Worth Mentioning - How Do You Keep the Music Playing?

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. 

Jason Statham action, plus Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn comedy.

THE BEEKEEPER (2024)

My father loved to watch action movies. Some of my fondest memories of us sharing time together involve us sitting down to watch action movies – particularly the classics of the ‘80s and ‘90s. He passed away in 2017, and while nothing can exactly replicate the experience of watching movies with him, in the years since I have taken some solace from watching action movies with another father figure in my life: the dad of blog contributor Priscilla, whose family has taken me in as one of their own. Her dad is also an action fan, so I take every opportunity to watch action movies with him. Like The Equalizer 2 and 3, Expendables 4... and most recently, The Beekeeper. I spent the long weekend on an event-filled adventure with Priscilla’s family in Rio, and we decided to cap off the festivities with a theatrical viewing of the latest Jason Statham release.

I don’t generally rush out to see the new Jason Statham movie, and I can’t say I’m a big fan of the movies director David Ayer (Suicide Squad) has made previously, but I kept seeing The Beekeeper receive good word of mouth just due to the fact that it’s a good, old fashioned action movie. A throwback to the sort of movies Cannon would make in the ‘80s. So I decided we should give it a try, and I’m glad we did. Watching the movie with Priscilla and her parents was a good time at the theatre.

In this one, Statham plays Adam Clay, a taciturn fellow who rents some space on the isolated property of retired schoolteacher Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad) – a woman who Clay credits as being the first person who has ever been kind to him. So, of course, this situation falls apart very quickly. Eloise commits suicide after falling prey to a phishing scam, and when her FBI agent daughter Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman) informs Clay that it’s not likely they’ll be able to track down and bust the people responsible, he calls in some favors. Turns out that not only is Clay a beekeeper in his down time, but he’s also a retired Beekeeper – which is some kind of government super spy / enforcer / maniac that works outside the bounds of the agencies we’re familiar with. Once he knows where the scammers were set up, he heads off on a rampage of revenge, finding out who’s behind the scheme and following the trail of evidence up to people who are in very high positions in the United States.

Written by Kurt Wimmer, The Beekeeper is an entertaining, goofball action flick that never goes too long without showing us a scene where Clay beats the hell out of someone. Usually multiple someones at once. It is ridiculous that Statham is one of those modern action stars who won’t allow his characters to take too much of a beating – never mind that some of the greatest heroes, like Rambo or John McClane, also happen to be characters who take a great deal of punishment – but for this silly movie, it works that he is an unstoppable killing machine who really only has trouble with one out of the many people he fights with over the course of the running time.

This is absolutely the sort of movie you could imagine Cannon releasing in the ‘80s. And sure, it would have been better back then, with someone like Charles Bronson or Chuck Norris in the lead role. But made in the now with Jason Statham, it still turned out very well.

BEST FRIENDS (1982)

Goldie Hawn has been married and divorced twice, but her “happily ever after” has come with Kurt Russell, who she has been in a relationship with since Valentine’s Day 1983. She and Russell never felt the need to get married – and she has said that if they had gotten married, they would have also gotten divorced a long time ago. So it’s interesting that the year before she started dating Russell, she starred in a romantic comedy called Best Friends where her character Paula McCullen has an outlook on marriage that Hawn would take on herself: she thinks it’s unnecessary. In fact, in Paula’s case, she’s kind of afraid of it, as the idea of marriage also makes her think of her own mortality. But she has been in a relationship with Richard Babson (Burt Reynolds) for a while now and Richard is desperate to get married. They have a good career going on as a writing duo, they’re moving into their dream home, and Richard wants to seal it all up with marriage vows. So Paula gives in and agrees to marry him... and the fact that the issue of their marriage gets so much attention in the first 30 minutes of the movie indicates that they’re going to have a bumpy ride through the remaining 79.

Directed by Norman Jewison from a screenplay by Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson (a married writing duo who got divorced the year this film was released), Best Friends goes on to follow Paula and Richard as they take a trip to visit their parents and tell them they have gotten married. First they visit Paula’s parents Eleanor and Tim (Jessica Tandy and Barnard Hughes) in snowbound Buffalo, New York, then it’s off to the apartment building Richard’s parents Ann and Tom (Audra Lindley and Keenan Wynn) live in somewhere in Virginia. Richard is miserable with the McCullens, Paula is miserable with the Babsons, and all sorts of awkward situations ensue.

This is a decent movie that makes for a pleasant viewing experience and provides some amusing moments. Jewison assembled an excellent cast, and it’s fun to watch Hawn and Reynolds bounce off the likes of Tandy, Hughes, Lindley, and Wynn. There are also welcome appearances by Ron Silver and Carol Locatell, who is always great to see, even though I’ll always think of her as just one character: Ethel from Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.