BEFORE: OK, I'm back on track, no more additions to the dockchain. David Letterman carries over from "Good Night Oppy" and I'm sending a birthday SHOUT-out tonight to Robert Downey Sr., born June 24, 1936. Sure, he died in 2021 (oops, spoiler alert) but that doesn't mean he stopped having birthdays, right?
THE PLOT: The life and career of Robert Downey Sr., the fearless and visionary American director who set the standard for countercultural comedy in the 1960s and 1970s.
AFTER: Yeah, I really didn't know anything about Robert Downey Sr. or the movies he made until I watched this. - with one exception, I remember something about the movie "Up the Academy" because it was the only movie that was "presented" by MAD Magazine, at a time when National Lampoon was having great success with their films, like "Animal House" and MAD's film was a colossal flop. So Robert Downey Jr.'s father directed that, and it was the closest he came to having a big-budget successful film, which means therefore that he was never, ever close to having a big-budget successful film. Instead he made small "cult" movies, and nobody really cares if those make money or not.
I mean, you can go through your entire filmmaking career and never have a hit, there's no real shame in that, as long as you get paid and you support yourself, who cares? But at some point you then have to wonder if you're just afraid of being successful and all the things that would bring with it. If you have a hit, then people expect you to have another hit, and that's just way too much pressure, right? Better to never succeed at all in the first place, probably.
But that's not really what this doc is about, it's about the relationship between the two Robert Downey's, the Sr. and the Jr. RDJ is one of the most successful actors ever, though he had a period of making lame brat-pack movies and also some substance abuse problems, he came out the other side of all that at least and found a second chance in the Marvel movies. But then his father got Parkinson's disease and Jr. chose to document the last couple of years of his life with a film about them making a film together, or really, two films. I don't usually like films that break the fourth wall this much, where the whole movie is made up of "Look, we're making a movie...what kind of movie should we make?" Half of "Sr." is about them making the movie "Sr." and by my count, that's way too much.
Sure, there's a second movie being made, because RDS just couldn't sit back and watch other people make a movie about him, he started making his own movie at the same time, but that movie is just about whatever he found interesting that day, whether it was ducks living in the water near his apartment buildling, or a group of people whizzing past him on mopeds. Well, once a gonzo filmmaker, always a gonzo filmmaker, I guess - he had no script, no storyboards, no plan, he just went out into NYC on his good days and had the crew shoot black + white footage of whatever was there, kind of shoot first and ask questions later about where it was all going to fit in with the master plan.
I kind of suspect that his son set him up with a camera crew just to sustain his will to live, like if he had some purpose to each new day, to get out and film something, maybe he'd stick around a bit longer - and who's to say he was wrong? Then they filmed the phone conversations between father and son on both ends, and then they had something to talk about, whether it was the difference between NY and LA or what should be filmed next, or what the story arc for the "Sr." documentary should be. Well, bad news, because everybody's story arc is somewhat similar in that they all end, and really, my documentary choices this year are kind of proving that's the case, with the exception of Sylvester Stallone at least. Mary Tyler Moore, Reading Rainbow, the Opportunity rover, yeah, all of them are no longer alive, and in fact one of them never really was. Let's say all of them are no longer functioning.
Time is savage, and time is relentless. As that "Star Trek" movie said, time is the fire in which we all burn. And you may not know time is up until it's up, or you may become bedridden later in life and you'll watch it end over a long period, there's no way to predict. Really, the best thing you can do for yourself is keep busy and try not to think about it. And for God's sake, don't watch a lot of documentaries about people who have died, I can't stress this enough, because that could bring you down. But of course, that's who people who make documentaries tend to make documentaries about, isn't it?
This was just way too meta for me, everyone in the film being focused on making the film that you're watching RIGHT NOW, only nobody seems to know what they're doing or what the focus of the film should be. And when they people in charge of making the film let this slip, that they don't really have a plan, well that's a big old warning sign right there. I don't know, maybe stop and turn the camera off for a minute and make a plan? Then you can turn the camera back on, but if the BEST footage you have is just people sitting around and discussing what should be in the film, well I question whether you ever really made a film at all. It's a bit of a paradox when you made a film about deciding what should be in the film you're making - did you then make a film or not? I guess you technically made a film, but you could have made a better one by having the meetings BEFORE and not DURING.
There's footage from Downey Sr.'s films, of course, like "Chafed Elbows" and "Greaser's Palace" and 'Two Tons of Turquoise to Taos Tonight", but after watching the clips, I was more confused than ever. What are these movies even about, or are they about anything at all? "Rented Lips"? "Too Much Sun"? "Hugo Pool"? Sorry, but they all look terrible and I don't think any of them would capture my attention. The only one I might ever have any interest in watching might be "Up the Academy", but since everyone agrees that film is terrible, then you know what? I'm good with never watching it. Sorry.
Robert Downey Sr. also did some acting work, and Paul Thomas Anderson cast him in several films, like "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia". Another director (he-who-shall-not-be-named) cast him in "Tower Heist" and "The Family Man". So I think this guy maybe missed his calling, if directors loved to use him in their films maybe he should have focused on acting instead of directing. I've heard of "actor's directors" but maybe he was meant to be a "director's actor" of sorts. Well, it's too late for that now, but when life offers you opportunities you really should consider taking them, that's my takeaway.
As an added bonus, two of the people interviewed for this film have also passed on, Alan Arkin and Norman Lear. Well jeez, the hits just keep on coming, don't they?
Also starring Robert Downey Sr. (last seen in "The Family Man"), Robert Downey Jr. (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Paul Thomas Anderson, Alan Arkin (last heard in "Minions: The Rise of Gru"), Sean Hayes (last seen in "Pieces of April"), Norman Lear (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Rosemary Rogers, Lawrence Wolf
with archive footage of Allan Arbus (last seen in "Volunteers"), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Patrick Dempsey (last seen in "Scream 3"), Elsie Downey, Antonio Fargas (last seen in "Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood"), Allen Garfield (last seen in "Destiny Turns on the Radio"), Jami Gertz (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Eric Idle (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Arnold Johnson (last seen in "Sunset"), Ron Leibman (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Ralph Macchio (last seen in "Hitchcock"), Andrea Martin (last seen in "Loser"), Marcello Mastroianni, Andrew McCarthy, Malcolm McDowell (last heard in "The Christmas Chronicles; Part Two), Alyssa Milano (last seen in "Hall Pass"), George Morgan, Cathy Moriarty (last seen in "Matinee"), Nicholas Pryor (last seen in "Doctor Sleep"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "De Palma"), Mark Wahlberg (last seen in "Me Time"),
RATING: 4 out of 10 rides into Manhattan from the Hamptons
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