MATINEE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Teenage love, the Cuban Missile Crisis,
and a likable, stop-at-nothing film producer make for a film
that is a lot of fun. It also has something to say about the
nobility of the bad sci-fi films of the 1950s and 1960s. The
writing flounders a bit in the second half but the memories
are terrific. Rating: low +2 [-4 to +4].
This one is going to be hard for me to be objective about. I think Joe Dante may be a couple of years older than I, loved the same films I loved when I was growing up. He and I subscribed to the same monster magazines and probably had the same books in our libraries; we idolized the same filmmakers; we were both walking encyclopedias about the same films. Now he has reached into his past, grabbed it, and put it on film and at the same time he put a lot of my past forward too.
It is October 1962 in Key West, Florida, and the second biggest thing happening in the world is the Cuban Missile Crisis. People are going crazy because they might die at any minute. But right now the big thing happening is that Lawrence Woolsey is coming to town. The great William-Castle-like filmmaker of lousy monster movies is coming to key West to test-market MANT!, the story of a man turning into a giant ant. Woolsey is a genius at promoting his films and uses every trick in the book and some never in any book to fill the seats with joy buzzers below and frightened kids above.
MATINEE is a film with a terrific first half. This is a film that manages to tie together a teenage love story, a serious anti-war theme, a satire of science fiction films, and the comic story of Woolsey trying to have a successful sneak preview. John Goodman's Woolsey is extremely well- written, appearing at first to be a stop-at-nothing self-promoter and then proving to have the char, and natural showmanship of a Will Rogers. Cathy Moriarty plays Ruth Corday, a great foil for Woolsey. She stars in MANT! and then brazenly has to don a nurse's costume and play the ersatz "nurse in attendance" at the showing. All the time she is letting Woolsey know exactly how stupid the entire proceedings are. Moriarty is great, but the role feels as if it was written for Mary Woronov. Simon Fenton (of THE POWER OF ONE) plays Gene Loomis, starting in high school and dating for the first time. Currently he is coming home to a family terrified of the missile crisis and worried for the Navy father who is off enforcing the embargo of Cuba.
It is a great start, but the screenplay by Charlie Haas falls apart in the second half. Much of the logic of the story breaks down with some of the plot not making sense at all. No film made in the 1950s ever combined so many gimmicks to bring in an audience. But that exaggeration is almost acceptable compared to the miles-over-the-top lampoon of the 1950s and 1960s films themselves. Any film with the budget MANT! required really would have been better crafted. The writing might have been dull, but it is unlikely to have been so melodramatic or vaudevillian. The distorted style of MANT! is inconsistent with the rest of the film.
Part of the fun of MATINEE is picking out all the allusions to 1950s and 1960s films. Of course, there are the seat vibrators of THE TINGLER, the insurance policies of MACABRE, and the monster unveiling of THE FLY, but see if you can recognize the music borrowed from the 1950s Universal sci-fi films and even snatches of HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Even the "M" in the MANT! logo is borrowed from THE DEADLY MANTIS. And the film is peppered with actors from 1950s films. Not Kenneth Tobey for once--at least I did not notice him--but Robert Cornthwaite, Kevin McCarthy (who plays General Ankrum, a reference to Morris Ankrum who often played upper-rank military men), and William Schallert. Also present in nice ironic roles are Dick Miller and John Sayles. Sayles, of course, is rarely an actor but he got his start writing PIRANHA, ALLIGATOR, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, and THE HOWLING, the first and last directed by Dante.
While I cannot recommend every minute of MATINEE there is enough pleasure here to make this one well worth seeing. My rating would be a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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