Post 55

Well, well, well; what have we here?

I like old movies--a lot. If it's directed by Capra or staring Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant or either Hepburn, chances are that I will love it and desire to own it. I have often been heard to say, "They just don't make movies like that anymore," and I honestly believed that.

But last night I saw Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and I was quite impressed. I wouldn't go so far as saying that it matches Charade in quality, but it's definitely up there; down-to-earth good, clean funny like this is hard to find these days ('course, it came out in '88, but whatever).

Using the rubric I employed in reviewing Charade:

1) Camera work. Nothing terribly fancy, but when Lawrence is sending Janet off on the plane, I really appreciated the use of the reflection in the window. Brilliant; brilliant, I say!

2) Dialog. This movie is just plain funny. Like, holy cow, I laughed a great deal. And there are funny conversations not just one-liners. Good stuff.

3) Unfolding. Yes. Very good. That's all I'll say because--well, you'll just have to see it for yourself.

4) Music. Eh, I don't really know. It was good. I wasn't really paying attention. As I said, the only reason I picked up on Mancini's genius in Charade was that I'm familiar with the theme.

Anyway, I highly and unilaterally recommend this movie. I am proud to have it on my shelf.

Funny story: last night, I came home with Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and one of my roommates came home with an acquisition of his own: Robots. I was intrigued because this particular roommate's movie collection is full of intellectually stimulating, thought-provoking kinds of films, and Robots just didn't really strike me as the type of movie that would foot that bill.

And I was right. We had a double feature--Dirty Rotten Scoundrels followed by Robots--and I was kinda--I dunno. Robots was fun, I guess, but it was just another one of those fluffy sort of feel-good cartoon flicks with some kind of contrived moral lesson. There were some pretty good gags in it, but that just gave me the impression that it was a very concept-driven movie (ie "Let's make a movie about robots so we can use this joke and this gag and this one-liner and this bit and this scene and this character and--yeah. Where's my storyboard?")

Final analysis: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels highly recommended, Robots not so much (though if you find yourself at a party where Robots is on the agenda, I don't mean to imply that you ought to leave early to avoid it; I'm just saying that it isn't the sort of movie that you'll want to go out of your way either to see or to avoid seeing).