items tagged with Jay Mohr

HEREAFTER

It’s been a couple of days since I’ve seen it, and I still find myself unable to explain to friends why I enjoyed Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter as much as I did. I wonder if that has anything to do with the movie being an almost complete mess.

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is something unusual: a movie wherein everyone involved appears to be having a good time. Of course, you could say the same about Cannonball Run or Ocean’s Twelve, but the difference here is that the audience is allowed to have a good time, too. Based on Douglas Adams’ cheeky, beloved sci-fi novel, Hitchhiker’s Guide, which has been in various stages of film development for the better part of two decades, is a goofy, oftentimes glorious mess of a movie. If George Lucas and the Monty Python troupe ever spawned, the results would look something like this; I started smiling during the film’s opening credits and only stopped to occasionally laugh out loud.

SIMONE

Andrew Niccol appears to be obsessed with a theme that, in all likelihood, he can spend his entire filmmaking career exploring: What is the nature of reality? In 1997’s vastly underrated Gattaca, which Niccol wrote and directed, he investigated the perils of genetic engineering, as his biologically “natural” protagonist Vincent assumed the identity of the genetically “perfect” Jerome to further his space-exploration career; the film, which on paper might seem a cerebral sci-fi comedy of mistaken identity, dramatized what it meant to be “real” in an unreal world, and was a heady, thrilling experience.

BEST IN SHOW

The genius of Christopher Guest lies in his belief that nothing is funnier than mediocrity. (He's the antithesis of Peter Shaffer's Salieri in Amadeus, who saw it as a tragic failure.) In his two finest cinematic efforts, This Is Spinal Tap and Waiting for Guffman, the performers examined in the "mockumentary" format - Tap's hard rockers and Guffman's thespians - were delightful because of their clueless self-satisfaction; they truly thought they were creating Art, or at least really kick-ass entertainment. And the joke blossomed every time we watched them perform their shows before audiences, because it turned out that these well-meaning hacks, while by no means terrific, weren't all that bad. They might have been lacking in talent, but their enthusiasm was infectious, and it made sense that their shows were hits. (God knows I've seen worse community-theatre productions than Guffman's Red, White, & Blaine.) Guest, who co-wrote both films and served as director for Guffman, was thereby able to poke fun at his characters and have you genuinely rooting for them at the same time.