This week, Siskel and Ebert review, Jim Carrey is Matthew Broderick's best friend and worst
enemy, the Cable Guy, Liv Tyler searches for the key to her past in Stealing Beauty, and
Morgan Freeman stakes his future on orphan Robin Wright in Moll Flanders.
Hey, maybe I'll take you up to the satellite sometime, show you how this whole thing works.
Sure, we should do that one day.
How about tomorrow?
Tomorrow?
Tomorrow's no good.
Jim Carrey plays your worst nightmare, the cable TV installer who just won't leave in
the cable guy, one of six new summer movies we'll be reviewing this week on Siskel and
Ebert including a new film with Robin Wright from Forrest Gump and such provocative summertime
silliness titles as Switchblade Sisters and Sergeant Kabuki Man NYPD.
I'm Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune.
And I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Jim Carrey is the hottest comedian in the movies right now and a lot of people are looking
forward to big laughs from his new film, Name the Cable Guy, but boy are they in for a
surprise.
Carrey is one of the most likable actors in the movies, but the cable guy makes him into
a pathological basket case who is more creepy and depressing than funny.
The film starts out like a comedy with Carrey playing a cable technician who installs the
new service for a forlorn guy played by Matthew Broderick whose girlfriend has just dumped
him.
By the way, you might want to put on a bathing suit because you'll be channel surfing in
no time.
Now that's funny, but then Carrey descends steadily into personality hell until the cable
guy seems less like Ace Ventura than like Rupert Pupkin, the celebrity stalker played
by Robert De Niro in The King of Comedy.
Hi.
Is there a problem with your service?
Yeah, my cable is out.
Really?
It turns out the cable guy desperately, obsessively wants a friend and he thinks he has found
one.
I knew you'd like this place.
I come here twice a week.
Welcome to Medieval Times.
I'll be your serving lunch, Melinda.
Might I fetch you something from the barkeep?
Does, does have thou a mug of ale for me and me mate?
He has been pitched in battle for a- And he turns up everywhere, including Broderick's
apartment for an impromptu karaoke party.
One, two, three.
And the truth is found to be lying and- Eventually, the cable guy gets Broderick thrown into
jail for receiving stolen property and, of course, visits him there.
I don't think this scene works at all.
Why are you doing this to me?
I didn't do this to you.
You did this to you.
You set me up.
No, I taught you a lesson.
This is a seriously disturbed human being and not in the funny ways that Ace Ventura
was disturbed.
Another problem is that the Matthew Broderick character is too much of a victim and not
enough of an antagonist.
Watching him, I kept thinking of the Dunk the Clown booth at a carnival.
He takes so many shots from the cable guy that after a while, it's just not funny anymore.
Well, Roger, I thought it was very, very funny until the third act, maybe, but you've left
out some of the biggest laughs in the film and that is, for example, when again, he does
desperately want this friend and so he will take him to the cable company's dish to take
a look at that for an early morning sort of breakfast.
Jim Carrey has the ability to skewer most everything in popular culture just by laughing
at it and I think that there are huge laughs in the cable guy.
I think the medieval restaurant thing was kind of inspired by pulp fiction in a way.
It's a twist on that.
It had a couple of funny moments in it, but basically what happened is that increasingly
throughout the movie, this cable guy gets to be more and more and more of an abrasive,
unhappy element.
I don't know whether you can have it both ways.
First of all, there are funny elements in Martin Scorsese's King of Comedy.
It's a compliment to compare it to that film.
And the other thing I would say is that we dump on Ace Ventura for being light as a feather.
Well, this film is a little bit more serious, I suppose, and you can't have it both ways.
I think this is a very good film, his best since The Mask.
Okay, next movie.
And our next film is Stealing Beauty from the world-class filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci,
the director of such epics as Last Tango in Paris and The Last Emperor.
Unlike his previous work, Stealing Beauty is a modest effort about a 19-year-old American
girl who comes to Italy following her mother's death, looking for romance, as well as the
true identity of her father.
The hot young actress Liv Tyler plays the innocent virgin who immediately excites everyone
living at a Tuscan villa, including a yuppie lawyer who would like to steal more than her
beauty.
More significant is the nurturing relationship she develops with another house guest, a dying
writer played by Jeremy Irons.
The point of the film, physical beauty does have a very real power, maybe even a healing
power.
Well, look who's up and about.
I had a great night.
You met Lucy.
Oh.
She's irresistible.
Eventually, the Liv Tyler character decides to lose her virginity, and it's a poignant
moment as she confides in someone whose life is ending.
So I brought someone back.
Yeah?
I heard.
Who's the lucky fella?
The guy from the party.
Uh-huh.
Italian?
English, actually.
Oh, English.
So, good.
Well, I'm proud to be nearby at such an auspicious moment.
Stealing Beauty does not have the political or emotional gravity we associate with a film
by Bernardo Bertolucci, and the dramatic conceit of placing a fresh face amid tired ones isn't
groundbreaking either.
Yet, I wasn't bored by Stealing Beauty.
I noticed the Tuscan landscape as well as the beauty of Liv Tyler, and I felt a personal
desire to steal some of that beauty myself.
I felt the appeal of a physical landscape, I guess, as well as a sweet soul.
Thumbs down for me on this picture, but it's clearly a mixed review on Stealing Beauty.
My number's down, too, and I guess it's probably down a little bit further than yours because
one of the problems I had with the movie is that Bertolucci and his screenwriter, obviously,
are not interested in making this character played by Liv Tyler into a very complex and
intelligent human being.
She is seen...
She's a creature of the 90s.
She is not a creature of the 90s.
She's a dumb broad.
She comes into this picture and is used entirely as an object.
No one in the movie seems to be able to relate to her at all except for Jeremy Irons, except
on the basis of her appearance.
And you got to...
That might be more of their problem than hers.
This is a woman who was 19 years old, who has been raised in a Bohemian atmosphere of
some sort and has no conversation.
She has nothing of interest to say.
And so, as a result, why are we interested in looking at her?
We can see a photograph of her in a magazine and that would be the same idea.
Well, I think you can be critical of those people rather than being critical of her.
That's the way they choose to engage her, Roger, if you think about it, for a second.
What about her, though?
I also believe...
That's the way she chooses to be engaged.
I believe that Jeremy Irons...
In this movie, with any interest at all in who that person was, we would have found out
more about her.
It would have been a better movie, maybe, if we got to know her at some level, but I
think this movie is making a statement about how people look at a certain level of beauty
and that's where it all starts.
That is a sophisticated justification for a flaw in the film.
Thank you.
When we come back, Robin Wright plays an 18th century woman of the streets in Maul Flanders.
Don't you understand?
I'm going to fail you.
I always use my favorite steak sauce.
It's tradition.
Every once in a while, I'm in the mood for something different, something big, robust
and hearty.
Yeah.
All right.
New A1 Thick and Hearty.
Ten minutes and we're out of here.
Oh, Ralph.
It's that pipe again.
Will it take long?
Nah, only...
Oh, DirecTV.
...a couple hours.
Well, walk up when you leave.
Sure.
Ha-ha!
Aha!
DirecTV, over 175 channels, digital picture and sound.
It's satellite TV at its best.
Wow, how does this blow cable away?
Comfy?
For the choice of movies, cable and sports packages, you can't get anywhere else.
It's got to be DirecTV.
Reese's Nutragious, it decodes secret messages and wipes clean with a damp cloth.
Nutragious is a tachometer, a telemeter and a 12-power telescope.
My hand's as big as a building.
Machine washable, tumble dry, it will help you land a big movie contract.
One loan, one payment each month and nothing more.
Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?
If you're like most homeowners, you're paying a mortgage, several credit cards and an auto
loan each month.
That's why the Money Store introduced the Combo Loan.
With the Combo Loan from the Money Store, you can refinance your mortgage and consolidate
your bills.
You'll have one loan, one payment and write just one check each month.
Plus, the interest can be tax deductible.
One loan, one payment with the Combo Loan from the Money Store.
Call 1-800-LOAN-YES.
At American, we buy 20 truckloads of Simmons bedding every week.
Because we buy in such volume, we get special prices from the factory and we pass the savings
on to you.
Right now, we have 10 different Simmons sets on sale.
We've got two sets at $599.
Your choice, world-class Olympic pillow top or this Coral Silk Pillow Plus is only $599.
We have nine other best-selling Simmons styles on sale.
The queen sets from $189 to $499.
Fact is, Simmons bedding costs you less at American Furniture Warehouse.
I am instructed by a wealthy benefactor to offer you the chance to accompany me.
In return for your board and keep, I am to read you this.
The first-hand memoirs of your mother.
A Mysterious Stranger, played by Morgan Freeman, rescues a little girl from an orphanage and
takes her on a long journey in Moll Flanders, a new movie based loosely, very loosely, on
the 18th century novel by Daniel Defoe.
As the journey continues, Freeman reads to the girl from a journal compiled by her mother
and in flashbacks, we see the events she describes, as in this scene, where Moll Flanders has
no money and no place to live and falls under the influence of a madam played by Stockard
Channing.
That's Robin Wright from Forrest Gump in the title role.
What's your nature?
I'm learning to have a very fair manner.
It seems to be a necessity, if one is to succeed.
At first, Moll is only a servant and she makes the fateful decision to auction off her virtue.
One hundred guineas for that dumb thing.
Bravo, bravo.
Her life as a prostitute turns her to drinking and one night she meets a painter who wants
to hire her only as his model.
He's played by John Lynch and he gives her some of the first good days of her entire
life.
I know who I am and what I've been and so does your son.
I thought maybe there'd be some chance I'd fit into your family.
That would have made me the proudest living thing.
But no one can separate me from this man.
Miles Flanders tells the story of a woman who came up the hard way in a hard society
and it doesn't try to make it all into a pretty picture.
The end of the movie is a little melodramatic and unlikely, but then that's in the nature
of stories like this.
Miles Flanders made me care about this woman and about what happened.
I didn't like the picture at all, Roger, and I'll tell you why.
First of all, it held no surprises for me.
I thought this was all standard stuff, which is she's plucky, she's abused, and she survives.
You see that theme repeatedly throughout, almost like clockwork, this film is ticking
off its scenes.
Within individual scenes, I knew exactly where the action was going to go.
And let me go then again at Robin Wright and say that I had liked her very much as Jenny
and Forrest Gump, but here I thought she was too old, frankly, she looked in her low 30s
in this picture to me, too old for Miles Flanders, and also I thought she was very contemporary.
And I could get even more detailed and say that the painting by the painter that she
meets are really bad paintings, and they look like contemporary paintings.
I thought this was a flawed film all the way straight through.
The character played by John Lynch is a very interesting character, the artist, and the
visit to his family is very nicely handled.
Roger, hadn't you been through all these scenes before?
Which did you like better?
Just out of curiosity, Jane Eyre just came out a couple of weeks ago with Charlotte Gainsburg
and William Hurt.
Which do you think was better?
I liked Jane Eyre better.
Me too.
I also liked Restoration better.
Yes.
But I like this one, too.
Gee, I just don't see anything to like about it at all.
When we come back, a summertime exploitation double bill of two loopy titles.
Get this, Sergeant Kabuki Man NYPD and Switchblade Sisters.
That's us, Pontiac GMC.
You can count on bottom line prices every day, and now you can save even more.
It's announced from Pontiac, low 2.9% GMAC Smart Lease financing on any new Grand M.
2.9% that can save you hundreds in finance charges for Smart Lease a new Grand MSE.
With 800 down, pay just $199 a month, 36 months, 60 new Grand M's in stock, 30 more on the
way.
Plus get two tickets to South Shore Waterpark with a test run for a limited time only.
That's us, Pontiac GMC, at Havana and Mississippi, right across from Buckingham Square, Aurora.
With your period, it's always something.
If it's not major cramps, it's headaches, backaches, pick-time bloating, or that dreaded
irritability factor.
Good thing pamphrin has three ingredients to relieve them all.
Try pamphrin.
Way beyond pain relief, period relief.
I get no time out for pain, so I stop pain on the spot with the Icy Hot Chill Stick.
I see the dull pain, hot to relax it away, and for a cool you can't match, chill it.