Hall of Fame for Meathead?
Posted: January 10th, 2008 | Filed under: Pop Culture | 58 Comments »
The question — and I think it is one that everyone is asking these days — is simple: Did Rob Reiner have a good enough peak to get into the Hall of Fame?
This question comes up now because it appears from early reviews that The Bucket List — a seemingly can’t-miss movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as two old farts trying to live out their greatest aspirations before they die — missed badly. Seriously, how could you put Nicholson and Freeman in a movie together and have that movie suck? It seems impossible. All you need is to have Nicholson do his crazy, “All you have to do is hold the chicken and bring me the toast,†bit he’s been doing for 50 years (hell, Reiner had already done that once with the whole, “You can’t handle the truth,†thing) and have Freeman do his, “Get busy living,†thing, and you have an entertaining movie. You don’t even need a script.
Apparently, the problem — and I haven’t seen the movie yet, but it seems pretty unanimous — is that The Bucket List DOES have a script.
Anyway, if The Bucket List indeed sucks, then it seems likely that Reiner — at age 60 — is finished making good movies. Reiner’s career as a director, like Dale Murphy’s and Jim Rice’s, fell off the cliff after about 10 years. It more or less ended in 1994 when he inexplicably directed North, which is about as bad a movie as anyone can make, unless you count “The Story of Us†which Reiner directed five years later. Wow, The Story of Us was bad. If given the choice between going to the mall the day before Christmas or watching TSOU again, I would — well, I pray it never comes down to that. I saw TSOU with my wife in a hotel room somewhere or other, and it wasn’t just a bad movie, it was the kind of bad that could make you hate ALL movies, the kind of bad that made you consider going Amish so you never had to see another one again. I remember it being so bad that it actually made me reconsider my lifelong crush on Michelle Pfeiffer (then I watched “Fabulous Baker Boys†again and regained my senses).
It seems improbable that any director who gave us two movies as bad as North and TSOU could possibly make the Hall of Fame. There were extenuating circumstances — Bruce Willis was in both of them. It could be that’s just the price you pay when you decide to put Bruce Willis in a movie that doesn’t have the word “Die†in the title.
Aside: Speaking of amazing careers — Bruce Willis wasn’t just in North and The Story of Us. He was also in all-time stinkers Hudson Hawk, The Last Boy Scout, Look Who’s Talking Too AND Bonfire of the Vanities. That means he’s been in six of the worst motion pictures made the last 20 years. Then again, he was in Pulp Fiction and Sixth Sense. Also Nobody’s Fool and Twelve Monkeys. How do you explain a career like that? It’s like Jose Canseco’s career or something.
So we’ll just assume the Reiner career is over and that he won’t have a McGwire like resurrection. Did he do enough in his peak to get in to my movie Hall fo Fame.
First movie as director: This is Spinal tap
Rating out of 10: 11.
Comment: One of the three funniest movies I have ever seen. A Dick Allen type rookie campaign.
Second movie as director: The Sure Thing
Rating out of 10: 10.
Comment: This is personal, but in everyone’s life there are a few movies or songs or books that come along at exactly the right time for you. The Sure Thing was released my freshman year in college, and it was about John Cusack’s freshman year in college, and it had Daphne Zuniga (huge crush), and Tim Robbins singing show tunes and Anthony Edwards as the cool California guy the awesome Nicolette Sheridan as The Sure Thing. Still one of my all-time favorite movies.
Third movie as a director: Stand By Me
Rating out of 10: 9.
Comment: These are just personal movie choices … I’m not playing critic here. I loved Stand By Me too. It was over the top, schmaltzy, but very enjoyable, as any movie would be with a crazy Corey Feldman and Keifer Sutherland as a tough guy who liked knocking off mailboxes with a baseball bat. And, of course, River Phoenix, as everybody’s favorite best friend.
Fourth movie as a director: The Princess Bride
Rating out of 10: 10.
Comment: That makes four perfect movies to start a career — to me, this is like a Koufax-like run. I appreciate there are no Oscars involved here, nothing that made the critics pull out there thesauruses, but I never thought Reiner was going for that career. He was making good, enjoyable, movies that recaptured a little bit of the Golden Age of movies, before Hollywood was overrun with juvenile crap, blockbusters and ponderous Merchant & Ivory. At the same time, Ron Howard was trying to make those sorts of movies too, but Reiner was even better at it. I love The Princess Bride.
ASIDE: A little while ago, I saw Stranger Than Fiction … and I had this odd reaction to it. I loved it WAY more than its quality. I mean I really loved it. The movie wasn’t brilliant, it wasn’t extraordinary, it wasn’t something I would nominate for an Oscar or whatever. But it was EXACTLY the kind of movie that Howard and Reiner used to make, a quick, funny, quirky movie with likeable characters and a smart script and … damn, I loved it so much it reminded me that you almost NEVER find movies like this anymore. They must be very hard to make. Or nobody else wants to see them.
Fifth movie as a director: When Harry Met Sally.
Rating out of 10: 10.
Comment: Sure, it’s derivative of Woody Allen movies. But it remains, to me, the best chick flick ever made — best because though it’s a chick flick, it still has great guy scenes like Billy Crystal telling Bruno Kirby how his wife left him while they do the wave at a Giants game and Kirby guessing “baby fish mouth†during a game of Pictionary and Crystal babbling “But I would be proud to partake of your pecan pie.†And it has Meg Ryan at her awesome neurotic girl-next-door best. I appreciate that Meg did not want to get typecast … but she should have had a Hall of Fame career playing this role over and over again.
Sixth movie as a director: Misery.
Rating out of 10: 7.
Comment: A departure for Reiner … and while this was a good movie, it was perhaps a sign of bad things to come. Kathy Bates was incredible and scary in this thing — she won an Oscar — and the ankle scene is still quite the thing. He was going for a Hitchcock type movie, and he came reasonably close. But I wonder if he started losing his way here.
Seventh movie as a director: A Few Good Men.
Rating out of 10: 6.
Comment: Pauline Kael, I believe, called this “A Few Good Scenes†which is about right. It wasn’t great. At least he let Nicholson hog the movie for a while, and Kiefer Sutherland had some fun as a bible-thumping nutjob. But in the end we’re supposed to buy Tom Cruise as a brilliant lawyer, which is just a tough one. And I’m still not sure what the heck we’re supposed to think about Demi Moore in here. I do like the Kevin Pollak character — especially when he dressed down Moore for “strenuously objecting.*†An eh movie … the magic is over.
Eighth movie as a director: North.
Rating out of 10: -3.
Comment: Vile. Awful. Grotesque. Almost impossible to believe … this is like, say, Tom Brady throwing 42 inteceptions next year. And like that, it was over. He made The American President after that, and it was just blah, OK, nothing special, and then he more or less disappeared from the director world. He made “Ghosts of Mississippi,†which was pretty nondescript, and The Story of Us, which was even worse than North, and that was that. It’s hard to believe a career could just end like that. I do hope for one more great run … I really was hoping that “The Bucket List†would be a good, fun movie in the mode of those early ones. It doesn’t look good.
So the question is — do five awesome movies coming out of the shoot constitute a Hall of Fame career?
By the way check out Margo’s Blog on “How to be a Bond Girl.†Pictures of swimsuits! Plus Tiffany Case! Wowee!
Loading ...
Yes, the 1st four is enough of a peak. Princess Bride is in my all-time top 10. I’ll take a high peak over longevity which is why I voted for Dale Murphy and those who say Sandy Koufax does not belong in the HOF weren’t alive in 1965.
Maybe RR should get into Film Enhancing Drugs – which are just drugs to the rest of the planet – to resurrect his career and get into the HOF. Works(ed) in baseball. Unless you get caught, that is.
Bonus points: Cast his mother as the woman who says “I’ll have what she’s having.” Extra bonus points: Became his own caricature as he grew obese and bearded.
Orson Wells makes it to the HoF with a lot fewer great movies. But then he had a Hack Wilsian year that one year.
Reiner is the Ken Griffey Jr. of directors…
He’s spent much of the second half of his career injured.
Ouch. Tease me with the link to Margo’s blog and then WHAM! smacked down with the Error 404…whatever that is.
You can’t talk about North without linking to Roger Ebert’s review of the movie. There’s nothing quite as good as a review of a bad movie!
(or at least trying to link to it!)
You can’t argue his HOF credentials without noting his early acting career. In that way, he’s like Dennis Eckersley (or perhaps more appropriately, Gil Hodges or Joe Torre). It’s a tough argument, but warrants mentioning.
I prefer the writing style of the inimitable (except for Joe here of course) Nathan Rabin when it comes to deconstructing North:
http://www.avclub.com/content/blog/my_year_of_flops_case_file_87
PS: Upon re-reading, also includes a preamble re: Reiner’s career.
Princess Bride and A Few Good Men are both in my top 5 movies of all time.
FWIW, my folks saw The Bucket List and really liked it. I was thinking about going to see it myself.
How about a Wade Boggs comparison? Some really good early years, an above average middle, and then fades at the end, including some bleh moments (here I’m thinking of riding a horse at Yankee Stadium and playing for the D-Rays, but I know not everyone shares that opinion).
Coincidentally, I watched Bonfire of the Vanities last night – I cotninue to be befuddled why critics and moviegoers alike consider this so bad. I think it’s outstanding. Can somebody here (Joe) tell me why they dislike it?
Of course, it would have been better with a director other than DePalma. And while I keep going tengentially further away from Reiner – how bad was brian DePalma. He did his best to ruin very good movies BotV, Untouchables, and Scarface.
A Few Good Men is an excellent movie. I think that people don’t appreciate it as much as they used to because now every time we see Tom Cruise we picture him electrocuting Oprah or “educating” Matt Lauer. But Cruise was great in that movie and Nicholson was fantastic. It is an objective, undeniable fact that the scene at the end of the movie where the verdict is read and Dawson explains to a confused Downey why they are getting dishonorably discharged and concludes with Dawson saluting Cruise is a great tear-jerker/chills-down-your-spine moment.
6 out of 10 bogus. AFGM is clearly better than Misery and The Sure Thing and, in my personal opinion, better than a couple of the other movies on this list as well.
My take – Reiner is out as purely a director, but if you give him credit for Meathead, he’s probably borderline. As just a director, he’s Don Mattingly.
On the other hand, Ron Howard is an absolute Hall of Famer. Much slower start to his directorial career, didn’t really have a good film until aSplash, and was hit (Cocoon, Parenthood, Backraft, The Paper) and miss (Gung Ho, Willow, Far and Away) for a while, but then he found an additional gear that Reiner never had. He didn’t just make good, fun films, but shifted into movies that were not only higher in quality and critical acclaim, but also of varying subject matter and style. Put it this way…there’s no way Reiner could have made Apollo 13. He damn sure couldn’t have made A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man. Sure, Howard still had his misses (Edtv, The Missing), but he displayed a lot more ability and variability than Reiner ever did. Throw in the fact that he was both Opie Taylor AND Richie Cunningham and he’s a first-ballot guy for me.
Over at misc.writing.screenplays.moderate on Usenet we’ve been talking about The Bucket List for months.
Somebody got a copy of the script back when the deal was still being made. Some loved it. Others (the ones of us with taste) gagged.
It’s the ultimate Hollywood elevator pitch. The best thing about it is the title and the “List of things to do before you kick the bucket.” From then on, it’s obviously written to team up Nicholson and Freeman, to get them another $20 Million payday apiece, and a studio-financed junket around the world. Unfortunately, the $40 Million spent before a frame of film was shot, Reiner’s fee, other actors, catering, etc., resulted in a lot of unconvincing green screen CGI, so you’re left with the story.
(Then again, maybe they saved money on catering since Nicholson spends so much time chewing up the scenery.)
How ’bout a comparison to Rocky Colavito’s career?
Just for spits and giggles if you make it a Hollywood Hall of Fame, not just a movie hall of fame, you can cast Reiner in the same vein as Red Schoendienst and Joe Torre. Is his work as an actor enough to give his directorial roles the bump it needs to get him elected. I started to think so, then I couldn’t come up with a role he played besides Mike in All in the Family. Of course there was the classic Odd Couple episode where he Myrna Turner’s (Penny Marshall’s) estranged boyfriend Sheldn (“I strayed, I’m sorry, What can I say”). But what else did he do? Anyway, The Princess Bride and Stand by Me are among my favorites, but I never was a Spinal Tap fan. It’s a close call, but I think I’d say yes. He won’t make it on the first ballot, but give him 15 years and he’d get in.
The man did Spinal Tap AND The Princess Bridge, and you’re wondering if he is a Hall of Famer? That isn’t even a debate. First ballot, no questions asked. If he’s not in, nobody should be.
Paul, you beat me to the director/actor punch. Damn the business calls in the middle of my blog replies. And yes, Howard is in.
Definitely a HOFer. Reiner has the name and the top-notch movies to go along with it.
I’ll never understand people’s love for The Princess Bride. I get the children’s fairy tale come to life thing. Some of the dialog is funny, but most of it just grates on me. It’s not horrible, I think it just annoys me that people like it soooo much. It’s kind of like adults that read Harry Potter books. Yeah, they are good CHILDREN’s books. Not ADULT books. What’s the matter, your reading level never get past 6th grade? I guess if you watched it and you were fairly young, high school or younger, I can forgive it I guess. I saw it in college for the first time and slept through half of it. Since then I’ve been treated to it many more times by my wife. Anyways, Rob Reiner should be held OUT of the HOF for making this movie.
I’d only consider 2 of his early movies to be Home Runs at best and you don’t put someone in the HOF for 2 good seasons. So Reiner basically won ROY and had a few All-Star selections, but I don’t think he ever even won an MVP. How can you justify that selection. You are letting personal opinion enter into the mix, but when it’s strictly baseball it’s all about the numbers. Obviously I’m a little cheesed off that most of you won’t vote for McGwire, who I believe saved baseball from a slow death (and it’s not cheating if everyone is doing it), or Don Mattingly, who epitomized baseball in New York, etc. You don’t let any “special considerations” influence your vote.
Well how’s this for going strictly by the numbers? Princess Bride grossed $30 million in 1987. Spaceballs grossed $38 million in the same year. No question, by the numbers, Spaceballs was the better movie!
“when it’s strictly baseball it’s all about the numbers”
I just wish this were true. Sometimes it’s about being a Yankee or a Red Sox. Sometimes it’s about nostalgia and how people “feel”. Sometimes it’s about character or lack of same. If it were just about the numbers the HoF would look a little different.
Joe Torre is a good comparison for Reiner. They had pretty good, but not quite HoF careers as players/actors and then uneven managerial/directorial careers. Reiner’s Spinal Tap peak is at least as good as Torre’s Yankee years. Their Mets/Story of Us/Braves/North years may give the edge to Torre, but without North, we wouldn’t have had Roger Ebert’s review of North.
Or maybe turning Nicholson and Freeman into the Bucket List would be like if Torre had lost 115 games with any of the Yankee teams.
That should have been “Mets/Story of Us/Cardinals/North” years. Torre’s time with the Braves is more like “A Few Good Men” and “Misery.”
Aaron – all I can say is this: Inconceivable! I will grant you that it might have been different if you’d seen the movie growing up, rather than later in life, but I can still watch The Princess Bride as a 25-year-old and enjoy every minute of it. The dialogue is great and it basically makes fun of itself the entire time. I can’t wait to show it to my kids when they get old enough to appreciate it.
I think you have to overlook the increasingly questionable body of work for the few GREAT contributions he made to the movie business. He made three movies which deservedly define sub-genres of movies and which have spawned hundreds of movies since.
Anyone who makes a mockumentary should (and probably does) look to This is Spinal Tap
Anyone who parodies the classics is taking a page from The Princess Bride
Anyone who makes a romantic comedy is looking to recapture the magic of When Harry Met Sally
As a director who basically set the gold standard for three very popular veins of films, Rob Reiner is in the Hall of Fame without question.
He might as well have invented the hit and run, the shotgun snap, and the triangle offense.
Joe ~ I think you’re over-selling The Story of Us just a bit. You say it almost turned you off of movies entirely, but for me, it almost turned me off of living. I remember the ride home from the theater after that movie and slamming my car into an overpass on purpose. Obviously I lived to tell about it, but for 17 minutes from the time I walked out of that theater, got into my car, started driving, found a good overpass to slam into, and wrecking my car, I had legit suicidal tendencies.
Hallooo. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die.
CLASSIC.
And speaking classic, I’ve heard getting involved in a land war in Asia is an unfortunate choice…
Some thoughts: first, I compare him to Don Mattingly. Second, Princess Bride is a 19 on a scale of 1 to 10, not a 10. I would defend that movie as the greatest of all time.
Third… how much credit can we really give Reiner? He didn’t write The Princess Bride, he didn’t write “inconceivable”, or Fezzik’s rhyming, or “I do not suppose you could’a speed things up?”. He didn’t make Billy Crystal funny (I’m pretty sure Billy already had that down). And in fact, he departed from one of the more amusing aspects of the book (and presumably the screenplay): the idea that Buttercup was as dumb as a sack of rocks.
Maybe I just don’t understand the role of a director well enough to notice when someone does well at it… but I sort of feel like those guys could have just all decided to do the movie in their backyard, to make a funny clip on YouTube, and it would have been very close to as good.
PS – your piece here reminds me very much of a Bill Simmons article, which is probably a pretty good thing.
Joe, any list of crappy Bruce Willis movies must include Color of Night. Not only was it one of the worst movies EVER made, but Bruce shows his schlong in it. I’m not sure if that was the worst gratuitous male frontal nudity scene of all time (Kevin Bacon in Wild Things comes to mind), but it’s definitely up there.
Let me be the first to stand up for Misery. There is nothing wrong with that film and it certainly deserves to be mentioned with his other “HoF-level” work.
However, I also have to say that there is no way on God’s green earth that “A Few Good Men” is anything less than a contemptible piece of garbage! It is unwatchable, for dozens of reasons. First of all, Cruise against Nicholson in any scene is analogous to a t-ball hitter going up against Nolan Ryan (or maybe that’s Robin Ventura’s head against Nolan Ryan’s fist). Next, its the worst scenery chewing by Nicholson of all-time. That makes it laughable, not laudable. And how about that scene with Kiefer Sutherland in the bar when all Cruise can do is holler “you’re a shitty softball player!” That’s writing? That’s acting? That is GARBAGE with a capital G.
AFGM is Brady’s 42 interception season. Its a collapse of epic suckitude (I mean magnitude). And it single-handedly keeps Reiner out of the HoF.
Obviously, I meant Kevin Bacon. My mistake.
People who don’t love The Princess Bride are dead inside. Dead dead dead. Just a big black sucking vacuum where their heart should be. Cylons think those people soulless wraiths. I cannot over state this enough, if you don’t love The Princess Bride, you probably kick puppies and hate rainbows.
Spinal Tap is fan-damn-tabulous.
Stand By Me is a great, great film.
While A Few Good Men *might* be a bit overrated for a few scenes, it’s better than 6 of 10. That’s just barely above average. I think it’s a more like a 8.
He also did An American President, which was at pretty decent flick. 6 of 10 at least. Sure, it was really more about Aaron Sorkin’s script than RR directing, but I think the same is true of AFGM, but it could have been screwed up pretty badly in other hands.
What’s amazing about Spinal Tap is how short it is. Kinda like a Marx Brothers movie with one joke after another after another after another for a scant 78 minutes and change (not counting the closing credits). Sometimes less is more!
Speaking of The Sure Thing, how about a campaign to release a CD soundtrack. Just for Ray Charles’ “Just Because” which runs at the end of film and over credits. A killer song on a rare late 70s album (Ain’t it So on Atlantic) which was long ago cut out and deleted into oblivion. I’ve desperately wanted a copy of that song since I first saw that movie in Cambridge, MA the spring of my senior year in college.
On Reiner: HoFer for early films, Meathead, being the first $25,000-winning celebrity helper on the Old Pyramid, and myriad good political deeds many aimed towards Children.
Re: Nicholson everyone forgets how bad his early career in Roger Corman’s B movies was, Little Ship of Horros aside. Hell he was even reduced to a recurring role on The Andy Griffith Show in 1966-7. It wasn’t until he donned the Golden ND helmet in Easy Rider (or was it LSU for NOLA locations or UCLA for LA availability; couldn’t get this definitively answered on-line “Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?”). His recent films have been hit or miss. Personally he and his wiener didn’t do much for me in The Departed.
As a high school government teacher, I just want to weigh in and say “The American President” is a pantheon movie to show in class. To me, that’s extra points.
Come on, Joe. It’s “strenuously objecting,” not strongly. Good read, though.
Interesting. I went to sleep late this afternoon watching This is Spinal Tap on VH1 Classic (not a knock on the movie, I specifically set out to take a nap, not to watch a movie), then I woke up, checked this site and found that Poz was talking about Rob Reiner and Paul White was still wrong about everything.
More later.
Ok, a little more now: possibly aiding the Griffey Jr. analogy, the fact that Rob’s father Carl Reiner has a pretty great career of his own.
All right, I can’t let Bruno be bashed without someone coming to his defense. The Sixth Sense was not that great. Shymalan builds entire films on misdirection and one big twist, which really diminishes the importance of the first 90 minutes, which is good, because the first 90 minutes of his films are completely forgettable.
Bruno films that were great, however, include Hudson Hawk and The Last Boy Scout. Bruce Willis is great in both of these. Hudson Hawk was terribly misunderstood and won a Razzie because it’s a retarded award that doesn’t do its job and give them out for garbage like Crash. Last Boy Scout was also great. Shane Black’s script was outstanding and were it not for misguided direction the film would have been a smash.
By the way, Shane Black’s directorial debut Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is amazing and makes you wonder what would’ve happened if directors with better vision had helmed Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. His Lethal Weapon script was apparently a lot darker and funnier, and then it got dumbed down.
Back to Bruno, this is the man who was the star in the greatest action and Christmas movie ever, Die Hard. Die Hard 2 is also really great. The fourth one was solid. Hudson Hawk is funny as hell. The Last Boy Scout is a lot better than Joe’s giving it credit for. He was great in Moonlighting. He was in Striking Distance, one of the only two good segments in Four Rooms, Twelve Monkeys, The Fifth Element (!), Sin City, 16 Blocks, Hostage, and The Whole Nine Yards. He was also the only good thing about Friends for about half a season. Bruce Willis is awesome.
Bulb,
The Departed was great. Nicholson maybe hammed it up a little too much and never really sold an Irish/Boston accent, but The Departed was amazing.
As for Meathead, resounding no. I loved Stand By Me, This Is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride, but those are his only great films (and I’m a big Cusack fan, but your love of The Sure Thing is really personalized). When Harry Met Sally plays as extremely dated now, while its predecessors have at least stood the test of time.
The Bucket List, which I’ve actually gone off on a little bit elsewhere, looks atrocious. Like it could give Patch Adams a run. Or Mr. Holland’s Opus. Over the top schmaltz at its worst.
You are not alone in your praise of Stranger Than Fiction. Fantastic, and you gave as good a reason why as I could think of. I must disagree, strenuousy disagree, with you on A Few Good Men though. It’s cliched and over-the-top I admit, but man does it work in that film.
Old Man Duggan
I agree with you about The Departed well maybe except that final shot with the rat, more than a tad heavy-handed, no?. But then I loved Gone Baby Gone even more.
I need to visit Boston again soon: No Name, Newbury Comics, The Beanpot (though not so sure about The Fleet Center excuse me TD Banknorth Garden ha ha ha anyway “10,000 Men” et cetera), Fenway, the Rat, Union Oyster, Ida’s on Mechanic Street, Durgin Pahk blah blah blah . . .
Speaking of bad films, Death to Smoochy.
Is Rob Reiner the Dwight Gooden of directing: a few brilliant performances that augered the coming of an all-time great, followed by a long stretch that mixed horrible failure with stretches of adequacy, while giving no real hope for a return to former greatness?
+++
“He made three movies which deservedly define sub-genres of movies and which have spawned hundreds of movies since.
Anyone who makes a mockumentary should (and probably does) look to This is Spinal Tap
Anyone who parodies the classics is taking a page from The Princess Bride
Anyone who makes a romantic comedy is looking to recapture the magic of When Harry Met Sally”
While I think it’s entirely fair to give Reiner extra credit for his influence on the Guest mockumentaries, “Waiting for Guffman”, “Best in Show” and “A Mighty Wind”, I cant agree with the rest.
I love “The Princess Bride”, but Monty Python did the fantasy parody before that and I’ve seen a quite amusing Bing Crosby take on “A Connecticutt Yankee”.
I don’t love “When Harry Met Sally…” (I can’t stand Billy Crystal, although I find “61*” endlessly rewatchable) but that aside, I don’t think we can call Reiner a trailblazer here. Romantic comedies have made up, what, 5-10% of all the movies ever made, ever, in the history of everness?
Thinking of other successful romantic comedies of the post WHMS, I’m not sure I see anything that wouldn’t have been there without it. Did “Four Weddings and Funeral” need Reiner? I think not. “Groundhog Day”? “Pretty Woman”? “Bridget Jones Diary”? “Notting Hill”? Honestly, I think the romcom owes a lot more to Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Julia Roberts and, oddly, Andie McDowell, than it does to Rob Reiner.
I have a surprising (to me) amount to say about Ron Howard. Maybe later.
Bulb –
You’re several years too late to stop by the Rat again. Unless you want to try to find the section of the Hotel Commonwealth lobby where the Rat used to be.
C’est la vie!
I’m trying to get a sense of what size of Hall we’re talking about. Is it roughly equivalent to the 260 or so baseball players (over roughly the same years)?
So let’s just say the inner circle HOFers are some group of Welles (the Koufax career), Hitchcock, Godard, Renoir, Kurosawa, Ozu, Fellini, Ford, Bergman, Wilder, Scorsese, Lean, Kubrick…
And you can’t forget the great deadball players: Chaplin, Keaton, Eisenstein, DeMille…
The Chuck Kleins and Hack Wilsons of this Hall would be the steady directors of the studio system that have their awards and followings: William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, Michael Curtiz, Howard Hawkes, Joseph Mankiewicz…
Short peak candidates: George Lucas, Kieslowski, Bogdanovich
Right now we’d be debating Sidney Lumet, William Friedkin, George Roy Hill would have his defenders, Altman would be sailing in and Spielberg would be marked as a first ballot candidate.
At what point does Rob Reiner start looking like an all star for a period who never collected any major hardware, who was never considered top 5 of his era (although maybe he should have been for the years Joe covered)?
If Rob Reiner goes in before Carol Reed I’m done with the director Hall of Fame.
Wait a minute … we’re debating Sidney Lumet? Twelve Angry Men, Network, The Verdict, Deathtrap, Dog Day Afternoon, Fail Safe, The Pawnbroker, The Hill? And to top it all off he has another Oscar contender in Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead?
Throw in his book Making Movies and he is a first ballot HOF –as good as a candidate as Altman. He is in a way better category than Friedkin, who I believe is still doomed to always see his name listed with the same two credits afterwards (The Exorcist, The French Connection).
If you compare Reiner to Dwight Gooden’s career, then what is Coppola? FFC’s career is more like Icarus then Koufax… no wait, that’s not quite accurate, Icarus died…. more like Bellepheron, who tamed Pegasus, killed the Chimera, defeated the Amazons and then when he tried to enter Olympus, Zeus sent down a gadfly to sting Pegasus, and he fell to Earth “where he lived out his life in misery as a blinded cripple as punishment for trying to act as a god”, as Wikipedia says…
Speaking of Coppola, Lumet and the Sandy Koufax career, was there ever a better but shorter acting resume than the late great John Cazale? Throw out his 1962 debut in something called “The American Way,” and you have Godfather, The Conversation, Godfather II, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter. Wow.
And BTW… in that list of romantic comedies post-WHMS, you list Four Weddings, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones. The common thread is the writer, Richard Curtis, who also wrote Love Actually (and directed), as well as the most underrated comedy of the 80s, The Tall Guy, plus Bean and a lot of Blackadder episodes…
“…and Paul White was still wrong about everything.”
Gee, thanks gogiggs.
Tap – scripted/improvised by some very funny people
Harry Met Sally – written by the great Norah Ephron
A Few Good Men – the great Aaron Sorkin
Princess Bride – William Goldman, certified genius
Misery – Goldman AND Stephen King
I think its safe to say that all Reiner’s best movies have come from brilliant scripts and brilliant writers. The stinkers have tended to have absolutely rotten scripts.
Joe, as far as your plea for quick, funny, quirky movies – this isn’t exactly a secret, but go see “Juno”. Exactly the sort of thing you’re talking about.
Bulb,
I loved Gone Baby Gone as well.
I just read a pretty decent review of “The Bucket List” by Lawrence Toppman in the Charlotte Observer – 3 stars. Toppman is usually pretty discriminating so Joe, since you did not see the movie, give it a chance.
Joe,
Whatever you do, do not see Juno. It is awful. It fell in love with its own quirkiness, with each quirk having its own quirk. The dialogue is atrociously over the top. The soundtrack is grating to put it kindly. I’d go off for longer, but I’ve already done so elsewhere. If you’re really wanting to save yourself the pain of sitting through the worst 60 minutes (the last third is at least bearable) of film I’ve seen since Pirates 2, you can read my review on my blog (not that I’m trying to pimp my blog or anything, but please do not see that film).
But Frances, did you see the movie to be able to vouch for this Tuppman character? You don’t want to end up in Joe’s doghouse, do you?
First, outstanding analysis overall on an important subject, Joe.
Second, here is the Roger Ebert review of North.
Third, my two cents about a few of these films.
The Sure Thing is not anything like a Cy Young season. While you acknowledge that it’s personal, that kind of Kid Glove treatment would have to undermine the HOF case if it were limited to those first four films, as you suggest. In my view, however, his case is not so limited.
You don’t give Misery enough credit for being a genuinely great suspense flick. Is it top five ever? Of course not, but that isn’t a legitimate standard. Even before the ankle scene, can you really say that you weren’t flinching out of genuine concern for James Caan, who, by the way, also was great in that? See it again, you may give it a 9 this time.
The Princess Bride really is as good as everyone says it is, and the funny thing is, it doesn’t really have much to do with Inigo Montoya. How many directors can pull scene-stealing performances out of not only Andre the Giant, but Chris freakin’ Sarandon? “Work work work all the time.”
Apologists for A Few Good Men need to give it up. I think it has a number of things going for outside of the big courtroom scenes, but it’s riddled with enormous problems that have nothing to do with the fact that Tom Cruise is a nutcase. Cruise is great in that film, but everything about the way Demi Moore’s character is written and acted is absolutely atrocious, producing cringe after cringe in about 40 percent of the scenes in the film. Pollak is good and very amusing, but he’s not a miracle worker. I give it a 6 out of 10, but think how good it could have been without that character in it. (Interesting comp for this character: Jar Jar Binks.) Very possibly those who defend this film were capable of blocking her out.
Finally, The American President is competent but weak and lightweight. The political ideas are shallow and untruthful, undermining a nice little romance. Bening is great though. Maybe we should be talking about her HOF case — no MVP, but often in the Top 5.
Anyway, Reiner’s in like Puckett. And we might be better off Reiner had a career-ending illness.
Regarding A Few Good Men, should that film get extra credit from a Hall of Fame perspective since Conor Jackson’s father is the guy who plays the officer that takes the case away from Demi Moore at the beginning of the movie?
Fun equating movies to years in a career. Hard to argue with the inner circle guys, though I don’t know if anyone mentioned Spielberg (perhaps too obvious)
23 “seasons” – Sugarland Express, Jaws, Close Encounters, 1941, Raiders, E.T., Temple of Doom, Color Purple, Empire of Sun, Last Cursade, Always, Hook, Jurassic Park, Schindler;s List, Lost World, Amistad, Private Ryan, AI, Minority Report, Catch Me if you Can, The Terminal, War of the Worlds, Munich. At least 3 or 4 all time great seasons, and many other good ones.
I’m going to lose hours of my life thinking about directors as ballplayers now.