Subject: REVIEW: MATINEE

From: [email-masked] (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 19:45:18 GMT

[Followups directed to rec.arts.movies.]

                                  MATINEE
                      A film review by Mark R. Leeper
			Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper

          Capsule review:  Teenage love, the Cuban Missile Crisis,
     and a likable, stop-at-nothing film producer make for a film
     that is a lot of fun.  It also has something to say about the
     nobility of the bad sci-fi films of the 1950s and 1960s.  The
     writing flounders a bit in the second half but the memories
     are terrific.  Rating: low +2 [-4 to +4].

     This one is going to be hard for me to be objective about.  I think Joe
Dante may be a couple of years older than I, loved the same films I loved
when I was growing up.  He and I subscribed to the same monster magazines
and probably had the same books in our libraries; we idolized the same
filmmakers; we were both walking encyclopedias about the same films.  Now he
has reached into his past, grabbed it, and put it on film and at the same
time he put a lot of my past forward too.

     It is October 1962 in Key West, Florida, and the second biggest thing
happening in the world is the Cuban Missile Crisis.  People are going crazy
because they might die at any minute.  But right now the big thing happening
is that Lawrence Woolsey is coming to town.  The great William-Castle-like
filmmaker of lousy monster movies is coming to key West to test-market
MANT!, the story of a man turning into a giant ant.  Woolsey is a genius at
promoting his films and uses every trick in the book and some never in any
book to fill the seats with joy buzzers below and frightened kids above.

     MATINEE is a film with a terrific first half.  This is a film that
manages to tie together a teenage love story, a serious anti-war theme, a
satire of science fiction films, and the comic story of Woolsey trying to
have a successful sneak preview.  John Goodman's Woolsey is extremely well-
written, appearing at first to be a stop-at-nothing self-promoter and then
proving to have the char, and natural showmanship of a Will Rogers.  Cathy
Moriarty plays Ruth Corday, a great foil for Woolsey.  She stars in MANT!
and then brazenly has to don a nurse's costume and play the ersatz "nurse in
attendance" at the showing.  All the time she is letting Woolsey know
exactly how stupid the entire proceedings are.  Moriarty is great, but the
role feels as if it was written for Mary Woronov.  Simon Fenton (of THE
POWER OF ONE) plays Gene Loomis, starting in high school and dating for the
first time.  Currently he is coming home to a family terrified of the
missile crisis and worried for the Navy father who is off enforcing the
embargo of Cuba.

     It is a great start, but the screenplay by Charlie Haas falls apart in
the second half.  Much of the logic of the story breaks down with some of
the plot not making sense at all.  No film made in the 1950s ever combined
so many gimmicks to bring in an audience.  But that exaggeration is almost
acceptable compared to the miles-over-the-top lampoon of the 1950s and 1960s
films themselves.  Any film with the budget MANT! required really would have
been better crafted.  The writing might have been dull, but it is unlikely
to have been so melodramatic or vaudevillian.  The distorted style of MANT!
is inconsistent with the rest of the film.

     Part of the fun of MATINEE is picking out all the allusions to 1950s
and 1960s films.  Of course, there are the seat vibrators of THE TINGLER,
the insurance policies of MACABRE, and the monster unveiling of THE FLY, but
see if you can recognize the music borrowed from the 1950s Universal sci-fi
films and even snatches of HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN.  Even the "M" in the MANT!
logo is borrowed from THE DEADLY MANTIS.  And the film is peppered with
actors from 1950s films.  Not Kenneth Tobey for once--at least I did not
notice him--but Robert Cornthwaite, Kevin McCarthy (who plays General
Ankrum, a reference to Morris Ankrum who often played upper-rank military
men), and William Schallert.  Also present in nice ironic roles are Dick
Miller and John Sayles.  Sayles, of course, is rarely an actor but he got
his start writing PIRANHA, ALLIGATOR, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, and THE
HOWLING, the first and last directed by Dante.

     While I cannot recommend every minute of MATINEE there is enough
pleasure here to make this one well worth seeing.  My rating would be a low
+2 on the -4 to +4 scale.

					Mark R. Leeper
					att!mtgzfs3!leeper
					[email-masked]