We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
EUROPEAN VACATION (1985)
Of the three Vacation movies released in the '80s, European Vacation is the black sheep middle child. Vacation was a classic a couple years earlier, Christmas Vacation would become a classic a few years later, but European Vacation is - to me and, it seems, a lot of other Vacation fans - not quite on the same level as those films. There's some funny stuff in it and I have watched it a lot over the years, but I just don't enjoy it as much as the other two.
The story begins with the Griswold family, their name misspelled Griswald, competing on a wacky game show called Pig in a Poke, with John Astin turning in a perfect performance as the sleazy-but-hiding-it host Kent Winkdale. The Griswolds sort of accidentally win the show, and in the process are awarded with a two week European vacation. While Vacation writer John Hughes came back to write the script for this sequel (with some help from Walk Like a Man / Weekend at Bernie's writer Robert Klane), this doesn't have the same sort of relatability that the first movie had. This is just pure wackiness... and, like Kent Winkdale, it also has an odd sleaziness to it. There are bare breasts on display in multiple locations, the portrayal of the French is vulgar, and there's a minor plot element involving a stolen sex tape getting European distribution.
Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo reprise the roles of parents Clark and Ellen Griswold, and Dana Barron was told that she would be coming back as their teen daughter Audrey. But when Anthony Michael Hall, who had played Audrey's brother Rusty in the first Vacation, chose not to return for the sequel because he was working with Hughes on another project (Weird Science), the decision was made to recast both of the Griswold kids. That's kind of odd, why not just recast the one who didn't want to come back? But that's how Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), who took over as director on this one, wanted it. So here Audrey and Rusty are played by Dana Hill and Jason Lively, starting the tradition of these characters being played by different actors in every Vacation movie. While Lively's Rusty seems like a sensible extension of the Rusty we met previously, the Audrey that Hill was given to play does seem like a different person. She's whiny and sad, focused on which foods she can or can't eat, and spends most of the movie pining for her boyfriend back home in Chicago, Jack. Jack is played by The Karate Kid bully William Zabka, and he's a jerk here as well.
That aforementioned sex tape is shot by Clark early in the movie, when he's trying out the video camera they'll be taking to Europe with them. He has Ellen perform a song and dance routine for him on tape, one thing leads to another... And I've always been bothered by the fact that the Griswold bathroom and bedroom this scene was shot in is so obviously a cheap set that was tossed together real quick. This doesn't look like a real home at all.
Comedic vignettes take the Griswolds from a crappy hotel in London, to Stonehenge, the Eiffel Tower, and a festival in Germany, with them leaving their mark at most locations they pass through. It all builds up to a car chase through the streets of Rome, because there's some weird stuff involving Italian criminals dropped in near the end. I guess the filmmakers thought they needed something big to follow up the Griswolds taking control of Walley World in the first movie, but this doesn't work that well because it's very random.
There are some memorable jokes along the way, though. A scene involving a roundabout near Big Ben and Parliament is a classic "flustered Clark" moment, Eric Idle shows up as an extremely pleasant bike rider who keeps suffering terrible injuries, there's lines involving the euphemism "pork" that I have used myself in similar situations, Clark gets confused while brushing his teeth in Germany, and there are museum and shopping spree montages that have stuck in my head.
European Vacation is okay, but it's a lesser sequel.
POLICE ACADEMY 6: CITY UNDER SIEGE (1989)
I have childhood nostalgia for all of the Police Academy movies that were released in the 1980s, I watched those movies over and over throughout my early years - and while Police Academy 4 is my favorite, Police Academy 6 is one that has a special place in my heart, because it was the only one I ever got to see during its theatrical release. 1989 was the year of me being able to see the latest sequels to '80s franchises on the big screen after only being able to see the previous entries on TV and VHS. That year, I was in the theatre to see A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Christmas Vacation, and Police Academy 6: City Under Siege. Unfortunately, aside from Christmas Vacation, the sequels I was finally able to go to ("finally", at age 5) were not shining examples of the franchises they were part of. The Dream Child and Jason Takes Manhattan are among the worst of the Nightmare and F13 movies, and while I think Police Academy 6 is a fine sequel, it was the first Police Academy to fail at the box office.
City Under Siege was not the first or even the second idea producer Paul Maslansky had for the sixth film. Originally, it was going to follow the lead of part 5, Assignment: Miami Beach, and take the characters to a new setting; this time, Maslansky was thinking of going international. While Miami Beach was filming, there was already talk of heading to Russia for Police Academy 6: Operation Glasnost. When the idea of filming in Russia fell apart (Maslansky wouldn't get the franchise there until the '90s), there was some consideration given to Police Academy 6: The London Beat. But then they moved forward with another sequel set in the same city as the first four entries.
Miami Beach writer Stephen J. Curwick returned to write this one, while Peter Bonerz took over the directing duties. That name sounds like a joke credit, but Peter Bonerz is the director's real name. He was a prolific director, and also wracked up a lot of acting credits. It's interesting to note that Bonerz played a dentist on the classic sitcom The Bob Newhart Show, and Jerry Paris, director of Police Academy 2 and 3, had played a dentist on the classic sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show.
The story finds that Captain Harris (G.W. Bailey), the antagonistic jackass from the first, fourth, and fifth films, has now been put in charge of his own precinct, and of course he has Lieutenant Proctor (Lance Kinsey) there as his devoted sidekick. Problem is, the city is being overrun by a crime spree being perpetrated by the Wilson Heights Gang (Gerrit Graham as Ace, Brian Seeman as Flash, and Darwyn Swalve as Ox), and Harris can't seem to bring them to justice. So the governor sends in a special team to help him. Headed up by Commandant Lassard (George Gaynes), that team is made up of familiar faces and likeable characters: Hightower (Bubba Smith), Tackleberry (David Graf), Jones (Michael Winslow), Hooks (Marion Ramsey), Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook), Fackler (Bruce Mahler) - returning for the first time since part 3, and Lassard's nephew Nick (Matt McCoy), who was a Miami police officer when he was introduced in part 5, but has now moved up to his uncle's city.
Mrs. Feldman from part 4 does not return, but oddly actress Billie Bird does have a very quick cameo as a different character, who Jones refers to as Mrs. Stanwyck. I don't really understand why that happened, but it's always good to see Billie Bird.
We'll soon come to find out that the Wilson Heights gang is not in this on their own. They answer to a mysterious mastermind, who appears to them as a shadow behind a glass screen, barking out orders. The way the gang's meetings with the mastermind are handled is very reminiscent of how the appearance of Blofeld was obscured in the early James Bond films.
Meanwhile, our heroes and Commissioner Hurst (George R. Robertson, who was in all six of the '80s Police Academy movies) are answering to a new character, the Mayor, who is played by Kenneth Mars. Mars improvised a character trait where the Mayor is always verbally stumbling over his sentences because he forgets very common words. It was surprising to hear that this wasn't written into the script, because the scenes with the Mayor could have been quite dry and uninteresting if Mars hadn't added this. Other characters are usually doing something goofy in his scenes, but he has a lot of dialogue to deliver while that's going on. Dialogue that would not have been amusing if Mars hadn't worked his magic.
Police Academy 6 isn't as funny as some of the films that came before, but it still delivers 84 minutes of ridiculous entertainment. I don't think it failed because it was seen as bad compared to its predecessors, I think the series had just run its course and movie-goers had gotten tired of it. And I can tell you that it features some moments that played very well for a 5-year-old Cody Hamman in 1989, especially the climactic sequence in which there's a monster truck chase, the hulking Hightower battles the hulking Ox, Tackleberry and Ace have a shooting competition, and Jones gets to show off his martial arts skills yet again - and is even able to convince Flash that he's a robot, because these movies are silly as hell.
AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER (2002)
Although I enjoyed watching Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery on home video so much that I saw Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me in the theatre, I found the sequel to be so underwhelming that I had no interest in going to see Austin Powers in Goldmember three years later... Well, I had no interest in seeing most of the movie. I was very interested in seeing this opening sequence that I kept hearing about, one which featured cameos by Tom Cruise, Gwyneth Paltrow, Steven Spielberg, and others. As a huge fan of Cruise, I had to see that. I got my opportunity to when I went to see a revival screening of Jaws at an old theatre. That screening of Jaws was followed by a first-run screening of Austin Powers in Goldmember, and while I didn't have a ticket to Goldmember, that wasn't a problem. This old theatre had a bar and lounge area by the concession stand, and in this area there was a window into the screening room. And the movies were always loud enough to be heard by this window. So I watched Goldmember through that window just long enough to see Cruise play Austin Powers, very briefly, in the movie-within-a-movie opening. My curiosity satisfied, I left. I didn't watch the remaining 90 minutes of the movie until it reached DVD... and in retrospect, this is the sequel I should have seen on the big screen instead of The Spy Who Shagged Me.
For me, Goldmember is a lot more entertaining than the previous sequel, and it has several scenes that have stuck with me over the years, even though it's the entry in the franchise where the plot matters the least. I couldn't tell you what the point of each scene is, but I can tell you there's some funny stuff in there.
This time around, Austin Powers (Mike Myers) has to travel back in time to 1975 because his nemesis Dr. Evil (also Myers) is seeking the help of a gold-obsessed Dutch roller disco king called Goldmember (Myers again) for one reason or another. Whatever he's up to, Goldmember is a really bizarre character whose skin is always peeling off and he has to struggle against an urge to eat it. I don't know what that's about. In one scene, Goldmember asks someone if they'd like a "smoke and a pancake" - literally, smoke a cigarette and eat a pancake. This is a line that had an impact on my personal life, because for a while after the release of this movie my friend Noah would ask me if I wanted to take a cigarette break with him by saying, "Smoke and a pancake?" But he truly was only offering a cigarette, there was never a pancake to be had.
In 1975, Powers meets up with Foxxy Cleopatra, a singer at Goldmember's roller disco. She's played by Beyonce Knowles, who delivers a fun performance with nods to blaxploitation era legends like Pam Grier.
As the film makes its way through parodies of scenes from Bond movies like Goldfinger, The Man with the Golden Gun, You Only Live Twice, and The Spy Who Loved Me, Myers also reprises the role of Fat Bastard from The Spy Who Shagged Me, Fred Savage of The Wonder Years shows up, we get flashbacks to Powers and Evil's younger days, when they went to school together, and we're introduced to Nigel Powers, played by Michael Caine. As it turns out, Austin Powers followed in his father's footsteps in many ways; Nigel was also a very sexually active secret agent, and Caine is perfect in the role.
Austin Powers in Goldmember is nuts, and that works out well for it.
CADDYSHACK II (1988)
As of right now (and this isn't something I see changing much in the future), Caddyshack II has a shockingly low rating on IMDb. A 3.8 out of 10? I know a lot of people like to rag on the film just because it's a step down from its predecessor, but I've always found it to to be better than a 3.8. It should at least be in the 5 to 6 range.
Directed by Allan Arkush from a screenplay by Harold Ramis and PJ Torokvei (with uncredited rewrites by Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman), Caddyshack II is a carbon copy of the first movie - and was so dedicated to being the same basic movie all over again, it didn't even let the fact that some cast members didn't return get in its way. It just cast other people as characters who are very much like the missing ones.
Jackie Mason steps in for Rodney Dangerfield as the rough-edged man-of-the-people who runs into resistance from the stuck-up rich snobs at a country club, with the biggest snob of the bunch being Chandler Young, played by Robert Stack, a man with the most chilling voice I've ever heard. His voice gave me many nights of terror, thanks to his hosting duties on the incredibly creepy Unsolved Mysteries. Mason plays Jack Hartounian, head of a construction business that specializes in building affordable housing. As far as Young and his ilk are concerned, Hartounian's latest project is too close to their beloved country club for comfort, so these separate factions already have reason to dislike each other before Hartounian even steps foot in the country club - which he only does at the urging of his daughter Kate (Jessica Lundy), who desperately wants to be part of high society.
The only funny person to come back from the first movie is Chevy Chase, reprising the role of irreverent trust fund baby Ty Webb. Hartounian and Webb are pals, so when Hartounian gets sick of the snobs' nonsense, he has Webb help him buy the country club and give it a makeover. That's a situation so disturbing to Young that he even hires an assassin to take Hartounian out, and that's when Dan Aykroyd shows up to attempt to fill the void left by the absence of Bill Murray. Bill Murray used a funny voice in Caddyshack, so Aykroyd uses a funny voice in Caddyshack II. The groundskeeper played by Murray had to deal with that party animal gopher that's tearing up the ground, and Aykroyd's character Captain Tom Everett also ends up trying to kill that gopher. And I'm really glad it took me until adulthood before I realized just how similar the gopher noises done by Frank Welker are to the noises he made when voicing the troll in Cat's Eye. The little monster I was convinced lived in the walls of my house.
Like the first movie, this one also gives some story to a caddy. In this case it's Jonathan Silverman as Harry, but they must have recognized that the caddy was the least interesting character in the first movie, because Harry doesn't have a whole lot to do. Still, Silverman is inherently more likeable than the previous caddy. Kate has romantic interest in a rich jackass, but the viewer knows that Harry is a better match for her, and that they're going to end up together by the time the end credits roll.
All of the actors mentioned so far have their amusing moments, and another one who provides laughs is Randy Quaid, who shows up as Hartounian's legal representative Peter Blunt. Blunt is a fitting name for the character and the way he interacts with others. At one point, Dangerfield was going to come back for Caddyshack II and his Back to School director Alan Metter was signed on to direct, with Dangerfield's friend and Back to School co-star Sam Kinison expected to play Peter Blunt. Blunt is very much a Kinison type character, and Quaid did a great job in the role
Remember how Caddyshack built up to a very important golf match? The same thing happens in this one, as Hartounian and Young face off in a golf match that will determine the future of the country club.
Caddyshack II is often referred to as one of the worst sequels ever made, but I just can't agree. I have always had a soft spot for it because I was a young kid in the days when it was playing on cable a lot, so I was watching it and enjoying it quite often back then, but even now I find it to be a fun movie to sit through. A lot of the jokes in this movie have stuck with me throughout the years, and seeing them play out on the screen again takes me right back to childhood. It's not as good as the first one, but there's some funny stuff in there.
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