TV Films
TV Films
by Matt Nippert
SATURDAY MARCH 1
Addams Family Values (TV3, noon). Sequels usually slide after the first in the series, but this effort is a notable exception. The stellar cast from the first film are retained (Christina Ricci, Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd) and teamed with a serial-killer nanny played by Joan Cusack. The first film suffered from being a series of one-joke skits, but Broadway scriptwriter Paul Rudnick manages to suffuse a genuine plot with plenty of laughs. The kids are sent to an American-Aryan summer camp, and the highlight has to be Wednesday (Ricci) playing a historically revised Pocahontas in a raucous climactic performance of the Thanksgiving fable. (1993) 7
Eyes Wide Shut (TV1, 8.30pm). Auteur Stanley Kubrick’s last film features one-time power couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and pictures the bedroom as the final frontier. Although these names and the artful rendering of sexual jealousy are worth seeing for themselves alone, the real value of this film is as fascinating celebrity commentary. The highly stylised and bizarre cult society the couple wander into somehow brings to mind Scientology, and Kidman and Cruise, playing a loveless couple, divorced soon after the premiere. (1999) 8
10 Things I Hate About You (TV2, 8.35pm). Heath Ledger in his first Hollywood role, plays a high-school outlaw who is bribed to date the unpopular Julia Stiles. If the plot sounds familiar, it is. The formula goes right back to The Taming of the Shrew), but this film is based on Shakespeare only in the way that Starship Troopers was inspired by Titus Andronicus. It may not be the work of the Bard, but it ain’t all bad: Ledger accompanied by a brass band while singing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” is fab. (1999) 6
In and Out (TV2, 10.30pm). Almost a decade before Brokeback Mountain, Tom Selleck snogged Kevin Kline. Muppet-man Frank Oz directed this script written by the underrated Paul Rudnick (see Addams Family Values, above). Kline is a high-school English teacher who’s mistakenly outed by a former pupil during an Oscars acceptance speech, and Selleck is the television gossip reporter in hot pursuit. Stereotypes get a gentle working over and there’s no surprise that the best joke is on Barbra Streisand. (1997) 6
The Constant Gardener (TV3, 10.30pm). Whereas last year’s Blood Diamond examined the machinations behind African gemstones, The Constant Gardener deals with African blood – or rather pharmaceutical companies that treat the continent’s warm bodies as a testing ground. Rachel Weisz won the best supporting actress Oscar for her role as a murdered activist, Ralph Fiennes is a dogged British official and Pete Postlethwaite plays an extremely weathered drug company man. It is based on an angry John le Carré novel, and even Naomi Klein readers won’t have seen the global finance and pharmaceutical industries portrayed so cynically. (2005) 8
SUNDAY MARCH 2
Police Academy (TV2, noon). A city mayor, alarmed by crime, reduces the entrance requirements for police officers and lets a band of incompetent delinquents loose on the misfits of society. A New Zealand First wet dream? No, this is a Reagan-era comedy that takes a cast of talented comedians and makes them play cardboard cut-outs (the sex addict, the gruff drill instructor, the meek woman, the black guy). Despite being a succession of outrageous sequences that are excuses for off-colour, racist, sexist and determinedly lowbrow jokes, this film somehow crosses into the “so bad it’s good” category. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the five sequels. (1984) 4
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (TV1, 8.30pm). This blend of courtroom drama and supernatural thriller has a priest (Tom Wilkinson) accused of killing a woman during a failed exorcism. But who really knows what went on? With lots of talking, but, disappointingly, no head-spinning from possessed lass Jennifer Carpenter, the voices of reason and medicine are given equivalence with demonologists and the church. At one point, the prosecutor, played by Campbell Scott (Roger Dodger), objects to a line of argument being run by his opposite. The grounds? “Well,” he says, “silliness for one.” The New York Times called the film “a fascinating document in the age of intelligent design”. (2005) 4
Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (C4, 8.30pm). Never have the smart kids looked so dumb. (1987) 2
My Beautiful Laundrette (MGM, 8.30pm). London hasn’t always been celebrated as a melting pot – Cool Britannia was as much about butter chicken as it was Britpop – and this vivid social comedy about upper-class Pakistani immigrants becoming working-class Britons was revolutionary in the time of Thatcher. It is based on a book by half-Pakistani Englishman Hanif Kureishi, and there’s no touchy-feely political correctness here as the immigrants are skewered mercilessly. The always-brilliant Daniel Day-Lewis, a Cockney layabout who falls for one of the new arrivals, is the pick of a talented cast. Satisfyingly spicy and free of saturated Hollywood fats. (1986) 8
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