Category: Comedy

#883 Bad Medicine (1985)

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Steve Guttenberg, Julie Hagerty and a cast full of ‘Hey, it’s that guy from the other movie‘ supporting actors, Bad Medicine sure seems like a sure hit 80s comedy. But, there’s unfortunately something more or less off throughout the comedy.

This is not so say that Bad Medicine is a total dud. The cast keeps the show running and the movie even has multiple laugh out loud moments.

Done very much in the vein of Guttenberg’s Police Academy box office hit movie series, you could easily confuse this movie as a spinoff, especially if G.W.Bailey was seen as the dean or the school. Speaking of which, Alan Arkin does a wonderfully fine acting work as the love sick founder and dean of the school, mixing in just the right doses of desperation and foolish pride.

Bad Medicine has a lot of good things going for it and could’ve potentially been one of the definite comedies of the 80s, but woefully ends up much less than the sum of its parts.

80s-o-meter: 89%

Total: 62%

#877 Dangerous Curves (1988)

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Dangerous Curves is an insignificant buddy comedy taking place in the sunny California that never makes an attempt for originality, and has that straight to video vibe written all over it.

Grant Heslov is totally lost in his role as the party animal side kick dragging his friend into troubles of various sorts; instead of pulling off that lovable rogue schtick the character is without any lovable traits and ends up plain annoying. Tate Donovan’s screen presence has always been terrific – reminding that of Robert Webb – taking the movie up a notch or two. Last but possibly least, Leslie Nielsen does a pretty uninspired visit as a crime lord inevitably getting his due.

The movie is a prime example of a pastiche where the team has succeeded in borrowing a lot of proven concepts, but totally dropping the ball when it comes to putting them all back together, making Dangerous Curves effectively more fun in still pictures and VHS trailers than as an actual movie.

80s-o-meter: 89%

Total: 48%

#875 Running Scared (1986)

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Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines as the lead actors in an 80s buddy cop movie? What at first seems like a somewhat bland combination actually works out much better than anticipated.

Although a picture book of the genre clichés and not as famous as its other counterparts of the era, Running Scared still manages stands firmly on its own. It’s the kind of a movie where the plot is secondary and most attention has been put into showing the two cops have a good time and battle against the authority. Every event in the movie is layered with constant stream of wisecracking; even when getting shot with an uzi Crystal and Hines make sure to first stop to exchange some puns before diving to safety.

The jesting does get tiresome at times, but it’s all done with such a good – if not exactly funny – humor that most viewers that will let it slip and just go with the flow.

80s-o-meter: 91%

Total: 72%

#870 American Dreamer (1984)

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A stay at home suburbians housewife gets involved in a crime plot after winning a trip to Paris and soon afterwards loosing her memory due to an accident.

Part of a wave of Hollywood international crime thrillers set in Paris (Frantic, Gotcha!, Target), American Dreamer is one of the movies I found the Paris setting least distracting, although given the adventurous, mysterious tone of the movie, some northern African location would’ve probably worked better.

JoBeth Williams complete surprises as the strong lead carrying to movie with ease giving credible performances both as the home maker and an action star. Although no classic of the genre, American Dreamer is an above average fluff with an undeniable charm to it.

80s-o-meter: 66%

Total: 79%

#863 Iron Eagle II (1988)

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While the first movie in the series was a fresh take on the subject, Iron Eagle II – released two years after the original – takes much more notes from Top Gun by introducing a roster of outcast pilots ordered to perform a seek and destroy mission along with a fleet from the Soviet Union.

The sequel ditches the former lead Doug Masters by killing him during a firefight in the very first minutes of the movie, leaving us with Colonel Chappy – arguably the weaker half of the duo. Along with the Top Gun influence, the movie is built on the post cold war thematics with some Police Academy style of humour thrown in the mix.

Iron Eagle II is a tired follow up to the original that inexplicably went on to spawn two more sequels during the nineties, both of which apparently even weaker than this one.

80s-o-meter: 91%

Total: 58%

#861 Private Lessons (1981)

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Part of the now politically even more incorrect wave of early 80s movies of an adult getting raunchy with a minor, Private Lessons joins in with the somewhat dubious club of Class, My Tutor, In the Mood, They’re Playing with Fire and Blame It on Rio.

It’s hard to view Private Lessons as anything but an exploitation on the subject and a weak excuse to display some T&A in order to lure in some younger audience. The movie does make an effort to cover all this up by cooking up a blackmailing plot – which is not actually too bad – but it’s too little too late to make up for its numerous shortcomings.

80s-o-meter: 71%

Total: 44%

#860 Explorers (1985)

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Explorers is a kids’ adventure movie that starts a bit dumb, then manages to get exciting as the three youngsters start putting together a spaceship, only to get dumb again as they eventually make their way into the alien spaceship.

The idea of another culture getting all of its information about mankind from TV broadcasts and ads is downright delicious, but Explorers fails to get anything substantial out of it. The aliens – as the rest of the movie – are well executed, but the forced humour aspect will leave cold anyone looking forward to a thrilling adventure.

Most viewers familiar with the two child stars of the movie will probably get the best mileage out of Explorers as a look into the early career of Ethan Hawke and the late River Phoenix.

80’s-o-meter: 85%

Total: 61%

#857 Fandango (1985)

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Based on a earlier short movie made by the writer-director Kevin Reynolds, Fandango is a terrific road movie that the time unfortunately forgot.

Fandango tells a story of a four college buddies (five, if you count one of them who stays passed out in the trunk for most of the movie) on the brink of adulthood taking a ride together towards the Mexico to slip away from getting shipped to serve in Vietnam war. The movie is episodic in its nature and Reynolds shows some natural talent by stitching them together to a solid movie experience that doesn’t feel patchy at all. The skydiving bit – lifted off the original short story – does take its sweet time but serves its purpose as a culmination point in the story.

The movie reminded me of how naturally talented and charismatic actor Kevin Costner was before becoming a household name. Fandango also remains Judd Nelson’s best performance to date.

80s-o-meter: 71%

Total: 87%

#855 Nothing Personal (1980)

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Here’s a film that once again reminds me of how much I loathe much of the 70s cinema. Nothing Personal is a horrid romantic comedy shot in the end of the decade and released during the first months of 1980, thus unfortunately making it into this review site.

There’s very little to be liked here, and the few somewhat interesting themes of nature preservation and fighting against big companies are quickly bypassed by cringeworthy scenes of the two leads getting it on between the sheets in the spirit of the sexual revolution that was big at the time.

I can’t remember the last time I was so mildly entertained by a comedy. The only decent thing the movie has going for it is Dickerson, a weasel of a big company spokesperson played to perfection by the terrific Dabney Coleman.

80s-o-meter: 22%

Total: 12%

#854 Three Fugitives (1989)

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A former convict is dragged into a getaway against his will after walking in on a bank robbery in Three Fugitives, a comedy that manages to be heartwarming as well as to offer some genuinely funny laugh out loud slapstick moments.

Nick Nolte revises his gruff, rough around the edges bulldozer of a character previously seen in 48 Hrs, but improves it on almost all counts, and Martin Short provides a perfectly good target for him to get heavy handed on with his small frame and very clever physical acting.

There’s a slight dip in the middle of the movie, but luckily the movie picks up the pace again towards the end, and manages to make it to my recommended 80s comedies list with ease.

80s-o-meter: 92%

Total: 93%

#851 Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984)

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Voyage of the Rock Aliens is made to spoof the swinging beach movies of the 60s with an element of extra terrestrial synth pop band traveling to study earth.

Wanting to be one of those crazy comedies, Voyage of the Rock Aliens makes an endless number of desperate attempts for humor. The most amount of wittiness you will see though is a convict attacking a cop with an electric can opener, and the cop then defending himself with a can of tomatoes, or a robot transformed to a fire hydrant then getting peed on by a dog. And both of these gags sound funnier in writing than they come out in the movie.

Much of the humor is built upon the fish out of water aspect of it all that grows stale already during the first minutes into the movie. There are also a lot of lengthy pop songs along the way, all of which have a strong vibe of if the soviet union had produced some music videos, and tried to pass them as the real thing.

Voyage of the Rock Aliens is one of those movies that is shoddy by design, and approach which sometimes works, but here the end result is just one cringeworthy mess.

80s-o-meter: 80%

Total: 3%

#849 Roadhouse 66 (1984)

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A poster can sometimes say a lot about a movie. In Roadhouse 66’s case the poster is unimaginative, totally forgettable and executed in an uninspired way – and all this goes for the movie as well.

Marketed as a action comedy, Roadhouse 66 is short on both. Counting out a few gunshots along the way, the most action we see is the Burt Reynolds style car race towards the end of the movie, which also ends up the weakest part of the already so-and-so movie.

It’s only one year later that Judge Reinhold and Willem Dafoe both became household names with their box office hits Beverly Hills Cop and To Live and Die in L.A., respectively, and as such the movie is an interesting look into their earlier career. Although neither of the lead actors do a particularly good or memorable work here, they’re still very much the glue that holds the movie together and save it from being a complete failure.

80s-o-meter: 85%

Total: 58%

#844 It Takes Two (1988)

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A young man on the verge of getting married departs from his ranch to the big city to buy a sports car of his dreams and runs into all kinds of trouble in It Takes Two, a lightweight romantic comedy with a somewhat patchy script.

Biggest problem with the movie is the lack of meaningful content and the resulting, obvious padding to make it meet the 75 minute mark. The movie does find its tone during the end, and even manages to have some elements of entertainment and coherency.

It takes two is an insignificant, fluffy movie that is impossible to recommend to anyone – but it’s not horrid either. In other words, if you happen to watch this movie from a cable tv without planning, chances are you won’t hate it.

80s-o-meter: 89%

Total: 60%

#839 Moon Over Parador (1988)

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Moon Over Parador feels like it was written with Richard Dreyfuss specifically in mind, and after seeing the movie it’s hard to fathom anyone else playing the part. Accompanying him can be seen Raúl Juliá who also performs tremendously well as the menacing head of the police masterminding the whole ordeal.

The movie skillfully builds up a mouth watering situation that would’ve lended itself to a great variety of humor, but never quite explores it deeply enough. The end result is entertaining, but never quite side splittingly funny. Whatever humor there is, it’s because of the snappy delivery of the lines by the talented actors involved, not necessarily because of the lines itself. There are also scenes that don’t really contribute to anything, like the homecoming of the dictator’s mother.

Still, there’s something heartwarming about the whole movie that makes me want to be generous with the scoring. A credit for that has go to Dreyfuss who plunges into the role with a great energy, making Moon Over Parador his second best 80s comedy after Stakeout.

80s-o-meter: 87%

Total: 80%

#836 Prizzi’s Honor (1985)

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A mob movie for people who don’t necessarily care for them, Prizzi’s Honor toys with the clichés of the genre. The lampooning alone would get tiresome after awhile, but luckily the smartly written script makes it for a refreshingly unique dark comedy.

The combination of Jack Nicholson with the Brooklyn accent is comical – probably even more than the production team intended to. Still, it’s good to see Nicholson breaking away from his usual acting patterns. Kathleen Turner is presented as the co-star of the show, but her screen time is unfortunately very limited, which leaves her character a bit too distant to the viewer.

I never was a fan of mob movies, and there’s nothing substantial enough in Prizzi’s Honor to change that. But it is one of the rare movies in the genre I might consider watching again at some point.

80s-o-meter: 72%

Total: 71%

#833 TerrorVision (1986)

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Finding a totally obscure movie that rocks is a thing that really makes running this blog worthwhile, and TerrorVision is definitely fits the bill.

It’s not a hard task to figure out an outrageous silly plot and concept like seen in this movie, but making it work definitely is and it’s more often than not that these kind of movies fail. But TerrorVision totally makes the best out of its B-movie origins and has one positive surprise after another lined up. While playing around with clichés has proven to be the biggest letdown in numerous of uninspired horror comedies, TerrorVision succeeds to find its own voice, often taking a step into completely unexpected direction.

I can’t end up nothing but to recommend the title. It’s one of the most positive, utterly surprises lately, and a perfect addition for that marathon of horror scifi comedies along with Night of the Creeps, The return of the Living Dead and Dead Heat.

80s-o-meter: 87%

Total: 95%

#831 Terms of Endearment (1983)

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Terms of Endearment, directed by James L. Brooks who wrote and directed the amazing Broadcast News and brought us The Simpsons along with Matt Groening was supposed to be a treat. The reviews were positive in general and the movie had won a whopping 5 Academy Awards, one of which was for the best picture of the year.

What I saw was completely mediocre. The really interesting moments are far and between and once the conflicts between all the characters are tediously set up, the movie pulls a sleight of hand of a terminal illness kind to resolve the movie without ever actually answering any of the questions it’s been raising for the last 90 minutes. It’s this cop out approach that makes the movie feel insignificant from today’s standpoint. If the movie really had some guts, it would’ve killed its starlet earlier on and concentrated on on lives of the people left behind, instead of just bailing out.

Jack Nicholson puts on his trademark lovable jerk impression, this time creating a character that’s somewhat impossible to read and even harder to see in any kind of fruitful relationship. Brooks’ 1997 movie As Good as It Gets has a similar setup but captures the whole struggle of wanting to be a better man in a much more three dimensional way.

80s-o-meter: 70%

Total: 58%

#830 Protocol (1984)

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A definition of a dedicated star vehicle if there ever was one, Protocol is a light hearted comedy built upon the very lovable girl next door qualities of Goldie Hawn — and it’s the role she pulls of with flying colors.

Although the movie is complete fluff, it’s fortunately mostly of the entertaining kind and manages to press a whole combination of feel good buttons that make the movie an easy to watch experience.

While the first portion of the movie builds up an intriguing setup, the latter part about arabs and sheiks feels like an unneeded diversion and entirely plastered on. Both the story and Hawn’s perky character would’ve benefited a lot if the writers would’ve just dug deeper into the already established plot. This decisions seems due to the makers of the movie struggling to meet the 90 minute mark as evident in some of the scenes that just seem to drag on and on.

This is a one woman show and it’s Goldie that makes the movie worth your time. The movie is fluffy, outdated and completely irrelevant, but similarly to its heroine, Protocol somehow manages to have some irresistible qualities to it.

80s-o-meter: 84%

Total: 75%

#829 UHF (1989)

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Although a Weird Al Yankovic movie, it’s Michael Richards as the eccentric janitor turned a TV star that rightfully steals the show in UHF. And it is Kevin McCarthy whose hilarious rendition of a rotten executive of a rivalling station that got the best laughs out of me this time around.

Similar to most parodies, the mileage you get out of UHF greatly depends on your knowledge of the popular culture of the late 70s and the 80s, and much of the humor will be lost with those not familiar with the era. The skits and musical numbers are completely loose from the main plot, but thanks to the TV station theme they blend in fairly well to the movie and are among the best ones Yankovic ever produced.

The movie bombed in the box office – some say because of the financial problems of Orion Pictures and the resulting lack of promotion – and remained Yankovic’s last feature film effort. Unfortunately so as his silver screen debut is surely one of the better crazy comedies of the era and has since become a cult classic.

80s-o-meter: 100%

Total: 86%

#821 Major League (1989)

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A proof that the classic sports story of an underdog team raising to a champion is worth doing one more time, Major League follows the often seen formula, but adds so many delicious bits to the mix that make it irresistible.

The movie is not about the winning ultimately – as we all know where it’s going to end up – but about the road getting there. And in this case the journey is filled with various events of the very entertaining kind that make Major League a one of the top sports comedies of the 80s.

80s-o-meter: 85%

Total: 89%