"Accomplishments"
At home: To be fair to it, let's look at what corpus of material backs Masters of the Universe. We have the toy line (one I collected as a kid, even), the cartoon, 1987's hokey live action film, and the meme with the 4 Non Blondes song. And in the first act of the overlong 2026 film, the references to all of these come at you fast and furiously. It doesn't take itself seriously (well good), but still comes off as entirely too silly, which I think comes down to how DUMB it is. The humor (despite being handled by writers who have written funny things, and a director who has made charming movies) is absolutely atrocious, juggling brain dead slapstick, adolescent dick jokes, and the hero who is such an IDIOT, I shouted at the screen for him to shut up at one point. Prince Adam is particularly stupid and as the holder of the stated "lesson" - that empathy is important - completely fails (still has to resort to violence to solve problems, indeed, the movie seems to sneer at empathy). Skeletor, invisibly played by box office poison Jared Leto covered in CG and an unrecognizable voice so what's the point, is just as dumb, really a parody of villain in line with Austin Powers's Dr. Evil. It's a movie that really wants to be that last D&D movie, or Guardians of the Galaxy (they even steal the heroic walk that gets deflated while an old pop tune plays, which is hack at this point), and beneath the infantile attempts at comedy and the mounds of sloppy CG, any good action gag, joke or heart (and they exist) is smothered along with any sense that the stakes matter.
I wasn't a big fan of The Devil Wears Prada and its mixed messages, nor do I agree with the algorithmic need to produce sequels 20 years too late, so the second film was perhaps in trouble from the beginning. Still, it's a cast one likes, and that might carry the day. It does not. I at least felt like the original was a comedy, while this one plays as a sappy drama with too many happy endings, and where I could at least care about Andy (Anne Hathaway) in the 2006 effort, in 2026, she's more of a facilitator of other people's happiness and I'm supposed to care about a glossy (now online) magazine for posh people and for the tyrannical boss, whose humanization is probably why things don't play as funny as they used to. There's certainly an attempt at discussing the state of journalism and the equity bros destroying everything for their portfolios, but it's a contortion too many for me to believe journalistic integrity will survive through a fashion mag. Ultimately, I'll buy almost anything if it's entertaining, but Prada 2 was really kind of boring.
An action hero must protect a young girl? Unheard of. Shelter is Jason Statham's entry in that overused subgenre, but he has Jason Statham going for him. He's kind of like Liam Neeson, always doing the same action thriller, but he seems to keep the boat steady at 3 out of 5 stars, you know? Add Naomi Ackie and Billy Nighy, and I can't resist, even if the material is far below their abilities. Statham is a lighthouse keeper (ish) on a lonely island where a young girl (Bohdi Rae Breathnach from Hamnet and the upcoming Werewulf, she's quite good) rescued from a storm. Often in this formula, the bad guys are after the child for some reason, but in this, it'll be his dark past that incidentally puts her in the crosshairs. The first part of the film is rather minimalistic - characters not speaking, on a bare island with few rooms - almost promising something with a little more dramatic weight. It doesn't actually make good on that promise, but turns into a solid action picture, if not a superlative one. Indeed, I might have given it a ½-star bump if it hadn't been so melancholy. It's just too sad to be fun.
I'll fully admit I don't really know Alan Partridge, except that he's one of Steve Coogan's characters, and watching Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, he feels very much like Coogan's standard comc persona - an egotistical narcissist, often inappropriate, and comfortable with word play - not that there's anything wrong with that. In this feature-length adventure, media personality Alan Partridge is working at a radio station which has just been bought up by a conglomerate bound to make some changes. Among them, firing older midnight man Colm Meaney (nice!) who goes postal on the station and takes hostages. Only Alan is allowed to negotiate for the police. If all the attention doesn't go to his head. It's an amusing affair, with plenty of that word play and Meaney as a sympathetic character where, of course, Coogan isn't (a character like Partridge is there mostly to be humiliated, after all, and we need to want that). Other comedy performers flit in and out (watch for a very small role by Diane Morgan, but you can't mistake the voice). As a former radio person, those elements are realistic enough and pass muster. Well, except what's actually SAID on-air, which would get anyone fired.
Not Quite Hollywood - The wild, untold story of OZploitation - makes the point that without exploitation films, Australia wouldn't have built the infrastructure necessary to have a film industry. I can't argue with that, though the couple critics interviewed in this documentary sure wish it wasn't true. Their hate for the material is hilarious and the best thing about the doc. They got many of the participating actors and directors - including better known Americans like Jamie Lee Curtis and Stacey Keach (Road Games), as well as fannish connoisseur Quentin Tarantino (of course). The portrait is that of an over-censored nation (Australia is where lost Doctor Who episodes' most violent clips survived and it's hard to believe a gunshot or scream was too much for Aussie TV in the 60s, but there you go) suddenly unleashed in the 70s and therefore going further than anyone else on sex, horror and violence/cars, and all without proper regulation and safety (which makes it akin to Hong Kong cinema in how "real" it feels). The doc is "told" with some humor and is entertaining, but for me, the point of these documentaries is to find movies I should watch. Though definitely in the trashier category (I've seen all the more acceptable ones), there are some flicks I want to track down here, so mission accomplished.
Who at SeaWorld thought it was good publicity to let a movie stage shark attacks in its theme park? Jaws 3-D is the winner in this exchange, not only getting to use a giant water "set", but also SeaWorld's star dolphins (who play a surprisingly big part) and, of course, Shamu (in a pair of cameos). Set at some point in the future, Brody's boys are now adults, and one of them is Dennis Quaid, an engineer working at the park. The kid brother was traumatized by the previous films' events and is afraid of the water... unless Lea Thompson's water skier babe lures him in there with her particular kink. And of course, there's a giant shark lurking in the massive network of reservoirs and at least one worthwhile, ridiculous death. The effects are absolutely terrible, especially the silly 3-D, but 40+ years on, that's now part of the charm. It's just unfortunate that we keep pausing for 3-D moments, though they're less egregious than those taken for the SeaWorld marketing. All in all, it's not a great film (duh), but it's got a lively cast of characters and wrings a lot of value from its setting, so definitely not the worst Shark Week selection.
Ashes to Ashes, the sequel series to Life on Mars, has Keeley Hawes (MI-5, Bodygiard) as a police profiler who, after studying the curious case of DI Sam Tyler (John Simm) is shot and sent back in time to the early 1980s, where she's part of the same police crew (albeit now moved to London). It didn't work for That 70s Show, but Life on Mars left us on an ambiguous note, so I think we're still interested in the mystery. Perhaps because of DI Alex Drake (Hawes)'s background, she remains convinced it's all her dying brain's hallucination and that if she can solve certain crimes (in particular, the murder of her parents), she'll have repaired her psyche, wake up and be reunited with her daughter. It's certainly a more surreal experience than the previous show. Philip Glenister and the gang are still the rough, sexist cops they were in the 70s, but things are changing in Britain, so they walk a tighter line that's also interesting to watch. Not sure about the will-they won't they between Alex and Gene Hunt, but perhaps that's part of the 80s of it. Nevertheless, I don't think the show feels too much like an 80s cop show - there's a fast car and some UZIs about, but generally, it's about how attitudes have changed rather than emulating an older kind of show. 1981 is still a little early for me to completely tap into the soundtrack nostalgically, but I definitely recognize and enjoy more tracks than in Life on Mars. Series 1's big mystery comes to a conclusion, but doesn't completely let Alex off the hook, so you get a complete story, but also may look forward to the subsequent two series.
[1984] The Philadelphia Experiment: Although I had perhaps, over time, confused this film with The Final Countdown, and rewatching it seemed strange and new (to me, I don't mean innovative), I do know I saw it in 9th grade because our English teacher would make us watch genre/action flicks I can only assume matched his tastes and write reports on them (the other two were Octopussy and Missing in Action Part 2, judge him as you please). Right off the bat, you know the USS Eldridge was the victim of time travel back in 1943, because the US Navy refused to offer its usual help to the production. That's a classic cover-up. Based on the "real" urban legend about a classified accident, the film quickly turns into a fish out of water story where boys from the 1940s interact with 1980s stuff while a wormhole tries to suck them back to their ship, giving me Howard the Duck vibes more than Final Countdown ones. It's fine, but the one main character played by a recognizable actor - Nancy Allen - creates a problem for me. She just helps the travellers and falls in love with one of them entirely too quickly. There's no real motivation behind it, except Hollywood formula. Ah! I bet that's why the Navy didn't want its name associated with it.
[1985] The Jewel of the Nile: Romancing the Stone's Vacation Sequel feels even more like Indiana Jones than the first film did. We may be in the present day, but Kathleen Turner's romance writer and Michael Douglas's globe-trotting rogue go to Egypt where Raiders of the Lost Ark is clearly evoked. There's a very out-of-control airplane scene, our heroes being left in a tomb with nasty critters, and a weird and fiery mystical sequence at the end. Further, it's like being thrown in the past. The political conflict is something out of Lawrence of Arabia, and the couple stumble upon an African tribe ripped from National Geographic (if you know what I mean). So downgrade the military hardware and remove a pair of sunglasses here and there, and you could have sold this as a 1930s adventure. And it's... fine. Too much bickering (which was part of the original's formula as well), but there's plenty of Saturday matinée action and Danny DeVito is back with his comedy stylings. I think I remember this series as much as I do because the acting trio would do a lot more together - the "Romancing" films aren't very memorable.
[1986] Hoosiers: Somewhere between Cool Runnings and The Dead Poets' Society, except with white boy high school basketball in the early 1950s, this true Cinderella team underdog story stars Gene Hackman as a disgraced coach punching under his weight in a small rural school where one doesn't really have the pick of a litter. While there are various success stories throughout, to me, a coaching movie should prove the "correctness" of the coaching strategy, and Hoosiers fails to deliver on that. Discipline? Yes, he's got that handled, and I appreciate his speeches. Unfortunately, when it comes to strategy, the film just isn't good at choreographing the games in a way that makes it understandable. A bit of folksy jargon and then balls hit hoops and I'm afraid I don't know the game enough to understand why the coaching was important. Worse, and this is surely because of the biopic origins of the movie (even if very loosely based, the year and team are even different), the coach's career isn't saved by his own passion or being proven right in his methods, but because a star player decides to return to the team. A couple of rousing moments at the end of the last couple games, but otherwise, it's a lot of montage under orchestral score, and I was bored with the sports sequences, which really shouldn't happen.
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