Werth: Hi,Wise!
Wise: Hi, Werth! Are you enjoying your Fourth of July vacation?
Werth: I sure am. I even found the time to squeeze in a movie between all the burgers, potato salad, and vodka-spiked lemonade.
Wise: I hope you left room for cake.
Werth: The movie was chosen by my pre-teen niece and nephew so I had to watch Despicable Me 2. While I normally avoid the kiddie set, I did find the little green multi-character Minions to be charming enough to make it worth sitting in a theater full of pint-sized film critics.
Wise: Henchmen have often been the highlight of Hollywood films. From the tough guy goons in 1930's Warner Bros. gangster pics to the colorful and sinister assassins who are out to destroy James Bond to the Crazy 88s of Tarantino's Kill Bill 1 & 2, these dastardly adjutants bring humor and horror to their attempts to take out the hero. But no henchman is as terrifying (and weirdly compelling) as the assassin Chigurh (Javier Bardeem) in Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of the Carmac McCarthy novel No Country for Old Men ( 2007).
A killer hired by an unnamed drug kingpin (Stephen Root) to recover $2 million from a deal gone wrong, Bardem brings the most terrifying dead eyes to the screen since Jaws.
Werth: We're going to need a bigger pick-up truck.
Wise: Chigurh soon discovers that Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a West Texas welder and Vietnam vet, has absconded with the cash and sets off in deadly pursuit.
Moss barely manages to stay one step ahead of the killer, narrowly escaping a gunfight in a hotel room before trying to arrange a rendezvous with his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) who tries to save his life by making a deal with the crooked, yet noble Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones).
The final confrontation is between Chigurh and Carla Jean whose terror and anguish have made her almost as soulless as her would-be killer, and thus makes her a worthy opponent.
Werth: I find their showdown a little anti-climactic, but then it's not really the Coen Brothers' fault. The McCarthy book ending is equally deflating.
Wise: Saddled with a bizarre haircut and only a few terse lines, Bardem fashions menace from the ridiculous which is something of a specialty of the Coens, although Bardem manages to elevate the black humor into horror. Chigurh is nothing to laugh at, and yet the Coens deftly employ their crack comic timing in creating this monster.
Clowns and killers may be at opposites sides of the spectrum, but they both deal in surprise, sudden reversals and gut-busting flash. Bardem and the Coens take full advantage of this connection, and make Chigurh into one of the most deadly, yet compelling henchmen of all time.
Werth: If I had to pick my favorite movie henchman it would have to be Marty Feldman's Igor from the Mel Brooks classic, Young Frankenstein. With his strange, googly eyes, Feldman found his way into television and film with a wicked sense of humor and sly sexuality. In his short career he starred in his own television show (1968-69) and such films as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975) and Silent Movie (1976).
But it is as Dr. Frankenstein's (Gene Wilder) not-so-attentive henchmen that Feldman really makes his mark. Based on the script written by Wilder, Young Frankenstein is both an homage and a parody of the movie Frankenstein (1931) and all of its many sequels.
The films opens on the young Dr. Frederick Frankenstein teaching a university class and stumbling through a demonstration of nerve functions while also fielding questions about his infamous great-grandpapa.
Wise: Undergrads can be so nosy when they're not too busy getting drunk at frat parties.
Werth: Frankenstein discovers that he has inherited his great-grandfather's estate and heads to Transylvania to see if he can figure out what his great paw-paw was up to. Igor greets him at the foggy train station in a strange hooded tunic and tights. Feldman cuts a disturbing figure, but he soon tosses out the old stereotype of the faithful, deformed servant by mocking his master, playing out vaudeville schtick and generally rolling his wild eyes at every opportunity, like Jimmy Durante with eyes a-bugging'. Feldman's ability to mock convention is perfect.
His looks and his "What hump?" mentality poke fun at seriousness, making us question why Dr. Frankenstein (or anyone) could be so determined to do anything as monumental as creating life.
Feldman is only one of a cast of characters who take their characters so seriously in a ridiculous way that the film feels less like a parody and more like a funnier realization of the source material.
What Wilder and Brooks crafted was not just a deft homage, but a comedy that flaunts the hubris of the Frankenstein myth, bringing it down to earth with slapstick, Catskills-style reverie and an Irving Berlin tune.
Wise: Maybe a tap dance routine could have rescued a certain masked man at the box office.
Werth: Wilder is ecstatic as the manic Dr. Frankenstein, Cloris Leachman as Frau Blucher needs only a pursed look to cause peals of laughter (and horse neighs), Kenneth Mars flings his arm around the set with reckless abandon as Inspector Kemp, Peter Boyle as The Monster is a scream, and
Madeline Kahn as Frederick's anal fiance Elizabeth is nothing short of inspired. Her scene with Feldman where they first meet is an expert improvisation and watching the take where Kahn loses it is worth a look in the DVD's extras.
Wise: So, Werth, are the idylls of Kansas tempting you to make a break from the isle of Manhattan?
Werth: Boundless vistas, hot tubs, and firepits are tempting diversions. But I promise to make it back to New York for next week's Film Gab.
Wise: Greetings, Werth!
Werth: Ssh, Wise. Mama's got a hangover.
Wise: I take it you're still recovering from our night out this past Saturday.
Werth: Who knew dinner and a show would wind up with us closing down a hole-in-the-wall organic bar after multiple rounds of free-range vodka with fresh ginger-infused ginger ale served by a Roman hottie?
Wise: Not to mention finding a drunk woman with a birkin bag taking a catnap in the loo.
Werth: It just goes to show the fun you can have when a series of misadventures sends your plans off-track.
Wise: Everything jumps the rails in A Fish Called Wanda (1988). Written by and staring Monty Python alum John Cleese, this farce follows the misadventures of a ragtag band of jewel thieves as they plot, doublecross, but mostly muddle through a jewel heist that goes every which way except according to plan.
Werth: Sounds like the plot to The Great Muppet Caper.
Wise: Not exactly. Although Cleese has a cameo in Jim Henson's film, he plays the lead in his own: Archie Leach, a well-respected barrister with a shrewish wife who is almost too strait-laced to fall for the machinations of Jamie Lee Curtis's sexpot criminal Wanda Gershwitz.
Werth: I used to think of Jamie Lee Curtis as sexy until she started shilling for digestive health.
Wise: While pretending to be in love with English gangster George Thomason (Tom Georgeson), Wanda is actually plotting with her lover Otto (Kevin Kline), a hair-trigger weapons expert who fancies himself an intellectual, but whose vanity-induced rages foil nearly every scheme. After the gang pulls off the heist, Wanda and Otto drop a dime on George landing him in prison, only to find that George has already removed the jewels to another location. Wanda stumbles into George's barrister (Cleese) and decides that the best way to secure the loot is to seduce him.
Meanwhile, George has convinced the fourth member of the gang—the stuttering, animal-loving Ken (Michael Palin)—to rub out the sole witness to the crime, the doddering Mrs. Coady (Benny Hill Show alumna Patricia Hayes), but to make sure the crime looks like an accident.
Werth: Cue up "Yakety Sax."
Wise: Of course, nothing goes according to plan: Ken keeps botching the job, mistakenly eliminating the old lady's yapping Yorkshire terriers one by one instead of the old gal herself in an escalating series of hilarious gaffes;
Otto's jealous outbursts and sheer stupidity nearly give the whole game away multiple times; and Archie and Wanda fall in love which is the one complication amid the endless blunders that turns out right.
Werth: Jewel thieves should learn to keep their personal lives out of the workplace.
Wise: The love story anchors the mayhem that surrounds it, allowing Kline and Palin to ascend to ever more baroque heights of madness. Palin is hilarious, working mostly alone and in pantomime; he's like a throwback to Harold Lloyd, only instead of rescuing the girl, he flubs almost every attempt to kill her.
Kline, however, gets to be a bit more operatic, trying on a series of accents and pratfalls, and eventually securing the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his wrongheaded efforts. He and the rest of the cast prove that no matter how brilliant the scheme, a pack of idiots can always make things turn out worse.
Werth: Idiot criminals also stumble through a string of misadventures in the Coen Brothers' Depression-era comedy O Brother Where Are Thou? (2000). Ulysses Everett McGill (the dapper George Clooney), Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro), and Delmar O'Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson) escape a chain gang deep in the heart of Mississippi and make their way through the backroads of the Deep South to retrieve a stash of money from an armored car robbery before a TVA project floods the entire valley. But nothing goes according to Ulysses' semi-formed plans.
Pursued by a menacing lawman (Daniel von Bargen), the mismatched trio stumbles into and out of money as they encounter a cock-eyed radio station owner, George (don't call him Babyface) Nelson, a one-eyed bible salesman (John Goodman), three scantily clad sirens washing their undies in a river, and Ulysses' sparky ex-wife (Holly Hunter) who is about to re-marry.
Wise: Sounds epic.
Werth: It should. The Coen Brothers based the story on Homer's The Odyssey. Even though they claim never to have actually read the poem, only absorbed it through cultural osmosis, the references are cunning and playful... for those who actually know ancient Greek literature well enough to recognize them.
Wise: Mostly I'm just able to recognize Harry Hamlin.
Werth: But any dustiness that might cling to Homer is blown away by the Coens' sense of dark comedy and expert cinematic design.
The Coens often do amazing work when they create environments that infuse every facet of the film with character: the pre-war skyscrapers of New York City in The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), the snowy wasteland of North Dakota in Fargo (1996), the seedy, gaudy world of bowling alleys in The Big Lebowski (1998).
Here, the dusty, ravaged world of the Deep South in the 1930's is mined for all its ugliness and character, creating a brown and yellow-paletted world of strange beauty populated by drawl-ey no-goods, bible-beaters, blustering politicians, and lots of good, "ole-timey" folk music.
The soundtrack of authentic music from the era became an unexpected hit and the movie itself was nominated for two Academy Awards. So if you're interested in having a wild night out in the comfort of your living room, O Brother hits all the right notes.
Wise: Since both our misadventure movies involve criminals, should our next night out include a little larceny?
Werth: I'll swipe some flatware if you can palm a salt shaker.
Wise: Tune in to see what we get away with in next week's Film Gab!
