Review: VARSITY BLUES

FANTASY LEAGUE

(reviewed on ppv, Monday, August 9th, 1999)

  ‘Varsity Blues’- an MTV produced teenage football romp- is so unrealistic I half expected the climax of the film to involve terrorists taking over the football field and the President of the United States to be held hostage in the endzone.
    James Van Der Beek (Dawson in ‘Dawson’s Creek’) stars as Moxie, a senior, second string quarterback on the West Canin football team in Texas, where football is life. The players are bigger than NFL stars, here. They get to have parties without cops interfering, they get free beer, they receive access to strip clubs, and hot blondes practically beg for sex.
    Their life is a party…or is it?
    ‘Varsity Blues’ majorily is a fun filled teenage drinking/sexual romp along the lines of ‘Porky’s’ or ‘Dazed & Confused’, but just to give it story they have added a dark underbelly. On the surface everything is great for these jocks, but on the inside, life sucks.
    The best part of the film is Jon Voight’s fiery performance as the football team coach who has his own bronze statue in front of the football field. He is the film’s villain. He forces hurt players to continue, routinely shoots them up with joy juice just so they continue to win, and desperately does everything his way just so he can win that coveted state title.
    Of course the kids rebel at halftime of THE BIG GAME and…do I even have to give it away?
    The film is watchable for one reason: it’s entertaining. Anything MTV has anything to do with (they’ve produced) usually is at least, on a certain level, watchable. Forget how unrealistic the entire film is. Forget how Der Beek is the perfect teen: how he can not fuck a nude blonde bombshell in a whipped cream bikini begging for his cock, how his girlfriend hates his guts because he’s the new star quarterback, but for some unknown reason she miraculously loves him because he wins a football game, and forget how he talks a fat assed disgusting caricature like Billy-Bob out of doing something really devlish with a shotgun.
    For teenagers, they’ll look at this film as a reason to have casual sex with anyone and everyone, drink beer because it’s hip and in the movies it’s what the cool kids do, and throughout all of this, a happy ending awaits you.
    Keep dreaming, MTV-ites. ** (out of ****)

Review: OF GODS & MONSTERS

FAGGOT OF FRANKENSTEIN

(reviewed on ppv, Thursday, August 5th, 1999)
  

  Last year’s Oscar race deserves a book to be written about it. Not only did ‘Shakespeare in Love’ shock the world by beating the had-been-thought locked winner, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, but there was such a shortage of nominateable films that it seemed like the Academy members were scraping the bottom of the barrels trying to find any film to nominate. Three names were mentioned that did not get nominations; ‘Gods & Monsters’, ‘Pleasantville’, and ‘Waking Ned Devine’. While I did not see ‘Ned’ and thought ‘Pleasantville’ was good but not Oscar worthy, my mind spins in disbelievement that anyone could even consider ‘Gods’ Oscar-worthy.
    It was hailed by critics and film fans, and won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay, but as I sat through this sort-of biopic it crossed my mind that the only reason it was up for all these awards (mostly critic) was because it looks like an Academy-type movie. It has it’s independent charm, it’s Academy favorite star, Ian McKellan, and it plays out dead serious when the subject matter is truly laughable.
    ‘Gods & Monsters’ is about the English director, Frank Whale. He was made famous for his films, ‘Frankenstein’, and ‘Bride of Frankenstein’, but the true reason he is more than famous is because secretly he was a homo.
    The film picks up when he’s older than dirt, having seizure-like attacks while he remembers his awful past involving the Great War and his strict father.
    A gardner, played with basic sweet nature by Brendan Fraser, attracts the gay man’s attention and soon they sort of become friends, establishing a bond while the old man struggles with these feelings of his dark past.
    The one word I can come up with to call ‘G&M’ is uneven. There are a lot of great scenes here, but there are a lot of bad scenes, too, especially the awful twenty minutes the film closes with. Brendan Fraser is good, doing his basic schtick, but Ian McKellan doesn’t really prove why he was nominated, I enjoyed him better in ‘Richard the III’ and the awful ‘Apt Pupil’. The maid, played with foreign incompetence by Lynn Redgrave, is fantastic, though, leaving the film very uneven.
    ‘G&M’ had great intentions, but ended up being more on the lines of a wannabe-Oscar winner. It just doesn’t go the full distance this type of film should to receive it’s just desserts. **