Word: mash
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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David Ogden Stiers, the stodgy Harvard grad in MASH, is Lane's father in this ill-starred effort, which, along with Creator makes two outrageously bad movies in a row for this former TV actor looking for work. Like other teen parents in film, the Meyers are portrayed as pathetic, uncomprehending creatures--pleasing propaganda for young audiences. Their roles only approach realism when Stiers is reading books on teenage communication and drug use which are hopelessly inaccurate...
...Harvard architecture is a mish-mash of styles, then finding the perfect architect for the Fogg extension was like finding the missing piece to a jigsaw puzzle...
...feeling that Maxie is a television sitcom. In fact, there are awkward pauses after many jokes, as if Aaron was expecting a laugh track to be put in. Even the soundtrack sounds like something from TV, resembling the Mary Tyler Moore theme when the mood is happy, and the MASH theme when it is bittersweet...
...Creator is definitely a movie not meant to be. For the first ten minutes, the movie accurately portrays the strange environs of scientific research, and Peter O'Toole is marvelous as a mildly comic, Einstein-like scientist. David Ogden Stiers of MASH fame sounds good without his aristocratic air as O'Toole's ruthless rival. But then the Jeremy Leven screenplay begins its long plummet in quality of dialogue, and the less dazzling supporting cast intrudes...
...only his anecdotes but such side comments as his thoughts on flounder ("I don't eat nothing with both eyes on the same side of the head"). The book is filled with whiteliquor lore, including a description of all the impurities to be found in moonshine: "Maggots spawn in mash. Rats, snakes, owls, possums, foxes, and other small creatures find their way to it and drink it and get drunk and fall in and drown." What Wilkinson does best, though, is evoke the spirits of a man, a region and a culture that have remained stubbornly idiosyncratic. The last words...