The Lost Boys

"Sleep all day.  Party all night.  Never grow old.  Never die.  It's fun to be a vampire."

That's a great tagline.  For as many vampire films as there have been over the years, surprisingly few spend any time on the allure of the vampire existence.  "Sleep all day.  Party all night"?  Who wouldn't want to do that forever?  I mean, aside from adults.  But that's the point, isn't it?  The Lost Boys doesn't focus on vampires as monsters, and it doesn't spend a whole lot of time on eroticism.  This movie argues that teens would want to become vampires because being a vampire is cool.  And that is more than enough reason to be an emotionally stunted asshat for eternity, right?

Michael (Jason Patric) and his little brother, Sam (Corey Haim), have just moved to a new town with their mother (Dianne Wiest).  Santa Carla is not a particularly fun place to be a teen, despite the fact that it is a scenic California beach town.  In fact, local graffiti claims the town to be the murder capital of the world; if you can't trust graffiti for the facts, who can you trust?  Michael quickly becomes infatuated with Star (Jami Gertz), a mysterious and frequently blank-looking young woman with the name of a horse.  Sam has a slightly more difficult time finding his place in the community, probably because he dresses like a jackass.

Sam does, however, meet Edgar (Corey Feldman) and Alan Frog (Jamison Newlander) at the local comic shop.  The brothers give Sam some not-so-subtle hints that Santa Carla is crawling with vampires, but he doesn't take them seriously because...well, because they're obviously morons.  Unfortunately, the morons are right.  Michael's lust for Star leads to him spending a lot of time with her and her guy friends.  That would be awkward enough in most social contexts, but these dudes are all full-fledged vampires.  Of course, Michael doesn't realize that, despite a lot of weird stuff happening.  Sure, the weird stuff (hallucinations, excessive fog, death-defying stunts, etc.) don't necessarily spell out "vampire," but I probably wouldn't have wanted to hang out with those guys for long.  Michael, though, gives in to peer pressure and unwittingly starts becoming a vampire.  Of course, you can argue that everything he does in this story is "unwitting" because he's not a terribly bright fellow.

You can sulk, or you can prove me wrong.  And Speed 2 doesn't help your case.

So what does Michael do?  Does he give in to his vampire hunger?  Does he try to hold on to his humanity?  Will Sam help him or hunt him?  And what about Star?  Was she really named after a horse?

I remember seeing The Lost Boys, both as a teenager and a preteen, and I remembered it being pretty cool.  It wasn't mind-blowingly awesome and it didn't drive me to wear plastic fangs, but I was certainly entertained.  The adult Brian has a little more experience, though, and I am able to recognize that The Lost Boys is pretty ridiculous.  For starters, a group of teenagers gathers on the beach to fist-pump to Tim Capello rocking out with a saxophone.

I'll ignore the obvious questions of how likely fist-pumping is to synthesizer-heavy music and instead point out that greasy muscleheads with accessory fetishes are probably as irresistible to vampires as fried food is to Americans.  It looks like he drizzled himself in butter, doesn't it?  I don't believe that any vampire could resist murdering him.  There are other examples, like the unnaturally deep voices of the Frog Brothers, the remarkable amount of punk and goth kids in a small town, and the prevalence of male belly shirts (Sam even has a Rob Lowe belly shirt poster on his wall!), but this video clip made it hard for me to focus on anything else in detail.

So...vampires wax their body hair?

The acting in the film isn't bad, but it's definitely in tune to the silliness of the movie.  Corey Haim was actually pretty good as the non-vampire brother and Jason Patric was decent, if you can get past how stupid his character was.  Really?  You expect me to believe that you can't tell the difference between wine and blood?  If the iron and salt didn't clue you in, the coagulated chunks probably should have.  Idiot.  The real star of the movie, though, is Kiefer Sutherland as David, the teenvamp leader.  It's not that he turned in a fabulous performance, but he did seem like a pretty cool rebel.  He was a little too needy for my taste, with all the "join us, Michael," but he fits the teenage appeal of this movie perfectly.  The rest of the cast is relatively unimportant.  Alex Winter and the other vampires offer some campy fun, Diane Wiest is the stereotypically clueless parent, and Corey Feldman is kind of amusing as an amateur vampire hunter.  Edward Herrmann is probably the most convincing actor in the supporting cast, but that might be because he's playing a variation of his typical square characters.  For what this movie is --- a vampire movie aimed at teens --- I think the acting is more than adequate.

"We're not up to anything, mom...we just have to hide this corpse upstairs"

There is an awful lot of camp in this movie, though.  Director Joel Schumacher doesn't know how to manufacture convincing emotions from his actors, so he often resorts to having them overact.  Normally, this annoys me, but I think it fits this script fairly well.  This was Schumacher's first special effects-driven movie, though, and he handled those scenes terribly.  Never mind the random way each vampire reacted when they died and the sometimes awful makeup jobs.

I'm referring to the less demanding scenes that should have been handled better.  For instance, when the vampires fly, we get POV shots...showing where they've been.  Unless vampires fly backwards, that's pretty hard to explain.  Speaking of which, what was going on with the motorcycle headlights that caused wind gusts...and then vanished?  Were the vampires on their scooters, huffing and puffing until they flew their bikes into the night sky?  And where did the Frog Brothers manage to find so much garlic?  That had to have been around forty pounds.  What about the I-have-a-flashlight-shining-up-at-my-face lighting for Kiefer Sutherland in the climactic sequence? 

None of these, on its own, is too awful.  When you see that many silly things in one movie, though, they do start to become more noticeable.

All in all, though, The Lost Boys is good enough.  It could have been a lot darker and creepier if it kept the R-rating and stayed closer to the concept of Peter Pan as a vampire, but it does a pretty good job of making vampires seem cool.

"Let's go cause some anemia!"

It is certainly not a great film, but it's enjoyable and frequently unintentionally funny.  As a mainstream film, I think The Lost Boys has the right tone and attitude, but the last third of the movie is too ridiculous to be taken seriously.

Solarbabies

My friends at NoBulljive suggested that I check Solarbabies out because it is really "...something."  That might not sound like a glowing recommendation to you, but I watch a lot of movies that are, at best, really...something...so, I thought I'd give this one a shot.

Wow.  Bad idea.  Kids, don't do as Donnie Don't does.

Catch a rerun instead of this movie, please.

In a post-apocalyptic future, what do you think the world will be like?  If you answered "a desert wasteland that is surprisingly roller skate friendly," then you hit the nail on the head.  Unfortunately, you hit it with your face.  Yes, the future is a dire time period and it is in need of some heroes.  I know what you're thinking..."We don't need another hero, we don't need to know the way home.  All we want is life beyond Thunderdome."  Well, what if I told you that in this desert-y future, orphans are kept in medium security prison-like facilities?  And the primary way for these orphans to rebel is to sneak out late at night and play each other in a game that is apparently a cross between lacrosse and roller skating?  And furthermore, what if I told you that a sentient, super-powered orb shows up and helps the kids escape their prison and topple the evil regime?  You would probably say that sounds like a terrible, terrible movie.  And you would be right.

Solarbabies (taken from the main characters' rollercrosse team name) is not exactly an acting tour de force.  Sure, it boasts Jason Patric in his first movie, but it also shows off some early work from Jami Gertz, Peter DeLouise, James LeGros, Lukas Haas and the apparently time-proof Adrian Pasdar.

What makes his hair even better is the fact that he plays a roller skating falconer.

There are some veterans in the cast to try and add legitimacy to this movie, but Richard Jordan isn't the sort of actor you want to headline your movie.  Unless, of course, your movie is about post-apocalyptic roller skating teens who befriend a glowing orb named Bohdai.  Charles Durning, on the other hand, is a much better actor, but his part is minuscule (and surprisingly sweaty).  Despite all that, the acting isn't too awful.  It is, by no stretch of the imagination, good.  It isn't as bad as the film premise might suggest, though.  They act poorly, but it is obvious that they have all memorized their lines and can deliver their ridiculous dialogue with a straight face.  I find it interesting that this movie was directed by Alan Johnson, who is most famous for providing choreography for Mel Brooks' movies; it's interesting because the man clearly was familiar with stupid comedy, but opted to make this film stupidly serious.

An actual publicity shot for Solarbabies, which wisely chooses to have nothing to do with the movie.

I don't want to waste my time analyzing this movie, but here's a list of things that I laughed at in the film:

• Their roller skates have lights to help with skating in the dark.
• When given the task of disabling a camera that will, at any moment, report that the Solarbabies are escaping their prison, one of them chooses to try and break the camera by hitting a rock at it, baseball-style.  That has to be a fairly unlikely path toward success.
• Roller.  Skating.  Falconer.
• There is apparently still hair dye after the apocalypse.
• Roller skating is apparently very easy on dirt roads.
• The police cars look like Darth Vader helmets on wheels.
• Five good guys get captured by two bounty hunters, even after the hunters admit that they won't use lethal force.
• Dogs have flashlights on their heads...to help track roller skates with flashlights on them, maybe?
• Smokey Robinson provides the song for the credits, and it includes the name "Bodhai" frequently in the lyrics.

Leave it to a DeLouise to be happy about a bad movie.

Take one part Rollerball, two parts Mad Max, and thirty-six parts of suck, and you will get Solarbabies.  Now, you might be thinking that Solarbabies can't be as bad as the cabbage role at the Terra-Phelevo Penn, or the oatmeal at the Cook County slammer, but (in the immortal words of Matt "Guitar" Murphy) "they're all pretty bad."

That's half a star for Adrian Pasdar's hair, half a star for never relenting with the roller skate gimmick, and half a star for a post-apocalyptic rollercrosse team that instinctively knows the best team colors are found on the American flag, dammit!

You better think before you watch Solarbabies with Aretha.

The Losers

I came of age in the greatest time in film ever: the golden age of body count movies.  In those days (the late 80s-early 90s), the bad guys had evil oozing out of their pores, the good guys could kill hundreds of baddies with nary a scratch (Rambo II and III, I'm looking at you), and there always seemed to be a smart-ass remark after the good guys did something extra cool.  For about five years, these films reigned supreme, from (roughly) Die Hard to The Last Boy Scout (there are outliers to this statistical survey, but let's ignore them for the sake of argument right now).  These movies were always mostly awesome, and always (at least a little) stupid.  After a while, though, people wanted to see more realistic violence on the big screen, and these tributes to testosterone became quite rare in popular film.  That's why The Losers is such a breath of fresh (and familiar) air.  This is a movie that would have felt right at home in 1990.  The bad guy is pure evil, the good guys quip all day long, and there are a lot of dead bad guy underlings by the time this movie ends.

The Losers is a film about five elite Special Forces troops; Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is the man with the plan, Roque (Idris Elba)  is his knife-wielding right hand, Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) is the marksman, Pooch (Columbus Short) is the driver, and Jensen (Chris Evans) is the tech/communications guy.  The movie begins with the team on a relatively easy mission: they need to "paint" a target area for an air strike, basically giving the coordinates to the bombers.  After they give the order to strike, though, a group of children is brought in to the target area for the purpose of being drug mules.  The team tries and fails to cancel the air strike, so they rush in, kill a bunch of bad guys, and rescue the kids, narrowly avoiding the air strike.  When they reach their extraction point, the helicopter waiting for them has only room for the kids or the Losers (which is not a name I heard them referred to in the film, but whatever).  Clay lets the kids take the chopper.  Moments later, the helicopter is blown out of the sky.  Somebody wanted the Losers dead and twenty-five children died instead.  Oops.

After the bombing, the group lies low in Bolivia, trying to figure things out.  Eventually, Aisha (Zoe Saldana) finds them and offers Clay a shot at revenge.  Apparently, the man responsible for the helicopter attack was Max (Jason Patric), an omega-level CIA spook, the kind of guy that topples governments.  Obviously, going to the police won't do any good against such a foe.  The only solution is to kill Max.  For freedom.

No, it's not much of a plot.  That's okay, though.  This movie keeps the action coming early and often, and it's done very well.  There are explosions, sniper shots, car chases, shootouts, and you name it.  You want a body falling to its death from a building?  Puh-leaze.  Give me a real challenge.  Oh, you want a hand-to-hand fight between a man and woman in a fire that doubles as foreplay?  Your wish is granted!

The action would not be so entertaining if not for the cast.  Jason Patric steals the show as the ultra-evil Max.  I normally don't like Patric, but he's mwa-ha-ha evil here and knows it; he's a mass murdering bastard that never justifies himself and clearly likes what he does.  Most bad guys are just bad, but I always welcome the villains that you love to hate, and that is what Patric brings to the table as Max.   Chris Evans is the sarcastic guy he is in most of his movies, but he throws in a lot of uncomfortable comic awkwardness whenever women are involved.  It doesn't quite click, since he's kind of studly and it's hard to believe that his lack of game would prevent him from romantic success, but he still has his moments.  Oscar Jaenada doesn't say much, but his role is to be the quiet bad ass and he does his work well.  Holt McCallany is decent as Max's underling and their conversations make up some of the highlights of the film.  Jeffery Dean Morgan is a likable alpha male, but he's nothing special as Clay.  I like the guy and liked the character, but it's true.  Idris Elba, Zoe Saldana, and Columbus Short don't do anything special, but none of them are bad, either.

Director Sylvain White does a good job keeping this movie moving, whether it be with action sequences or well-executed dialogue scenes.  This is the first movie of his I've seen, but I appreciate the music video quality of his cinematography.  This movie is based on a comic book series of the same name, with one of the primary writers of the TV show Friday Night Lights (Peter Berg) and the writer of The Rundown (James Vanderbilt) handling the adaptation.  I'm not familiar with the comic, so I don't know how well it was written, but this screenplay is pretty dumb.  That's not a problem for me, but consider yourself warned.  Yeah, there are the typical tough guy one-liners sprinkled throughout, but that's not the problem.  The problem is that I'm pretty sure that there are entire pages in the script that call for characters to watch explosions, smile, take a few beats, and then kill some underlings.  Again, I'm okay with that.  It's dumb, not necessarily bad.  What is bad is the basis for this film's conflict; so Max wanted to kill the Losers because...they saved children from an air raid, killing the bad guys he wanted to blow up only moments before their corpses blew up?  That seems silly, at best.

Ultimately, The Losers is a likable action movie that is a lot like ones you've seen before.  The action is good and served often, the characters are shallow but are equipped with sarcasm, and there is a genuinely amusing evildoer.  Yes, the script is a little dumb, the characters are one-dimensional, and you never care what happens to any particular character.  This is a movie that knows what it is and never apologizes.  The only thing that keeps it from joining the elite action movies on Mt. Stupid Bloodfest is the lack of originality.  Since these characters are so shallow, there's really nothing about this movie that makes it memorable.  It's a good time, but not much more.