Mikey Is Now 25. Feel Old Yet? "Look Who's Talking"

Look Who's Talking (1989)
Rated PG-13 for language

Starring  John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, George Segal, Olympia Dukakis and Bruce Willis

Directed and Written by Amy Heckerling

The Story:

Mollie (Alley) is an accountant whose biggest client (Segal) is having an affair with her.  And then along comes unplanned baby, Mikey (Willis).  When Mollie goes into labor, she takes a cab driven by James (Travolta) to the hospital.  You can guess how this romantic comedy unfolds at this point, no?

Another Heckerling masterpiece.

Funny dialogue, great characters and wonderful music that helps tell the story is one of Heckerlings many attributes.

This film gets overlooked between Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless, but deserves to be mentioned with those cinema gems as well.

While everyone claims that Travolta enjoyed a career comeback in 1994 with Pulp Fiction, this was only 5 years earlier, so it's not like he had completely dropped off the map.  Alley was enjoying her tenure on Cheers and Bruce Willis was finishing up his Moonlighting stint and about to be Mr. Movie Star.

Lightning in a bottle that wasn't quite as successful with the subsequent sequels, but is still charmingly fun(ny) 25 years later.

Final Grade: B+

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: Yes to both, I'd forgotten how much fun this movie really was.

Love at First Bite? "Vamps"

That bites!

The Story:

Two vampires in New York, Goody (Alicia Silverstone) and Stacy (Krysten Ritter) mostly enjoy their night life.  Taking college courses at night and working as exterminators to catch rats and drink their blood.  Yep, they and many other vampires have shunned human blood and concentrate on the vermin of New York as their sustenance.  Ah, but when the Van Helsing family moves to New York, the girls' existence is about to get really complicated...

Following up the latest viewing of Clueless, I wondered whatever happened to Amy Heckerling?

Turns out she wrote and directed this one last year, and brought back Alicia Silverstone (and Wallace Shawn!) in the process.

I'm not sure if she gave up on Hollywood, or vice versa, but there just hasn't been very much Amy Heckerling product in quite some time.

She comes out of the gate in 1982 with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and then enjoys success again in High School in 1995 with Clueless.

Other than that, her career is filled with long gaps from the Director's chair, and even longer since she's had a box office hit.

Vamps apparently didn't help her much, which is a shame, because it is a cute little movie.

Perhaps that was the problem?    It's nothing special that screamed "I must be a movie" instead of something that could have been made for tv.

Her cast is impressive, with Sigourney Weaver playing the stem vampire that turned both Goody and Stacy.  As it turns out, only stems can turn people into vampires, and if a stem is injured or killed, it will have repercussions on the entire line of vampires that the stem had created.

So you can see where the plot device is coming from.

Either way, it's still a better film than Twilight.

: )

Final Grade: B-

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: Mostly harmless fun.  Not Heckerling's best, but it's a  movie that I could watch again with no problem.

100 Greatest Movies of All Time...That I Own. # 49 ~ Clueless

Back to Back Heckerling!

What can I say, the lady gets High School!  Here, she weaves Jane Austen's Emma into the ritzy life of Southern California High Schools and comes away with Clueless.

To summarize, Cher (Alicia Silverstone) wants to make everyone happy, for purely selfish reasons, and so begins to attempt to match-make for many people in and around her life.  From the teachers to her friends, she just can't help herself.

Unfortunately, Cher can't seem to find that elusive Mr. Right for herself, although he may be much closer than she can even begin to imagine.

The dialogue and situations are tremendously funny, and the actors all do a great job.

Much like Fast Times, Clueless unleashed a group of young actors on the public who were just making their starts in the business, or who had not received much exposure on the Silver Screen.

Alicia Silverstone is the most obvious.  Some TV movies and some music videos were her claim to fame.  Then there was the late Brittany Murphy and Stacey Dash as her two best friends.

On the guy side of things Breckin Meyer and Donald Faison played love interests in the tale, but my favorite was Paul Rudd in the first role I ever saw him in.  Hilarious in his part as an ex-son-in-law, he was an overnight sensation...almost a decade after his appearance in this movie. : )

Following Fast Times lead of a strong supporting cast of older character actors, Dan Hedaya won my favorite character as Cher's put upon father, and I've already listed my favorite line from the film.

One I'm saving for the guys that show up on my doorstep to court my daughters.

>: )

100 Greatest Movies of All Time...That I Own. # 50 ~ Fast Times at Ridgemont High

So here it is.  50-100 have been settled.  49 more to go.  Hopefully you've enjoyed this trip down memory lane, maybe found a new title or two to give a shot at, or rediscovered a lost classic.

If nothing else, perhaps you've been able to compare my tastes in film to your own, and then you can get the idea that if I like a film, you might also...or vice versa.

Now, in the style of Casey Kasem...

Back to the Countdown!


I'm not sure when I ever saw Fast Times at Ridgemont High.  It had to be well after the original release.  Either way, I've enjoyed it over the years at a look at what High School may have been like in the late 70s/early 80s.

Wow.

Way crazier than what I went through.

And this begins to explain a lot about my brother and sister...

: )

But back to the story.  It's a collection of "a year in the life" of several students whose lives intersect throughout the school year.  From their dealings with each other, their teachers and other various people in their lives, the story moves along and never hits a dull moment.

To describe the plot any further would be impossible, and ruin the film.

But what a storm of potential was released on Hollywood with this film.  It was the first time, or relatively first time for a lot of the cast and crew:

Cameron Crowe: first movie written.
Amy Heckerling: first movie directed.

Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates and Judge Reinhold, among others, all made one of their first forays on the Silver Screen in this project.

And don't forget Nicolas Cage!  Triple Cage for the Ultimate Win!

Naturally, one of my favorites is Mr. Hand (Ray Walston).  While technically the "villain" of the film, at least in the eyes and grades of Spicoli, you can see that like many teachers, he really does care for his students and wants them to succeed in life, and indeed, his class.

Aloha, Mr. Hand!