Movie Madness!

CHASING AMY

As a professional cartoonist (in my other career), I can testify that whenever Hollywood has tried to portray the life of a cartoonist on screen, they rarely even get close to getting it right. Well, let's face it - the mechanics of the job are pretty dull viewing. Sit at a table and draw, draw, draw for hours and hours. So naturally they've tried to liven up their scripts by ignoring the actual work and making up a bunch of other crap about what our lives are like. For example in How to Murder Your Wife (a film I credit with greatly influence my decision to become a cartoonist), Jack Lemmon actually acts out and photographs all the adventures of his comic strip hero. I've never tried this myself, and I doubt if any other cartoonist ever has.

The plot of Chasing Amy has little to do with comic books specifically, but uses the profession as a backdrop to the action very effectively - and very accurately. For this alone, I have to give it my applause. Holden (Ben Affleck) and Banky (Jason Lee) are the creators of the hit comic 'Bluntman and Chronic' (artwork provided by Madman's Mike Allred). At a convention, they meet self-publishing cartoonist Alyssa Jones (excellently played by Joey Adams), and Holden is instantly smitten. But, as he soon discovers, Alyssa is a "devout" lesbian - which leads to all sorts of comic and dramatic situations that I don't want to give away here.

Kevin Smith has followed up his cult hits Clerks and Mallrats with his best film by far. While his actors often have to struggle with his overwritten, relentlessly witty dialogue, the conversation is so often refreshingly bright and hilariously funny, and the characters and situations are so genuine and heartfelt, that I soon forgave Smith for presenting it all in a fantasy world in which everyone speaks like a Dennis Miller rant. Though a distant relative to the weak Threesome, Chasing Amy is wonderful blend of killer comedy and raw drama that's in a class by itself.

However, I hate that title. Educating Rita, Eating Raoul, Raising Arizona, Feeling Minnesota, Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, Killing Zoe, Adding Nauseum. ½

LOVE JONES

A poet (Larenz Tate) meets a photographer (Nia Long). Poet gets photographer. Poet loses photographer. Poet gets photographer. Rinse. Repeat.

The publicists behind this film are trying to sell the fact writer/director Theodore Witcher is giving us something new in cinema: a natural view of life in "black America". But to my for-the-most-part-racially-colorblind eyes, he's only given us the same old romance movie that's older than Hollywood. The script is reasonably witty, the cast is excellent, the film's settings give us lots of great scenes all over Chicago - but being its very basic entertainment values, there just isn't any reason I can recommend it. The nail in the cliché coffin is when we see the happy couple actually running through a park laughing. If you're looking for something fresh, look elsewhere.

PRIVATE PARTS

I'll be having more trouble than usual trying to provide an unbiased review for this film. After all, the star of the movie has been waking me up every morning for the past few months by telling me how great it is.

Like most Americans, I was not always a Howard Stern fan. I've lived in Chicago most of my life - a town that has been a difficult sell for Stern for a very good reason. I've spent the last twenty years or so listening to a broadcasting genius named Steve Dahl, a radio personality whose show and career have been oddly echoed by Stern's. Whenever an east coast friend would crow to me about an antic of Stern's, it was something that Dahl had done on the air years before. "Who needs him?" I thought.

When Stern began a local (then syndicated) weekly television show, I began to catch on to his appeal. For one thing, he's incredibly funny - and with me, Funny rules. Also, on television I could see the little half-embarrassed grin almost hidden behind the shades, the hair, the microphone, and the shock-jock façade. Stern was revealed as a charming sheep in big bad wolf's clothing. And once it was available to me, I could see that Stern's show was structured to combine loosely scripted bits, celebrity appearances, and "behind-the-scenes" explorations among an established cast of characters - a successful formula going back in radio at least to The Jack Benny Program.

It is this chemical stew that makes Private Parts one of the most successful movie comedies ever made - a seamless mixture of startling reality and goofball fantasizing, presented through the eyes of its hero. It's extremely rare for a celebrity to play himself in a film biography - an event which makes a film of curiosity value at least. Mohammed Ali and Ann Jillian are the only ones I can think of offhand who have done this. Strengthening the bond to radio history: during the early '50s, Jack Benny did a string of shows in which Jack was to play himself in a film biography, and the hilarity surrounding such an outrageous notion kept the show going for months. But Stern has taken the same notion and brought it to life. Even more surprising is the fact that Stern, as well as his supporting radio cast, are all excellent in their 'roles'.

Backing Stern up are an expert team of veterans - producer Ivan Reitman, director Betty Thomas, and screenwriters Len Blum and Michael Kalesniko - as well as a cast of top character actors, especially the hysterical Paul Giamatti as Stern's nemesis at WNBC. Though this was considered a very risky project by everyone in the world, in retrospect, it looks like an obvious hit all the way.

Some may say that Private Parts is one long commercial for Stern, an expensive apology and love note to his wife, an anti-FCC propaganda screed, a very public session on a psychiatrist's couch, and a desperate plea for understanding to Stern's parents and everyone else that's abused and humiliated him over the years. Well, it's all these things - but it's also an outstanding entertainment from start to finish, and a very funny movie. As I said before: with me, Funny rules. Private Parts - and Howard Stern - rules!

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