'80s comedy, '90s action, and a childish superhero.
CADDYSHACK (1980)
The feature directorial debut of Meatballs co-writer Harold Ramis, Caddyshack seems like it was put together much like Meatballs was. They both started out being based on the childhoods of the directors and writers; Ivan Reitman and the writers of Meatballs had gone to summer camp, while Ramis and his Caddyshack co-writer Brian Doyle-Murray had both worked as golf caddies in their younger days, as did Doyle-Murray's brothers Bill and John, plus Ramis's brother had won a golf scholarship. Ramis also had National Lampoon founder Douglas Kenney write Caddyshack with him and Doyle-Murray, as Ramis and Kenney had previously written Animal House together. But then, just like Meatballs, Caddyshack became a different movie during production. While Caddyshack was meant to primarily focus on the lives of young caddies, a lot of time ended up being dedicated to scenes featuring older characters played by comedy legends Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, and Bill Murray, who each largely improvised their scenes.
Kenney wasn't happy that the caddies got overshadowed in the movie, but it was the right move to give Chase, Dangerfield, and Murray a good amount of screen time. We do follow the story of caddy Danny Noonan, played by Michael O'Keefe, his endeavor to earn a caddy scholarship by trying to impress snooty Judge Smails (Ted Knight) while also lusting after Smails' wild niece Lacey Underall (Cindy Morgan) and carrying on something of a relationship with golf course employee / Irish exchange student Maggie (Sarah Holcomb) is at the center of the film... but Danny is the least interesting thing about the movie, because O'Keefe isn't a comedy legend.
Holcomb made her screen acting debut in Animal House, where she played a college student character's love interest who is, unbeknownst to him, actually 13. Oddly, the idea of a older guy getting involved with an underage girl is turned into a joke in this film as well, when Chase's character tells a story about a college student who was caught "night putting" with the dean's 15 year old daughter. Caddyshack was released two years after Animal House, and it was Holcomb's last screen credit. She hasn't acted since 1980.
Dangerfield is hilarious as Al Czervik, the owner of a construction company that's working on a project close to Bushwood Country Club. Czervik is rich, but he's nothing like the snooty regulars at the club, and he's constantly disrupting the peace, shocking and appalling people, and tormenting his "buddy" Judge Smails.
Chase's character is another irreverent rich person who golfs at the club, Ty Webb. And he's something of a rival for Lacey's affections. There's a scene where Ty is giving Lacey an oil massage that is the most obviously improvised scene in the film, because Morgan must have had no idea what she was dealing with when Chase climbed onto her back.
Murray has played a lot of iconic roles over the course of his career, and greenskeeper Carl Spackler is one of them. Carl has a very unique way of speaking and doesn't seem to be very bright. This is the only movie that offers viewers the chance to see Murray and Chase sharing a scene. The two didn't get along when they worked on Saturday Night Live together, but set aside their differences long enough to allow Ty Webb and Carl Spackler to have a very fun interaction with each other.
Carl spends many of his scenes trying to eliminate a gopher that has been digging its way around the golf course. The fact that there is an animatronic gopher in the movie is another thing Kenney was upset about, but that gopher is part of what made Caddyshack so great. As soon as that thing pops up at the beginning of the movie and starts dancing to the sound of the Kenny Loggins theme song "I'm Alright", Caddyshack instantly became a hit.
I wasn't there to help Caddyshack become a hit, because it was released three years before I was born. That's fine, because by the time I was being raised on a steady stream of cable television, this movie was in heavy rotation. I watched Caddyshack a lot when I was a little kid, and still have memories from those viewings - in particular, I remember the gopher, the scene where a chocolate bar is dropped into the country club's pool and mistaken for a turd, and the scene where a character who needs to vomit makes the choice to vomit into the sunroof of a car.
I enjoyed Caddyshack when I was a little kid, and continue to enjoy it to this day. It didn't stay focused on its story like Kenney wanted it to, but that allowed it to be packed with classic comedy scenes.
ANOTHER 48 HRS. (1990)
Eight years after making his film debut in the action comedy 48 Hrs., Eddie Murphy wanted to make a sequel. He came up with the plot and approached his 48 Hrs. director Walter Hill and co-star Nick Nolte about it. He made it happen. His story idea (which he didn't take credit for, instead choosing to use the pseudonym Fred Braughton for the story credit) was fleshed out into a screenplay by John Fasano, Jeb Stuart, and the first film's co-writer Larry Gross. And it really feels like there's quite a lot going on in the movie, so it's no surprise to hear that the first cut was 145 minutes long, even if the cut that got released is just 95 minutes. According to Brion James, who plays a cop named Ben Kehoe in both 48 Hrs. films, this movie was sitting at 120 minutes until a week before its release, when distributor Paramount decided to take out another 25 minutes. That's an odd move and I would like to see the director's cut of this movie, but I've never felt like losing those minutes resulted in a bad film.
The story picks up five years after the events of the first movie, and we find that Murphy's character Reggie Hammond is just now being released, despite only having six months left to serve at the end of 48 Hrs. Reggie got an extra five years for robbing a payroll, or at least being framed for robbing a payroll. Meanwhile, San Francisco police officer Jack Cates (Nolte) has been hunting down a mysterious figure known as "the Iceman", the "biggest drug dealer in the Bay Area" and a criminal that only Cates believes is real.
The Iceman is real, and whoever he is he has just put out a $100,000 hit on Reggie. The film begins with a pair of bikers, David Anthony Marshall and Andrew Divoff as Willie Hickok and Cherry Ganz, being hired to pull off that hit. If the name Ganz seems familiar, that's because Cherry is the brother of the villain of the first movie; so he's enthusiastic about the idea of getting to kill Reggie. Hickok and Ganz do not take a subtle approach to this hit, instead they try to kill Reggie while he's riding on a prison bus. This attempt causes the bus to crash, flipping and rolling down the road before getting hit by a semi truck - and each time Reggie references this crash, he says the bus flipped a different number of times. I first saw this movie rented on VHS when I was 7 years old, and I was very impressed by that bus crash. With the help of my father, I even tried to go frame-by-frame through the crash so I could count how many times the bus did roll over. But it's covered from multiple angles, so it was tough to get an accurate count.
Another hitman was in the middle of being hired to kill Reggie when Cates interrupted the transaction. He says he doesn't want anyone to get hurt when he pulls his gun on the hitman, but that guy does get very hurt. He pulls his gun on Cates, and since he's standing by a gas pump at the time that gas pump gets punctured when Cates fires back, and then the hitman is engulfed in flames. This gets Cates in trouble with Internal Affairs, headed up by Kevin Tighe as Lieutenant Blake Wilson, since the hitman's gun can't be found in the ashes. We saw the guy pull his gun, but since it can't be found it's ruled that the shooting was a "wrongful action" and it looks like Cates is going to be prosecuted for manslaughter.
Cates is suspended, but that doesn't stop him from continuing to search for the Iceman - or from forcing Reggie to help him in this search. He does so by holding on to the money Reggie left in his care at the end of the first movie, the $500,000 that was said to be stolen from a drug dealer. As it turns out, that drug dealer was the Iceman. And they say "the Iceman" so many times in this movie, it was one of the top things I remembered about it during the twenty-plus years I went between viewings.
Reggie needs money quick because he owes prisoner Kirkland Smith (Bernie Casey) for protecting him during his extra five years behind bars, and Kirkland wants him to give that money to his daughter Amy (Tisha Campbell). Like I said, this movie is packed with plot points, and since it's only 95 minutes long it has to work through these things as quickly as possible.
Another 48 Hrs. isn't as popular as its predecessor, but I think it's a decent sequel. It's nice to see Cates and Reggie interact again, and they go up against some dangerous villains. There are things about this movie that I thought were so awesome when I first saw it at age 7, they stuck with me through the years just like "the Iceman" did. That bus crash was one, and another involves a bad guy falling from a height onto a truck hauling water cooler jugs.
That last minute cutting turned this sequel into something that's seen as a bit troubled, which is a shame since Murphy convinced everyone that it was a good idea. I hope he still felt positive about it in the long run, because it's not a bad follow-up.
SHAZAM! (2019)
It can be really fascinating to watch a filmmaker's career progression. For example, Swedish director David F. Sandberg, who made a simple little short film starring his wife and was then hired by New Line Cinema and producer James Wan to turn that short into a feature called Lights Out. Sandberg did such a good job with Lights Out that New Line and Wan had him direct Annabelle: Creation... and from there, New Line's parent company Warner Bros. decided to let him take the helm of the $100 million (or around there) DC Comics superhero movie Shazam! This guy who was shooting a short in a bedroom with his wife just a few years ago did an excellent job directing the big budget superhero movie. And yes, his wife, actress Lotta Losten, is still in everything he makes.
I have a somewhat shameful lack of familiarity with most DC characters, and I would say that "if they didn't have an old movie or TV show about them, I don't know them", but that doesn't even hold up as an excuse for why I don't know Shazam, because this character did have a movie and a TV show before. Created in 1940 at Fawcett Comics (DC didn't get the character until 1972), Shazam was at the center of the first superhero movie ever made, the 12-part 1941 serial Adventures of Captain Marvel... You see, Shazam was originally known as Captain Marvel, but that name has since been taken over by a character who's set up at Marvel Comics. Then there was a TV show called Shazam! that ran on CBS from 1974 until '77. But I have never watched Adventures of Captain Marvel or seen an episode of Shazam!, so Sandberg's Shazam! movie was my introduction to the character.
Written by Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke, the film stars Asher Angel as a kid named Billy Batson, who has been in the foster care system ever since getting separated from his mom at a carnival when he was very young. He keeps running away from foster homes so he can search for his mom, but he has never been able to find her - and now he has ended up in a group home run by Victor (Cooper Andrews of The Walking Dead, always a welcome presence) and Rosa (Marta Milans). There are several other kids in this house and we'll get to know each of them, but the standout is Jack Dylan Grazer as superhero fanboy Freddy Freeman, who is constantly talking about superheroes, has a replica Batarang, and even owns a mangled 9mm bullet that was fired at Superman. It's a good thing Billy has made an acquaintance who's so familiar with these things, because he's about to become a superhero himself.
Djimon Hounsou plays a wizard who is the last surviving member of the Council of Wizards that were meant to protect the realms from the Seven Deadly Sins. For decades, this wizard has been looking for a pure-hearted champion worthy of inheriting his magic. This wizard chooses Billy as his champion, which is sort of unexpected because he has been shown to be quite a handful. But he's a good kid at heart. By speaking the wizard's name, Billy gains "the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury". His name is Shazam. And you might notice that the first letters in the names of those gods also spell SHAZAM.
Every time Billy says "Shazam!", he transforms into an adult in a caped costume who is basically a Superman knock-off (DC got involved the character after suing Fawcett Comics for copyright infringement, feeling he was too similar to their Superman), but his IQ seems to drop several points when he turns into this hero as well, so he's a total goofball. Where is that "wisdom of Solomon"? Superhero Shazam is played by Zachary Levi, who is a lot of fun in the role as he works to figure out what exactly his powers are, with Freddy serving as his supervisor.
Every superhero gets a supervillain to battle, and Shazam's enemy in this film is Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong), a man who had the powers of Shazam offered to him in 1974 but was then rejected because he was not worthy, he was too likely to give in to temptation from the lurking Seven Deadly Sins. The wizard was right than Sivana was going to turn out bad, and he ends up becoming the champion of darkness right around the same time Billy gets the powers of Shazam. Our hero has to stop Sivana from unleashing the sins on mankind.
Shazam! is an entertaining movie, and what I really appreciated about it is that, for the most part, it had a lighthearted, family friendly tone. It could have been even family friendlier if the occasional joke wasn't so crass - a scene of a festival Santa Claus who witnesses the final battle being interviewed on TV would have been even more amusing without the peppering of bleeped-out F-bombs - but as is it's still a great movie for kids. My expectations weren't high, since I didn't know Shazam before this, but I ended up being very impressed. Now I'm interested in learning more about this character and would like to watch that serial and the '70s TV show.
STAKEOUT (1987)
Directed by John Badham from a screenplay by Jim Kouf, Stakeout is a fun action comedy that is often referred to as a "buddy cop" movie, but if you watch it you might be shocked to see how much one of the cops, Richard Dreyfuss as Chris Lecce, overshadows his buddy/partner, Emilio Estevez as Bill Reimers. Bill is mostly around just to be Chris's sidekick, the sensible family man who observes the trouble Chris gets himself caught up in.
That trouble starts up when convicted criminal Richard "Stick" Montgomery (Aidan Quinn) makes an opening sequence escape from prison. Montgomery has friends in the Seattle area, so the FBI teams up with the local police force to set up a half dozen stakeouts - and Chris and Bill are assigned to watch the home of Montgomery's ex-girlfriend Maria McGuire (Madeleine Stowe), in revolving shifts with another pair of detectives they have a prank rivalry with, Forest Whitaker and Dan Lauria as Jack Pismo and Phil Coldshank. I thought Estevez could have been given more to do in the movie, but Whitaker really gets underused.
The start of the stakeout coincides with the end of Chris's marriage, and Dreyfuss ends up carrying the plot because Chris makes the ill-advised move of getting caught up in a romantic relationship with a woman he shouldn't have any contact with at all: Maria. Which not only jeopardizes his job, it also puts his life in danger once Montgomery finally shows up. Of course, Chris doesn't admit to Maria that he's a cop until well after they have fallen for each other, so it's got that "you're not who you said you were!" troubled romance aspect as well.
There isn't a whole lot of action in Stakeout, it's primarily focused on the drama and the comedy of the character interactions, but there are some exciting moments, including a car chase and a climactic sequence set at a waterfront that continues into a paper mill. Bill participates in that sequence, but Chris handles most of the action, just like he does in the rest of the movie.
This is a fun flick that doesn't seem to get referenced very often these days, but it was well received by critics when it was released and was a box office hit, the eighth highest grossing film of 1987.
It can be really fascinating to watch a filmmaker's career progression. For example, Swedish director David F. Sandberg, who made a simple little short film starring his wife and was then hired by New Line Cinema and producer James Wan to turn that short into a feature called Lights Out. Sandberg did such a good job with Lights Out that New Line and Wan had him direct Annabelle: Creation... and from there, New Line's parent company Warner Bros. decided to let him take the helm of the $100 million (or around there) DC Comics superhero movie Shazam! This guy who was shooting a short in a bedroom with his wife just a few years ago did an excellent job directing the big budget superhero movie. And yes, his wife, actress Lotta Losten, is still in everything he makes.
I have a somewhat shameful lack of familiarity with most DC characters, and I would say that "if they didn't have an old movie or TV show about them, I don't know them", but that doesn't even hold up as an excuse for why I don't know Shazam, because this character did have a movie and a TV show before. Created in 1940 at Fawcett Comics (DC didn't get the character until 1972), Shazam was at the center of the first superhero movie ever made, the 12-part 1941 serial Adventures of Captain Marvel... You see, Shazam was originally known as Captain Marvel, but that name has since been taken over by a character who's set up at Marvel Comics. Then there was a TV show called Shazam! that ran on CBS from 1974 until '77. But I have never watched Adventures of Captain Marvel or seen an episode of Shazam!, so Sandberg's Shazam! movie was my introduction to the character.
Written by Henry Gayden and Darren Lemke, the film stars Asher Angel as a kid named Billy Batson, who has been in the foster care system ever since getting separated from his mom at a carnival when he was very young. He keeps running away from foster homes so he can search for his mom, but he has never been able to find her - and now he has ended up in a group home run by Victor (Cooper Andrews of The Walking Dead, always a welcome presence) and Rosa (Marta Milans). There are several other kids in this house and we'll get to know each of them, but the standout is Jack Dylan Grazer as superhero fanboy Freddy Freeman, who is constantly talking about superheroes, has a replica Batarang, and even owns a mangled 9mm bullet that was fired at Superman. It's a good thing Billy has made an acquaintance who's so familiar with these things, because he's about to become a superhero himself.
Djimon Hounsou plays a wizard who is the last surviving member of the Council of Wizards that were meant to protect the realms from the Seven Deadly Sins. For decades, this wizard has been looking for a pure-hearted champion worthy of inheriting his magic. This wizard chooses Billy as his champion, which is sort of unexpected because he has been shown to be quite a handful. But he's a good kid at heart. By speaking the wizard's name, Billy gains "the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury". His name is Shazam. And you might notice that the first letters in the names of those gods also spell SHAZAM.
Every time Billy says "Shazam!", he transforms into an adult in a caped costume who is basically a Superman knock-off (DC got involved the character after suing Fawcett Comics for copyright infringement, feeling he was too similar to their Superman), but his IQ seems to drop several points when he turns into this hero as well, so he's a total goofball. Where is that "wisdom of Solomon"? Superhero Shazam is played by Zachary Levi, who is a lot of fun in the role as he works to figure out what exactly his powers are, with Freddy serving as his supervisor.
Every superhero gets a supervillain to battle, and Shazam's enemy in this film is Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong), a man who had the powers of Shazam offered to him in 1974 but was then rejected because he was not worthy, he was too likely to give in to temptation from the lurking Seven Deadly Sins. The wizard was right than Sivana was going to turn out bad, and he ends up becoming the champion of darkness right around the same time Billy gets the powers of Shazam. Our hero has to stop Sivana from unleashing the sins on mankind.
Shazam! is an entertaining movie, and what I really appreciated about it is that, for the most part, it had a lighthearted, family friendly tone. It could have been even family friendlier if the occasional joke wasn't so crass - a scene of a festival Santa Claus who witnesses the final battle being interviewed on TV would have been even more amusing without the peppering of bleeped-out F-bombs - but as is it's still a great movie for kids. My expectations weren't high, since I didn't know Shazam before this, but I ended up being very impressed. Now I'm interested in learning more about this character and would like to watch that serial and the '70s TV show.
Directed by John Badham from a screenplay by Jim Kouf, Stakeout is a fun action comedy that is often referred to as a "buddy cop" movie, but if you watch it you might be shocked to see how much one of the cops, Richard Dreyfuss as Chris Lecce, overshadows his buddy/partner, Emilio Estevez as Bill Reimers. Bill is mostly around just to be Chris's sidekick, the sensible family man who observes the trouble Chris gets himself caught up in.
That trouble starts up when convicted criminal Richard "Stick" Montgomery (Aidan Quinn) makes an opening sequence escape from prison. Montgomery has friends in the Seattle area, so the FBI teams up with the local police force to set up a half dozen stakeouts - and Chris and Bill are assigned to watch the home of Montgomery's ex-girlfriend Maria McGuire (Madeleine Stowe), in revolving shifts with another pair of detectives they have a prank rivalry with, Forest Whitaker and Dan Lauria as Jack Pismo and Phil Coldshank. I thought Estevez could have been given more to do in the movie, but Whitaker really gets underused.
The start of the stakeout coincides with the end of Chris's marriage, and Dreyfuss ends up carrying the plot because Chris makes the ill-advised move of getting caught up in a romantic relationship with a woman he shouldn't have any contact with at all: Maria. Which not only jeopardizes his job, it also puts his life in danger once Montgomery finally shows up. Of course, Chris doesn't admit to Maria that he's a cop until well after they have fallen for each other, so it's got that "you're not who you said you were!" troubled romance aspect as well.
There isn't a whole lot of action in Stakeout, it's primarily focused on the drama and the comedy of the character interactions, but there are some exciting moments, including a car chase and a climactic sequence set at a waterfront that continues into a paper mill. Bill participates in that sequence, but Chris handles most of the action, just like he does in the rest of the movie.
This is a fun flick that doesn't seem to get referenced very often these days, but it was well received by critics when it was released and was a box office hit, the eighth highest grossing film of 1987.
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