Betsy's Wedding Is a Beautiful Disaster

M*A*S*H is my all-time favorite sit-com, so I’ve always been pretty familiar with Alan Alda, but I mostly think of him in association with television, so it was interesting to see him in the 1990 movie Betsy’s Wedding, which he also wrote and directed.

In this comedy, Alda plays Eddie Hopper, a devoted dad with big dreams. There’s a Walter Mitty-ish quality about this man who spends so much of his life in daydreams, but he has achieved some measure of happiness in the real world as well. He and his wife Lola (Madeline Kahn) love each other, and they have two grown daughters, one of whom is about to get married.

Brat Pack staple Molly Ringwald plays Betsy, the spirited young woman for whom Eddie is determined to throw the perfect wedding. The problem? Betsy’s future in-laws are equally adamant about throwing the wedding themselves, and neither wedding fits with the vision that Betsy has. With so many different people determined to have a hand in this ceremony and the reception to follow, will the happy couple get lost in the shuffle?

This is a fun comedy that shows how crazy a wedding can get when there are two very different but equally strong-willed sets of parents involved. Groom-to-be Jake (Dylan Walsh) comes from a very wealthy family, and his parents’ snobbery is even more aggravating than the appeals from Betsy’s relatives to incorporate both Catholic and Jewish traditions into what she intends to be an irreligious wedding.

Less directly involved with Betsy but very enjoyable are her scuzzy uncle Oscar (Joe Pesci), who rents the couple a decrepit apartment and makes shady deals with Eddie to finance the wedding, and young, gentlemanly mobster-in-training Stevie Dee (Anthony LaPaglia), who undertakes an old-fashioned courtship of Betsy’s sister Connie (Ally Sheedy), a tough-talking cop.

The film is fun and zany without being unrealistic, though Eddie’s fantasy sequences add to the fun of the movie. There’s also a definite warmth to it, especially from Eddie’s end as he comes to terms with this big change in his family and in the sweetness of the romance between Stevie and Connie. Movies revolving around weddings always have plenty of room for disaster as emotions run high and everyone strives to ensure this day is absolutely perfect. Betsy’s isn’t, but the chaotic events that punctuate it only serve to make it more memorable and a truer reflection of the bride and groom.

Celebrate Independent Music Stores With the Quirky Empire Records

The independent record store, like the independent bookstore, is an increasingly rare breed nowadays. After watching the 1995 indie comedy Empire Records last week, I am reminded what a great shame that is.

This movie, written by Carol Heikkinen and directed by Allan Moyle, centers around the titular store, where a small, close-knit group of teens and early 20-somethings work together under the easy-going management of the slightly older Joe (Anthony LaPaglia).

Three major events punctuate the movie. The first is laconic philosopher Lucas’s (Rory Cochrane) decision to take all of the store’s cash at closing time and go to Atlantic City. His aim is noble; he has just learned that a big music franchise intends to buy out the store, and he wants to generate enough money to stop that from happening. However, it’s a risky gamble that doesn’t pay off. How is the store going to recover the lost $9000, let alone avoid this hostile takeover?

The second is the arrival of has-been teen idol Rex Manning (Maxwell Caulfield) for an album signing. This is an especially big deal to Corey (Liv Tyler), a rather naive and mostly straight-laced young woman who has just been accepted to Harvard. In fact, she is determined to get her first taste of intimacy with him, little realizing in her teeny bopperish fervor that her coworker A.J. (Johnny Whitworth) is madly in love with her.

The third is a pair of shoplifting attempts by a mouthy teen who identifies himself only as Warren Beatty (Brendan Sexton III). These incidents demonstrate how well the employees work together to solve a crisis and how unique Joe’s management style is. The latter attempt also provides an opportunity for jittery aspiring singer Mark (Ethan Embry) to practice his assertiveness.

Interspersed with these occurrences is plenty of endearingly delinquent behavior such as confrontational clothing and jewelry choices – especially from the worldly Gina (Renee Zellweger) and goth Debra (Robin Tunney) – and music cranked up to ear-splitting volumes, as well as dangerous deeds like drug use and wrist-cutting. The dialogue is zingy, with plenty of memorable lines that elicit a laugh, and while the era of music being represented isn’t really my scene, the soundtrack definitely helps root the movie in a particular time and demonstrates the passion these employees have for the albums they’re selling.

The best way to be introduced to a quirky cult film is by someone who already loves it, and I was fortunate to have that experience. Even if you’re going into the movie cold, though, it shouldn’t take long to warm to the characters, all of whom are flawed but keep their shenanigans to a level appropriate for the PG-13 rating.

I especially enjoyed LaPaglia’s performance as a guy who seems quite deserving of a World’s Best Boss mug, and Cochrane got to utter many of the movie’s most memorable lines, but the ensemble in general is strong, and it’s fun to recognize some of these actors from later roles. It also made me smile that two of the actors – Tyler and Embry – in this film about a Little Record Store That Could co-starred the next year in That Thing You Do!, a thoroughly charming movie about a plucky one-hit wonder band. This movie isn’t as family-friendly as that one, but for older teens and young adults – and those who remember what it was like to be both – it is equally engaging.

The Visuals Soar But the Rest Drags in Legend of the Guardians

I'm a sucker for talking-animal movies, so when I saw advertisements for Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, based on the intermediate series about warrior owls, I was intrigued. I'd seen the books but had never read them, and I thought this might serve as a good introduction to that world. Now that I've watched it, my interest in the books has dwindled. Granted, it's generally not a good idea to judge a book by its film adaptation, and I do get the sense that this story would work better on paper. But I can't say the plot really grabbed me either.

Legend of the Guardians is a computer-animated movie directed by Zack Snyder and starring a host of voice actors from England, Australia and New Zealand. Some of them, like Helen Mirren, Hugo Weaving, David Wenham, Anthony LaPaglia and Sam Neill, are familiar to me; most aren't. All of the characters, aside from a peculiar snake who serves as a nursemaid to the family of Soren (Jim Sturgess), are owls, and all of them have unusual names, and all those accents sort of blended together for me and I had a rather hard time telling everyone apart. My favorite characters are Digger (Wenham) and Twilight (LaPaglia), who basically serve as comic relief, which is sorely needed in this dark and sometimes disturbing movie.

The animation, while perhaps not quite at a Pixar level, is very well done, particularly when it comes to the backgrounds. The enormous Tree of Ga'Hoole, where the legendary Guardians live, is breathtakingly gorgeous, and some of the scenes of the owls in flight are as well. There's a Tolkienish quality to the film, with the Guardians whom Soren seeks light-bathed, ethereal and reminiscent of the Elves. Meanwhile, the evil owls from whom the kidnapped Soren escapes reside in a stronghold reminding me of Saruman's fortress of Isengard. Here, the cruel Pure Ones, led by Metalbeak (Joel Edgerton) and Nyra (Mirren), forge weapons and build an army out of abducted owlings brainwashed into obedience.

It's a pretty basic quest story, with Soren, having been taken by the Pure Ones, making his escape with some help from the grizzled Grimble (Weaving), who assures him that the legends he's heard about the Guardians are true, that they really do exist and he must go to them for help before Metalbeak's rise to power is complete. Undertaking this mission involves a leap of faith, as Soren must decide whether to believe Grimble or his own brother, Kludd (Ryan Kwanten), who says it's a load of hogwash. But Kludd has chosen to ally himself with Nyra, and he and Soren never saw eye to eye anyway, so the budding hero makes his choice, laying the groundwork for a future showdown with his hard-hearted sibling, who later uses their little sister as a means of gaining greater rank within the Pure army.

It's a simple story, but I found it hard to stay engaged with it. My mind kept wandering, and the oppressive feel of the film didn't help. While there's nothing too graphic, the movie is certainly violent, and the depiction of the brainwashing of the young abductees is just plain creepy. It's dark, and frankly, it's also dull more often than not. At more than an hour and a half in length, it's on the long side for an animated film, and the length doesn't do it any favors. I also found the use of pop music rather incongruous and distracting (though I have to smile that one of the included songs is by Owl City).

I like the epic feel of the movie and the way it explores ideas about faith and about the boundaries between legend and reality. Parts of it are visually dazzling, and some of the banter between Digger and Twilight is pretty funny. The voice work is fine as well, with Weaving, Wenham, LaPaglia and a bone-chilling Mirren standing out the most. But I wouldn't watch it again, and if a sequel comes out, as the film's conclusion suggests may be the case, I think I'll give it a pass.

Niles and Daphne Take Center Stage in Frasier's Seventh Season

Back when Cheers was still on the air, I used to catch an episode now and then, but I was too young to really appreciate it, and I mostly just liked the theme song. Of the characters, my least favorite was Dr. Frasier Crane, a smug psychiatrist, so it seems a little odd that, years later, I started watching Frasier, but around the time I was in college, I was pretty caught up in it.

I suppose it helped that the erudite psychiatrist and his equally effete brother Niles were always making allusions to works of literature I studied in my college English classes, and I loved the clever wordplay of the titles that preceded each scene. It was one of the quirky touches that made the show so distinct. Additionally, when I was a freshman, I went through a particularly powerful obsession with the music of Art Garfunkel, which I’d always loved but hadn’t really listened to in years. When I read that he once had a voice-only guest spot as a man who calls into Frasier’s radio program, I began watching the re-runs as often as I could in hopes that I would see that episode. I still haven’t. But I did see a lot of other good ones.

As the series begins, Frasier has relocated from Boston to Seattle, where his crusty dad, Martin (John Mahoney), a retired cop, and his younger brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce), a psychiatrist with a private practice, reside. Niles and Frasier are two peas in a pod, and they love taking in fine culture and talking about it over complicated coffees at their favorite shop, Café Nervosa. While they are very much in sync with each other, they also frequently find themselves in competition.

Martin is much more down-to-earth, which causes some friction. He moves in with Frasier, and he insists upon filling his son’s condo with such distasteful elements as his ratty old chair and his shrewd Jack Russell Terrier, Eddie (Moose / Enzo). He swills beer and watches sports. He tires of his sons’ constant high-falutin’ talk. His kind but tough live-in physical therapist, an Englishwoman named Daphne Moon (Jane Leeves), has much more in common with the father than the sons, but Niles adores her, first for her beauty, then for her sweetness. Meanwhile, Frasier must daily deal with Roz Doyle (Peri Gilpin), the street-smart, promiscuous producer of his radio show. These six characters form the core of the show.

I mostly watched Frasier in syndication, but season seven was when I really became a fan, and as I watched all those older episodes in which timid Niles sighed over Daphne, I became anxious to see whether he would ever let her in on his feelings, and I found myself watching more current episodes. At first, Niles is merely infatuated with her. In fact, he is a married man, so his appreciation for Daphne’s finer features hardly is something to encourage. But as the seasons wear on, and Niles is still pining for Daphne years after his marriage to a deranged socialite dissolves, rooting for the two of them to give it a shot feels more inevitable. By the seventh season, it had become the central question of the series.

Thus, I tend to think of season seven as Frasier’s most pivotal. Pierce is a brilliant actor, and just as Brad Garrett so often steals the show on Everybody Loves Raymond as Ray’s lumbering, resentful brother Robert, so Pierce gets most of the biggest laughs with his fidgety bundle of insecurities and compulsions. Yet by this point in the show, he is also the most compelling dramatic character. I ached for him in the many moments when he nearly gets up the nerve to tell Daphne just how much he cares about her, only to lose heart at the last minute or have something come along and interrupt him.

Pierce embodies that angst perfectly, and show creators David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee drag out the tension as long as they possibly can. Daphne is always entirely congenial with Niles, but the writers go out of their way to leave her feelings toward him ambiguous as long as possible. Particularly with her role as an employee of the family, it seemed that it was up to Niles to bare his soul even if she shared his regard, and I know I shouted at the TV for him to do so on more than one occasion, even as I thought, Well, would I have the guts to do it? No, probably not. And if I tried, I’d probably just end up sticking my foot in my mouth. So I could sympathize with his plight. But I knew I was going to be pretty aggravated if all of this anticipation was not rewarded.

This season finds Daphne engaged to lawyer Donny Douglas (Saul Rubinek), which means plenty of agitation involving her overbearing relatives, especially her mother (Millicent Martin) and her destructively boorish brother Simon (Anthony LaPaglia). Niles, bemoaning all his missed chances to declare his feelings for Daphne, embarks upon a series of whirlwind relationships that leads him to Dr. Mel Karnofsky (Jane Adams), a woman as icy and abrasive as Daphne is warm and compassionate. No one can stand her, and it’s pretty plain that Niles can’t either; he’s just getting married in an effort to get over losing Daphne, which always struck me as an absurdly stupid thing to do. Far better to remain single than get hitched to someone who makes you miserable. She does provide some funny moments, but she’s so hard to take that I mostly just cringed whenever she showed up.

Aside from all the complications of these two impending marriages, which are set for the same week, the season does have some individual episodes that aren’t quite so wrapped up in the romantic drama. My favorite of these is A Tsar Is Born, in which Frasier and Martin are startled to learn that they are both fans of Antiques Roadshow, though for different reasons. When the PBS series comes to town looking for treasures culled from Seattle attics, Martin brings along a kitschy old clock and is astonished to discover that it once belonged to the Romanov family. Frasier decides to do some digging, figuring this must mean that the Cranes are descended from Russian royalty, but his findings are not quite what he had anticipated. Another great one is The Late Dr. Crane, in which a case of mistaken identity leaves most of Seattle believing that Frasier is dead.

Frasier was an unusual sit-com that was equal parts family and workplace comedy, with plenty of pathos and romance mixed in. I would say that I probably fall about halfway between the Crane brothers’ intellectual elitism and their father’s salt-of-the-earth kick-back style, so I found plenty to identify with on both ends, and I was more invested in the seventh season than any other. Of course, it’s that much better with the first six seasons behind it, so I highly recommend this season, but I wouldn’t start here. It’s worth it to really get to know these characters first.

Mixed Nuts Is a Mixed Bag

I’ve been counting on Netflix to give me some new Christmas movies to watch this season. So far, the results have been less than inspiring; that continued last night when I watched Mixed Nuts, a 1994 Nora Ephron movie starring Steve Martin and Rita Wilson, along with Madeline Kahn, Adam Sandler, Anthony LaPaglia, Juliette Lewis, Rob Reiner and Liev Schreiber. It’s an A-list cast, but this cacophonous movie misses as often as it hits.

Martin is Philip, who’s in charge of a suicide hotline and is in danger of being evicted. He’s a decent guy, though he’s rather testy and completely oblivious to the fact that his earnest employee Catherine (Wilson) has a crush on him. His other employee, cranky Mrs. Munchnik (Kahn), is all too aware of it. Although she is snappish and rude, it’s easy to feel sorry for her because this particular Christmas brings her a string of abominably bad luck.

Then again, nobody in this merry band of misfits is having a great day. Street-smart fashionista Gracie (Lewis) is hugely pregnant and at odds with her volatile boyfriend, Felix (LaPaglia). Transvestite Chris (Schreiber) feels lonely and unappreciated. Eccentric ukulele player Louie (Sandler) just wants Catherine to slow down long enough to listen to the song he wrote for her. But in this movie, nobody stands still for long. The characters move swiftly from one crisis to another, getting to know each other better while trying to preserve their own sanity.

There are a lot of fun moments in the movie, from a recurring joke with a fruitcake baked by Mrs. Munchnik to the elegant dance performed by Chris and an obliging Philip. On the whole, though, while I found Martin’s character to be mostly sympathetic, he usually wasn’t particularly funny. Probably the most consistent source of humor is Kahn, who gives off a sort of nightmare mother-in-law vibe. Meanwhile, Wilson is irresistibly sweet as Catherine, who is idealistic and always anxious to help others, even as she bemoans her lack of romantic attachments.

There’s a certain tenderness in the explosive relationship between Gracie and Felix, but both are so unstable that it’s easy to imagine some type of disastrous outcome if their relationship continues. Chris is likable enough but feels out of place much of the time, while Louie, like most of Sandler’s characters, is endearing but incredibly annoying. And there’s often so much going on at once that it’s easy to miss what certain characters are saying.

Mixed Nuts is a decent holiday flick, but it’s not one to warm the cockles of your heart, and I doubt it’ll make you bust a gut either.