LUPIN III: PURSUIT OF HARIMAO'S TREASURE (1995)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                  This LUPIN III TV special is, as the title suggests, a treasure-hunt story. In fact, in keeping with several callbacks to the James Bond franchise, there's not much of the marvelous phenomena common to many other LUPIN-tales of the period. Even Goemon confines himself to one quasi-marvelous feat, that of using his sword to cut slabs of street-concrete out from under a fleet of cop-cars. The period in the history of things Lupin-esque seems dubious too, for though Lupin and Jigen are working together, Goemon doesn't seem a regular part of the team, and continually makes remarks about being a "part-timer" who expects to be remunerated on an hourly basis. The Lupin Gang's status with respect to Fujiko seems standard though, and Lupin even remarks that Fujiko dealt herself in to get the others' help in finding the booty, in contrast to the more frequent situation where Lupin calls on the seductive siren for special reconnaissance.                                                                                       

  The desired treasure is a cache of gold and precious metals hidden by a Malaysian bandit, Harimao, who during WWII ripped off the English and the Japanese alike. Two competitors for the prize are the British lord Sir Archer-- strongly implied to have been a real agent on whom the fictional stories of James Bond were based-- and his super-competent granddaughter Diana. The treasure's location is hidden in three separate statues, and when Archer gets one of the statues, Lupin consents to work with Archer and Diana to find the trove. One of the special's best moments is the revelation of how Harimao forged the valuables into a vehicle of sorts, suggesting that he might have anticipated a not dissimilar episode of the SPEED RACER teleseries.                                                                                       

 Of course it wouldn't be a Lupin adventure if there weren't "bad thieves" to play off the "noble thieves." In this case, there's a gang of Neo-Nazis who also want Harimao's riches, and the foremost henchman is a brute named Goering, who stomps the usually athletic Lupin in each of their altercations. Strangely, though the original Nazis were not precisely welcoming of alternative sexualities, these goose-steppers are led by a rouge-wearing cross-dresser whose punny name, at least in his mastermind identity, is "Herr Maffrodite." Given that he hates women but plays up a feminine appearance, Maffrodite might have been a major Lupin antagonist had the script built him up better. However, he comes off as little more than a cartoon of a cross-dresser and so proves no more than a curiosity. The script devotes much more attention to Lupin's constant attempts to grope and/or or court Diana. She usually kicks his ass in response, and while Fujiko shows mild jealousy of Diana in just one scene, most of her time in the movie is taken up being ogled by Dirty Old Sir Archer. So I can just barely label this item as participating in the "fighting femmes" category. TREASURE is a mildly entertaining romp with more naughty jokes that one would ever find in an American heist film, nothing more. Oh, and Zenigata's in the story, but is only used for occasional comedy relief.                                                                     

WAGON TRAIN: "THE WAGON TRAIN MUTINY" (1962)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                               It could be safely argued that because the teleseries WAGON TRAIN endured for eight seasons, the show must have tapped some of the audience's beliefs about the Manifest Destiny of all the settlers who traveled west by wagon trains, thus ensuring that the United States became a country "from sea to shining sea." However, of all the episodes I've seen, most are a little too rationally thought-out to allow for the imaginative flights of high mythicity. "The Wagon Train Mutiny," the first episode of the sixth season, is a rare exception.                                                                                                

On the surface of the script, the main concern seems to be one of a challenge to the masculine powers guiding the wagon train. The main representative of this power is wagonmaster Chris Hale (John McIntire), who for once finds himself at odds with some of his subordinates. In the course of a particular overland voyage, Hale's scouts find the remnants of a settlement wiped out by Comanchero raiders. A little later, the scouts receive intel as to the presence of a Comanchero camp. Hale makes the command decision to attack the camp, even though some of his aides-- and a troublemaking passenger (Dan Duryea) -- argue that this action will simply bring the wrath of other Comancheros down upon the wagons. These challenges to Hale's command occupy much of the episode's running-time, but since Hale is a main protagonist, there's no serious doubt that his decision will be proven to be the correct one. Toward the episode's end, the cavalry even shows up to announce that Hale's decision to attack the camp made it possible for the soldiers to chase down the other bandits. Thus, the sacrifice of Leland (and some non-entities) is justified as serving the Greater Good-- a message that might have resonated with American audiences in the early years of American involvement in Vietnam.                                                                           

   The episode's mythic resonance, however, gathers around the figures of two passengers and one intruder to the wagon train. The scouts find out about the hostile camp because they come across a wounded young Mexican, Renaldo (Jose de Vega). Several members of the wagon train think that Renaldo is a Judas goat who's supposed to lead them into peril. Among them is widow Hannah Barber (Jane Wyman), who's traveling with her twenty-something son Leland (Peter Helm). Despite one of the other cowboy's remarks that the Comancheros are a mixture of whites, Indians and Mexicans, Hannah immediately believes the worst of Renaldo because he's Mexican. And yet, because she's a woman and therefore a nurturing presence, she does give assistance in caring for the wounded young man. Renaldo later tells a sympathetic male that he's been a slave of the Comancheros for years after they slew his family, and that he was wounded while escaping the bandits.                                                   

 Hannah's already been through some ordeal in which she lost her husband in some unspecified violent conflict, and therefore she's overly protective of her son. Leland, of course, yearns to prove himself a man and escape Hannah's apron strings, so he volunteers to join the force attacking the Comanchero camp. Before anyone knows the outcome of the attack, Hannah seems to psychically sense her son's demise-- which is my only reason for tagging this story with the naturalistic "superlative skills" trope-- and sure enough, when the attack-party returns to the train, Leland is one of three killed in the assault. The myth-question then becomes, "will this frontier incarnation of maternality become a bloody-handed avenger? Will she kill the helpless Renaldo, whom she equates with her son's killers, as payback for her son's sacrifice?" Hannah does venture to the edge of that chasm, for she does intend to play Medea to the orphaned youth. But in the end, her mythic identity as a mother takes over, and the story ends with the implication that she will put aside her prejudices and become some sort of adoptive parent to the rootless young man. Renaldo, I'll note, played by an actor with a handsome face, which reinforces my impression that it's always easier to do nice things for put-upon people when the latter just happen to be good-looking.      

CURSED (2005)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*                                                                                                                        *SPOILERS*                                                                                                                                                                                             CURSED might have reunited director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson of the SCREAM series, but from the beginning it took on the aura of a "cursed" film. Producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein repeatedly required changes to the script and to the FX team, in the latter case firing the famous Rick Baker in favor of using more CGI animation for the film's monsters. Craven later bemoaned that the film took roughly two years to complete, and the film flopped at the theaters. I re-watched an uncut version of the movie, which was two minutes longer than the theatrical release. Yet I'm not sure that had the film featured more of the violent R-level effects Craven had wanted, it would have been much better than what resulted: a slick, mildly engaging drama about a couple of young adults turning into werewolves.                                                                                             

  In many monster-movies, the narrative emphasis focuses upon the monster, particularly when the monster's identity is the center of a mystery, as was the case with the SCREAM series. Here, though, the narrative focus is upon TV-production assistant Ellie Myers (Christina Ricci) and her high-school-aged brother Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg). A chance encounter with an unidentified animal out in the Los Angeles countryside leaves them with bite-wounds. When both of them begin manifesting strange symptoms, including greater aggression, enhanced strength and a lust for blood, they are forced to consult folklore books for a cure. The only cure is to kill the "alpha wolf" who either bit them or who created the creature that bit them-- which means that the siblings must play detective to find their lupine progenitor-- and to bring an end to a new cycle of werewolf killings in Los Angeles.                                                                                             

  And now comes the spoiler-ific part of the review: the beast that bit the siblings in the woods is one of Ellie's co-workers, one Joanna (Judy Greer), and her other victims are mostly young women whom Joanna perceived as competition for the alpha wolf who created her, Jake (Joshua Jackson). The story culminates in two violent but subcombative battles: one in which the siblings manage to get Joanna killed by police gunfire, and another in which the two of them manage to employ various werewolf-weaknesses against Jake, so that he dies and removes the beast-curse from the two of them.     

 Despite the movie's focus upon Ellie and Jimmy, they're not very interesting characters, and neither Ryder nor Eisenberg can do much with them-- possibly because they as actors were flummoxed by the assorted script-changes. Joshua Jackson also wasn't able to put much feeling into his underwritten alpha-wolf character, but Judy Greer benefits from being able to play Joanna as a power-crazed bitch, enjoying her ability to slam her "children" around because they've not yet attained full werewolf status. However, the climax probably would have been more powerful had the script gone in the direction of WOLF's conclusion, with "good werewolves" fighting "bad werewolves." I have to say that even though it would have been interesting to see what Rick Baker would have concocted had he not been discharged, the CGI werewolves look pretty good and are the best thing about CURSED.

DESPICABLE ME 4 (2024)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                              I'd like to imagine Universal and Illumination allowing this fourth Gru-venture to be the last installment with the characters. However, the box office on Four was almost as impressive as the one for Three (despite Three's fall-off in quality), so it's likely that there will be more Despicable Movies down the road. But at least this one went back to the original template from the first film: imagining the origins of super-villainy as stemming purely from childhood frustrations.                                                                                                               

In contrast to the mediocrity of Three's Balthazar Bratt, this time Gru (Steve Carell), his wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig), and their three girls must combat a villain with connections to Gru's own history. In Gru's high school years, he attended an institution devoted to turning out super-villains, Lycee Pas Bon ("High School of Evil" by one translation), and Young Gru formed a one-upmanship antagonism with fellow student Maxime Le Mal. As an adult working for the Anti-Villain League, Gru uses his status to infiltrate an alumnus party for the Lycee, intending to capture the adult Maxime (Will Farrell) for the AVL. With the help of Lucy, Gru succeeds, though the action here is less amusing than the concatenation of evildoers standing around doing the high school reunion thing. However, almost as soon as Maxime's captured, he escapes, issuing dire threats against Gru and his whole family-- which, by the bye, now includes the infant son of Gru and Lucy. The AVL can't find Maxime, so Gru's family must seek the security of a witness protection program, transferring them to a new community, under contrived new names. This situation at least allowed for some varied comical situations, though as other critics observed, the script stuffed the story with too many minor characters of little consequence-- probably to instill suspense as to who was eventually going to "out" Gru's family and betray them to Maxime.                                                                         

       
  Without question, the worst schtick is that of the baby, Gru Junior. Gru Jr. loves his mother Lucy without reserve but seems to hate Gru no matter what the reformed villain does. This remains a lame schtick because as soon as I saw it begin, I knew that no feel-good cartoon movie was going to end with a baby despising his father, and as I predicted, at the eleventh hour Gru Junior overcomes his personal animus. Ho hum. Slightly more promising is a plot-thread in which a middle-school neighbor girl identifies her new neighbor as the former supervillain Felonious Gru. She then blackmails Gru into helping her commit a silly petty crime. But this contrivance worked better for me because it shows that the creators knew they needed to force the main character back into his criminal mode to keep his basic appeal, no matter how thoroughly he converted to the side of the angels. Again, DESPICABLE #4 would make a great conclusion for a pleasant if lightweight cartoon-series, but I don't imagine things will work out that way.                                

DESPICABLE ME 3 (2017)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                               While I thought DESPICABLE ME 2 was funny, the decision to make Felonious Gru a full-time family man and an agent of the Anti-Villain League didn't play to the strengths of the original character. Possibly the writers of #3 sensed that on some level, since the film begins with Gru (Steve Carell) and his new wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) acting as agents for the AVL and getting fired when they fail to capture the latest new super-villain, former child actor Balthazar Bratt (Trey Parker). Unfortunately, after the former super-villain and his wife get fired, the whole story becomes mostly about their trying to redeem themselves with the ungrateful agency and become super-villain fighters once more. I think this was short-sightedness on the part of the writers, since Gru and Lucy could just as easily gone into private consultation on the prevention of super-villainy or something.                                                                                               

  The writers, though, weren't terribly interested in originality, since for #3 they resurrected one of the moldiest of moldy-oldie plotlines: the guy who finds out he's got a secret twin brother he's never known about: a twin who's opposed to the original in some way. In Gru's case, he learns that when his parents split, the father (who I guess is deceased in the story) took with him a twin named Dru, while the mother kept Gru. Gru became a famous super-villain in reaction to his mother's negligence, but Dru's father wanted Dru to become a villain. Unfortunately for the dad, Dru was a light-hearted schmuck with no talent for villainy. When circumstances bring about the reunion of Gru and Dru, what Dru wants most is for his twin to school him in the art of the skillful super-heist artist. Gru obliges, but only as a means of catching up with Balthazar and nailing him so that Gru and Lucy can get their jobs back.                                             

The interactions of Gru and Dru are pretty hokey, but the notion behind Balthazar Bratt is leaden to the point of distraction. The concept is that as a child he had a successful TV show about a naughty kid super-villain. When the show was cancelled, Bratt decided to become a real malefactor, complete with all sorts of kid-themed super-weapons. I suppose the kid-audience #3 was aimed at might have enjoyed the spectacle of a forty-something man sprinting around like a juvenile, but none of that alleged humor worked for me. There's a subplot about Lucy trying to learn how to be a mother to Gru's three adoptees, but that too proved forgettable.  


 

THE LEGEND OF HERCULES (2014)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                                I saw LEGEND once before, but I must have been "out of critical mode" while watching, because I remembered nothing about it. Only after this re-watch did I realize that it's much worse than even the bargain-basement Hercules flicks of the sixties.                                 

Only the opening scenes have any bite to them. King Amphitryon of Tiryns (Scott Adkins) is first seen leading his army to conquer another city. Amphitryon proposes single combat against the city's king for all the marbles, and he wins the battle and dominion over the city. What this ruthless monarch does not win, though, is the approval of his wife Alcmene (Roxanne McKee). Alcmene, despite having borne a son to Amphitryon, hates her lord's warring ways so much that she prays to Hera at the goddess' temple for a deliverer. Hera appears to Alcmene, and tells her that Zeus, King of the Gods, is willing to spawn a hero with the mortal queen, while Hera is willing to allow the infidelity because-- well, it's not clear why Hera's on board. My theory is that the writers knew they had to use the strongman's familiar Roman name "Hercules," rather than the Greek "Heracles," but they *may* have wanted to allude to the meaning of the Greek name, since said meaning occurs later in the script: "Heracles"= "Glory of Hera." Alcmene consents to have Zeus come to her at night, and Amphitryon witnesses what is essentially an "invisible man" impregnation. The evil king doesn't overtly make the connection to Zeus, but since he doesn't simply have the infant Hercules killed, Amphitron probably worries about the consequences of killing a god's spawn.                                                       

 After this setup, though, the script devolves into an amateurish level of predictability. Hercules (Kellan Lutz) and his older sibling Iphicles (Liam Garrigan) grow to manhood, and though crown prince Iphicles is scheduled to make a political marriage with Cretan princess Hebe (Gaia Weiss), she and Hercules fall in love. Amphitryon is the only one besides Alcmene who knows/guesses Hercules' divine parentage, but Iphicles gets some direct evidence of his half-brother's power when the two siblings are out in the wild and get attacked by a bad CGI creature that's supposed to be the Nemean Lion. At least the lion is invulnerable as in the myth, and Hercules breaks its neck with his demigod-strength. But this signals to Iphicles and his father that they need to get rid of this strongman, so they send Hercules off to a foreign war in the hope he'll get killed. The rest of the story is just a long, boring montage of action-scenes as Hercules gets taken prisoner as a slave, is forced to fight in gladiatorial games, and finally works his way back to Greece to reclaim Hebe and overthrow his false father and nasty brother.                   

 It's hard to choose which of LEGEND's faults is the worst. The CGI Nemean Lion looks great next to the awful gladiatorial battles, which seem as fake as hell. While director Renny Harlin had never been a critical favorite, I liked both of the nineties films he did with Geena Davis, CUTTHROAT ISLAND and LONG KISS GOODNIGHT. Despite the assorted problems of both movies, they're good basic formula-flicks that can catch an audience up with sheer momentum. But LEGEND drags from fake battle to fake battle with zero sense of kinetic power, and Harlin's phoning it all in. The dramatic scenes are equally terrible, and the dialogue is so clunky that it's hard to tell if any actor except Adkins has any talent. But I'd have to say Kellan Lutz is the worst performer here. He acts out his Herculean role with a sort of stone-faced indifference and fails to sell the alleged heroism of his character. Even a couple of scenes where Hercules invokes extra power from his heavenly father-- additional strength in one instance, a lightning-filled sword in another- fall flat. Though LEGEND came to theaters six months before the Dwayne Johnson HERCULES of the same year, I strongly suspect that LEGEND's producers sought to steal a march on the Johnson film. But coming out early with a mediocre script didn't help LEGEND, which flopped at the box office just as the Johnson film succeeded. Even the Asylum's HERCULES REBORN, also from 2014, proved more entertaining than this drab mythological misfire.

SERENADE FOR TWO SPIES (1965)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                              SERENADE is one of the few West German Eurospy films that has a strong Germanic character, though Italy had something to do with the production. Most of the major characters are played by German actors, with only minor contributions from "names" like the American Brad Harris and Italian Tony Kendall, and even though large parts of the story take place in the United States, it's very much a European's treatment of "America as exotic locale." The rambling narrative even wanders from San Francisco to Nevada just so that the hero can contend with guys in cowboy hats.                                 

  The story begins in a farcical mode as John Krim, Agent 006 1/2 (Helmut Lange), gets his assignment, with lots of daffy references to James Bond and Goldfinger. But SERENADE isn't really a comedy with lots of joke-setups, but what I consider an irony, devoted to loosely satirizing the tropes of the superspy genre. Director/co-writer Michael Phlegar doesn't come up with a very pointed satire, but I have the impression that he was focused on inverting just one major superspy trope: that of the spy as a Don Juan who never gets tied down to one woman. To counter this favored trope, the story puts Krim more or less in the hands of the mystery girl Tamara (a radiant Barbara Lass). Is she an ally who keeps giving Krim romantic overtures, but still plays coy, or a foe working for the villains? She seems to want to vex and confuse the hero, and there's even an amusing scene in Nevada where Tamara dresses up like a cowgirl and lassos Krim, just to mess with him. Since Lass's Tamara is so central to the plot-- essentially a co-star to Lange's Krim-- I'm not giving much away to say that she's one of the good guys. But her real threat is not that she's going to murder him, but to marry him, and the goofy ending implies that Krim's going to get hog-tied by matrimony no matter what. A lot of spy-flicks loosely end with the secret agent bonding with his leading lady, so that there's at least the possibility of connubial bliss, but few if any really show the hero getting dragged to the altar.                                                                             

  There's also another duplicitous damsel whom Krim names "Goldfeather" because she never mentions her actual name. She shows up in his hotel room as a maid and delivers him an exploding breakfast roll (which is the most uncanny thing we get in the film). But it's not clear that she knew the roll was really a bomb, and later on she saves Krim from death, so maybe she's one of those bad girls who turns good due to the hero's sex appeal. It's almost impossible to follow who the villains are, and though they're said to be pursuing some sort of "laser rifle" tech, we never see so much as a prototype, so I think the script just threw in a laser reference because there was a laser in the GOLDFINGER movie. Though Krim doesn't have any secret agent devices, he can fight passably well, though an early sequence shows him running from a rumble with a bunch of garishly clad henchmen. Toward the end there's a hallucinatory scene in which Krim and a few allies seem to be standing around on the floor of a lake with no ill effects, shooting it out with enemy spies, but this is clearly just the director's brief visit to Surrealism Alley, with no relevance to the main story. I can't say I found SERENADE as funny as I think its creators thought it was, but I have to appreciate that this is one time the male spy doesn't get to be the cock of the walk-- though Goldfeather does get a pretty good look at an unclad Krim in his bathroom.