BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
A review in the public domain
by The Phantom
(sbb@panix.com)
It's nice when a film lives up to its title, as far too many these days do not. In part this is due to the endless tide of sequels Hollywood's long-suffering audiences have been subjected to; after all, what is it about pedestrian titles like BATMAN RETURNS that might raise our spirits? How do LETHAL WEAPON 3 and DIE HARD 2 tickle our fancies? The answer is that they don't, for although everyone loves a clever title (and an even more clever film to back it up), they are sadly few and far between. (With DIE HARD 2, people took matters into their own hands and redubbed it DIE HARDER, which is both more appropriate and rather more clever than the film itself.)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, however, has little to worry about in this department. Though we'll be treated to one or two other well-thought-out titles (WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP and DePalma's upcoming RAISING CAIN come to mind) before year's end, BUFFY -- more than any other film in recent months -- works hard to capture our interest even before the theater lights dim. Its title conjures up all sorts of intriguing possibilities, and it's impossible to think of it without becoming at least moderately interested in seeing the film.
The question, of course, is what happens *after* the theater lights dim. In the case of BUFFY, we are again pleasantly surprised to find that unlike many films this year, BUFFY is truly a smile. By this, the Phantom means that at any point during the film, you'll likely find yourself smiling at something, if not outright laughing out loud at some bit of cleverness, a throwaway line, a delightfully incongruous scene. And you won't be alone -- look around you and you'll see that most of the rest of the audience is smiling as well. There aren't many films that can produce this reaction -- this involuntary smiling -- but BUFFY does, and does quite often. And that's worth a lot in this season of expensive frowns, this dismal summer season of more-of-the-same action films and tame high-concept comedies that are worrying studios and video dealers alike. For after all, although people are still going to the movies, they are with few exceptions going with little enthusiasm and low expectations. How else to explain the generally positive response to the anachronistic LETHAL WEAPON 3? The overwhelmingly positive notices that BATMAN RETURNS has garnered, even though that film suffers from one of the worst cases of sequelitis in recent memory? (BATMAN RETURNS comes to vibrant life just once when Michelle Pfeiffer transforms herself for the first time into Catwoman. The rest of the time we get an awful lot of high-budget wheel-spinning in traditional, grand, LETHAL WEAPON style.)
In the Phantom's opinion, the problem with this summer's crop of films is that there are too many dollars chasing too few smiles (if the Phantom may be permitted to appropriate a term traditionally used in economics, a subject that is itself the root cause of much moviegoer misery these past few months). Extraordinary amounts of money have been spent on exceedingly tired comedies like MO' MONEY, comedies that are at best sporadically funny but much more frequently horrifyingly bad, filled with unnecessary violence and misogyny and bereft of any ability to make their audiences feel good for 90 minutes (which is, after all, all a Hollywood film has to do to be considered successful; these films are for the most part not being made for the ages, unless Hollywood has redefined "the ages" to mean six months down the road when the film hits Blockbusters).
BUFFY, though, looks like it's had someone's time -- rather than money -- lavished on it, and as a result we find few expensive special effects, no high-rent actors, and -- surprise of all surprises -- a shockingly literate script. As Joe Eszterhas so ably proved with his overpriced and very bad screenplay for BASIC INSTINCT, more money doesn't always buy better dialogue or non-intelligence-insulting situations; instead, BUFFY's screenplay delights and amuses us at every turn, whether it's presenting Buffy to us for the first time, giving us a glimpse of an exceedingly dysfunctional basketball coach's motivational techniques, or letting us enjoy Paul Reuben's antics as the least likely vampire to grace the silver screen in years. Best of all, just when we begin to feel that the film has left us stranded in smile heaven in order to set up a superfluous action or love scene, BUFFY's screenplay comes to our rescue once again; and as we leave the theater, what crosses all of our minds, what surprises us and encourages us, what makes us shake our heads in disbelief is this: BUFFY never lets us down. It is a film that is consistently entertaining, one that never tries to flimflam us with gore or special effects, and one that moves confidently at its own pace, secure in the knowledge that its audience will be right behind it, smiling all the time and hoping for more.
Its story couldn't be more simple: Buffy, you see, is our generation's Official Vampire Slayer, and as such it falls to her to take care of the growing vampire menace in her sunny, Southern Californian home town (to demonstrate this, the film gives us a glimpse of Buffy in a prior life, back before there were malls). Donald Sutherland is reborn each generation as the vampire slayer's tutor, sidekick and kick-boxing coach (Buffy may be able to lead a cheer, but as an Official Vampire Slayer, she requires a fair amount of assertiveness training); his job is to convince her that her destiny lies not in cheering the basketball team on to victory but in pounding wooden stakes through people's hearts -- a tough job, but someone's got to do it.
On hand as well are Paul Reubens and Rutger Hauer, who handles his light comic role as well has he's handled the large-caliber automatic weapons he's co-starred with in the past (the Phantom will even go so far as to forgive him for SPLIT SECOND, the only Rutger Hauer-with-a-shotgun film that was almost perfectly unentertaining). Hauer plays Lothos, the head of Vampires Local 54, who directs Paul Reuben's actions and spends most of the film waiting for his climactic confrontation with Buffy. He looks suitably creepy most of the time, though he stops well short of causing the audience's skin to crawl (as he did in incomparable horror film THE HITCHER); this is just as well, since BUFFY is a comedy first and foremost and a horror spoof only as an afterthought. In this, it's a bit different than FRIGHT NIGHT, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, EVIL DEAD 2, NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and countless other (and lesser) horror spoofs, but it's as fun and entertaining as the best of them (the Phantom was particularly reminded of Tom Holland's wonderful FRIGHT NIGHT, which is a must-see for phans of horror-comedies).
Paul Reubens seems to be having a marvelously malevolent time as Lothos' Renfield and executive assistant; he also mugs up a storm in a death scene to end all death scenes, and frighteningly enough, in a few scenes he actually comes to resemble his police mug shots -- surely a sign that he's perfected the look of the living dead.
Kristy Swanson as Buffy takes command of the film early on and doesn't relinquish it to Luke Perry's mugging, Paul Reuben's antics, or any number of surprisingly funny actors in bit parts throughout the film (including Mark DeCarlo as a coach who's spent too much time reading self-help books and Candy Clark as Buffy's even-more-airheaded mother). She remains the focus of attention, and her transformation from Valley Girl to Vampire Slayer is carried off nearly without a hitch (though the film almost loses its way once Buffy discovers her more serious and responsible side, Swanson keeps the proceedings on track until the screenplay can toss another throwaway line or two our way).
Director Fran Rubel Kuzui (with a name like that, you know you're in for a comic treat -- Ms. Kuzui's name sounds like a clown sneezing) keeps the film rolling along to its somewhat predictable conclusion, and although it is not entirely funny nor even very original for every one of its 98 minutes, it is funny and original enough for this summer. BUFFY is well worth a look now while people are talking about it and while its many throwaway comic lines are fresh in people's minds. For BUFFY passes the hardest test of a good comedy: it's still funny well after you've left the theater, and any two people who've seen it can amuse themselves for a good long while by recalling the best of the film's dialogue, the funniest of its situations, and the overall good feeling it left them with. For even greater effect, see the embarrassingly bad MO' MONEY first, if only so that you can fully appreciate what it is that BUFFY's filmmakers have done -- and have not done. No gore, no violence, no car chases, no explosions, no misogyny, no pumping soundtrack; instead, BUFFY lets us smile beatifically for 98 minutes. And for the Phantom, that's worth $7.50 any day.
: The Phantom : sbb@panix.com : cmcl2!panix!sbb
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