A former film critic has chucked it in and now reviews movies before either of you have seen them.
Anyway, 'The American President' is the latest movie from Rob Reiner, the director of a number of very successful films: 'A Few Good Men', 'Misery', 'Stand By Me' and 'When Harry Met Sally'. Oh, and also 'North' but the less said about that, the better. OK, it was ill-judged, sentimental twaddle. Reiner also directed what is probably the funniest film ever made, 'Spinal Tap', so he can pretty much be forgiven for any subsequent cinematic transgressions, even if they do feature self-confessed 'sex-addict' Michael Douglas . (What is the male equivalent of a nymphomaniac?) When I think of Douglas, I just see his shabby flabby bobbing bumhole in 'Basic Instinct' (awful but not as bad as Mickey Rourke's gratuitous quivering buttocks in 'Angel Heart').
Most people forget
however that Douglas was a reasonably successful producer ('One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest') and TV actor long before he became, let's say, a 'boner' fide
big-screen movie star. For years, he was best known for his role in 'The Streets
of San Francisco', playing cop sidekick to Karl Malden, the distinguished
character actor who was, in turn, best known for having an awfully big nose, the
end of which looked like a satsuma. Incidentally, Malden was a good friend of my
ex-violin teacher. I say was because Malden is, to the best of my knowledge,
dead. Come to think of it, so is my ex-violin teacher. Malden lived in San
Francisco and so too did Annette Bening (a student at the much respected
American Conservatory Theater), who co-stars with Douglas in this movie and who
is, of course, married to Warren (John Holmes MF) Beatty. Wait a minute! Beatty
once made a movie called 'The Parallax View' about the assassination of a
presidential candidate. I smell a conspiracy.
9 out of 10
Words fail me - almost. Now don't get me wrong. I think Sean Young is utterly adorable and she is definitely up there with Sigourney Weaver ('Alien') in the Top Five Celluloid Unisex Scanty Underwear Scenes ('Ace Ventura: Pet Detective' to be precise). Sadly, Ms Young seems destined to float around aimlessly like a piece of space junk in Hollywood's celestial skies ; to mosey along like a crappy three-wheeler on the slip road to Movie Stardom; the female equivalent of Jeff Bridges, if you know what I mean. This is a shame because, like Bridges, she is eminently watchable and a highly competent actor. Furthermore, it is almost unbearably awful to think that some Gucci-loafered, Ferrari-driving twat in LA is attempting to use Sean Young's sexual allure to sell this unremarkable, unoriginal and irredeemably feeble film - a common tactic in Hollywood where nipple and fanny shots are somehow acceptable while the exposition of the flaccid penis is still taboo (unless it belongs to Richard Gere or Harvey Keitel, both of whom are known to whip out their arthouse genitals at the drop of a hat).
Who needs another gender-bender role-reversal alter-ego bullshit
movie like this in any case. The ultimate life-swap scenario for me was the 1976
classic teenpic 'Freaky Friday' which featured a chubby and charming Jodie
Foster who quite implausibly becomes her mother. In the same year, Foster made
the magnificent 'Taxi Driver' with Robert De Niro, who - 12 years later - even
more implausibly wanted to play the lead role in 'Big'. Of course, Tom Hanks
eventually won the part of the adult who gets to behave like a ninny for a
couple of hours - a fact which Barry Norman (film critic and celebrity
brown-noser) foolishly brought up when interviewing De Niro a few years ago. Ah
yes, the sycophantic starfucker (who in all seriousness asked Michelle Pfeiffer
what it was like '..to be the most beautiful woman in the world.') narrowly avoided
a richly deserved Method beating. Oh well, good luck, as it were, to him and why
not, I say.
0 out of 10
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