WORLD TOUR Day 7 - Beverly Hills, CA
BEFORE: We were supposed to drive upstate yesterday and go to a Renaissance Faire, but the torrential rains in the morning forced us to change our plans. Even if the rain stopped by midday, the whole place would probably have been one big mud pit. Then Queens got hit with a couple of tornadoes and even more rain, so staying close to home and playing board games with friends turned out to be a much safer plan. Now, back to films set in sunny California - Beverly Hills made a brief appearance in yesterday's film, so I feel justified in scheduling this one next.
Linking from "Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles", character actor Jonathan Banks was also in "The Rose" with Bette Midler (last seen in "Fantasia 2000"), so that worked out quite well.
THE PLOT: While a Beverly Hills couple, Barbara and Dave, are celebrating thanksgiving, a homeless man decides to end his life by drowning himself in their swimming pool. Dave rescues him and invites him to stay for a while. How does this stranger change the lifestyle of this family?
AFTER: I listen to a lot of 80's music while working at an animation studio, and the other day one of the colorists asked me, "What was it like during the 80's?" with about the same tone that I might have asked my grandparents about life in the 1930's. Great, that doesn't make me feel old at all. I usually explain that we all did the Safety Dance while wearing our sunglasses at night, and the boys often wore more makeup than the girls. (If you don't get my references, please ask your parents for help.)
This film is a look at a typical (?) wealthy Beverly Hills family in 1986. The father is a neurotic workaholic who's over-medicated, the mother is a neurotic New-Ager who's undersexed, the college-age daughter is neurotic and won't eat, and the high-school age son is a neurotic filmmaker who's sexually confused. Even the dog is seeing a therapist - thank god for stereotypes, or the film wouldn't have any material to work with. Into their lives comes a street person who's dirty, smelly and hungry, but at least he's not neurotic. He eventually becomes the most clear-headed person in the film, once he's invited to stay with the family and cleans himself up.
He also is charming to some degree, as evidenced by helping each member of the family loosen up in some way, giving verbal advice to the men and umm, taking a more hands-on approach with the women. The situation in the house was already a love triangle, involving the husband, the wife and the maid, but his presence turns it into a quadrangle, and then it becomes a pentangle.
But in the process, a film that could have said something meaningful about the social dynamic of America, the great divide between the mega-rich and the dirt poor, man's unwillingness to help his fellow man except as a social experiment, instead devolves into a simple bedroom farce, with slapstick thrown in for good measure. So the main message of the film got very muddled for me - is it "Help your fellow man" or "Don't help your fellow man, unless you want to jeopardize your family"? What about "Listen to your kids" and "Don't yell at the dog"?
DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY: 6 miles / 11 km (Los Angeles to Beverly Hills)
DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR: 529 miles / 855 km
Also starring Richard Dreyfuss (last seen in "Red"), Nick Nolte (last seen in "Blue Chips"), Catherine Pena (last seen in "Impostor"), Tracy Nelson, Little Richard.
RATING: 5 out of 10 coat hangers
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