Only now does it occur to me... MOTHER'S BOYS (1993)

Only now does it occur to me... that MOTHER'S BOYS (1993) deserves its place in the pantheon of scary-campy "diva gone mad" thrillers, a proud tradition stretching at least from 1964's STRAIT-JACKET to 2019's MA.

Picture it: KRAMER VS. KRAMER, THE STEPFATHER, and SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, mashed together and directed in the fashion of "a John Waters Hitchcock thriller"... and starring Jamie Lee Curtis!

It must be noted that Jamie Lee, in a rare villainous turn, is decked out as if her style icons are Angelica Huston and Annette Bening in THE GRIFTERS: cool sunglasses, dyed blonde hair in a "sea anemone" cut, and the most wicked blazers this side of a Joan Crawford movie. I mean, look at how Queen JLC elevates the pedestrian act of grocery shopping:

JLC plays "Jude," a mother of three who abruptly left her husband (Peter Gallagher) and kids for reasons the screenplay judges as "um, I dunno... unknowable crazy-woman motivations maybe involving a traumatic childhood?" She didn't leave a note, at any rate.

In the three years since, Gallagher's "Robert"––a primo soap opera archetype, the stiff-upper-lip architect dad who's trying to repair his broken heart––has moved on and is dating Joanne Whalley (WILLOW, NAVY SEALS). She is styled like Jeanne Tripplehorn in the thrillers of this era and in no way deserves the inspired madness which is deposited on her doorstep.

You see, Jamie Lee Curtis shows up out of nowhere––and she wants her family back, her Gallagher back, and Joanne Whalley... dead!

She is willing to use raw sexual/elaborately violent schemes to get what she wants, and I must say that this movie truly has a Joe Eszterhas-ian (BASIC INSTINCT, SHOWGIRLS) understanding of human sensuality. 

There are so many ludicrous happenings in this movie that Dame Vanessa Redgrave (!)

is pushed down a flight of stairs by a her grandson

 ––we're talkin' two, full-body flips––

and it's only, like, the fifth most insane thing to happen in this movie.

What are some others, you might ask? I couldn't dream of giving them all away, but I will say that Jamie Lee gets a bathtub masturbation scene as campy as anything in THE PAPERBOY or the Angela Lansbury workout video.

A personal favorite is when she buys a bunch of sugary cereals for her estranged family (on that grocery trip where she looked so fabulous) and, before she can gift them to her children, she sees them out enjoying a nice dinner with Joanne Whalley (the horror!). She does what any sensible hag-horror-heroine would do and drives into the sunset, sob-steering while she flings entire bags of groceries onto the highway.

To me, this is as iconic as the bunny boiling in FATAL ATTRACTION, Bette Davis' outbursts in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, and the car burning in WAITING TO EXHALE.

There's melodrama for days, and Jamie Lee does a tremendous job, really giving it 110%––

"I'M STILL THEIR FUCKING MOMMA!"

––even when the three screenwriters let it be known that they have the combined psychological maturity of an adolescent boy who caught a double feature of THE CRUSH and POISON IVY on late nite TV after his parents went to sleep. This all works in the movie's favor, I believe.

Oh man, there's a scene where Jamie Lee tries to show her son her c-section scar in a (seductive?) attempt to manipulate him into becoming THE BAD SEED/THE GOOD SON, so... MOTHER'S BOYS is not without its groaners, I suppose.

Ooh, and there's a very proto-FIGHT CLUB bit where Jamie Lee gets into a fight with herself in Joanne Whalley's office

to make it look like Joanne is the crazy one who attacked her. Nice!

The grand finale involves a beautifully absurd scenario wherein Joanne is tied up and put on trial by "Mother's Boys"

and Jamie Lee orchestrates a murder plot which involves cutting the brakes on someone's car and sending out the family dog to make them swerve to their doom

and it's all camp, beyond camp, and it brought many a smile to my lips.

There's a glossy "taking this seriously" workmanship to the direction by Yves Simoneau (BLIND TRUST, BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE) and a solid supporting cast which includes the aforementioned Vanessa Redgrave as Jamie Lee's mom, John C. McGinley (THE ROCK, SCRUBS, SURVIVING THE GAME, OFFICE SPACE) as a hapless biology teacher

and Joss Ackland (THE APPLE, LETHAL WEAPON 2) as a slimy divorce lawyer.

But, as you would assume, the entire project rides on the commitment and charisma of one Jamie Lee Curtis

Check out those fish earrings, a WANDA reference?

who I've now decided is the hero of this picture and will be awarded full custody. MOTHER'S BOYS, ladies and gentlemen.

Television Review: CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT (1992, Arnold Schwarzenegger)

Stars: I dunno, 3? 3 of 5? Does that seem like too many?
Running Time: 93 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Dyan Cannon (DEATHTRAP, BOB & TED & CAROL & ALICE), Kris Kristofferson (ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE, CONVOY), Tony Curtis (SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, SPARTACUS), Richard Roundtree (SHAFT, SHAFT'S BIG SCORE), Jimmy Workman ("Pugsley" from THE ADDAMS FAMILY and ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES), Sonny Carl Davis (TERRORVISION, THE 'BURBS). Cast by Jackie Burch, the legendary casting director responsible for the ensembles in PREDATOR, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, COMMANDO, FRIGHT NIGHT, DIE HARD, and COMING TO AMERICA. Music by Charles Fox (DEMOLITION MAN, 9 TO 5).
Tagline: "She's hungry for ratings... he's hungry for dinner... director Arnold Schwarzenegger cooks up a holiday hit!"
Best one-liner: "I'll be back!"

In a familiar, darkened alleyway: 

"So what are we doin' for the holidays this year?"

–"Nada mucho, good buddy. I'm afraid there will be no Christmas at Junta Juleil this year."  

"But what about all the good times? REINDEER GAMES? DIE HARD? BATMAN RETURNS? CHRISTMAS AT PEE WEE'S PLAYHOUSE? ELVES? JINGLE ALL THE WAY?"

–"Why would you even mention JINGLE ALL THE WAY? I'm still a little pissed at you for making me watch that."

"But don't ya just associate Christmas with Arnold Schwarzenegger?"

–"What? No."

"Well, maybe you should. Cause I got a motion picture for ya here that's gonna blow your mind: CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT."

–"Isn't that that '40s movie where, according to the promotional materials, Dennis Morgan is gonna teach Barbara Stanwyck about men, 'the Navy way?'"

"Well, yes. But this isn't that."

–"There's another CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT?"

"So in 1992, TNT––that is, Turner Network Television––decided to finance a made-for-TV remake. The choice of director was... shall we say... unconventional."

–"WHAT?! Schwarzenegger? Are you JINGLE ALL THE WAY-ing me again?"

"Not exactly. Though JINGLE ALL THE WAY is an underrated movie, and the only one I can think of which features a Santa laying down smack with candy cane nunchaku. But let's focus on the film at hand. So Arnie was trying to figure out if directing was really for him. He'd already cut his teeth on a TALES FROM THE CRYPT episode in 1990 and was looking for something bigger."

–"Uhhh.... by 'bigger,' you mean a Hallmark-level rom-com?"

"Let's not peg the big guy down. Like Walt Whitman, Arnie contains multitudes: TOTAL RECALL and TWINS, THE TERMINATOR and JUNIOR."

–"Just tell me what we're dealing with here."

"Kris Kristofferson plays a heroic forest ranger who makes the national news after a dramatic rescue. Arnold really puts a lot of himself into his direction here, as we spend some time really getting to know Kristofferson as he silently works out in his cabin. Sorta like the prologue to COMMANDO.

–"Kristofferson really giving us some Chuck Norris-in-a-Cannon-Film vibes there."

"Meanwhile, in New York City, Dyan Cannon plays a Martha Stewart-esque lifestyle TV host. The twist is that she's only the façade of the program––she doesn't actually know how to cook or decorate. 

 

She's really a lonely, apartment-dwelling lady whose greatest passion is, I guess, Hummel figurines.

 Her world is ruled by her overbearing producer, played by Tony Curtis."

–"And Arnold worked with his daughter the next year when they shot TRUE LIES! I wonder if Jamie Lee is in that movie because of Arnold and Tony's friendship?"

"Who can say. Anyway, Tony Curtis, who has retained the oily smarm of his character from SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS and fused it together with something like latter-day Liberace, is sort of the MVP of this whole strange affair.

Donning silk shirts, clutching pearls, and enjoying avocado-and-green-tea facials, Tony hasn't had this much fun since he was a pampered disco daddy in THE MANITOU."

–"Hey, like Martha Plimpton says in PECKER, 'No tea-bagging.'"

"Sure. So Tony Curtis sees Kris Kristofferson on the teevee and decides that he ought to be the special guest on Dyan Cannon's live Christmas special, to be filmed at a prop house in Connecticut. Dyan's media persona is, apparently, built on the idea that she is married with adult children and lives her life as a happy homemaker in New England. I don't know how this subterfuge is supposed to have worked, since, the first time it comes up in the film, her overbearing producer (Tony Curtis) suggests, in the spur of the moment, that he should play the role of her husband. Who's been playing that role up till now?"

–"Seems ill-conceived."

"Eh, it doesn't really matter. The whole thing would probably be easier if they just told Kris the truth, that he was appearing on a TV program governed by a certain amount of artifice. I guess it's more of a device so that Dyan Cannon has to pretend she's unavailable to Kris Kristofferson even though they have obvious and immediate chemistry."

–"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Schwarzenegger directs the scene in which they first meet with a deft directorial hand. You see, Kristofferson comes in the front door while Cannon is bending over and cleaning up some broken glass. He proceeds to check out her butt for an excruciating twenty-nine seconds."

–"That's, like, an eternity in TV time."

"Ya don't tell an auteur what to do. I've seen Terrence Malick contemplate the beauty of a reed rustling in the wind for twenty-nine seconds. Anyway, sparks continue to fly when Dyan Cannon watches Kris chopping wood."

–"Also like in COMMANDO!"

"Most things in life come back to COMMANDO. This, obviously, leads to a sequence which I would describe as 'Let Me Show You How to Cut a Tree.' It's no 'Let Me Show You How to Play Tennis,' but it works just as well in a pinch."

–"Romantic."

"I'll say. Finally, things come to a head once the live taping begins. A comedy of errors ensues with  problem after problem spawned by Dyan Cannon's fake family, her inability to actually cook, and zany/domineering producorial decisions made by Tony Curtis. 

Kris Kristofferson, the everyman, is quite confused by the whole thing,

and it's all nearly too much for poor Tony Curtis.

Oh, did I mention Richard Roundtree is in this, too? He plays a network executive whom TC (that's right, I have a new Tony Curtis abbreviation) interrupts mid-Mass––we're talkin' full-on mouthful of Eucharist––with a highlight reel on VHS."

–"What in the hell is going on here? Can we just wrap this up?"

"Oh, yeah––and you should know that Schwarzenegger puts a few more personal, directorial touches on the movie. First-off, like Alfred Hitchcock, he gives himself a cameo. He plays "Guy in Crew Tent on Phone With Winter Coat on His Knees."

–"Just like Hitch. I'm sure it's worth the price of admission."

"And I saved the best for last––he has Dyan Cannon's faux son-in-law (Gene Lythgow) dress up as THE TERMINATOR and say, 'I'll be back.'"

–"Gene Lythgow? Is that like an off-brand John Lithgow? Everything about this movie seems like it's slightly off-brand, ersatz. Oh, it's not that CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT. And it aired on TNT? TNT is such an ersatz network. Why not just put it on USA or TBS?"

"Doesn't seem like you're much in the holiday spirit."

–"I'm not. I'm a real grinch."

"I know what'll cheer you up. I'll let you in on a little secret. Remember REINDEER GAMES?"

–"I've been trying to forget REINDEER GAMES."

"Yeah, but whenever I'm feeling low, I watch that really heartwarming scene where Gary Sinise throws darts into Ben Affleck. Like Colt 45, I find that it works every time."

–"Whaddya know, I do feel better. Why, it's a holiday miracle––Merry Christmas!––God bless us every one!"

"It's the gift that keeps giving. Anyway, CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT, ladies and gentlemen."