Another week, another set of movies with the kids.
The Truman Show:
I forget how this came up, but SteelyKid mentioned this at dinner during the week, and then specifically requested it for Friday’s Movie Night. We had a little trouble getting HBO Max to connect, so ended up renting it from Prime. You’re welcome, Jeff Bezos.
I’m sure this is rich material for generational social commentary, but SteelyKid interpreted the ending as a total bummer, because Truman is leaving his comfortable bubble for the uncertain outside world. This Take is absolutely baffling to me; I see it as very clearly a happy ending, because he’s finally getting some real agency, and the movie is clearly pushing that view, but SteelyKid was adamant. Kids These Days are weird.
Kate and I both saw this when it came out; we can’t remember if we saw it together. Probably? Anyway, it was interesting to look back at from twenty-mumble years later. At the time, Carrey’s performance seemed really remarkable, coming off several years of absolutely ubiquitous shameless mugging. On second watch, without that context, meh. Still a pretty good movie, though; I worried it would be too slow for the kids, but they both enjoyed it, even if SteelyKid was Wrong about the meaning.
Beverly Hills Cop 2:
SteelyKid was out on movies for Saturday night, so The Pip and I went back to the 80’s well for a sequel. This was a bit zanier than the original, with even more Eddie Murphy mugging and Judge Reinhold getting a bunch of weird character quirks. Lots of bad words and gunfights and dick jokes and car chases. So it was an enormous hit with The Pip, who is, after all, a ten-year-old boy.
I don’t remember this super well from back in the day, but it was good fun. There’s no way I didn’t see this in 1987, but I don’t specifically remember it, other than a couple of scenes. Some of the gender aspects haven’t aged particularly well, but it’s less bad than I feared. The plot makes no real sense, but it’s really just a vehicle for Murphy to mug charmingly, and he was very charming in 1987.
That’s it for this week; no TV-watching for me, as the snow that fell on MLK day has been remarkably persistent, so I’ve been able to get my exercise Nordic skiing rather than biking-to-nowhere. Here are the usual buttons:
And if you want to discuss SteelyKid’s wrongness about the Truman Show, the comments will be open.
I saw Beverly Hills Cop III at that mall in the Pittsfield mall on graduation day after all the hubbub died down. It remains one of the worst movies I have seen in a theater (along with Navy Seals, Johnny Mnemonic and the SW prequels.) I advise against completing the trilogy.
I sort of get the point about The Truman Show. Christof is both an ethical monster in his I-am-your-God speech to Truman and yet he's kind of right. Truman is getting some agency but he's also going into an unscripted world full of unpredictable sadness and suffering. If you stop to think about what his immediately post-Truman Show life is going to be like, it's a bit daunting. He's going to be just as much under the spotlight at least for a while as before, hounded by unscrupulous promoters and media executives. He's going to have a pack of lawyers offering to sue Christof and the production company on his behalf (so they can collect most of the settlement) while having no ability to support himself. He's going to meet the love of his life, who thinks she loves him, but who knows how it will work out in reality? He's going to be in constant danger from all the things he doesn't know about the real world. Everyone in the world will think they know him and yet he will know almost no one. If he wants to go back, he won't be able to. He's a bit like a person who has been raised in a cult and managed to escape, or a person who was kidnapped as a small child and has been held captive inside someone's house for years--people who've come out of those situations generally testify that they're grateful to be free but also that it's been profoundly difficult to function as an independent adult. It's a happy ending tinged with the sadness of knowing how badly Truman has been damaged and how little he knows about that at the moment he steps through the door.