Word: badness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Good schlock--like An American Werewolf in London or Risky Business--steps gingerly just this side of outright derision of its subjects. Bad schlock--St. Elmo's Fire--hates its characters intensely and usually ends up by offending us or making us squirm...
...deal, Richler wrote a bad book. His film, on the other hand, is a disaster. The man couldn't cut good screen dialogue with a Bowie knife and his facility with visual humor ends at the level of the dated "Expose Yourself to Art" poster. Clearly, Richler is treading in unfamiliar territory (he told a Toronto journalist he would be sticking to novels in the future). Joshua is a case of what experts call genre envy...
...here's another difference: Who's Zoomin' won't have the longstanding success Turner managed with her uneven, mostly convincing comeback record. Turner earned her place atop the music heap last year with a sincere testimonial to love-gone-bad. Franklin fires her bolts at the teeny-weenie crowd and the most that can be said for her is that she succeeds at infantilizing her once proud persona...
...addition to Lennox and Stewart, Peter Wolf chimes in for a phony duet (with an obvious nod to Mick and Tina) and Carlos Santana and Clarence Clemons drop by for a pair of specialty solos. It all adds up to what could have been but wasn't. Too bad Franklin doesn't have (just a little bit) of self...
George Clinton's latest, entitled SOME OF MY BEST JOKES ARE FRIENDS, is also a bad record...