Handful of Old Movies Get a Look in My Queue

I've been catching up on some old movies lately. Some classic, some a little less than classic.

Funny Farm: This is a relatively terrible Chevy Chase flick from 1988, the downside of a time when he was arguably the funniest movie-comedian in America. Gene Siskel once called it Chase's funniest film, a serious stretch for one that has a few laughs but is pretty badly dated by now. I had never seen it. Must have been going to too many Boston and AC/DC concerts that year.
**1/2 out of ***** stars

Dazed and Confused: After my favorite movie of 2014, Boyhood, I had to go back and watch Richard Linklater's other great Texas epic. This one was named Quentin Tarantino's 10th favorite film of all time for good reason. Beyond star-cameos galore, this view of high-school life in Austin captures the ethos of an entire generation of kids growing up in the 1970s and 1980s.
***** out of ***** stars

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure: I somehow never saw this, although I recognized the numerous catchphrases that still hold strong today ("I know you are but what am I?"). It's pretty funny and even educational stuff, and, as my 7-year-old said, "Pee-Wee makes funny faces."
**** out of ***** stars

The Man With Two Brains: Steve Martin comes nowhere close to The Jerk or Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid in this completely wacky script. Playing a neurosurgeon with an unpronounceable name (in the grand tradition of Chase's Fletch), Martin is nevertheless still funny and this one is still worth watching.
***1/2 out of ***** stars

An Affair to Remember: Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr star in this exceedingly romantic film, which suffers just a bit because Grant's typical comedic touches are largely missing. Instead, he is very George Clooney, meaning suave and very handsome, as he becomes friends on a passenger ship with Kerr between Europe and New York before slowly falling in love even amidst some traumatic setbacks.
***1/2 out of ***** stars

The Object of My Affection: The acting talents of Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd are pretty raw in this 1998 film. But it's entertaining enough and is pretty important in bringing societal acceptability of gay relationships to a more mass audience.
*** out of ***** stars

Cedar Falls, Iowa Lures Ed Helms for an Insurance Conference

If one things can be said about Ed Helms, he plays his type well. Basically the same square-dweeb turned party animal that he played in The Hangover and The Hangover II, Helms is Tim Lippe (pronounced Lip-y) in Cedar Falls, the name of this movie and also the location of the annual insurance conference that serves as the center of the action.

This is actually a brilliant concept for a movie. An insurance conference? The comedic possibilities seem endless. And while there could have been more fall-out-of-your-seat-laughing moments, the characters are so lovable that it's impossible to not get caught up cheering for them.

Lippe has never been on an airplane before, so the run-of-the-mill chain hotel seems like a wonderland to him. This is clear from the moment he arrives and hesitates to give the desk person his credit card for incidentals to the Chevy Chase-like moment when he and the gang break into the indoor pool in the center of all the rooms in the middle of the night.

He rooms with a seemingly slimy, but actually much deeper, John C. Reilly and straight man Isiah Whitlock Jr. And he gets in all kinds of situations with a winning trifecta of ladies, Anne Heche, Sigourney Weaver, and Alia Shawkat (from Arrested Development).

An interesting tidbit: Iowa, where the real Cedar Rapids is located, failed to secure the film a tax credit, so the whole movie was actually done in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Although Helms' never seems funny to me in late-night talk show interviews, his winning streak with The Daily Show, The Office, The Hangovers, and this movie is a thing of beauty.

***1/2 out of ***** stars