The Conversation (1974)

What a STUPID Conversation.

I thought that I would’ve been able to get far more reviews out of my Film Criticism class than I did.  It was a class where I watch movies and write about them, for God’s sake!  How could I not just take my assignments and add a few more penis jokes and release them to my readers?  I’ll tell you how: because most of the movies we watched were boring and pretentious.  I didn’t even want to talk about the boring, black and white movies that we had to watch from week to week.  How would you all want to read about them?  The movies that I did choose from this class to review for you guys were the least pretentious.  And also they were in color.  Perhaps that’s how I judge pretention: strictly based on the color palate.  Well let’s see if I liked it as I review The Conversation, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and starring Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Harrison Ford, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, and Teri Garr.

A surveillance expert named Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) has been tasked by The Director (Robert Duvall) to record a boring conversation between two people (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest) about Christmas shopping or some shit.  He edits the tapes with his colleague Stan (John Cazale) and goes to turn it in to The Director, only to find that he’s out and he would have to leave it with his assistant Martin Stett (Harrison Ford), which was not part of their agreement.  So he keeps the tapes until he can meet with The Director as agreed, and he decides to go to a convention for surveillance gear.

Does it sound like nothing happens in this movie?  That’s because it doesn’t.  At least it doesn’t until the very end when some big reveals are dropped, but without spoiling the big reveals of this movie I can only really talk about what sounds like a really boring movie.  The movie was not what I expected it to be.  When it opened I thought it was going to be about snipers because they were watching people through a scope.  It turns out to be about surveillance.  And more specifically, the surveillance of two people having a boring conversation.  I assume this is to be a metaphor for the audience, who will spend ¾ of this movie watching people have boring conversations and wondering what the point is.  If I wasn’t watching this movie for a class, I would’ve checked out at about the halfway point … and it would’ve been my loss.  It ends really strong and exciting.  I didn’t see the first reveal (the reason that the two people were being recorded) coming, and I didn’t see the second reveal (the actual subject of the conversation) coming.  And the way they handled it was very exciting and suspenseful.  It finally made the movie feel like it was worth watching, but it takes so long to get there I don’t know that I’d actually recommend it.  You have to sit through a lot of boring to get to a reason to like the movie.

The performances were all great, so at least the people that are into that sort of thing will have something to watch for most of this movie.  Gene Hackman was great, but the movie never really required him to stretch his acting chops until maybe the end.  I did think it was a little weird that he was a surveillance expert at a conference for surveillance gear but thought nothing of it when that douche bag guy slipped a pen into his jacket.  They make microphones around that size, don’t they?  Oh well, probably not worth thinking about.  Also, Robert Shields played a mime in this movie and I got to wondering: Is a mime’s sole purpose in the world to be annoying?  It seemed to be the mission of this mime in the beginning of the movie.  I’ve never heard of anyone that likes mimes so how is it ever a job anyone takes?  And speaking of annoying: what was the deal with the guy waiting outside the phone booth that started tapping on the door the second he arrived at it?  The world doesn’t move at your schedule, asshole!  This is how lines work!

The Conversation is a good movie that I don’t feel confident in recommending because, to people like me, it requires far too much patience to reach the point where it’s worth the wait.  Nothing seems to happen in the movie until the last 15 minutes of the movie, when the movie reveals itself to the audience and finally becomes worth the 100 minutes you’ve already trudged through, but you must still sit through those 100 minutes to get it.  If that sounds like something you’re able to do, or if you just want to see Gene Hackman being pretty great, then I would recommend this movie.  Otherwise you can skip it.  The Conversation gets “I’m not afraid of death, but I am afraid of murder” out of “This conversation is over.”

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Dumb and Dumber (1994)

We Got No Food, No Jobs … Our Pet’s HEADS ARE FALLING OFF!

Apparently I have been neglecting my friend, Josh.  He recently reminded me that he has requested my review of multiple movies and I have not done them.  But he also learned the reason I ask that my review requests come via Facebook or this very site: I don’t remember anything.  I only remember to do about half of the movies people have suggested to me on Facebook.  I should really write this stuff down, but then I’d just forget where I put that note.  In order to retain a friendship, I decided that the next available opportunity should go to Josh.  And this request was made so much easier to fulfill when the only one of his requests he could remember was one of my favorite comedies, starring one of my favorite actors, and one I own on DVD.  What worried me about this request was that it’s a movie I have not seen in somewhere around 10 years, and I was worried that I would not still find it funny.  But we’ll find out together in my review of Dumb and Dumber, written by Bobby and Peter Farrelly and Bennett Yellin, directed by the Farrelly Brothers, and starring Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Lauren Holly, Charles Rocket, Mike Starr, Karen Duffy, Teri Garr, Victoria Rowell, Felton Perry, Cam Neely, Lin Shaye, and Harland Williams.

Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) is a limousine driver of questionable intelligence.  One day, Lloyd drives Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly) to the airport and, in the process, falls madly in love with her.  The feeling is not reciprocated.  As he watches her leave, he sees her drop her briefcase by the escalator.  Lloyd jumps into action, rushing inside to return the briefcase to her, only to find that her plane has already departed to Aspen.  And, just to add more to Lloyd’s plate, it turns out that the briefcase was left intentionally in order to pay a ransom.  Also, the two criminals that were supposed to retrieve the briefcase, Joe Mentalino (Mike Starr) and J.P. Shay (Karen Duffy), saw Lloyd take the briefcase.  Lloyd returns to the apartment he shares with his best friend, Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels), a recently terminated pet groomer with a van converted to look like a sheep dog.  Shortly after their arrival, Joe and J.P. show up at the front door.  Harry and Lloyd mistake the two armed criminals for representatives of the gas company, annoyed that they forgot to pay their bill, so they jump out the window.  To show they mean business, Joe kills Harry’s pet bird.  When Harry and Lloyd return to their dead pet, they get sick of their lives and concoct a plan.  The two will drive to Aspen, return Mary’s briefcase, and Harry will probably live with Lloyd and his new wife happily ever after.  And so their journey begins.

In 1994, to an 11-year-old Robert, this movie was absolutely hysterical.  Quite possibly the funniest movie I had seen at that point because Ace Ventura was not yet known to me.  17 years later, I will admit this movie is not as funny as it was back then, but I do still find it very charming.  I don’t feel like it’s fair to judge the movie on how funny I find it now because I’ve seen it WAY too many times by now.  It’s always hard to tell how I’d react to it now if it was my first viewing.  The story of the movie is pretty negligible.  It’s mainly there just to give us something cohesive to pay attention to while stupid and funny things happen on screen.  It’s a buddy movie of sorts, and a travel movie of course, but there’s not much story going on beyond that.  But it sets up lots of classic moments that I still think about to this day.  The part where Lloyd gets Harry to bet that Lloyd will not be able to make Harry gamble on something by the end of the day would be cute on it’s own, but when Lloyd genuinely doesn’t realize that Harry agreeing to said bet caused him to win it made it funny.  Every time I see a squeeze bottle of ketchup and mustard, my brain returns to the scene right after Harry and Lloyd eat a hot pepper, and that scene has another funny moment where they accidentally kill one of their pursuers.  There are lines in this movie that I still use to this day.  I cannot count how many times “Yeeaaaah, he must work out”, “Samsonite!  I was way off!”, “Suck me sideways”, “Kick his ass, Sea Bass!”, and “I have a rapist wit” have come out of my mouth.  I’ve also said “nice set of hooters you got there” numerous times, but not usually in the same context.  There are times when they go for some shit humor that I don’t find as appealing today as I did when I was 11.  There’s an entire scene of Harry tearing it up in a toilet (with horribly realistic sound effects to accompany it) that is not as much in my comedy wheelhouse today, but I will defend the filling up the gas tank on the Shaggin Waggin with the gas tank nozzle located under the sheep dog’s lifted leg.  They set that up really nice and slow-like and then paid it off.

I still like all of the performances in this movie.  Jim Carrey is Jim Carrey, so I love him.  The man does broad comedies better that almost anyone else can, and this movie just lets the man do what he does best.  From him, we expect this.  From Jeff Daniels, we don’t.  Yet the man is still able to hold up his end of the bargain remarkably well.  He has a few solid comedic moments on his own in the movie.  I would say, however, that he made Harry nowhere near as dumb as Jim Carrey made Lloyd.  Lloyd was clearly the dumber to Harry’s dumb.  Lauren Holly didn’t have to do much in this movie, but boy did she look purdy.  She looked good in this movie, and even busted out a little bit of booty, but she didn’t do much for the comedy.  Comedy was more done to (or at) her, like when Harry smashed her in the face with a snowball.

I still like this movie a great deal, even if the comedy’s lost some of it’s effect on me over the years.  When I went to look at the overall score of the movie, I was surprised to see that Rotten Tomatoes gives this movie a mere 63%.  It’s a comedy classic, for crying out loud!  For anyone to call this movie dumb only serves to show their own ignorance.  Of course it’s dumb!  It’s in the friggin title!  You’re just saying that it lived up to expectations.  I personally cannot imagine a time where I won’t have some fondness for this movie, even if I don’t laugh hysterically anymore.  You should definitely buy this movie.  Dumb and Dumber gets “Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this … and totally redeem yourself!” out of “You can’t triple stamp a double stamp!”

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