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Reviews
Great Performances: The Innocents Abroad (1983)
Episode 11, Season 11
The writer of the teleplay should hang his head, or have it hung for him.
_The Innocents Abroad_ is one of my favorite books in the world. The humor is fresh and alive 130 years after it was written. Any page has an amusing scene that could be recounted to good effect.
Enter the teleplay writer of this doomed project, Dan Wakefield. Not a single scene in the movie remains free from his butchering. Not a quote isn't "improved" or completely twisted into a totally different scene. Without any reason or logic, every memorable piece of the book is replaced by some moronic slapstick routine, or a complete rewrite (in what one guesses was an attempt at humor, but is inevitably painfully unfunny.) Every bit of anticipation that I had when I sensed a favorite part of the book about to be recounted was destroyed by an inexplicable rewrite. Someone should have sat down with the screenwriter and suggested that he wasn't improving Twain by his hackish efforts. The other half that was purely invented was even worse. There were even 3 fight scenes which were gratuitously added. I fully expected a car chase to break out at any time. Painful.
The redeeming qualities of the film are the fascinating scenery, filmed in Greece, Paris, Egypt, and Rome. Somebody did at least a little bit of research to bring in the characters of Julia Newell and Mary Mason Fairbanks, (who are never once mentioned in the book.) David Ogden Stiers does a good job as the ship's doctor, but in the end, all of the characters come off as irritating and distasteful because of the horrible script. Of course Wakefield had to invent an engagement proposal between the Doctor and Julia. (The Doctor, Abraham Jackson, was married at the time, although he did marry Newell 4 years later after his wife died.)
Whoever allowed Wakefield's moronic teleplay to see the light of day wasted a whole lot of money, and utterly ruined a chance to make an underappreciated work into a great film. A monkey could produce a better screenplay. Blindfold him, make him point at a page in the book, and quote it directly. It doesn't have to be a particularly literate monkey, either.
One imagines Wakefield at his typewriter, thinking "wouldn't it be funnier if Huck Finn decided not to help Jim gain his freedom, but instead had a wacky pie-fight on the raft? I'm so brilliant!"
Enter the teleplay writer of this doomed project, Dan Wakefield. Not a single scene in the movie remains free from his butchering. Not a quote isn't "improved" or completely twisted into a totally different scene. Without any reason or logic, every memorable piece of the book is replaced by some moronic slapstick routine, or a complete rewrite (in what one guesses was an attempt at humor, but is inevitably painfully unfunny.) Every bit of anticipation that I had when I sensed a favorite part of the book about to be recounted was destroyed by an inexplicable rewrite. Someone should have sat down with the screenwriter and suggested that he wasn't improving Twain by his hackish efforts. The other half that was purely invented was even worse. There were even 3 fight scenes which were gratuitously added. I fully expected a car chase to break out at any time. Painful.
The redeeming qualities of the film are the fascinating scenery, filmed in Greece, Paris, Egypt, and Rome. Somebody did at least a little bit of research to bring in the characters of Julia Newell and Mary Mason Fairbanks, (who are never once mentioned in the book.) David Ogden Stiers does a good job as the ship's doctor, but in the end, all of the characters come off as irritating and distasteful because of the horrible script. Of course Wakefield had to invent an engagement proposal between the Doctor and Julia. (The Doctor, Abraham Jackson, was married at the time, although he did marry Newell 4 years later after his wife died.)
Whoever allowed Wakefield's moronic teleplay to see the light of day wasted a whole lot of money, and utterly ruined a chance to make an underappreciated work into a great film. A monkey could produce a better screenplay. Blindfold him, make him point at a page in the book, and quote it directly. It doesn't have to be a particularly literate monkey, either.
One imagines Wakefield at his typewriter, thinking "wouldn't it be funnier if Huck Finn decided not to help Jim gain his freedom, but instead had a wacky pie-fight on the raft? I'm so brilliant!"
Hell's Angels (1930)
Possibly the best aerial battles yet!
My roommates and I saw a few minutes of this many years ago, and we spent weeks poring over TV listings and video rentals to find more of this movie. We were not disappointed. The aerial combat scenes are, quite simply, the most astounding ever. Some scenes show DOZENS of REAL airplanes roiling in a frighteningly tight ball like a cloud of gnats, and barely missing each other. 3 pilots died filming this movie. I'm forever spoiled for the safe choreography, heavy editing, and airplane-free skies of Top Gun... Hell's Angels has real pilots doing really scary stuff. Real planes crashing into real hillsides, not "drifting behind a sand dune and then setting off a gasoline pot."
I now scoff at the computer-generated zeppelin scenes in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." Howard Hughes kicked their butts over 70 years earlier.
Some of the movie is melodramatic and dated, but some human scenes are brutally harsh, powerful, and would never get filmed today because they're TOO chilling.
A really stunning movie, which not only holds up, but betters today's air movies.
I now scoff at the computer-generated zeppelin scenes in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." Howard Hughes kicked their butts over 70 years earlier.
Some of the movie is melodramatic and dated, but some human scenes are brutally harsh, powerful, and would never get filmed today because they're TOO chilling.
A really stunning movie, which not only holds up, but betters today's air movies.