May Review: The Great Race (1965)

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“Push the button, Max!”
– Professor Fate, usually before a catastrophe of his doing strikes

To say things have gotten tumultuous since the last review would be a gross understatement. But we’re not here to discuss today’s upheavals, important as they are. Let’s just take a moment to reflect and laugh. Lord knows we could use a good one right now.

Directed by esteemed comedy director and Hollywood bad boy Blake Edwards, The Great Race is a loving pastiche and send-up of silent comedies and melodramas from the early days of cinema (classic Laurel and Hardy in particular; the film even opens with a dedication to them). Thankfully the movie itself is not silent. What kind of genius madman would try to make a silent comedy in the late twentieth century?

Believe it or not, The Great Race was inspired by a real automobile race from New York to Paris that took place in 1908. Some of the more outlandish elements of the race like floating on icebergs across the sea were even based on genuine ideas that were proposed for the race but wisely ruled out. Despite its star power and a huge budget, The Great Race was a flop on release and quickly fell into obscurity. Critics assumed it was trying to ride off the popularity of Those Magnificent Men And Their Flying Machines, another big-budget all-star comedy with a similar premise. I’m more inclined to believe that its failure was due to the roadshow phenomenon that boomed in the late ’50s dying out at this point. It would be several more years until the epic format of a three-hour film with an overture and intermission faded from theaters completely, but audiences were already losing interest, and that rung The Great Race’s knell. Regardless, it’s garnered something of a cult fanbase from automobile aficionados (the original cars are still displayed at conventions), fans of classic cinematic comedies, and it even inspired the wildly popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon Wacky Races.

So if it wasn’t for this –

– we wouldn’t have this.

June Review: The Hobbit – The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

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“If this is to end in fire, then we will all burn together.”

Can you believe it’s been nearly four years since I reviewed the first Hobbit movie? *Sigh*, how time flies. My tastes may have matured and expanded, and I like to think my writing has improved too, but my thoughts on The Hobbit trilogy haven’t changed. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is superior, obviously, but I’m quite fond of this slightly smaller yet no less exciting adventure. I went into great detail why in the previous review, but if I had to sum it up I like how it expands upon Middle Earth lore hinted at in Lord of the Rings while decently tying it back to the events of those movies, and it fixes some major character and plot issues I had that kept me from fully enjoying the book it was based on.

While The Hobbit films do suffer from some the same issues as another prequel trilogy that people love to harp on – mainly an over-reliance on CGI and some contrived plotting – I’m relieved to say that poor performances and production value are not among them. The fact that they were able to bring together some great newcomers to the franchise as well as get as many cast members and locations from Lord of the Rings to return and make it all not feel like fanservice is a testament to the writing, craftmanship and direction that went into making these films, even more so since they were under double the studio pressure than they were the first time around. And if I may be shallow for a moment, it also looks really nice. Sometimes I like nothing more than to get lost in an inviting woodland fantasy atmosphere and this scratches my itch every time.

Now we have the much-anticipated Part 2, The Desolation of Smaug. This incarnation of The Hobbit was originally supposed to end here. But at the last minute it was decided that the Battle of the Five Armies, which happens during the last fifty pages of the book, was too important to relegate to the last act of a film that could potentially overreach The Return of the King’s runtime so they made it its own separate movie. I should mention that the copy of Desolation of Smaug I’m reviewing is the theatrical version since I received it as a gift. I saw the extended edition when it came out on blu-ray and the comparison between the two is an…interesting one. The extended cut fixes some of the inconsistent pacing and adds a few welcome character moments both original and from the book, but the rest I could do without. Some scenes stop the movie, sidetrack the main plot for something else to happen and take you out of the moment as a result, or simply add way more than necessary. One of these days I might get around to editing my own cut combining the best of the two, but for now I’d say you’re better off sticking with the theatrical cut in this case. Just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, I’ll give special mention to those parts when they’re supposed to come up. So let’s find out if it was it a wise decision to split these movies up or if those naysayers who edited the entire trilogy into one forty-five minute feature were right.

Christmas Shelf Reviews: The Nutcracker Prince (1990)

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Merry Christmas everyone! To conclude this month of merrymaking we’re looking at an animated Christmas cult classic that I have a bit of a soft spot for. But perhaps it’s best to start at the beginning:

ETA Hoffman’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” is one of my favorite fantasy stories, though chances are you’re more familiar with the famous ballet by Tchaikovsky that it inspired. The music is gorgeous and instantly recognizable, but few know the actual story of The Nutcracker beyond what your average community production rolls out every December. Much of the plot plays out like a variation of Beauty and the Beast with a protagonist akin to The Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy and story elements that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Grimms’ fairytale. Sadly, most of those details were lost in the translation from book to light holiday entertainment. Not that I’m complaining, I love the ballet, but there’s so much more to its origins that people aren’t usually interested in delving into.

I say all this because today’s movie, The Nutcracker Prince, is one of the very few filmic adaptations that pays faithful tribute to both its source material and its theatrical counterpart. In spite of – or perhaps because of – the popularity of the ballet, there’s been only a handful of film versions of Hoffman’s The Nutcracker (or at least a handful compared to something like A Christmas Carol). How good you find each of them to be depends upon your taste and the production value. I’ve found remarkably little about the making of this particular adaption, but that probably has to do with the fact that it was barely a blip on the box office radar. Released through Warner Brothers (which itself would issue another Nutcracker movie starring Maculay Culkin six years later), this was the only full-length animated feature created by Canada’s Lacewood Productions. A shame, really, because looking at The Nutcracker Prince you can see the studio’s potential. But thanks to the home video circuit, the movie has found a new life as a nostalgic Christmas classic for 90’s kids like myself. Let’s unwrap the reasons why, shall we?