There have been some minor exceptions ... I was very impressed with David Fincher's atmospheric thriller Panic Room starring Jodie Foster, as well as the new film Changing Lanes with Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson, which surprised me for how good it was. Don't know if we'll actually see Oscar nominations from these films, but we'll see. It's hard to believe that the summer film season is only a couple of weeks away. The studios have continued to start the "summer movies" earlier and earlier, and one of the summer's most anticipated films, Spiderman, opens May 3! So just as we have gotten over the 74th Annual Academy Awards, the summer film season is upon us.
Well, to take a break from the usual discussions of exceptional film achievements and the Oscars, I thought it would be fun to reveal what I call "guilty pleasures" ... those films that you just love to watch over and over, always seem to find yourself watching when HBO or Showtime run them, but yet, you wouldn't want to admit that they are one of your personal favorite films to anyone else. In hoping to get some fun discussions going, I will present eighteen films over the course of a three part series revealing to you some films which I have a tough time admitting to others that I actually enjoy watching. Sometimes we can't explain guilty pleasures, it makes no rational sense sometimes why we enjoy watching them, especially if we consider ourselves "serious" film-goers. But we all have them, and it's time to get them out of the closet ... so I'll throw open the discussion and bravely go where I haven't gone before ... announce to the world some films which I'm afraid to admit I actually love.
THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE (1990)
Of course, it was universally trashed by critics, and probably for reason. But there's something incredibly funny about this lightweight film starring comic Andrew Dice Clay. I laugh out loud at so many parts of this zany film. In the film, Dice plays a rock-n-roll detective named Ford Fairlane, an extension of his offensive-to-some stage persona. The film is all about his search for a strange girl named Zuzu Petals, who it seems everyone is desperate to find. Priscilla Presley plays a rich woman wanting to find her, Gilbert Gottfried is hilarious in his brief role as Ford's old friend who ends up getting electrocuted in his own radio station, Robert Englund plays a bad guy with overzealous glea, and Wayne Newton plays the chief bad guy who is looking for three mysterious computer cd's. One of the funniest bits in the film is the interplay between Fairlane and a regular detective, Amos, played by Ed O'Neill, who Fairlane calls Lt. Anus. Call me crazy, but moments like Ford falling from a building, and saying "My hair!", cracked me up ... and just Dice's persona in general is simply hilarious in this film.
