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Defend a Maligned Movie
I don’t believe in “guilty pleasures” – why should I feel guilt because the critical groupthink scorned something I think has merit? It’s not as if those individual critics don’t pull the shades and watch something the rest of the priesthood demeans. (Unless Marty Scorcese gave it a nod in an interview, and then it’s time for a Fresh New Look.) I also don’t believe in watching bad movies to revel in their awfulness, unless there’s some meta-level payoff. (Plan Nine really is the apotheosis of true unintended hilarity.) I’m watching something right now that makes eyes roll if you try to make the case for its importance, but that’s not important right now. (No, I’m not watching Airplane!) I’ll hand it off to you: defend a movie dismissed by the gatekeepers.
Published in General
I never cared for the Bond stuff, but I really enjoy all of the Derek Flint and Matt Helm movies.
The Austin Powers movies had an odd box office trajectory. The first one wasn’t all that popular; it did okay. But the sequel did fantastic business. The third one fell off at a fairly normal level. When the first one opened in 1997, the critical verdict was that it was a nice tribute/parody of a genre that was so far in the past that few people would remember or care. But the critics were wrong.
Maybe it’s partly due to my age, but while I enjoyed Flint and Helm, the Powers movies didn’t appeal to me.
With Uma Thurman in a latex catsuit, who needs a plot?
I was very disappointed with this movie, I would love for the Avenger’s TV series to get a (another) reboot.
With Uma Thurman in the movie, who needs to watch?
I’ve never been impressed by her.
There was a lot more of that in Kill Bill (both parts).
Oh please. Can you imagine what they’d do with – to – it now?
I think it is only co-incidence but the great and very off-beat Michael Leunig had a cartoon along the lines The panel shows a store front covered in the slogans “Tong Mania!” and “Out they go!” and “Crazy prices.” The people emerging, clutching tongs, have expressions of feral greed and covetousness on their faces.
Sexism was what made the Avengers tv series work. Wokeism is what killed the Bond franchise.
Yes, it wouldnt work… The BBC would never let it happen anyhow..
Well, you’re in luck. It was the UK’s commercial network, ITV, that bought and broadcast The Avengers. Although ITV and BBC share Britbox, they are still very separate. The Avengers TV series is also unexpected in that, unlike almost most other hit shows, it wasn’t filmed in London, but unfashionably north of the capital. Occasionally they’d do a brief “shoot” to give themselves stock shots they could use all year, the way Kojak and CSI:NY mixed in a little on-the-streets realism with the usual L.A. studio fakery.
Suppose Mr. Steed was a handsome, elegant Black man, roughly 50, and Emma Peel was a poised, gorgeous half-Jamaican dancer, acrobat and bodyguard, 25 years old, both with impeccable old school British manners and Oxbridge pronunciation. Think that show wouldn’t sell?
See, you even started out wrong. It would have to be MISS Steed, and maybe (Mr) Emory Peel would be her subordinate, or it would be Miss Peel and they’d be a lesbian couple, yadda yadda yadda.
No, I don’t think that killed the Bond franchise, though wokeism played a role. For me, much of the appeal of the Bond movies went away when the Soviet Union fell, and the Western World was not dealing with that constant threat anymore. But after the Soviet Union fell, the Bond villains became people like evil drug cartel leaders, and that didn’t do it for me because the stakes weren’t high enough anymore.
I find this persuasive. For one thing, there hasn’t been enough time for sexism to kill Bond. The shift over to vague villains is motivated by the loss of the old Cold War rivalry, sure, but is also due to the fact that unlike the USSR, China is a major economic power that buys a lot of films from Hollywood, so it’s not going to be the logical opposing force. That’s not wokeism; that’s business. That only leaves the usual gang of private Doctor Evils. Potentially, they make good villains, but the one place where I think wokeism has hit the franchise since the Brosnan era is to downgrade the danger from worldwide annihilation to, say, increasing the poppy crop, trading in conflict diamonds, or undermining sustainable agriculture (okay, I made that one up, but it wouldn’t surprise me).
I’m trying to think of what lies at the bottom of the barrel. I’ve already argued in post form for Zach Snyder’s Superman/Batman over the immensely popular Marvel movies. But that won’t do.
The first thing that comes to mind is the superiority of Adam Sandler’s comeback as a family comedian. So I’ll defend his abhorred Jack and Jill over his beloved 90s dreck. I don’t think it gets more indefensible, but I’ll take it!
When i was a teenager, I saw what I long considered to be The Worst Movie I’d Ever Seen, 1943’s “Hitler: Dead or Alive”. It’s one of those movies that’s so bad it’s funny–“Sprechen sie Deutsch? Then droppen sie dead!” The improbability of American gangsters being able to blend into Nazi Germany was explained, “Remember when we had that beer racket in Milwaukee?” Most ridiculous of all, they succeed, leading to the logical question, “So if you killed him, who’s running Germany?” “Who knows? Impostors, trained actors? Who cares?”
But then…umpteen millions years later, Quentin Tarantino ripped it off to make “Inglorious Basterds”. To his credit, and to my surprise, he cheerfully admits the influence.
My ‘like’ is not a show of agreement, but a thumbs up for the sheer audacity of this comment.
Sure, Laurence Fishburne would be a fantastic John Steed. I am thinking Emma Peel would be more Asian, just the elegance and hyper-feminine…
Well, Patrick Macnee was 39 when The Avengers started. Laurence Fishburne is almost 60.
Yes, and I am sure he would be too expensive for a TV series.
Just dropping in to say that the GLoP guys took on the topic of this fantasic post and comment thread on their most recent show (at about the 1 hour nine minute mark if you don’t want to hear the whole show — but you should because it’s a funny one).
But it’s not maligned. Maybe not seen by a lot of people, but Whit Stillman movies get a good reception. It’s the bookends of the “Doomed-Bourgeois-in-Love” trilogy (Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco) you want to be defending. From yourself. Dang, this game is too hard.
You might try Love & Friendship or Damsels in Distress.