Word: cheapjack
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ought to MASH, but it has found a way to get into the underbelly of a city, to survey the twilight territory where tragedy and comedy trip over each other and make an unsightly mess. What might have been a pitch-black comedy is a movie loaded down with cheapjack melodrama and sleazy yocks...
Grizzly is too cheapjack to be a considerable success, but it also will not need much of a return at the box office to show a modest profit. It is notable mainly as the first in what promises to be an infestation of Jaws sequels, rip-offs and derivations. Universal is presently at work on the official reprise, Jaws II. Other studios will soon bring forth films about marauding crocodiles, deadly swarms of bees, a car - apparently driverless- that terrorizes a small town, and a plague of earthworms, this last called Squirm. Most of these items hold little promise...
...whole is directed by Josh Rubins in a junior-grade imitation of cheapjack Broadway commercial. His actors bounce over furniture and up the stairs whenever possible; the rest of their movements are entrances ad exits...
...arguing. He is, of course, right. But Farber doesn't worry about what less-hardened souls want to change: the cheapjack genre orientation of commercial film in general. Farber is a sensualist, and it enters his criticism in his acceptance of the good laid out for him along with the bad that dominates. It also means that, for Farber, the presence of a "physical" screen actor can compensate for the psychology the narrative develops, and the thoughts espoused. By talking with him, I learned things about the film art that you can only learn from a quirky, home-grown intelligence...