BEFORE: Sally Field carries over from "The End" and I think you can see where this is heading - I've got one more film from the 1970's to get rid of, and then we're on to Mother's Day movies, a couple days in advance of the holiday, because I won't be here for the week after.
THE PLOT: An agent infiltrates a gym that's been targeted for purchase by some shady real-estate developers.
AFTER: The 1970's were a very weird time, and if you need any further proof of that, well, there's this movie. Some of the things that you might see in this movie are Jeff Bridges getting drunk on moonshine and dancing a jig, a man with the absolute worst hairpiece ever, Sally Field getting naked, and Arnold Schwarzenegger learning to play the violin. Where those things fall on your own personal scale of weirdness, I can't imagine, but they all stand out as very unusual. The fitness craze was just getting started, however those few people who were into this very strange competition called "bodybuilding" were regarded as freaks who had WAY too much time on their hands. Most people couldn't spend six hours a day working out because they had this thing called jobs, or else they couldn't afford the gas for their car to get to the gym, because there was both a recession and an energy crisis going on. So once the fitness craze caught on, people had to find another way to get to the gyms, and that's how jogging became a thing. It wasn't because Forrest Gump ran across the country several times, don't believe what you see in the movies.
The other day I saw the first appearance. of Elvira in a movie, though she appeared with zero explanation in "Stroker Ace" and it would still be a while before people knew what they were looking at, today's film did the same thing for Schwarzenegger, though he had been in a cheapo dubbed Hercules movie a few years before under the name "Arnold Strong", this was his first attempt at being an actor under his own name, using his own voice. Then he was in the documentary "Pumping Iron" one year after this and people realized he was the real deal, and also were very, very afraid. Some lingering post-World War II fear over a giant man with a German accent, perhaps.
The story here (and honestly, there isn't much) is about a gym in Alabama that's in a prime real-estate location, a local group of developers wants to buy up all the properties on a block, Monopoly-style, so they can tear them down and put up a giant office building. I still see this going on in NYC, if you see a street corner with a 3-story building, and on the ground floor is a very convenient supermarket, or a cool group of mixed stores like a deli that makes great sandwiches, a record store that has comic books in the back, a cool tattoo parlor, a pizza place and a weed shop, you can bet that sooner or later someone's going to raise the rents on those stores so they can't afford to stay open, the tenants will be evicted or encouraged to go elsewhere, and the 3-story building will be torn down to create a 15-story condo complex with maybe a parking garage underneath and a bunch of spaces for retail stores, which hopefully would include a deli, a record store, a tattoo parlor and a pizza place - only not the same ones. It's too bad they can't tear down the housing units and leave the shops intact, but I guess we just don't have that technology.
Craig Blake is the slick bro who gets assigned the task of getting the gym owner to sell cheap, so he goes to check the place out and finds a totally weird group of characters running the place, plus one cute girl who works the counter, and I guess he finds the whole place rather inviting and quirky, or perhaps he was just bored with his old life and looking for a new direction, because he takes the time to get to know these people and then kind of never gets around to trying to buy the place. At one point he loans $5,000 to Thor, the gym's owner, to repair the damage caused by the developers' thugs, but it's a bit unclear if this is done with good intentions, or to create debt that he can use later to foreclose on the place. Perhaps that depends on how far he can get with the cute girl who works the counter.
This film could have been saved for the romance chain, because it does have a love triangle in it, or maybe it's a quadrangle, it's hard to keep track of all the southern belles who want to take a ride on the Arnold express. Mary, the girl who works at the gym, lived with Joe Santo for a while, but he apparently never wants to get too comfortable in a relationship, he wants to "stay hungry", plus there are a ton of other Birmingham women he wants to sleep with, because he needs to prove that bodybuilders aren't all gay (though some clearly are). So Joe kind of sets Mary up with Craig, and Craig is fine with that for a while, but Craig also seems to have a hard time making decisions. Should he sleep with Mary or go back to his old girlfriend, Dorothy? Should he keep living in his dead parents' house or sell it? Should he stick with his new friends from the gym or betray them and keep his standing with the developers and his spot at the country club? Jesus, do something already, I don't even care what you choose to do, but stop being stuck in the middle of everything, afraid to act!
Mary can't take the indecision, either - plus Craig is very bossy and kind of an a-hole. It seems like she's still pining for Joe, and all the society people just assume she's with Joe, because that seems to fit, based on the class system. For Craig to lower himself and date a girl who works at a gym, that's just hard to fathom. Craig also invites Joe to come and play the violin at a high-society black-tie affair, but it does not go well. Craig's friends are also a-holes, and they poke fun at the big strong body-builder who plays the violin. Logically this SHOULD have ended with Schwarzenegger kicking everybody else's ass, or at least a cream-pie throwing fight at the fancy dinner party, the fact that this film didn't go in either of those two directions is very disappointing.
The Mr. Universe competition is coming to town, though, and for some reason they've chosen this gym as the competition headquarters, and Thor's in charge of holding the prize money (or is it the entry fees?) in a shoebox - what could POSSIBLY go wrong? It's not like he's going to spend it on "poppers" and go wild on a three-day sex spree with two massage therapists he locked into the spa with him. Oh, wait, that's exactly what he's going to do. This leads to a wild chase from the arena to the gym where a whole crowd of male body-builders have to run several blocks across town in their tiny swimsuits while the people of Birmingham act positively shocked because they've never seen such well-muscled men before. Most of the body-builders never get there, because they end up posing in the street or climbing on top of a bus like it's a parade float, and soaking up all of the town's attention. Yeah, that seems about right.
Finally all is made right - the sex-crazed Thor did NOT rape Mary, Joe Santo is declared Mr. Universe, and Craig decides to sell his dead parents' house and go into the gym business with Joe, and the plans of the real estate developers are thwarted, at least for the next couple of months. Can the relationship between Craig and Mary be saved? Not sure.
Directed by Bob Rafelson (director of "No Good Deed" (2002))
Also starring Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Kiss Me Goodbye"), Arnold Schwarzenegger (last seen in "Good Night Oppy"), R.G. Armstrong (last seen in "The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper"), Robert Englund (last seen in "Hustle"), Helena Kallianiotes (last seen in "Five Easy Pieces"), Roger E. Mosley (last seen in "Semi-Tough"), Woodrow Parfrey (last seen in "The Outlaw Josey Wales"), Scatman Crothers (last seen in "Filmworker"), Kathleen Miller (last seen in "Coming Home"), Fannie Flagg (last seen in "Five Easy Pieces"), Joanna Cassidy (last seen in "The Late Show"), Richard Gilliland, Mayf Nutter, Ed Begley Jr. (last seen in "Amsterdam"), John David Carson, Joe Spinell (last seen in "The Seven-Ups"), Clifford A. Pellow (last seen in "Blue Thunder"), Dennis Fimple (last seen in "Swing Shift"), Garry Goodrow (last seen in "Eating Raoul"), Bart Carpinelli, Bob Westmoreland (last seen in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore"), Brandy Wilde, Laura Hippe, John Gilgreen, Martin Hames, Murray Johnson, Dennis Burkley (last seen in "Murphy's Romance"), Autry Pinson, Samson Burke, Franco Columbu (last seen in "Conan the Barbarian" (1982)), Sam Ingraffia (last seen in "The Falcon and the Snowman"), Ken Waller, Jolene Wolff
RATING: 4 out of 10 barbells thrown across the weight room
No comments:
Post a Comment