Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 19, 1993 TAG: 9303190055
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Chris Gladden
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SOMETIMES LIFE CAN IMITATE FILM
All of us have those nightmare days like the one Bill Murray was forced to live over and over again in "Groundhog Day."Mine goes something like this:
\ 6:30 a.m. The clock radio blares on, and the caustic NPR film critic is savaging a movie. He is saying that anyone who likes this movie ought to be locked up in an institution for the criminally stupid. What, I wonder, is this piece of garbage he's talking about? Then I find out. It is a movie I glowingly four-starred the day before.
\ 12:25 p.m. I head for the multiplex to review my first movie of the day. It is "The Singing Gun," a musical-comedy based on the GI Joe dolls that wage war in toy boxes everywhere. I arrive at the theater and find approximately 600 clamoring children in the grip of a sugar high and 200 impatient parents standing in line. School is out. It is a teacher work day.
\ 1:25 p.m. I am trying to stay awake during "The Singing Gun" when I get some unexpected help. I feel a strange sensation around my feet and look down. The adorable tyke behind me has kicked over a 16-ounce Coke, and it is puddling around my brand-new Reeboks.
\ 4:15 p.m. Time for the second movie of the day, titled "Crimes Against Nature!" It is an American remake of the acclaimed French comedy "Four Bald Men, Two Large Women and One Blue Sock."
I am reminded of a cartoon poking fun at movie critics. The cartoonist proposed the greatest paradox in cinema: The French are funny; sex is funny; comedies are funny. Yet no French sex comedies are funny. There is a greater paradox: No French sex comedies are funny, yet American filmmakers insist on remaking them and rendering them less funny than they were to begin with.
\ 4:30 p.m. There are nine of us in the theater, and we are sitting in a tightly bunched cluster though there are 500 empty seats in the theater. Directly in front of me is one of probably three people in the Roanoke Valley who has seen the original, subtitled version of this movie.
A very large man, he is sporting the latest in Seattle grunge chic. Atop his bushy tangle of Jerry Garcia hair is a gaudily striped stocking cap with a ball on top. The cap sticks up a good 20 inches above his considerable mass of hair. I can see about one-fourth of the screen.
Directly behind me is an older couple. She asks her husband every three or four minutes to explain the movie to her. He is incapable of the task, but he is a pompous sort who is only too happy to oblige anyway.
Directly to my right is a mother with young triplets. On the rare occasion when none is crying, she will whack one just to get them jump-started again. Across the aisle is a sleeping man with a loud snore who sings to himself when he periodically snaps out of his nap.
\ 6:30 a.m. The clock radio blares on, and the caustic NPR film critic . . .