kinda like the Keystone Kops, only those shorts were done sixty years earlier. Oh, and the Keystone Kops were, you know, funny. John Fiedler has been posted as lookout, and he calls Leon to tell him that it’s a neck-and-neck race. Leon pages the players to pick up a phone, and he gives the next hint: “Look at the pool area, and I mean this expressly.” (The split screen in this shot convinces me that this movie was composed at Academy aperture.) Adam’s team is right by the pool, so they go out to look around.
In the hotel room, no one notices MOL, so she decides to stir the pot. She makes her way to the phone, and is able to dial security. Cigar-chomping Chief answers, and MOL says “there’s a bunch of hooligans up here tearing apart your hotel.” She gives him the room number, and he goes to round up his men. (Actually, I’m surprised she didn’t report that there were two dozen people in a 15-foot-square room, creating a fire hazard.)
Our Heroes aren’t making much progress, until Adam figures out what Leon meant by “expressly” (and it’s spoon-fed to the audience, natch): ride up the glass express elevators, which run up the outside of the hotel. They make tracks for the elevator, and Harold sees them and blurts out, “They must know something!” for the three-year-olds in the audience, then follows Our Heroes, getting in the second elevator. About this time, the other three teams swarm out into the pool area.
The three teams get into a war of words, which quickly builds until the Jocks and the Sisters are taking turns pushing one another into the pool. Infantile? Badly staged? Eye-rolling? Yup, yup, and yup. It ends up with two of the Jocks still standing. That’s when the Nerds come running up, tackle the Jocks, and all of them go into the drink. Notice how one of the Nerds stops short and has to jump into the pool!
Our Heroes ride up the elevator, looking out and down at the pool area. Presently they see it: somehow, Leon was able to arrange the deck chairs to read “RM 2704”, the hotel room Leon reserved. Ah so, the finish line! (I’m not even going to start listing the problems with this bit.) Harold and his crew see the same thing, and Harold tells Barf to hit the button for the 27th floor. Only one problem: there is none. The elevator only goes to the restaurant on the top floor. At this point, Melio starts laughing like a maniac, and for once, I could understand it. It’s quite possible that Melio, alone among this bunch, has figured it out: this “Great All-Nighter” is nothing more than an elaborate prank, played by a sadistic jokester. (Oh if only the filmmakers had followed up on an idea like this!)
So, they get to the top floor and make a break for the stairs: whoever gets there first will win— Nope. Gotcha again. They start down again. Then we see the security team get in an elevator and head for the 27th floor.
Adam’s team gets to an elevator and starts up. Harold runs to the Main Power Room and cuts the power to all the elevators. The terrorists did this trick eight years later in Die Hard, but they were smart enough to leave one lift running. Adam’s team is stopped at about the tenth floor. The security team’s elevator is stopped just as the door has opened a crack at the 27th floor.
Harold’s team starts up the stairs, and yes, we’ll get some jokes about how fat old Harold will get winded climbing the stairs, never mind that anyone who’s not in good enough shape to be an Olympic athlete will probably get tired climbing twenty-six flights of steps.
Back in the elevator, Our Heroes fret for a moment, then Marvin spots the “manual override,” which he can jimmy, if they have some wire. Scott helpfully offers his retainer. Marvin bends the wire and picks the lock on the override, and Our Heroes are underway!
Ahem. Three problems. (1) That retainer Scott offered up so glibly? Those things can cost upwards of a couple thousand dollars. I’d love to hear what Adam and Scott’s parents had to say about this. (2) Manual override my ass: Harold cut the power! (3) The movie has a goof here: the control panel shows buttons for 51 floors. The Bonaventure Hotel has only 35 floors. Once again, Nanking and Wechter didn’t even bother to do five minutes of research.
Anyway, we go back and forth between Heroes and Villains, as the “suspense” builds. Whaddaya know, they both get to the 27th floor at the same time! Harold grabs the fire hose and yells at Adam to get back. Adam and his team slowly march forward. Once again, if they thought to make a break for the door to Room 2704, they’d win. Harold says there’s no way in hell he’s gonna let Adam win, then he gets Melio to start the water.
Adam just so happens to see the cracked-open elevator door with the security team trying to get out. He grabs the retainer and uses it to, uh, unlock the elevator. (Just go with it; the movie’s got about five minutes to go, including credits.) The door opens, and the guards pour out, just as the water shoots out of the hose. Harold panics and doesn’t think to point the hose away! Ay yi yi. The guards haul Harold’s team outta there. Adam’s team runs into Room 2704 to the cheers of the spectators. They won! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip, uh, hooray! Hip hip— zzzzzzzzzzzz.
Fade to, I guess, about ten or fifteen minutes later. Everyone, minus the guards and Harold’s team, is at the hotel’s breakfast bar. We have some lame business with Eddie Deezen trying to hit on Donna again (ugh), and, oh how sweeeeeeet, someone got a birthday cake for Scott. The one subtle joke in the whole movie: it’s a champagne breakfast, but Blaylack shrinks back when he sees the bubbly; seems he’s off the sauce for good. Leon is about to present Adam with a (cheap-looking) trophy, when....
Uh oh, the security guards haul Harold’s team past. Melio makes a pest of himself for the last time, giving the guards Harold’s dad’s phone number. Harold sees the breakfast bar— Oh, please no.
Yep.
Harold goes nuts, runs for the breakfast bar, and starts grabbin’ food and shoving it into his face, makin’ like Pac-Man. Lucille runs to stop him, but Harold pops a plate of food in her face, knocking her into the fountain behind them. Everyone starts laughing at this, and Harold and Lucille stop to just watch. Ummmmmm, okay. Cue the violins! Adam and Laura finally embrace and kiss! And the whole room erupts in applause. I’ve seen several movies that have a crowd break into applause like this for no reason at the end, in an attempt to get the audience cheering. It’s never worked, and it doesn’t work here.
But one thing is worth cheering. The final credits start.
Thank God. I can’t believe I survived that. (And to think that the movies Pip has reviewed are just as unfunny and are gross to boot. That little red-headed hellraiser is made of tougher stuff than I am.) |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2008 : 8:58:08 PM
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Afterthoughts
I first saw Midnight Madness around 1983, on HBO. I liked it more than I do now, but remember, I was (a) 12 years old, and (b) home sick with the flu when I saw it. When I ordered it from Netflix, I knew it was gonna be bad, but... damn!
So, let’s bring one last problem up. First, my initial question: why do the players want to compete in the first place? Let’s see, in their quest for that trophy, the Jocks get a car seat puked on, and their insurance will have to pay for a new truck (if the Sisters report them). The Sisters (if they don’t report the Jocks) will have to deal with a smashed-up truck. Harold’s team has a busted computer, Adam’s team has a wasted retainer. The only team that doesn’t get hit pretty hard in the wallet is the Nerds. Here’s another poser: what’s in it for Leon? Here’s a partial list of the stuff he has to do or have done for this game to work out:
- Pay off a bank (or break into its computer program) to have a clue on its announcement board.
- Smuggle in a toy piano, stand, and backboard with music into a museum.
- Pay off at least three workers at a brewery to put up a billboard on their pallets of beer.
- Pay a restaraunt (and waitress) to take part in a demeaning joke.
- Paint a large message in a prominent place on a miniature golf course.
- Hire some bad actors to play Hare Krishnas (okay, he could have called in some favors on this one).
- Rent five lockers.
- Have a fortune-telling machine built from scratch, or extensively doctored.
- Have a videogame machine radically altered (in a way that probably was impossible to do).
- Pay for a room in an midrange hotel.
- Hire several hotel employees to rearrange the deck chairs at the right moment (this is the only possible way Leon could’ve pulled this one off, and that’s a maybe at best).
Now, if there were money in it for Leon, no prob. If Leon were a wealthy student with too much time and money on his hands, even better. But it’s clear that Leon doesn’t have a lot of money, nor does it look like he ever will. So, I have to ask once again, why bother?
Okay, you’ve noticed by now that I’m reviewing this movie as if it were a straightforward story, pointing out problems with acting, plot holes, bad camerawork, and so on. Not the way you rate a comedy, right? Okay.
Throw everything I’ve said out the window. All of it. Plot holes, logical problems, eye-rollingly stupid situations and people, take it all. And it’s okay. It’s perfectly okay to have all of this... provided that your story is FUNNY!!! (If you want a perfect example, look at John Hughes. Most of his work falls apart under any scrutiny, but Hughes got away with it for a while, because he made people laugh. Up until about 1992 or so, anyway.)
I cracked a smile maybe five or six times while watching Midnight Madness, and I actually laughed once. Count ’em. Once.
The whole mess can be chalked up to two people: Michael Nanking and David Wechter. The writer-directors blew it every step of the way. You see some movies where the director is walking a tightrope: fall or slip at any point, and the whole thing falls apart. Midnight Madness is the exact opposite. One gets the feeling that if the filmmakers had done something else, anything else, anywhere along the way, the movie would have improved. The moment that crystalizes this idea better than any other, I think, was the videogame scene. It could have been a clever moment, taken advantage of that game’s (then) unique traits, and it would have been accurate, to boot. Instead, the filmmakers showed that they just thought of it, jotted it down, and left it at that. My grandmother spoke of lunch-hour movies, films that look like they got written on someone’s lunch break. This is a coffee-break movie.
The other scene in the movie that keeps coming back to me is the one where Flinch introduces Adam and Laura to his date. Boy oh boy. This movie goes over the top with all the fat jokes and nerd jokes, but this moment told me a lot about Nanking and Wechter, none of it good.
Most of the actors disappeared soon after this movie was finished, with a few exceptions (and it’s notable that this handful of actors were the ones that came within shouting distance of giving decent performances). David Naughton was in An American Werewolf in London, but didn’t do much else. Stephen Furst went on to co-star in St. Elsewhere and Babylon 5, and he doesn’t seem to have had trouble finding work as a character actor. (For the record, the scenes where Harold goes into a rage are the only ones where the character comes to life.) Dirk Blocker has gotten small parts in movies and TV, and Maggie Roswell has worked consistently as a voice actress. Michael J. Fox, well, you know how well he did after getting parts worthy of his talents. Eddie Deezen somehow managed to make a career out of being Eddie Deezen. It wasn’t long before Hollywood realized that this guy was best taken in very small doses. His best role may have been in WarGames, where he was on screen for all of two minutes, and the other characters were just as annoyed by him as the audience was. Deezen very nearly destroyed The Polar Express all by his lonesome.
The interesting ones here are Andy Tennant and Brian Frishman, perhaps the only two to get the joke. Tennant got out of acting and became a director in the nineties. He’s no Scorsese, but he’s managed to make a competent filmmaker out of himself. I doubt he’ll win any Oscars, but he’ll keep getting hired.
Frishman may have the most convincing performance in the movie, as the autistic/retarded Barf. The guy hasn’t done a lot of work, but when I checked him out on IMDb, one credit surprised me. I didn’t realize it was him. Frishman played another retarded character in a Disney movie about a year later. The film was Amy, and Frishman was far more effective in it. Of course, Amy had a competent director at the helm. (Amy started out as a TV-movie but was ported to the big screen. It shows it’s TV roots, and is often quite mawkish, but it pulls the rug out from under the viewer in the final reel. It may well be the darkest ending I’ve ever seen for a G-rated movie.)
And then there are Michael Nanking and David Wechter. The team split up after this movie. Within a few years, Nanking was working as a TV director, and he’s found steady work since then. Apparently, he’d learned a few things. Wechter’s next movie? It was titled The Malibu Bikini Shop. I swear I’m not joking. Lately, he’s been involved with the Penn and Teller series “Bullsh!t,” which doesn’t put him any higher in my book.
Like several of Disney’s movies around this time, Midnight Madness could be a good remake subject, if done right. Problem is, there have been other, better, madcap-race-to-the-finish comedies done before and since. Add to that, reality TV shows such as The Amazing Race may have put this mini-genre out to pasture. And finally, in a way, it has been remade.
Midnight Madness bombed at the box office. When it aired on HBO, however, it became something of a cult hit. I suspect most of the appeal this movie may have carried came from the premise of the all-night scavenger hunt (and it’s not a bad premise). There were a couple of games like this played for real, but several more popped up around the country in the mid- to late-eighties. I’ve read that one of these real-life games all nighters served as the inspiration for The Game, which is what Midnight Madness might have been if made by competent filmmakers.
As it stands, this movie may well be the point where Disney hit absolute rock bottom. And Management made a diabolically good choice in subjecting me to this thing. It came very close to breaking me.
(Management: I’m not done with you yet, Brad. MWA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAA!!!)
(whimper) |
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twitterpate
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Canada
1026 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2008 : 5:45:23 PM
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Oh, Brad. Oh, you poor, poor man. What have they DONE to you?
(Whatever it was, it produced another funny as hell review, so I wouldn't want them to actually stop or anything.) |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2008 : 7:08:51 PM
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| Dude, that movie sounds murderous. Well done Brad! |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 08/31/2008 : 12:19:48 AM
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Twitter, I'd play for your sympathy and then start flirting shamelessly... but you just said you don't want Management to stop. *smirk* Anyhoo, I don't plan on stoppin'; I already have another one in the works, though it's gonna be a challenge. It's not on DVD, so I'll have to write this one from memory. Yikes!
quote:
Dude, that movie sounds murderous.
Food, you have no idea.
Funny thing. My friend Diane is in town, and she and I watched Rat Race earlier this evening. Stupid as hell, but it had good comic actors and a director who knows how to do this stuff. If Midnight Madness had competent people working on it, it might have been an agreeable piece of fluff like this. |
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Greenhornet
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1791 Posts |
Posted - 09/01/2008 : 11:37:06 AM
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"Treasure hunt" was one of my favorite games as a kid, but I never thought someone should make a movie about it. Brad, you called the game a "scavenger hunt" a couple of times, but that's diffrent from "treasure hunt", or "wild goose chase" as it's sometimes called. I point that out because a scavenger hunt would have been a better plot, with the teams fighting over the items if they were pretty unique, or doing ANYTHING to get common items.
See "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" for how to make a GOOD movie like this.
"The Queen is testing poisons." CLEOPATRA, 1935 |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2008 : 6:25:47 PM
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You're right about the movie being about a treasure hunt, not a scavenger hunt, Greenhornet. My mistake, and thanks for the heads-up. I've never seen It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, but I'll get in on my Netflix queue.
By the way, I was able to watch Junior High School in its entireity. A couple of the musical numbers were kind of funny, and the technical filmmaking was, well, competent, at least. But the story was pretty lame, the acting was amateurish as hell, and the movie ends with the "hero" pulling a pretty low-down stunt, and we're supposed to cheer for him. All in all, it was mediocre, and I'll ask again, what the hell was Ron Miller thinking when he brought these two in? |
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 09/18/2008 : 6:10:16 PM
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Late in the game for this comment, but what the hell.
I have another review I'm startin' to work on, for a movie I really liked. It'll be quite a change from the norm; the movie has some mild flaws, but it is, in my opinion, a genuine classic, possibly Disney's best of the seventies and eighties combined.
Anyway, before I started, I rented another very good (and overlooked) gem that Disney produced, Tex.
Man, this has Compare-and-Contrast written all over it. These two are night and day. Watch Midnight Madness (or at least the first half hour of it, since you may need to bail to save your very soul), then watch Tex, and your neck may snap from the whiplash.
I was gonna give Tex and Night Crossing prominent mention in the upcoming write-up. I'll give my view on Tex here. The musical score, by Pino Donaggio, was overly melodramatic (good theme, though). Other than that, I can't really think of anything wrong with this winner. Simple, straightforward, and very well acted (Jim Metzler should have been put up for Best Supporting Actor).
Anyway, here's one to drop your jaw: note that the cast of Tex ranges from 18 to 31, but they're all believable as teenagers.
Here's another one: compare the "You're a virgin?" gag from Midnight Madness to the scene in Tex where Matt Dillon asks his older brother for advice on going all the way... and gets a surprising (and very admirable) answer. Tex was intelligent, insightful, and heartfelt, everything that Midnight Madness was not.
And with that, let's hope I've washed my hands of this thing forever. |
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Midnight Madness — Disney flicks 2
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