*batteries not included

Day 140 - 5/20/09 - Movie #139

BEFORE: This is another movie that I've seen bits and pieces of over the years, but probably never watched all the way through. I forget - was this the last film with Hume Cronyn, or Jessica Tandy? Nope, not according to IMDB. Maybe it was the last time they were in a film together? Nope, that would be "Cocoon: The Return"...damn, what was it?

THE PLOT: Apartment block tenants seek the aid of alien mechanical life-forms to save their building from demolition.

AFTER: This film contains a number of gross over-simplifications, if you ask me. Landlords and developers are evil, their rent-controlled tenants are all noble souls or struggling artists, and old people go senile in a very endearing way. Oh, and aliens are tiny helpful mechanical beings who fix things, and are not fixated on world domination in any way. And the streets are paved with gold and the Easter Bunny planted a money tree in the backyard....

As every New Yorker knows, a developer wouldn't be able to put up a skyscraper in the East Village. The bedrock there isn't solid enough to support it - that's why midtown and lower Manhattan are filled with high-rises, and in-between there are strict rules about the height of buildings. Look at the skyline of Soho and the Village, there's nothing like a skyscraper.

So, I have to call "shenanigans" on the movie's premise. The alien storyline, I'm OK with, but I don't mess with the portrayal of NYC zoning codes.

There's actually a similar situation going on right now in Brooklyn - Bruce Ratner is a developer who bought up a whole bunch of properties in the Atlantic Yards section, in hopes of building high-rises and a basketball arena, to lure the NJ Nets to move to Brooklyn. Through a combination of eminent domain foreclosures and cold, hard cash, he got most of the tenants who lived in properties that were "in the way" to move, but at last report there were 1 or 2 tenants still holding out.

I admire their fortitude - I'm all for sticking it to the man, but when someone comes up to the house with a briefcase full of cash, take the deal! Or maybe hold out for the 2nd or 3rd offer, but then take it - they probably could have bought houses for the money they were offered to leave their apartments. By not cashing in, these holdouts now have to live in an almost-deserted part of Brooklyn, which can't be safe. And now the developer has been hit hard by the recession, so it's too late for them to cash in, and the whole project's timetable is shot. Again, when someone offers you six figures to move, take the damn deal.

For fans of animation, there's a brief appearance by Wendy Schaal as the girlfriend of the artist in the building - she moves out early in the film, and only has one scene, about 3 minutes long - but if you listen to her voice, you'll recognize that she plays the mother on "American Dad".

RATING: 6 out of 10 bulldozers