Friday, May 10, 2013
MOVIE MISCHIEF
Today's film was
with Jeff Bridges, Andy Griffith, Alan Arkin, Blythe Danner, Donald Pleasance and, what seem to be, all the character actors in Hollywood.
This is a movie about making movies. Always fun, somehow. Only people in on the game could come up with the ins and outs of backstabbing, double dealing and outright chicanery that go along with the picture business.
Bridges is an aspiring movie writer who decides to go right to the source of his correspondence course only to find that there is no school. Only two con men.
There is a fight and an escape into the desert and the writer falls into a B movie production on location.
He gets a job, a girl, a part in a movie and gets someone to read his novel.
But nothing is simple in the movies.
Chases, shootings (more than the picture kind) and a lot of confusion adds up to a sweet comedy. It is not a great picture but it is a picture that arouses a lot of affection. No one is really mean. Well, they are but it turns out OK.
I have wanted to see this for quite a while. I read about it and it would pop up here and there. Not on Netflix. Not for sale at any price.
Then it popped up in a collection of older movies and they unbundled the films so I could buy it (cheap) and just see it.
I am glad that I did. It cost the same as two regular movies and I will probably give it away to a friend who has a huge collection of films. Who, like our star is a movie writer!
If I had rented it this film would have been a 4 out of Netflix5. Maybe a 3.
One more thing. I have seen all of Jeff Bridge's movies except this one. Now that goal is complete.
It is easy to see the Bridges that we know developing his comic chops in this film. He is very very good. But then we found that out some time ago.
Labels: films
