Leave Yesterday Behind (1978)

          Tempting as it is to romanticize Carrie Fisher’s career in the wake of her shocking death at age 60, the truth is that outside of Star Wars movies, she was far more successful as a writer than she was as an actress. In fact, she didn’t properly lead the cast of a feature film until the obscure 1989 indie She’s Back, and most of her major screen credits are secondary roles as best friends and love interests. Acknowledging that drug problems and typecasting contributed to Fisher’s marginalization, it’s interesting to look at one of her first significant performances after the release of Star Wars (1977) to examine the question of whether Hollywood failed to understand her gifts or whether her gifts simply took time to mature. (Lest we forget, Fisher was only 19 when she first ventured to a galaxy far, far away.) In the respectable romantic telefilm Leave Yesterday Behind, Fisher plays a woman whose devotion helps a young man conquer emotional difficulties following an accident that leaves him paralyzed from the waist down.

          Occupying the leading role is the versatile John Ritter, then riding high on the success of his dopey sitcom Three’s Company and undoubtedly eager to display his dramatic chops. Within the film’s predictable and sentimental rhythms, he comes off quite well, conveying anguish and rage and vulnerability in a number of convincing moments. Fisher isn’t given nearly as much room to shine, since most of her repetitive scenes involve expressing sympathy, and she doesn’t elevate the material the way Ritter does. So while it’s likely Hollywood didn’t know what to do with the precocious starlet whom audiences first encountered in Shampoo (1975), it also seems fair to say Fisher hadn’t yet found the right balance between her innate qualities of humor and toughness. In Leave Yesterday Behind, she’s appealing and formidable in some moments, forgettable and shrill in others. As for the movie itself, it’s watchable as far as this sort of thing goes.

          Directed without much passion or style by Richard Michaels, the picture overcomes a choppy opening sequence to settle into a straightforward pattern of vignettes displaying the leading character encountering—and occasionally surmounting—obstacles. After losing the use of his legs because of a fall during a polo match, Paul Stallings (Ritter) becomes depressed and embittered, wreaking domestic havoc on his grandfather, Doc (Buddy Ebsen), whose sprawling farm provides a quiet sanctuary while Paul adjusts to life in a wheelchair. Marnie (Fisher) practices with her horse on the farm, so eventually she has a meet-cute with Paul. Discarding her boyfriend, David (Robert Urich), Marnie spends lots of time with Paul, quickly escalating from friendship to romance until Paul pumps the brakes out of fear he won’t be able to perform sexually. Meanwhile, Doc gives no-bullshit life lessons that force Paul to overcome self-pity so he can explore his potential. This stuff isn’t anywhere near as saccharine as it sounds, but it’s not profound, either. Still, alongside a minor role in the 1977 made-for-TV adaptation of William Inge’s play Come Back, Little Sheba, this humble telefilm is, by dint of her scant credits during this period, Fisher’s most substantial ’70s performance beyond her first appearance as Princess Leia. So there’s that.

Leave Yesterday Behind: FUNKY

1980 Week: Wholly Moses!

Unfunny, uninteresting, and unmemorable, this half-assed comedy set in Biblical times offers a drab Hollywood counterpart to the previous year’s Life of Brian, a controversial satire created by the madmen of Monty Python. Whereas Life of Brian is a deliberately offensive movie that asks provocative questions about the nature of religion, Wholly Moses! is a brainless compendium of sketches posing as scenes. Dudley Moore, trying but not succeeding to slide by on charm, stars in a modern-day wraparound sequence as Harvey, a New York City history professor taking a low-budget tour of the Holy Land. While exploring a cave with fellow tourist Zoey (Laraine Newman), Harvey discovers an ancient scroll that tells the story of a man named Herschel. Most of the movie depicts that story. Born to corpulent slave Hyssop (James Coco), Herschel (played as an adult by Moore) was set adrift on the Nile at the same time as Moses, but, by an accident of timing, led a life of little consequence instead of finding a grand destiny. Thus, the central joke in the movie is painfully similar to the central joke in Life of Brian—a schmuck’s existence runs parallel with that of a Biblical icon. Director Gary Weis and screenwriter Guy Thomas use this scenario as a framework for a string of uninspired gags, occasionally juicing the mix with cameos by familiar actors. (Dom DeLuise, John Houseman, Madeline Kahn, and Richard Pryor are among those who appear.) Typical of the lame gags in Wholly Moses! is the S&M-laden puppet show in the city of Sodom, or the throwaway reference to a graven-images store called “Chock Full of Gods.” Moore’s appeal isn’t nearly strong enough to make Wholly Moses! bearable, and Newman, of Saturday Night Live fame, is a non-presence. The only time the movie sparks briefly to life is during John Ritter’s droll cameo as Satan, even though Ritter wears a cheap satin costume and carries a plastic pitchfork. Despite the tacky trappings, Ritter injects amusing world-weariness into his role, at one point whining, “Well, here come the damned—they’ll be expecting me.”

Wholly Moses!: LAME

1980 Week: Hero at Large

          An innocent fable very much in the Frank Capra mode, Hero at Large tells the story of a normal New Yorker who adopts the guise of a superhero simply because helping other people makes him feel good. Seeing as how his innocent motivations become complicated by money and romance, the goal of the story is asking whether a genuinely decent human being can find a place in the cynical modern world. Timing-wise, it didn’t hurt that Hero at Large was released two years after the blockbuster success of Superman (1978), starring Christopher Reeve, which demonstrated the public’s appetite for old-fashioned heroism. Given this context, there’s every reason to believe Hero at Large could have become a sleeper hit had it delivered on its own promise. Unfortunately, neither director Martin Davidson nor screenwriter Stephen J. Friedman delivered exemplary work. Hero at Large is earnest and periodically charming, but it’s also contrived, shallow, and trite. There’s a reason why the filmmakers couldn’t attract A-list acting talent, even though leading man John Ritter—attempting to translate his Three’s Company TV fame into movie stardom—gives a likeable performance.

          Set in New York, the story focuses on Steve Nichols (Ritter), an actor who can’t catch a break in his career. To pay the bills, he takes a gig dressing as Captain Avenger, the comic-book character whose exploits have been adapted into a new movie. The idea of using actors to portray Captain Avenger at theaters showing the film was hatched by PR man Walter Reeves (Bert Convy), whose company also handles publicity for the re-election campaign of the city’s mayor. One evening, while still dressed as Captain Avenger, Steve foils a burglary at a convenience store. His bravery makes headlines, so Walter hatches a scheme—find out which actor did the good deed, put the man on the payroll, and use the resulting publicity to enrich the mayor’s image. Two birds with one stone.

          As should be apparent, the plot is rather laborious, and a good portion of the film is wasted on dry scenes explaining the logic of circumstances and situations. This talky approach drains most of the fun out of the enterprise. Similarly, Steve’s repartee-filled romance with his next-door neighbor, Jolene Walsh (Anne Archer), strives for the effortless wit of classic screwball comedy but doesn’t come close. (Fun fact: Archer was one of the actresses who auditioned for the part of Lois Lane in Superman, eventually losing the role to Margot Kidder, so Hero at Large represents superhero-cinema sloppy seconds.) While the fundamental shortcoming of Hero at Large is the weak script, Davidson could have helped matters considerably by adopting a breakneck pace. Instead, the movie sprawls across 98 minutes that feel much longer. So, while it’s hard to dislike a movie that tries this hard to engender goodwill, it’s equally difficult to generate enthusiasm for something that’s mired in well-meaning mediocrity.

Hero at Large: FUNKY

The Other (1972)

          Considering that it’s an entry in the long and dubious genre of creepy-kid horror movies, The Other has an awfully posh pedigree. The film’s director is Robert Mulligan, of To Kill a Mockingbird fame, and the star is Uta Hagen, the revered acting teacher whose book, Respect for Acting, is a sacred text for thespians. Fittingly, The Other favors backstory and character development over straight-out scares, though the narrative is actually quite lurid.

          In Connecticut circa 1935, twin boys Niles and Holland Perry (played by real-life twins Chris Udvarnoky and Martin Udvarnoky, respectively) engage in boyhood mischief with an edge. Niles is psychic and Holland is sadistic, so they seem strange from the moment they’re introduced cavorting in bowl cuts and short pants. Their relatives are just as peculiar: The boys’ mother (Diana Muldaur) is a basket case who rarely leaves her bedroom, and their grandmother, Ada (Hagen), is a superstitious immigrant who teaches Niles how to sharpen his special abilities.

          As the story progresses, Holland’s violent side grows more dangerous, leading to a series of deaths, and Ada slowly realizes that Niles is complicit in his brother’s activities; this leads to a huge plot twist in the middle of the movie that shouldn’t be spoiled. There’s nothing egregiously wrong with the story, by actor-turned-writer Tom Tryon (who adapted the script from his own novel), but many questions can be raised about the way Mulligan tells the story.
          First off, The Other is painfully slow, and the picture drags through long and uninteresting idylls whenever Niles and Holland get embroiled in deep conversations. The Udvarnovky twins are fine, as child actors go, but Mulligan simply can’t make their surface-level exchanges compelling enough to keep the momentum going between jolts. Mulligan also seems preoccupied with creating nostalgic atmosphere, lavishing attention on details of clothing, décor, and furnishing. While it’s admirable whenever a filmmaker treats a horror story with as much care as a “real” movie, the priority is supposed to be generating tension, not showcasing production design.

          Still, the acting by the grownups is generally strong. Hagen is a bit florid, using stagey flamboyance as she speaks with a thick accent and suffers operatic emotional upheavals, and Muldaur is believably pained but underused. Victor French is similarly wasted in his role as the Perry family’s unlucky handyman, and John Ritter shows up in a minor role. The Other has its fans, and none can dispute that the film was made with care, but for many viewers, the picture will be far too slow and unsatisfying to justify digging for its hidden pleasures.

The Other: FUNKY

The Barefoot Executive (1971)

Although it’s ultimately quite harmless, there’s little to recommend in The Barefoot Executive, a live-action Disney movie set in the world of TV-network corporate offices. A quick recitation of the plot explains why the movie is such a dubious proposition: Ambitious TV-network page Steven Post (Kurt Russell) discovers that his girlfriend’s pet chimpanzee has infallible instincts for picking which TV shows will get high ratings, so Steven pretends he’s actually picking the shows and thus climbs the network hierarchy. As penned by sure Disney hand Joseph L. McEveety, the script isn’t quite as insipid as the story suggests, since McEveety keeps things moving quickly and zeroes in on Steven’s moral conflict about lying to his bosses and exploiting his simian sidekick. That said, it’s a movie about a chimp picking TV shows, so there’s only so high up the ladder of quality a movie with this premise can ascend, particularly since McEveety doesn’t go far enough with the satire implied by the set-up. Russell, at this point just a few years away from aging out of juvenile roles, does fairly well in the emotional scenes, though he’s still operating inside the golly-gee-whiz confines of exuberant Disney-kid acting. Nobody else in the movie gets anything interesting to do, so Disney regular Joe Flynn overcompensates with his standard exasperated-nincompoop routine and the normally reliable Harry Morgan shouts his way through an uncharacteristically obnoxious performance. As Steven’s girlfriend, leading lady Heather North is forgettable, and as his main nemesis, future TV star John Ritter is enjoyably fussy if not in any way exceptional. The chimp is cute, though.

The Barefoot Executive: LAME

Americathon (1979)

          The basic premise of this hyperkinetic comedy is a winner, but the execution is so deprived of inspiration that Americathon ends up feeling like a Saturday Night Live sketch overstaying its welcome. Set in 1998, which was 20 years into the future when the movie was made, Americathon imagines what happens when the U.S. finally runs out of money and risks defaulting on debts. (Sound familiar, circa 2011?) The government hires a PR man (Peter Riegert), who suggests a month-long telethon in which Americans will be invited to help the government pay off a $400 billion loan. That’s a great start, but the filmmakers behind Americathon bludgeon this rich concept with one lame joke after another, filling the movie with so many misdirected satirical potshots that the movie becomes unrelentingly stupid.

          The country’s main creditor is a rich Native American (Chief Dan George), who makes his money selling running shoes and track suits; the President (John Ritter) is a narcissistic horndog preaching ’70s-style philosophy while operating out of the “Western White House,” a sublet condo in Southern California; and the country’s main enemy is a new nation called the United Hebrab Republic, formed when Arabs and Israelis solved their differences to become a greedy world power. But wait, there’s more! The telethon host is a drugged-out sitcom star named Monty Rushmore (Harvey Korman); the President gets infatuated with a screeching Vietnamese singer (Zane Busby), who performs something called “puke rock”; and the President’s insidious chief of staff (Fred Willard) wants to sabotage the telethon (by overstuffing the talent list with ventriloquists) in order to sell the country to the Hebrabs. There’s also room for rocker Meat Loaf as a stuntman, baseball manager Tommy Lasorda as a sports commentator, Jay Leno as a shlub who enters a boxing match with his aging mother, and random moments like a performance by Elvis Costello.

         Directed by Neil Israel, who later co-created the Police Academy franchise, this picture opts for a shallow mile-a-minute style that only works when the jokes are so funny that viewers can’t catch their breath in between laughs—and the jokes in Americathon simply aren’t funny. One can’t help but feel for the actors, since they’re clearly trying to elevate this dreck into something worthwhile, but even the indefatigable Korman is left gasping for air by the dopey script. In fact, virtually the only unassailable element of the movie is George Carlin’s sardonic narration (he voices a track ostensibly spoken by Reigert’s character); though the jokes in the narration aren’t any better than those onscreen, Carlin’s delivery is so perfect that his work hints at the satirical free-for-all Americathon could have been. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Americathon: LAME

Nickelodeon (1976)

          The notorious flop that finally knocked director Peter Bogdanovich off the Hollywood A-list after a precipitous slide, Nickelodeon is a fascinating movie unfairly relegated to obscurity. In the overstuffed narrative, Ryan O’Neal and Burt Reynolds play early-20th-century ne’er-do-wells who stumble into cinema careers when they encounter a disreputable producer (Brian Keith); a romantic triangle then emerges because O’Neal and Reynolds are both infatuated with the beautiful klutz (Jane Hitchcock) who keeps crossing their respective paths. Eventually, O’Neal becomes a director and Reynolds becomes his long-suffering leading man, so they wend their way through calamitous filmmaking experiences accompanied by a motley crew of actors and technicians (played by a vibrant ensemble including George Gaynes, Tatum O’Neal, John Ritter, and Stella Stevens).

          In a rare case of a movie being too meticulously scripted for its own good, Nickelodeon smothers a slight premise with painstaking detail, since each new plot development is dramatized at considerable length; accordingly, the movie wavers between happy-go-lucky farce and romantic dramedy as Bogdanovich endeavors to include every colorful episode he can imagine, whether the episodes advance the narrative or not. Bogdanovich, a scholarly cinephile who interviewed many of the great studio-era directors, rewrote W.D. Richter’s original script to include fictionalized anecdotes drawn from the life experiences of real-life cinematic pioneers, and the all-business soberness of Bogdanovich’s attempt to re-create the madcap milieu of silent-era comedy undercuts the story’s frothy appeal.

          Yet even with these storytelling excesses (and an overreliance on slapstick gags like breakaway walls and pratfalls), there’s a lot of gorgeous filmmaking on display in Nickelodeon. Laszlo Kovacs’ photography is elegant, the craftsmanship of the sight gags is impressive, and the nerdy motif of shout-outs to classic directors is endearing. Ryan O’Neal and Reynolds lock into smooth grooves during light-comedy passages like their epic fistfight, while Tatum O’Neal delivers a memorable dose of her signature old-before-her-years edginess. So even though Nickelodeon is excessive and undisciplined, it’s crafted with such care that it can’t be ignored. In 2009, Bogdanovich revisited the movie for its DVD debut, adding several minutes of previously unused footage and converting the imagery to black-and-white, the format he originally intended to use; the disc features both the monochromatic version and the original full-color theatrical release.

Nickelodeon: GROOVY