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Motorama
The Story: A ten year old kid, Gus, runs away from his dysfunctional family, steals a classic Ford Mustang, and sets out on the open highway, trying to win a game called MOTORAMA sponsored by the Chimera Gas Company. Collect all the cards, spell out "Motorama", and win the loot. His journey begins, encountering Phil, the friendliest gas station attendant in the world, who is trying to fly a kite with a picture of himself shaking hands with the sheriff to Heaven so he can impress the angels. And so the stage is set as Gus travels across a fictional landscape, one part Canada, one part American desert, running into oddball characters as he tries to collect all the cards. He is beaten up and tattooed by bikers. Is kidnapped, tortured and loses an eye by a mobster/security salesman he tried to steal gas from. And as he gets more cards, makes his way to the industrialized wastelands of Essex, where his hair takes a Warhol and he confronts a Bizzaro version of himself, he finds the final card, but when he goes to Chimera's corporate headquarters, he finds out his dream may just be that, only a dream.
The Film:Unlike a quirky comedy like Raising Arizona or Edward Scissorhands, Motorama (1991) never manages to gel, to let you believe in its offbeat world. Maybe its the bad child acting. Maybe its the cameos. Maybe its just the thin plot. Instead, it comes off like the filmmakers were sitting around saying, "My aren't we kooky?" and patting themselves on the back for being strange. I believe in the strange, surreal world of Delicatessen, but I don't buy the forced one in Motorama one bit. Written by Joseph Minon, who also wrote After Hours and Vampires Kiss. The film was directed by Barry Shils, who has one other directing credit Wigstock: The Movie, and will most likely to be known in film history for producing the 80's horror standards The Stuff, Its Alive 3: Island of the Alive and Return to Salems Lot rather than for directing Motorama.
The road movie is nothing new, neither is the quirky road movie. Although I'm a huge surrealist fan, the symbolic and dreamy bits were either obvious (Gus running into the older, ruined version of himself) or just strange for strangeness sake (Lets get the guy from Eraserhead to be a hotel manger obsessed with catching squirrels). Its the kind of movie people call "weird" and "surreal", only if they haven't seen Begotten, Arizona Dream, Blue Velvet, Simon of the Desert, or any number of more competent surrealist films. Not only is it obvious, with Gus slicking back his hair Gordon Gecko style when he is corrupt, or a bad juxtaposition of a couple having sex in the back of his car while he gets orgasmically ecstatic over finding a much needed card. It also is silly like when he puts on a pair of Groucho glasses and passes as an adult food inspector. And, it falls prey to one of the great contrived plottings, the full circle, "It was all just a dream" scenario. And in the end, we are supposed to realize that he films message is the bond of friendship is what we should strive for, not monetary profit, money can corrupt the soul, but its all rather pointless because I already knew that was the motif in the first five minutes of the movie.
This film is populated with tons of third tier stars and recognizable character actors. Virtually every face in the film, will have viewers scratching their heads and saying "I've seen that guy before." As kind of neat as it is, its also another thing that takes you out of the film itself and lends to the complete disillusion of the film, because the faces are just that, faces, instead of defined characters. Lets see, who shows up? Martha Quinn as a bank teller. Meat Loaf as a biker. Garret Morris as a gas station attendant. Drew Barrymore as Gus' dream vision girl. Jack "Eraserhead" Nance as a hotel proprietor. Veteran character actor Dick Miller as a family man. Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea as a hyper, retarded?, simpleton restaurant worker. Robert 'I was the coach on Wonder Years and the holographic Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager" Picardo as a cop. And a bunch of other names like Alice Beasley, John Deihl, Mary Woronov, Robin Duke, Irwin Keyes, Sandy Baron, and Michael J. Pollard, whose names you may not recognize, but whose faces are well known as bit part and fringe players in numerous tv and film works.
I guess its an okay curiosity, but the uneven and quirky Roadside Prophets would be a better alternative.
The DVD: Columbia/Tristar Studios does a mediocre, no fuss, no muss presentation of this cult film. Picture- Anamorphic and FULLSCREEN, which begs the question: If you are going to present the film cropped, missing a considerable amount of its image, why on Earth bother to anamorphically enhance it? I figure anyone who desires their DVDs be anamorphic, probably also wants them in their proper ratio, and anyone who hates "those black bars" probably won't know what anamorphic means. The image itself shows strong color, but is overall pretty worn and soft with fairly low resolution. But, true cinephiles probably stopped reading my Picture review once they saw it was fullscreen, something that is this day and age should be a secondary option, unless you're buying an Ernest movie of something. Those people probably wouldn't care, whereas the rest of us just wont stand for losing image. Sound- English, Dolby Digital Stereo, Close Captioned. Pretty standard and competent, modestly budgeted affair. The sound is fine, but if you ever wondered what Andy Summers of the Police was doing all these years, well, he did the repetitive and bland incidnetal music for this film. Extras- None, really. 28 Chapters and a "bonus" trailer for The Adventures of Joe Dirt, something I don't consider much of a bonus.
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