Capsule Reviews
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
McHALE'S NAVY (Universal) Starring: Tom Arnold, Tim Curry, David Alan Grier, Dean Stockwell, Debra Messing, Bruce Campbell, Brian Haley, French Stewart. Screenplay: Peter Crabbe. Producers: Sid, Bill and Jon Scheinberg. Director: Bryan Spicer. MPAA Rating: PG (profanity, adult themes)
Here's the good news: Tom Arnold may never, _ever_ be allowed to make a movie again after McHALE'S NAVY. Here's the bad news: everything else. McHALE follows SGT. BILKO and DOWN PERISCOPE as the best arguments yet for military down-sizing, trotting out the same tired cliches -- unorthodox heroes, inept commanding officers, officious little weasels getting trampled by the zany crew -- which haven't been funny since...well, ever. Arnold plays Quinton McHale, the lovable oaf of a retired naval officer who bootlegs, but also donates to hospitals and poor kids, so we know he's really a stand-up guy; Tim Curry plays his arch-enemy, who bares his teeth so much that his dentist should get a screen credit. Curry wants to do something-or-other involving a military satellite, and it's up to McHale's crew to prevent it, or at least wander around for a while getting into trouble until the something-or-other doesn't happen. If you last the whole 105 minutes, you will experience a few explosions, a bar fight, the visage of Ernest Borgnine looking as though it were already preserved in formaldehyde, kids in peril, pigs in peril, and the criminal waste of Bruce Campbell's eccentric talents. You should also get some sort of pension; you may be having flashbacks of this one for years.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 service errors: 1.
FOLLOW ME HOME (New Millenia) Starring: Benjamin Bratt, Jesse Borrego, Steve Reevis, Calvin Levels, Alfre Woodard. Screenplay: Peter Bratt. Producers: Alan Renshaw, Irene Romero, Peter Bratt, Benjamin Bratt. Director: Peter Bratt. MPAA Rating: Not Rated (could be R for profanity, violence, drug use and adult themes)
There's just no way around it: FOLLOW ME HOME is a really, really, really, really -- there just aren't enough "reallys" to do it justice -- bizarre film experience. The story concerns four mural artists -- Tudee (Jesse Borrego), Abel (Benjamin Bratt), Freddy (Steve Reevis) and Kaz (Calvin Revels) -- who set out from California on a guerrilla mission to paint a mural on the White House depicting the history of people of color in America. Along the way, they pick up a woman (Alfre Woodard) with a secret, and encounter a group of history enthusiasts with a desire to return to a very white version of America. It's not entirely appropriate to think of FOLLOW ME HOME as a failed experiment, because it's not exactly a failure. There are some impressive performances, particularly by Benjamin Bratt as the wild and troubled Abel, and writer/director Peter Bratt constantly keeps the audience off-balance with a surreal, dream-like atmosphere and characters who are never as predictable as you think they might be. But FOLLOW ME HOME is ambitious to a fault, attempting to tackle every racial, ethnic and gender stereotype in existence in one film. The result is a film which has as its only focus the fact that it is iconoclastic, 200 years of history given a whirlwind revisionist spin in 102 minutes. When the climax involves a group chant of The Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight," it's hard not to wonder if Bratt has been spinning so hard that he's gotten too dizzy to recognize absurdity. FOLLOW ME HOME is an admirable project, sometimes intriguing but just as deeply confused and fragmented as the America Peter Bratt is trying to portray.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 culture shocks: 5.
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