Tag: The Breakfast Club

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1986) ****
Little Shop of Horrors, based on the off-Broadway stage musical itself based on the 1960 Roger Corman cult film, is one of those movies that I like a little bit more every time I watch it.

I’ll just come right out and say it early on in this review: I’ll take Little Shop of Horrors over The Rocky Horror Picture Show every day of the week because the performances and characters, the science fiction and horror plot, the script, the direction, the musical production numbers, and the special effects are all far superior. Granted, to be fair, Little Shop of Horrors had more than 25 times the production budget of Rocky Horror.

I watched both films around the same time, in the late ’80s or early ’90s both on late-night local TV Saturday night movie programming. I also remember first coming across Wolfen and The Breakfast Club in this format. Anyway, I’ve always liked Little Shop of Horrors and never particularly cared for Rocky Horror, which I’ve come to like even less with every viewing so it’s Little Shop of Horrors inverted.

Rick Moranis stars as the meek, nerdy florist Seymour Krelborn. He means well but he’s extremely clumsy and pines after his beautiful coworker Audrey (Ellen Greene) who dates the abusive, sadistic, nitrous oxide fiend ’50s style greaser biker dentist Orin Scrivello (Steve Martin). Seymour’s perpetually chewed out by his boss Mr. Mushnik (Vincent Gardenia), the owner of Mushnik’s Flower Shop. Everything changes for Seymour, Audrey, and Mr. Mushnik when Seymour discovers Audrey II (voiced by Levi Stubbs, lead singer of the Four Tops), one mean green mother from outer space with an insatiable appetite and designs on taking over Planet Earth. Feeding Audrey II proves to be a nightmare for Seymour.

Moranis gives his definitive film performance, Greene returns to play Audrey from the stage production, Moranis and Greene make for a great movie couple and they’re very deserving of a happy ending, and Martin and Stubbs are both absolutely incredible in their villainous roles.

In fact, Martin and Stubbs both should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but it’s understandable why they were not in a year with supporting actor winner Michael Caine for Hannah and Her Sisters and nominees Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe for Platoon, Denholm Elliott for A Room with a View, and Dennis Hopper for Hoosiers.

Comedies, science fiction, and horror films very rarely earn nods from the Academy, a problem for Little Shop of Horrors when it encompasses all three genres.

It also became complicated when considering Stubbs (1936-2008) for a nomination, since he’s the voice of an animatronic puppet with 21 different principal puppeteers including Brian Henson. Stubbs’ authoritative, booming voice benefits the movie infinitely in both the dialogue scenes between Audrey II and poor Seymour and four musical numbers.

Audrey II’s Mean Green Mother from Outer Space, with lyrics by Howard Ashman and music by Alan Menken, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song and lost to Berlin’s Take My Breath Away from Top Gun.

I’ve been known to say to pets both canine and feline Feed me, Seymour.

Crystal (Tichina Arnold), Ronette (Michelle Weeks), and Chiffon (Tisha Campbell), names borrowed from three girl groups contemporaneous with the original Little Shop of Horrors, provide a Greek chorus with sass and style.

Jim Belushi, John Candy, Christopher Guest, and Bill Murray show up in small roles.

Little Shop of Horrors originally retained the ending of the stage musical with Audrey and Seymour killed and giant Audrey II plants on a Godzilla-like rampage, but test audiences positively absolutely hated that Audrey and Seymour were killed and the original 23-minute ending became a rewritten and reshot happy ending that pushed the release date back to December 19, 1986.

I’ve only watched Little Shop of Horrors with the happy ending, and I must say that I’m more than happy with that.

Night School (2018)

NIGHT SCHOOL

NIGHT SCHOOL (2018) One star

I know that I am probably not the target audience for director Malcolm D. Lee’s comedy starring Kevin Hart, who also served as one of the six writers and producers on NIGHT SCHOOL.

I know that, but I am still hard pressed to come up with a single (even fleeting) moment I laughed at during a movie listed at 111 minutes.

I struggled through NIGHT SCHOOL, but I must report there were those around me who laughed their heads off at regular intervals. They made up the difference for my stone face. (Previously, I had this experience at THE HANGOVER, STEP BROTHERS, and TED, though far more pronounced for those comedies since I watched them in a crowded multiplex.)

Perusing through Hart’s credits, I found one movie over the last 18 years that I watched before experiencing NIGHT SCHOOL, just one movie and not exactly a good one at that, SCARY MOVIE 3. I might have watched SUPERHERO MOVIE, but it’s not exactly coming back to me now with any clarity. I am glad that I have missed just about every one of his movies.

In NIGHT SCHOOL, Hart plays a high school dropout named Teddy who’s forced to attend night school at his alma mater to pursue a GED. It is far more complicated than that, of course, especially since he’s not been honest with his far more successful fiance about a single thing. Yes, he’s a hustler. I know, I know, it’s a shocker.

I especially found any of the restaurant scenes in NIGHT SCHOOL difficult to watch, because they involve a pubic hair custody battle, incessant mugging and melodrama especially by Hart, racism accusations that will remind one of bad scenes from BEVERLY HILLS COP and RUSH HOUR 2 involving Eddie Murphy and Chris Tucker, and I just can’t take that sentence and paragraph any longer though I will be leaving behind crucial plot points.

The classroom scenes are really not any better, since the night school students and authority figures combine to form a modern-day comedic variation on a platoon in a World War II movie. There are would-be identification figures for everybody in NIGHT SCHOOL.

We have the harpy teacher with an inspirational heart of gold (Tiffany Haddish), the high school principal (Taran Killam) whom our protagonist embarrassed back in high school who’s prone to fits of mugging for the camera more pronounced than the rest of the cast, the working class laborer (Rob Riggle) who has literally broken his back and wants to get into management, the harried housewife (Mary Lynn Rajskub) with a great big lummox for a husband, the former waiter (Al Madrigal) who dreams of being like Justin Bieber or Justin Timberlake, the woke conspiracy theorist (Romany Malco), the young woman (Anne Winters) from a wealthy family, and the convict (Fat Joe) beamed into a standard plot through Skype.

Hart, Haddish, and Killam in particular are guilty of overplaying everything, bludgeoning us with every single joke until the film gets all gooey and sentimental in the final reel and takes its plot oh so seriously. This cast acts like each audience member suffers from a learning disability (or hearing loss).

I absolutely hate it when comedies go for cheap gag after cheap gag for most of their running time and then get all serious and borderline preachy at the end, like they want both their NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE and their ABC Afterschool Special. I wanted to gag when Teddy began his meandering feel good speech at graduation.

Austin Chronicle reviewer Marc Savlov incorporated both the Hindenburg and John Hughes’ THE BREAKFAST CLUB into his opening sentence. That’s good and true, because NIGHT SCHOOL indeed leaves me saying “Oh, the Humanity!”