Marty is one of those movies that I had heard of for years, but never got around to seeing. Sure, I like Ernest Borgnine in The Wild Bunch --- who doesn't? --- but he's not an actor that ever inspired me to look up his work. I had never heard of director Delbert Mann, either, despite most of his movies receiving some sort of Academy Award recognition. Am I just an ignoramus, or have these respected artists been unjustly overlooked by modern audiences? A little from column A, and a little from column B, I'm sure. The bigger question for me, though, is whether or not I will find a non-noir from the '50s entertaining, or will I see it as hammy and manipulative, as I have a fewother "classic" pics?
Wow. That's...some movie trailer. Setting aside the issue of a movie star introducing a film and pointing out that they are explicitly not in the film --- what audience are they seeking there? The people who trust a star's recommendations, but don't want to see him on screen? --- I have to wonder why they included the scene at the 1:11 mark. If this is a love story, why prominently feature the one part that looks like a rape scene?
To distract from any Oedipus complex jokes?
Marty is, not surprisingly, the story of Marty (Ernest Borgnine), an Italian-American New York butcher. Marty's a genuinely nice guy that has a good job, is good to his mother (Esther Minciotti), and is relied on by his family. His problem is that he has Ernest Borgnine's face.
Quelle horror!
His looks and naturally shy personality have combined to leave Marty a bachelor at the ripe old age of 34. As all the older women in his neighborhood frequently tell him, "[he] should be ashamed" of still being single, especially since his younger brothers are now all married with children. His biological clock is ticking, you know. It's not that Marty wants to be single, he just can't seem to attract any women. All he does is work, do nice things for his mother, and hang out at a diner with his equally dull best friend, Angie (Joe Mantell).
If it was possible to cohabitate in a booth, these two would be common-law husbands
At this point, you might expect some sort of Pygmalion tale, where Marty reinvents himself and wins over someone who had been overlooking him. Instead, Marty keeps being Marty, and is dragged to a dance club where he is promptly ignored by all the women while Angie tries to mingle. It is there that Marty meets Clara (Betsy Blair), a homely schoolteacher, who has been abandoned by her date. Hmm...homely...ignored by the opposite sex...solid job...hey, these two crazy kids might have some things in common! But when Angie and the guys see Clara, they let Marty know that she's a dog and he should be embarrassed to be out with her. Just as bad, Marty's own mother keeps telling him that she doesn't like Clara and that Marty can do better. What's a guy to do? Invite the scorn of everyone important to him, or keep seeking happiness with Plain Jane?
Admittedly, Marty is a pretty simple story. Despite that, Paddy Chayefsky's script is surprisingly well-done. It's not hilarious, but it has some clever moments.
Example: Who farted?
It's dramatic, but skirts melodrama nicely. Many of the characters are stereotypical Eye-Talians, but the main characters are also full of subtlety. Most importantly, the script does a very good job simulating believable social awkwardness and budding romance. Director Delbert Mann made sure to use that script to its fullest, focusing on the verbal and nonverbal skills of his actors and ignoring most everything else. That's not a knock on Mann's direction, either; his work here is simple, but beautifully simple and undeniably appropriate.
Mann's direction helped shape Marty into a treat for acting fans. Ernest Borgnine is absolutely wonderful in the title role. It's fairly unusual to see such a varied and vulnerable performance in a Hollywood movie (especially one made in 1955), but Borgnine manages to be gruff, vulnerable, sad, optimistic, and absolutely adorable within the same role. I've seen maybe six or seven Borgnine roles over the years but I never dreamed he could be this good. Betsy Blair was also very good as the plain Clara. I preferred her shy moments over her tears, but she wasn't at all annoying, despite her mopiness.
Marty is about 80% Borgnine, 10% Blair and 10% everybody else, but even everybody else was pretty entertaining. Esther Manciotti was essentially a stereotype, but successfully added believable motivations and insecurities to the mix. Augusta Ciolli, in a similar role, wasn't as good, but still gave a deeper performance than I expected. Joe Mantell's part was fairly simple, but he did a good job conveying the undercurrent of jealousy that the script never makes explicit in his character. Jerry Paris and Karen Steel are the only other noteworthy actors in Marty, but theirs are easily the worst performances. To be fair, though, they had the least screen time and the least to work with.
Marty is a very low-key movie, but it is thoroughly enjoyable, from start to finish. The characters are easy to identify with, the emotions seem sincere, and the script --- despite its age --- is still cute. Hearing Marty's mom reference a place with lots of girls as "loaded with tomatoes" is the most adorable thing I have heard from someone over the age of three. You can make some justifiable complaints about Marty, though. Many of the background characters are complete Italian stereotypes, most characters make their point over and over and over again, and the ending can seem abrupt if you lose sight of the core concept. None of that truly matters, though. This is a quiet, uplifting story that warms the heart more than most epic romances. So, if you're like me and are confused by the fact the Ernest Borgnine won a Best Actor Oscar, or that Marty is one of only two movies in history to win the Cannes Palme d'Or and the Best Picture Oscar --- yes, it's that good.
I've always been a pretty big fan of South Park, and I'm glad the show has gotten more clever (as I have) over the years. Co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are generally pretty funny guys from what I've seen and listened to in interviews, but I've never given them much of a chance as actors. Even though BASEketball was released between the first and second seasons of South Park, back when my fondness for dick jokes was at its zenith (AKA my teens), and despite the presence of the still-attractive-at-the-time Jenny McCarthy, I never got around to seeing this movie. Comedies, especially stupid ones, don't always age well, but this was directed by David Zucker, so maybe this is one for the ages, right? You know, like his other recent works, An American Carol or the Ashton Kutcher/Tara Reid vehicle, My Boss's Daughter. I know you can't see this, but I'm yanking on my collar a la Dangerfield right now.
Coop (Trey Parker) and Remer (Matt Stone) are unemployed losers who haven't made anything of their lives since finishing high school. After they crash a party filled with their more successful classmates, the pair find themselves talking trash to some jock-looking dudes who challenge them in the sport of their choice. Smart enough to avoid a sure loss by playing a traditional sport, Coop and Remer create Baseketball on the spot; it's basically a cross between the shooting game HORSE from basketball and the scoring system from baseball, but that's not very important. What is important is that these two morons create a sport that is easy to play, easy to understand (more or less), can be played on any driveway, and allows competitors to distract each other by any means necessary.
An example.
In a world filled with overpaid celebrity athletes with no sense of team loyalty, Baseketball skyrockets in popularity. Eventually, eccentric millionaire Ted Denslow (Ernest Borgnine) and the boys team up to create a professional league --- but they agree to prevent players from leaving their teams or doing endorsements, for the good of the game. When Denslow dies from complications stemming from a hot dog and extreme idiocy, ownership of the Milwaukee Beers is given to Coop. Another owner, Baxter Cain (Robert Vaughn) is heading a movement to make the sport more profitable, but he needs Coop's cooperation...or for the team to belong to someone more morally pliable. Cue naughty laugh and some slapstick humor.
Since this is a David Zucker movie, the acting isn't terribly important. Actors are just there to deliver their lines and react to the bizarre gags that the script calls for. Having said that, Trey Parker and Matt Stone are not very good actors.
They're mostly adequate here, but that's only because this is a really dumb movie. More often than not, their voice inflections tend to assume the characteristics that South Park fans will recognize as "adults about to say something incredibly stupid." The other actors aren't much better. In fact, some are worse. Jenny McCarthy and Yasmine Bleeth are both unimpressive, but for different reasons; McCarthy does a lot of physical comedy gags and Bleeth pretends to act. Neither are great, but at least they didn't trade roles and end up with McCarthy talking more. Frequent Parker/Stone collaborator Dian Bachar is okay as a hapless pipsqueak, but was more useful as someone for Parker and Stone to be a jerk toward. Borgnine and Vaughn lend some credibility to the film, and both are obviously the only professional actors in the movie, but it's not like their presence is going to change the type of movie this is. There are a ton of cameos in the movie --- nothing too spectacular --- but they don't really add anything other than a few chuckles here and there.
With David Zucker at the helm (and co-writing the movie), you should know what you're getting. There are a lot of visual gags, more than a few sex jokes, and a lot of stupid humor. It's what the man does, and he's been doing it for a long time. Is it funny? Well...parts of it are. I laughed at a few of the psyche-outs during the games. Not all of them were funny (unexplained male lactation, for instance), but many were stupid enough to to amuse me. The rest of the humor is obvious and underwhelming. Whether it was the frequency of the straight man in a scene silently repeating a stupid line to himself in disbelief, the use of goofy costumes, or gags that were timely in Zucker's 1980 classic Airplane!, a lot of the jokes in this movie just felt old.
Cross-dressing men: funny only in England.
On the other hand, the concept behind this movie did a lot of things right. I appreciated that the Baseketball teams had names that were (while usually stupid) appropriate for their geographical location. Calling the Milwaukee team the Beers instead of the Brewers is as subtle as these jokes get, but I liked the Roswell Aliens and the Miami Dealers, too. The basis of the film --- the average fan's dismay with modern spoiled athletes --- is a good one that could have led to an interesting story; of course, plot points weren't ever going to play a major part in BASEketball. If absolutely nothing else, this movie takes the idea of cheerleaders seriously, eliminating much of their annoying chants and demands and instead opting for the more direct "sexual object" route.
Lingerie cheerleaders = marketing genius
As the film progressed, I found myself disappointed in Parker and Stone. No, they're not professional actors, but I think they are both pretty funny guys, and this movie is way beneath their normal humor levels. When the credits rolled, I figured out why. The South Park boys were only actors in this movie; they received no directorial or writing credits. With that knowledge, I was a lot less disappointed in this film. No, it's not very good, but it is occasionally funny. And I will give it credit for never trying to be anything more or less than a very stupid movie. Not a lot of credit, but it was enough to keep me from hating this movie.
Apparently, America, we are having trouble saying goodbye to our aging action stars. If you truly doubt that, please explain the appeal of Rambo or The Expendables. Don't get me wrong, I miss the days when a hero could stand in one spot and shoot down fifteen thousand ninja-Communist-Nazis, without getting even a flesh wound, and I've enjoyed Stallone's increasingly idiotic movies. Still, it's kind of strange that we haven't seen anybody (except maybe Jason Statham) truly embrace the stupid action hero role, given how important dumb action movies were in the 80s and 90s. When you think about it, the success of The Expendables is an amusing insight into just how badly we want these actors to keep killing bad guys. I don't know how intentional this was, but Red seems to be in on that joke, too.
It's kind of like the song from White Christmas...what do you do with a former CIA black-ops agent when he stops being a CIA black-ops agent? Well, if you are Frank Moses (Bruce Willis), and you are living an inoffensive existence as a lonely retiree whose only friend is a customer service representative at a bank several states away, the answer is simple: kill him. For reasons unknown to him, Frank discovers that his status in the intelligence community has been changed from "retired" to RED ("retired, extremely dangerous"). Being RED means that assassination squads infiltrate your home in the middle of the night, looking to terminate with extreme prejudice. However, the "extremely dangerous" bit is an understatement; Frank quickly kills his attackers and begins a quest to find out who wants to kill him and why.
Along the way, Frank has to pick up that bank representative, Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker). He realizes that his phone must have been tapped prior to the assassination attempt and that the next logical step for the bad guys would be to kidnap Sarah and use her as leverage against him. She's not very willing at first, but as more people keep showing up to kill her, Sarah quickly gets on the Frank Moses bandwagon. Frank can't unravel the plot against him all by his lonesome, though, which means he needs to find help. Since he's retired, it turns out that his help is also a little past their prime. Joe (Morgan Freeman), Frank's mentor, is now living in a retirement home and passes the time by ogling his nurse's ass. Marvin (John Malkovich) is a well-armed conspiracy theorist that is paranoid to the extent of having a decoy house. Victoria (Helen Mirren) is a prim and proper housewife, formerly the best wetworks specialist in the business. With a little help from Ivan (Brian Cox), a Russian spy and former adversary, the group sets out to learn the truth.
I so so so wish he yelled "Flava Flaaaaav!" here.
I was excited to see this movie after seeing the trailers for it. It didn't look like a great action movie --- it has Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren, remember? --- but I thought it looked funny. I was wrong. It is funny and a good action movie. This is one of Willis' more wooden roles, but I don't know if I would have bought a black-ops specialist with a talent for wisecracks. His stoicism was probably for the best. Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren clearly had a lot of fun in their roles, with Mirren taking particular relish in being the gun expert. I go back and forth with my appreciation for John Malkovich, but he plays a pretty amusing paranoid here. Malkovich was probably my favorite character in the film, but I also really enjoyed Brian Cox. I think I just like the idea of former arch-enemies getting together and reminiscing about "the good old days," when they used to try to kill each other. Cox doesn't get nearly enough comic work, in my opinion. Mary-Louise Parker was also good as the relative newbie to all the danger. Is it just me, or was Parker neither attractive or talented until she turned 40? Weird. I liked seeing Ernest Borgnine again, even if he wasn't threatening to shoot anyone in the face. The rest of the cast was kind of meh. James Remar was in the movie for all of two seconds. Rebecca "Mrs. David Mamet" Pidgeon and her ugly jaw was as awful as she usually is, as was Richard Dreyfuss in his small-but-overacted role. I'm not exactly sure why Julian McMahon took his small part in the film, but he was definitely many years too young for the character he played. The bulk of the meh comes from Karl Urban, though. While I appreciate his dedication to the action movie genre, Urban is best when he speaks little and doesn't develop as a character. Here, he tries to actually act, with little to show for it.
Though this isn't from Red, Ernest Borgnine is still awesome.
This movie shouldn't be as good as it is. The screenwriters that adapted this story from the comic book series are the same people who wrote the dreadful Whiteout. The director, Robert Schwentke, has never shown a talent for either action or comedy, with his only other English films being The Time Traveler's Wife and Flightplan. Somehow, those films managed to collectively gross over $300 million and still have absolutely zero appeal to me. Regardless, the script was smart, the actors were directed well, and the action was pretty cool. I don't think I've ever seen so many bullets fired into one suburban home before, but I liked it.
Probably the thing I appreciated most about this movie was that it didn't keep calling attention to the age of its characters. Aside from an assassin calling Malkovich "old man," and maybe a similar remark made during a Willis-Urban fight, age was not a joke in this movie. Thank you, screenwriters. Instead, the humor was largely contextual and delivery-based. The main actors were all very good, and only the bad guys weren't funny. The pace is quick, the action is good, and many things go boom. This is exactly what From Paris With Love should have been, but was not. I will go so far as to say that Red is one of the most enjoyable action movies of 2010, and the perfect antidote for anyone who cannot fathom the success of The Expendables.
