Posts tagged Kevin Kline
Darling Companion – Movie Trailer
Jun 9th
Beth (Diane Keaton) saves a bedraggled lost dog from the side of the freeway on a wintry day in Denver. Struggling with her distracted, self-involved husband Joseph (Kevin Kline) and an empty nest at home, Beth forms a special bond with the rescued animal. When Joseph loses the dog after their daughter’s (Elisabeth Moss) wedding at their vacation home in the Rockies, Beth, distraught and angry with Joseph, enlists the help of the few remaining guests (Dianne Wiest, Richard Jenkins, Mark Duplass) and a mysterious woman (Ayelet Zurer) in a frantic search.
“Darling Companion” a Shaggy Dog Story
Jun 16th
“Shaggy Dog Story”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Darling Companion is a pleasant little movie about a simple little subject from the beginning to the end.
Written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, this movie can be added to his other movies, such as the 1981 Body Heat, the 1983 The Big Chill, and the 1991 Grand Canyon, among many others.
It stars Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline, Dianne Wiest, Richard Jenkins, and Sam Shephard, and it is about a lovable dog that goes missing and all the problems that causes.
When the movie opens, Beth and her daughter Grace are returning home from the airport when Beth orders Grace to stop the car on the freeway, because she saw something on the side of the road.
What Beth saw was a dog, and to make a long story short, after a veterinarian says there is nothing wrong with him that a few good meals and a bath won’t fix, Beth decides to keep the dog and names him Freeway.
Beth tells her reluctant husband, Joseph, “He’s not mine. I’m just going to find him a home.”
Well, you can guess how that works out, can’t you?
Sure enough, a year later, everybody is at the vacation home in the mountains of Beth and Joseph, where Grace is getting married, and Freeway is still a part of the family.
So, Joseph is out in the woods taking Freeway for a walk when Freeway spots a deer and runs off after it.
Freeway doesn’t come back, Beth blames Joseph for losing the dog while Joseph was talking on his phone, and this disrupts everybody’s plans for going back to their homes after the wedding, because now they all decide to stay until Freeway can be found.
Everybody includes Beth and Joseph, Joseph’s sister Penny, Penny’s grown son Bryan and her new boyfriend Russell, a young woman who “sees things,” because her mother was a gypsy and her father was a yogi, and even the local sheriff.
Well, now the story isn’t so much a story about a missing dog, but a story about the relationships of three sets of couples, some good and some not so good.
Darling Companion is like a shaggy dog story, which means that you either enjoyed all the details as it gets to the end or else the end itself was just as enjoyable.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Pink Panther 2” Dumbed Down Even More
Feb 11th
Dumbed Down Even More
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE PINK PANTHER 2 is the most recent version of an Inspector Clouseau movie that started in 1964 with Peter Sellers in the lead role, the second with Steve Martin as the bumbling French detective, and hopefully it will be the last one.
The 2006 THE PINK PANTHER with Martin attempting a silly French accent was bad enough, but this one is even worse.
Hollywood has not only run out of ideas, stories, and characters, but it has also run out of titles.
It has run out of actors, too, it appears, because John Cleese has replaced Kevin Kline as Chief Inspector Dreyfus, but that still isn’t enough to make you bother to see this unfunny waste of time.
The premise is that a master criminal named The Tornado has stolen the Magna Carta from Great Britain, the Emperor’s Sword from Japan, and the Shroud of Turin from Italy. An international “dream team” of detectives has been formed, and the world’s greatest detective is chosen to lead it.
That would be the Inspector Clouseau, but only for comedic reasons.
Except in this movie.
Watching the opening titles, you might ask, “Is this the best thing in the movie?” And the answer is “Yes.”
Another question you might ask is, “What is Lily Tomlin doing in this movie?” She plays Mrs. Berenger without making any attempt at a French accent, good or bad, and she is supposed to teach Clouseau how to be more politically correct in his attitude and comments.
In actuality, however, all she does is interrupt the plot, which isn’t going anywhere anyway.
In fact, there are too many subplots having nothing to do with catching The Tornado, which just distract from the main plot, which is to catch The Tornado, expecially after the Pink Panther diamond goes missing.
However, when you dumb down Inspector Clouseau, what are you left with? Absolutely nothing.
The ending is ridiculous, and the whole movie is ridiculous.
In fact, the movie is so boring that at one point I didn’t even feel like watching any more of it.
Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards, the director of the good Pink Panther movies, are undoubtedly rolling over in their graves.
THE PINK PANTHER 2 has been dumbed down even more than the 2006 version with Steve Martin, and let us hope that this is the last one.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
