Matinee (1993) 99m.
Joe Dante's most personal film is also one of his best. After a hilarious opening sequence featuring a direct copy of the cinema promos made by director-producer William Castle in the late 50s/early 60s, Dante settles into areas of childhood nostalgia that's only been hinted at in his previous work. He's a good choice of director for this project: it's plain to see that he has always loved movies (his films have more movie in-jokes than any other director I can think of) and he was lucky enough to see Castle films with the gimmicks 'Emergo' (HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL), 'Percepto' (THE TINGLER) and 'Illusion-O' (13 GHOSTS) when he was an impressionable young movie buff.
MATINEE is set in Florida during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and begins when teenager Gene (Simon Fenton) witnesses two sober warnings about atomic weapons. The first is from movie producer Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) in a Saturday matinee trailer, the second is from John F. Kennedy on live television. One is obviously far-fetched, the other deadly serious, but what's a boy to think? Appropriately, Gene's younger brother believes in both. The reality/unreality of these two scenarios reaches a middle ground during Gene's third warning, when he is told that his school's nuclear attack drill (ever seen those old 'Duck and Cover' educational films?) is a sham. It's just the right climate for Woolsey's new monster movie, and he duly arrives in town with his entourage in tow, for who can separate the current real-life nuclear horrors from his skilfully orchestrated ones? Woolsey's horror show boasts a barrage of audience-participation effects, and by the end not even the adults (including theater owner Robert Picardo) can differentiate between the gimmicks and the apocalypse.
Dante's agenda with this film is clear: he wants to show what going to the movies *really* used to be like before the shopping malls and the cineplexes took over. Fittingly, MATINEE's second half is set in and around the cinema, cross-cutting between the monster movie (itself a very funny spoof of 50s nuclear-mutant horror flicks) and the action behind the scenes. Charles Haas' clever script ties up this package so neatly that you'll reach the final credits feeling completely satisfied - it even manages to include what surely must have been every teenage boy's fantasy during the Cold War, i.e. the prospect of being trapped for months in a fallout shelter with a would-be girlfriend. Unfortunately, the script falters during a hackneyed 'child-in-peril' climax, which is dispensed with so briefly that there's almost no justification for its inclusion. It's a bad move for two reasons: firstly, it is the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a kid's movie, which MATINEE is not; secondly, it introduces a false note of real danger - the underlying theme of MATINEE is to watch how our minds surrender voluntarily or instinctively to larger-than-life fears. Contrast this scene to the film's understated final shot, which hints at the war in Vietnam and conveys realistic menace a lot more effectively. What's great about MATINEE is how it introduces fantastic elements to an ordinary setting and weaves them so invisibly into the story, so it's ironic that the only 'real' dangerous moment in the film is also its only unrealistic one.
The era celebrated in this film happened before my time, but I still have enough memories of my own journeys to the local cinema (whether it was to see old prints of Tarzan or Ray Harryhausen films) to recognize that for a while there was a golden age of movie-going for young audiences. The Saturday matinees were full of kids who were only half-interested in the show; foodstuffs were routinely thrown; and cheers sometimes punctuated the action on screen. If only I'd seen a skeleton sliding on a wire or been given electric shocks in my seat - my childhood would have been made complete. For now, like many other viewers, I'll have to make do with Dante's own affectionate, good-humored memoir.
sburridge@hotmail.com
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