Man on Film: Take Me Home Tonight and the Near-Certain Eddie Money Renaissance That Will Ensue

[This is an oldie, but a goodie. From time to time, I'll repost an old entry. Don't worry, I won't re-post shitty entries. This is from late February and is near and dear to my heart.]

As if you were not keenly aware, the [chris]Topher Grace star-vehicle Take Me Home Tonight opens on the first Friday of March. Judging by the [very adult NSFW Red-Band] trailer below, this will surely be a comedic tour de force that rivals Arsenic and Old Lace, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, Modern Times, Duck Soup, and The New Guy.

Yes, there was once a film starring Dennis Miller

All right, maybe not, but it might not suck. And if the only other Angie Everhart movie you saw was Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood (read: this guy) only to swear off getting teased like that again, then here is your chance to finally see her [presumably] partially nude, albeit 16 years after the fact.

Any talk of the movie is largely irrelevant, at least here. It is opening against Rango--not this film's target audience--and The Adjustment Bureau--perhaps the perfect counter-programming for those not wanting to indulge in the paranoid world of Philip K. Dick's imagination. It will get its audience of stoned/drunk 17-to-45-year-olds*, and nothing I say here will affect this one way or the other.

*Let's not pretend that this will not be a core demographic, kids. Americans stopped growing up after the baby-boomers came of age.

What is most important is that this will surely start an Eddie Money renaissance. If ever there were a more deservingly fella than Edward Mahoney, I've not seen him. And, oh, the possibilities...

If there is one thing that Hollywood has proven they are willing, nay, likely to do, it is take an idea and run it into the ground. For a frame of reference, witness Battle: Los Angeles, which is basically the same film as Skyline (no, I will not be embedding the trailers here), and both of those look to be the same fucking film as every other alien invasion movie ever. Given the inarguably bright future for Take Me Home Tonight, it is important to prepare ourselves for the orgiastic onslaught of Eddie Money tunes that will be finding their way into film titles for years to come.

Buckle up kids.

Think I'm In Love

Taking a slight cue from the video that inspired the film's name, this will feature Ron Livingston as an mild-mannered introvert, Mark, who lives in the estate left to him by his dearly departed parents. A professor in Library Sciences, he is dragged out on the town by his amiable graduate assistant (Adam Brody), where he meets a wild, mysterious, vampiric woman (Monica Bellucci) who casts her spell and sinks her teeth into her mark. After a whirlwind month-long romance, he begins to wonder if things are too good to be true, looks around at how he seems to have lost his bearings, and says, "Fuck it, this is Monica Bellucci."

We Should Be Sleeping

A black comedy in which a couple married for 35 years (Alan Thicke and Joanna Kerns) find out they both have inoperable brain tumors from obsessive cell phone use and make a suicide pact. In an extended take on the first act of Harold & Maude, their various attempts at taking fate into their own hands are unsuccessful in hilarious ways. When they finally give up and decide to let God do his will, a grand piano falls from the sky, crushing them while the titular song plays the movie to its credits featuring candid photos from the set of Growing Pains.

Club Michelle

An indie comedy in which a college student group dedicated to honoring the current First Lady tries in vain to secure Michelle Obama as their special guest speaker at their year-end mixer with their intra-campus rival group the ObaManiacs, who have netted Rahm Emanuel as their speaker. Their efforts are continually cross-cut with segments of Rahm Emanuel's insanely lewd speech at the mixer.

Endless Nights

Hugh Grant stars as a father of ten-year-old triplets who has to watch as all three of his daughters try out for and get parts in three separate community theater productions that end up rehearsing every weeknight. A fully aware father, he has to watch as his daughters, who are all clearly horrible actresses, butcher already awful plays while getting absurdly effusive and earnest praise from everyone around. The disconnect between his realistic read on things and everyone else's feedback cause him to contemplate moving his family to Barrow, AK, where the nights may not end in the summer but they don't have community theater.

Walk On Water

Scott Stapp stars as the Second Coming of Christ, the role he was born to play, but rather than usher in the end of times, he falls for a drive-thru worker at a Popeye's in Atlanta, played by Stacey Dash. He goes through the drive-thru every day trying to work up the courage to ask her out, but her boyfriend (William Zabka) is having none of it. After a confrontation, Zabka's foil challenges Jesus to a water-skiing contest, which Jesus dominates, of course. Jesus gets the girl, ushers in the end of the world, and Zabka's character gets sent to hell, along with the dickish owner (William Atherton) of the Popeye's in the film.

Two Tickets to Paradise
*
Despite the universal acclaim for the directorial debut of D.B. Sweeney in the first film called Two Tickets to Paradise, 
(here is the trailer )
the name is used again, this time for a Terence Malick film in which a single mother (Charlize Theron) and her 12-year-old son (Haley Joel Osment) win a potato sack race only to find that the prize is two bus tickets and a three-week stay in Paradise, MI, a small town in the Upper Peninsula with nothing to do but watch the freighters on the Lake Superior. Weirded out by the UPers and their backward ways, they soon find themselves ostracized after badmouthing Tom Izzo and have to wait out their final week in Paradise while the locals scowl at them.

*This version is strangely faster than the album version. I wonder why...

Baby Hold On

Epitomizing big studio laziness, Open Water is re-titled Baby Hold On, a Money-centric soundtrack is inserted, and the film is re-released.

Shakin'

Not to be left out, Michael Moore turns his lens on epilepsy... Of the feline variety. It is a scathing indictment as to how our government is failing our cats. As he uncovers reams of documents, he finds that it is, in fact, Wal-Mart and Monsanto acting in cahoots to draw our attention to seizing kitties of a family-friendly variety while they actively find ways to kill us in an effort to take over the world.

Man on Film: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

This is absolutely the oldest movie on the list* that I have yet to write about, so you can take solace in that fact. This, as every Nicolas Cage movie is, was a must-see in the theater. The Sorcerer's Apprentice marks the seventh straight live-action Nic Cage film that I've seen in the theater. For those keeping track at home, that means I've seen Next (3 times), National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Bangkok Dangerous, Knowing, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans, Kick-Ass, and The Sorcerer's Apprentice during their theatrical release. If you wanted to play a little loose with the rules, you could also add Grindhouse to the mix as he was in the Werewolf Women of the SS trailer, but I take my Cage streak seriously, so I won't.

*As mentioned in the Facebook group--join, fans...

Now I want you to think long and hard about how many straight movies you've seen of an actor or actress in the theater. I've seen four of the last five Matt Damon star-vehicles in the theater, but he's done a couple of cameos that I still haven't seen. That is not the case with Cage.

"Why the love for Nicolas Cage?" some of you joyless bastards may ask. Because every moment he is on screen is fucking sublime. Hell, every minute he's being interviewed is sublime. Case in point (trust me, take the time--Jeremy and Mark would agree):


Back to the movie, though, The Sorcerer's Apprentice is a lot of relatively wholesome fun. It is the third instance in which Jon Turteltaub and Nicolas Cage have teamed up, and just like in the case of the National Treasure films, the finished product is a success. I haven't seen Fantasia since about 1985, so I barely remember the source material that provided the inspiration, but the modernization of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" section of the film seems to have been revamped in good faith.

The element of the film that ultimately makes it work is the student/teacher relationship between Jay Baruchel's character, Dave, and Cage's Balthazar Blake. While Baruchel can be occasionally irritating, Cage's turn as the mentor is rich and a source of many laughs. Both the levity and the gravity come from the person of Balthazar Blake, and in Cage's sure hands all that is necessary is delivered. All of the conflict within the film originates in Blake's past. Cage's ever-present awareness of character imbues the movie with a richness of personal history--the conflict with Alfred Molina's Maxim Horvath, the centuries-old widower's love for Veronica*, all of this falls flat and so does the movie with a lesser actor carrying the weight of the film on his shoulders. Hell, the fact that a movie co-starring Jay Baruchel is thoroughly entertaining is a testament to the acting chops of Nic Cage.

*Although men will probably pine for Monica Bellucci for centuries anyway, so maybe this isn't that great a feat...

Now, yes, the story is as much Dave's as it is Balthazar's, and the apprentice could probably have been cast with another actor who would not have been as irritating to others, but I didn't really have a problem with Baruchel. Sure, he has a slightly off-putting nervous energy in general, but I think it works for the most part.

In the end, this film is good family fun and has one of our generation's finest actors gracing it with his presence. Some may question his selection of roles, but he is just doing what he loves, and I am pretty goddamn glad he is.