Last week my film group passed around an open ended question: `Daryl Hannah: Wax Figure or Blow Up Doll?' and somehow, being the standard wiseass of me, I wrote `Blow up doll that's been popped once or twice.' The point: a title like American Pop is just asking for it. Bad joke after bad joke can be made at its expense. To team this up with popular music – which brings to mind such thoughts as bubble-gum chewing teenie boppers advocating smacking girls around if you don't look deeper into the almost transparent lyrics – just doesn't strike me as a good idea. Thus it's to Ralph Bakasi's credit that he's able to pull any part of American Pop off.
Further to the film's detriment is the fact that it follows four generations of characters through 80 years of popular music, yet the film still manages to come out massively unscathed and generally feel good… kind of like the people who are now saying Madonna was just a trapped artist back in the 80s who finally got free when she discovered the magic of trance.
Oh well.
Although you smile at the end of American Pop and have your fun time singing lyrics to songs you thought you never knew, American Pop doesn't ever really do much with itself other than be entertaining. It's serious, it's moderately intelligent, and it has some of the most interesting soundtrack selections (i.e. W.W.II intercut with `Sing, Sing, Sing') that you'll ever hear, but American Pop would neither make its way in the land of live-action or animation if it didn't have such nice music. It has weak characters, cheesy dialogue, and it basically never goes anywhere. It's seemingly triumphant ending really isn't, and it's depressing middle really is.
Yet music-fanatics will be hard-pressed to pass this one up, and nostalgia lovers will get a kick out of this. Everyone else should stick to singing in the shower, and avoid American Pop.
RATING: **
|----------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|--------------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Ralph Bakasi Producer: Martin Ransohoff Writer: Ronnie Kern Starring: Gene Borkan, Frank DeKova, Jerry Holland, Ron Thompson, Eric Taslitz
James Brundage at Epinions http://mk2k.epinions.com/user-mk2k
James Brundage's mailing list: http://filmcritic2000.listbot.com/
Short Stuff Short Film Review: http://www.othercinema.com/~jbrundage/
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