DVD Review: The Pursuit of Happiness (1971) -- Martini Movies: Wave 3

Part of Sony's Martini Movies* Collection

Photo Slideshow

Bookmark this on Delicious

Print Page





The films selected for the third wave of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's Martini Movies series (see official description in footnote below) didn't really seem to have a single unifying theme until I began writing about them. Honestly, come to think of it, they still don't but at least now I think I've discovered a common thread that you can weave throughout the five titles.

While most people relish in the cup of coffee or piece of pie that goes along with discussing a movie once you've seen it, often critics don't have that luxury as the keyboard seems to be our version of the coffee shop with readers filling in as the other conversationalist.

For just as-- whenever possible-- I prefer to wait at least twenty-four hours to review any film since reactions tend to run to the extreme right after you hit eject or walk outside the theatre, I'm often amazed by the discoveries I make when I write and trying to wrap my head around why these five movies were released together under the Martini Movies banner was indeed a challenge.

Although all titles were released in the late '60s and early '70s for the first time on DVD by Sony, culling from their old classic Columbia Pictures archive and adding retro packaging plus a martini recipe on every disc, they didn't really seem to be the type of sophisticated fare associated with the beverage nor wild enough for the decade's quintessential Holly Golightly styled cocktail party from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

However, finally today, when working on the fifth review for To Kill a Mockingbird director Robert Mulligan's uneven and cynically toned film The Pursuit of Happiness, it hit me that instead of being movies you'd watch with friends over cocktails, the lead male characters in each and every one seemed to be suffering from a few too many martinis throughout their running time.

Yet instead of being obnoxious, getting booed off the karaoke stage and hitting on anything that moves (although I'm fairly certain The Buttercup Chain might be the exception to the latter), they're overly quiet, apathetic, submissive, and disconnected as events just seem to happen to them instead of having a straightforward goal.

Whether it's Michael Douglas in "ho-hum" mode wondering if he should dodge the draft or disenchanted Gary Lockwood falling for a French woman in an arty strip club while contemplating the draft a la Summertree and Model Shop or stumbling into romantic entanglements with unlikely prospects a la Buttercup and Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing, the Martini men never seem to be in active pursuit of anything.

And this is definitely a problem when your film is called The Pursuit of Happiness and we're presented with another one of these slacker heroes. In the movie, former politically active and anti-establishment spouting college student William Popper (Michael Sarazin) has more or less turned his back on political activism in favor of just wrapping up his baccalaureate degree and getting on with life.

Without any goal or motivation, Popper is an odd fit in his relationship with the beautiful hippie Barbara Hershey who began college as the type of square Popper is when the film starts but has now turned into a one woman Abbie Hoffman. And while we're fairly certain the movie will focus purely on the futility and/or power implications of political activism, the movie simply uses that as a backdrop when plot pursues Popper (instead of the other way around) in the form of an elderly grocery bag carrying jaywalker whom he plows down accidentally in an unforgiving rain.

Assuming that the justice system will just deal with her death for the accident that it was, when Popper's attitude, past activism, and unwillingness to avoid visiting the woman's family to apologize are put on trial, the judge throws the book at him. Pretty naive for an activist, I'd say! Yet instead of a prison film, once inside, Popper realizes by this point that he actually does want to pursue happiness and get out of there. This leads to a series of events where he's proactive yet not in ways in which we can truly root since there's some unanswered questions about guilt, his future plans, and the sacrifices others have made for Popper that make the all-too-familiar Randy Newman music and protracted, illogical ending dissatisfying.

Masquerading as a message movie about prejudice towards the counter culture movement, The Pursuit of Happiness earns points for not making everything clear cut but even sans a concrete message, it's still shallow and doesn't seem to offer us a reason or idea as to what it means or why it was made other than to simply preach to the era's choir that in the '60s and '70s "a nervous breakdown" was going on in America (and the rest of the world).

And likewise, although I wasn't fully in Popper's corner by any means and understand it's not mandatory, I feel that Mulligan's Pursuit would have been far more memorable had the film not have been quite as apathetic as our main character since it's one you'll no doubt forget as soon as the final credits roll.

*Note: Just what is a Martini Movie? Sony's statement: "No matter the decade, there's a place where icons, idols and the infamous flock for bottomless martinis and over-the-top trysts. One part top-shelf martini, two parts celluloid history and garnished with a hint of camp. Sit back and take in the scene with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's Martini Movies." All titles released so far in the collection have never been available previously in the DVD format.

Text ©2009, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited.

DVD Review: Falling Down (1993) -- Deluxe Edition

Now Available on DVD & Blu-ray as a
Remastered Deluxe Edition
With a New Commentary & Interview



Previously Available Edition

Bookmark this on Delicious

Print Page





In Fatal Attraction (also recently released on Blu-ray), Glenn Close's scorned one-night-stand warns Michael Douglas that she "is not going to be ignored.” Tired of being ignored himself in a world where as his Wall Street character Gordon Gecko proclaimed, “greed is good"-- a few years following the premieres of those '80s classics-- Douglas' character snaps in gridlock L.A. traffic on the hottest day of the year near the beginning of Joel Schumacher's psychological exploration of an urban nightmare.

Despite the 8 & ½ like opener and weather fueled short tempers a la Spike Lee's masterpiece Do the Right Thing-- Falling Down is incredibly straightforward from the start as a work of action driven suspense rather than a highbrow work of art.

The timeline plays out over the course of a deceptively sunny day that is in stark contrast to the tone of the piece which seems as though it's filled with as many ominous dangers as a long, dark night.



And in it, Douglas' angry, laid off former governmental cold war era defense employee does all the wrong things, changing from his tendency to implode everything--shoving it beneath the surface-- until he explodes all over the city in a series of escalating violent encounters and devastating acts.

The film Douglas notes in an all new interview would most likely have been made independently today. For by the time it was finally released in '93, Ebbe Roe Smith's screenplay (that later garnered him an Edgar Allen Poe award) had been circulating from studio to studio for years as each one passed on the piece.



However, the work found and an avid supporter in the continuously risk-taking Michael Douglas who consistently stands behind projects in which he wholeheartedly believes which is something he's done since producing Milos Forman's Oscar winner One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest starring his good friend and frequent collaborator Danny DeVito.

And in fact it was his commitment to the unique material in tandem with director Joel Schumacher's clear-cut vision as well as costar Robert Duvall who plays the ideal counterpoint to the madness as a good-natured, ready to retire police officer who pieces together the movements of Douglas that makes the film so successful. And still Douglas marvels at the brave boldness of Warner Brothers Studios to see it through as all of the aforementioned collaborators crafted one of the most provocative films of the '90s and likewise offered further proof of Douglas' acting versatility and command of character.

Daring, controversial and still potent sixteen years later especially to this reviewer who hadn't seen it since its original release-- upon further research I was fascinated to see all of the numerous interpretations. To say that reception to the film itself varied is a gross understatement as Falling Down runs the gamut of responses, thereby proving that-- like all effective works-- the fact that it draws a passionate response always makes it a success at least on the most important level of jolting audiences out of passivity and into conversation.



And surely it was seriously discussed as some audience members erroneously viewed it as a celebration of violence and anarchy. Moreover, others fervently dismissed Falling Down as merely racist. This is especially the case since the well-dressed yet crew cut sporting and briefcase carrying main character-- known for a majority of the picture as his license plate D-FENS (both a nod to the man's former employer and an ironic statement on his actions which move from offense to defense and back again depending on how you look at it)-- is first set off in a scene by a Korean grocer before getting into an altercation with Latin American gang members.

However the most obvious interpretations of the piece likened the film to a modern amalgam of Robert De Niro's turn as the loose cannon or “certain breed of white boy” that Paul Schrader warned of in his script for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver as well an action-packed version of Peter Finch's “I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore” mantra in Network.

Yet to me and right in line with the other work of Schumacher (especially as he later revisited with the near Colin Farrell one-man-show underrated effort Phone Booth), Falling Down seems to be a satirically exaggerated cautionary tale of the way that all of the little things we experience can multiply until it's too late.

For, in the case of D-FENS who flips out in the opening moments of the piece when his automobile's air conditioning fails and a fly buzzes as in a poem of Emily Dickinson-- it's all these little things like being overcharged at convenience stores and missing out on the breakfast menu at a fast food joint by minutes-- which propel him onward on his delusional yet determined journey to the home of his estranged wife (Barbara Hershey) and daughter.

And while it's not a journey we'll want to take very often as it's a painful yet poignant portrait of a heart heading directly into darkness, it's nonetheless a passionate piece as we chronicle one man's (possibly culturally symbolic?) loss of sanity to the point of literally falling down in the memorable finale wherein the "London Bridges" references that run throughout finally pay off.

Despite my admiration for the work which I was startled to realize how much of it I recalled verbatim as it was so shocking that it seared into my young mind in '93, I must admit that it's still incredibly hard to watch the disturbingly funny yet shockingly in-your-face film now in 2009. And the reason for this is simple as unfortunately the events in the film aren't that far-fetched today since we're bombarded much too often with horrific news reports of (usually) a nondescript man like D-FENS who snaps either at work, at home, or at a public place and kills everyone in sight including himself.



Of course, at the same time-- while it's especially hard given this state of affairs to view it objectively-- the fact that Schumacher, screenwriter Smith, Douglas and all involved had the foresight to try and address our increasingly hostile society sixteen years ago makes Falling Down even more significant and similarly much less exploitative in retrospect.

Remastered to a sharper clarity for this deluxe edition release-- while I can't rate the Blu-ray technical aspects or what sounded like a truly incredible booklet that comes with the disc which lets you behind the scenes, offers a discussion of the movie and examines D-FENS to greater extent, this DVD will still be of particular interest.



Nicely tying in with this year's AFI Lifetime Achievement Award for Douglas, Falling Down's DVD benefits from the inclusion of a Schumacher and Douglas commentary track and a modern in-depth discussion by Douglas as he deconstructs D-FENS and articulates his take on the character, film, and his passionate wish that it would provoke discussion among those who saw it. I think it's safe to say that that goal was more than achieved since, much like Close noted in Fatal Attraction, Falling Down may do a lot of things but it will definitely not "be ignored."