Sycophant
11-27-2007, 06:16 AM
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Little Shop of Horrors
Directed by Frank Oz. 1986.
Recommended by: Spinal
There is a group of films that I should have watched. They get brought up in conversation by someone who turns to be knowingly, dropping a reference, and expecting a smile. Fearful that my memory is getting ever worse, I ask them to help me jog it. They give me the name of the film and I give a meek shrug: "Haven't seen it." They're aghast. Even I'm a little shocked. Seriously. How is it even possible that I haven't seen that yet?
Little Shop of Horrors was one of those films for me. I was delighted to have it assigned to me. While I knew much of its legacy, I knew little of it. Then, a bevy of names danced before my eyes: Frank Oz, Howard Ashman, Alan Menken, Rick Moranis, Steve Martin. This was going to be even better than I'd thought.
Really, the movie had me at "hello." I'm a sucker for anything that indulges so much in embracing its ideas and its form that it gives us a glammed-out Greek chorus singing about the miseries of Skid Row, a sadistic dentist who is scared of the prospect of an indulging masochistic Bill Murray, and a fast-talking gee-whiz Christopher Guest character that, when the little shop in question can't break the $100 bill he's got for the $50 of flowers he wants, well shucks, better give him twice as many.
So many moments work so perfectly in the movie, everyone hamming up their parts to perfection, that it sings, even when it's not singing. It's so sad, then, that the ending lost me. COMMENCE SPOILING. Everything the film seemed to be heading up to, the themes of the destructive consequences of human greed (particularly in the hands of the ill-equipped), justification, relativity, and the importance of self-assertion seemed to go out the window with a pretty cheap Hollywood brand of redemption. Up until the end, Moranis's Seymour was being held accountable by the film. I felt the abrupt change, and I find that it's no coincidence that the ending lost me. Reading up on the film, I see that negative audience reaction to the completed, expensive, apocalyptic ending was cut and replaced with this less satisfactory sequence. Reading about what would have been, I find it's almost exactly what I was expecting and would find deeply satisfying.
Having that sort of problem is fairly major, but to injure my review of the film too severely with it would do a disservice to the preceding 80-some minutes of near-bliss I relished. The film's a blast. There's a lot going on in it. And damned if those numbers aren't catchy.
***½
Little Shop of Horrors
Directed by Frank Oz. 1986.
Recommended by: Spinal
There is a group of films that I should have watched. They get brought up in conversation by someone who turns to be knowingly, dropping a reference, and expecting a smile. Fearful that my memory is getting ever worse, I ask them to help me jog it. They give me the name of the film and I give a meek shrug: "Haven't seen it." They're aghast. Even I'm a little shocked. Seriously. How is it even possible that I haven't seen that yet?
Little Shop of Horrors was one of those films for me. I was delighted to have it assigned to me. While I knew much of its legacy, I knew little of it. Then, a bevy of names danced before my eyes: Frank Oz, Howard Ashman, Alan Menken, Rick Moranis, Steve Martin. This was going to be even better than I'd thought.
Really, the movie had me at "hello." I'm a sucker for anything that indulges so much in embracing its ideas and its form that it gives us a glammed-out Greek chorus singing about the miseries of Skid Row, a sadistic dentist who is scared of the prospect of an indulging masochistic Bill Murray, and a fast-talking gee-whiz Christopher Guest character that, when the little shop in question can't break the $100 bill he's got for the $50 of flowers he wants, well shucks, better give him twice as many.
So many moments work so perfectly in the movie, everyone hamming up their parts to perfection, that it sings, even when it's not singing. It's so sad, then, that the ending lost me. COMMENCE SPOILING. Everything the film seemed to be heading up to, the themes of the destructive consequences of human greed (particularly in the hands of the ill-equipped), justification, relativity, and the importance of self-assertion seemed to go out the window with a pretty cheap Hollywood brand of redemption. Up until the end, Moranis's Seymour was being held accountable by the film. I felt the abrupt change, and I find that it's no coincidence that the ending lost me. Reading up on the film, I see that negative audience reaction to the completed, expensive, apocalyptic ending was cut and replaced with this less satisfactory sequence. Reading about what would have been, I find it's almost exactly what I was expecting and would find deeply satisfying.
Having that sort of problem is fairly major, but to injure my review of the film too severely with it would do a disservice to the preceding 80-some minutes of near-bliss I relished. The film's a blast. There's a lot going on in it. And damned if those numbers aren't catchy.
***½