BEFORE: Well, I started this romance chain back on February 1 with "A Rainy Day in New York", a film about college kids in love, then followed that with a high-school set film, "She's All That", and another one set in college, "Down to You". Weeks later, as this theme is winding down a bit (still two weeks to go, though), I'm back in the school-based films like "The Rules of Attraction", and now this one, another classic high-school romance film. So classic that I never got around to watching it, in 13-plus years of doing this. Swoosie Kurtz carries over from "The Rules of Attraction".
There were no romances on TCM today, I can't really get my programming to align with their "31 Days of Oscar" schedule - but there IS a western tomorrow on their docket, and my film tomorrow is also a Western, can you guess which one? Hint: It's from 2021, and it's got Kirsten Dunst in it. Here's the TCM line-up for Day 5:
6:30 am "The Good Earth" (1937)
9:00 am "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940)
11:00 am "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956)
2:15 pm "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949)
4:15 pm "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) - hey, that one counts as a romance, right?
8:00 pm "Tootsie" (1982)
10:15 pm "Rain Man" (1988)
12:45 am "Raging Bull" (1980)
3:00 am "Fanny and Alexander" (1982)
Come on, you can't just put two Dustin Hoffman movies next to each other, you're going to get me all excited! See how easy it is to link movies by actor, TCM? Why not just do that for the whole MONTH, come on, it's not that hard, I do it for a whole year! Anyway, I've seen 6 out of these 9, the ones I haven't seen are "The Good Earth", "The Thief of Bagdad" and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" - I'm OK with Westerns, but not really a fan of John Wayne. But now I'm moving up to 22 seen out of 55, which is a full 40%! I knew watching all those Ingmar Bergman films last year would pay off somehow.
THE PLOT: A high school senior's girlfriend breaks up with him. His friends try to make him think of something else. His friend's sister Kelly helps him try out for the school musical, and spending time with Kelly has an effect.
AFTER: Well, this film from 2001 manages to answer the question that absolutely nobody has ever asked, which is, "Hey, did 1990's music stars Sisqo, Coolio and Vitamin C ever appear in the same movie?" Why, yes, they did. Nobody talks about this amazing meeting of the musical minds, but it exists. Oh, yeah, a bunch of actors are in here too, with a tale of love lost and love regained, and in true classical Shakespearean style, there's a play within the play, er, film, much like there was in "Hamlet". Only the play here is a high-school musical version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and the love quadrangle among the human students sort of mimics the one that was in Billy Shakes' play with fairies. (Thankfully, nobody in the film made any queer fairy-based jokes...)
High-school senior Berke Landers has his childhood sweetheart move back in town, so they hook up as a couple of horny high-school students - BUT the relationship wears out after a few months, and the (ridiculously named) Allison McAllister falls for "Striker" Scrumfield, a former boy-bander who sang with a group called the Swingtown Lads. I'm not sure a boy-bander would be caught dead performing in a high-school musical, though - but this version of Shakespeare's play is called "A Midsummer Night's Rocking Eve", with songs written by the high-school's overly dramatic drama teacher, who can't stop name-dropping all the famous people he's ever not met.
Berke enlists the help of Kelly, his best friend's younger sister to help him rehearse for the musical, and he manages to land a very small role, as attendant #3. But that's OK, his plan is to just get close to Allison and win her back, umm, somehow. Or he could also expose Striker for the cheating ladies man he probably is, he's basically up for anything that will get her back. Only he ends up spending so much time with Kelly that they become friends and confidantes, and you can probably guess where this is probably heading, right? Who needs Allison when you have Kelly, who's played by a much more famous actress, so hey, it's probably meant to be.
The big stand-out, here, though is Martin Short as the drama teacher who's either a genius or an idiot, or possibly both. He's perfectly cast because Short is always so freewheeling and over-the-top, and that's exactly what a drama teacher would be, and if he doesn't also turn up somewhere on this season of "The Masked Singer", well, then that would be a real shame, wouldn't it? The judges have finally stopped guessing him as a likely candidate, so it's a perfect time to put him on the show. Just saying. (Also, I had a vivid dream a few months ago that U2 frontman Bono turned up on the show in a polar bear costume, singing "She Blinded Me With Science", so I just want to get that down in print, because if it happens, then my dreams can predict the future and I have the gift of prophecy.)
It's clear, however, that the screenwriter here has no actual experience with high-school musicals (I, on the other hand, do) because this is not the way I remember them working. High-school boys just do not, for example, sing like operatic sopranos. I played in countless high-school and community-level productions, as Uncle Max in "The Sound of Music", Lazar Wolfe in "Fiddler on the Roof", Big Julie in "Guys and Dolls" and General Bullmoose in "Lil' Abner", but my biggest role was probably as Chief Sitting Bull in "Annie Get Your Gun" (I wore a full Indian headress, but it was a different time, this would probably now be considered culturally inappropriate...). Look, I'll admit I wasn't much of a ladies' man in high school, but I must have been in 10 plays and never even made out with a girl backstage, what was I doing wrong? I know, I know, it's all about the production and I didn't get into the game for that kind of action, but still...not even a kiss at the wrap party?
Said screenwriter also has no idea how strip clubs work, either, that much is clear. A high-school kid would never end up on stage with the girls, tied up in a harness, just before the police raid the place. Just. Doesn't. Happen. Berke also has the coolest parents in recorded history, they're a couple of sex therapists with their own TV advice show, and they don't even care that there a wild party was thrown at their house without permission. Must be another writer's fantasy there, along with very accident-prone New Zealand women.
About that Kiwi girl, she goes sailing in the air late into the film, catapulted high up in the school theater's ceiling, and a character catches her in his arms. I've got a big NITPICK POINT with any film that has somebody falling several stories, then caught safely - this happens a lot in superhero movies, too, but you can't just catch another human and stop their fall, not without doing damage to the catcher and the person being caught. People are HEAVY, even the female ones, and when they fall a couple of stories they build up this thing called momentum, and it's not the fall that kills them, it's that sudden stop at the end. Whether that stop happens in someone's arms, or on the floor, it's just as dangerous - you can't catch someone falling from a great height and save their life, it's just not that simple. And you may hurt yourself in the process, too, so the general rule is, don't do this. Even in a superhero movie, they've got to be slowed down first if they're going to survive - Superman can't just pluck Lois Lane out of her fall, he's got to grab her and fall with her for a bit, while slowing her down.
Ah, I'm just learning that Shane West was also in another high-school based romance, called "Whatever It Takes", loosely based on the Cyrano de Bergerac story. Yeah, that would have been good to know before programming this chain. Oh, well, put it on the "maybe" list for next year.. Well, at least today's film was a bit of fun, compared with yesterday's college film which was just such a big downer, all around. Though, nowadays, hearing anybody sing "Love Will Keep Us Together" just reminds me that the duo most famous for performing that song, Captain and Tennille, ended up getting divorced. I'm not sure if that's ironic or just an admission of the inevitable.
Also starring Ben Foster (last seen in "Contraband"), Kirsten Dunst (last seen in "The Virgin Suicides"), Melissa Sagemiller, Shane West, Colin Hanks (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Sisqo, Zoe Saldana (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2010)), Mila Kunis (last seen in "Third Person"), Ed Begley Jr. (last seen in "Lucky"), Martin Short (last seen in "Spielberg"), Carmen Electra (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen 2"), Shawn Roberts (ditto), Christopher Jacot (last seen in "Chaos Theory"), Kylie Bax, Dov Teifenbach (last seen in "Are You Here"), Jeanie Calleja (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"), Jonathan Whittaker (also last seen in "The Virgin Suicides"), Daniel Enright, Andrew McGillivray, Megan Fahlenbock, Sadie LeBlanc, Jordan Madley, Ravi Steve, Larissa Gomes, Lindsay Cole, Vitamin C (last seen in "Higher Learning"), Coolio
RATING: 4 out of 10 people on fire (doesn't anybody ever remember to stop, drop and roll?)
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