This week, Siskel and Ebert review Shirley MacLaine and Ricky Lake caught in the case of mistaken identity in Mrs. Winterborn.
Superfans Dan Aykroyd and Daniel Stern kidnap rival star Damon Wayans in Celtic Pride.
And Tom Berenger takes on a classroom of troublemakers in the substitute.
David Wayans, Dan Aykroyd and Daniel Stern star in Celtic Pride, a comedy about Boston
basketball fans and it's one of six new movies we'll be reviewing this week on Siskel and
Ebert.
Also coming up, the long awaited mystery science theater movie and new film starring Ricky
Lake, Tom Berenger and Oscar winner Miro Sorvino.
I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times.
I'm Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune.
Our first film is Celtic Pride and it's a different kind of basketball comedy with all
the funny stuff going on off the court and not focusing on the players, but on the fans.
A couple of rabid Boston Celtic fans played by Dan Aykroyd and Daniel Stern.
How rabid?
Well, here's an exchange between Daniel Stern's character and his long suffering wife who
has just served him with divorce papers.
In the story of Celtic Pride, the Boston team is playing Utah for the championship.
Stern and Aykroyd decide to get the star Utah player, played by David Wayans, drunk in a
Boston bar before the final game by pretending to be Utah Jazz fan.
Oh, God!
Jimmy!
Louis Scott's in the bed.
I don't know, I must have been so wasted, I blacked out.
What happened last night?
We must have done this when he passed out.
We kidnapped him.
Celtic Pride is light as a feather and the comedy only works because Stern and Aykroyd
are absolutely serious about their devotion to the team.
On a team, everybody's got a job to do, right?
So this is our job.
Our job is to cover Louis Scott.
And if we can hold on to him, then maybe, just maybe, we can win that championship.
And the rest of the movie is how that kidnapping plot plays itself out in the seventh game.
Dan Aykroyd and Daniel Stern throw themselves enthusiastically into their roles, but if
you think about it, Celtic Pride is essentially a one-joke movie, namely that they are simply
rabid fans.
So, a mixed review for me, there's not enough complication in the plot, thumbs down.
Yeah, I'm about where you are, Gene, a little more than thumbs down, actually.
The one thing I did like was Damon Wayans playing head games with them after they kidnapped
me, and he's talking to them, trying to denigrate their status as fans and making fun of them.
He says, do you think Larry Bird has a picture of you in his den?
You know, Aykroyd is a plumber, he says he has a picture of you with your hand down the
toilet, I don't think so.
That was a funny line.
And I liked what Wayans was doing in an attempt to talk himself out of that situation, but
I agree.
It's just, that's it, they're nutty fans.
You got it.
Okay, next movie.
And our next movie is Mystery Science Theater 3000, a feature-length comedy inspired by
the long-running cable show on the Comedy Channel.
The premise behind the program is that an evil scientist hopes to rule the world by
rotting our brains with bad movies.
To perfect his techniques, he conducts experiments on the satellite of love, where a victim named
Mike Nelson is forced to view some of the worst movies ever made.
To preserve his sanity, Mike and his mechanical friends Tom Servo and Pro-T-Robot make wise
tracks as they watch the old films.
This time, their target is a 1954 science fiction classic named This Island Earth.
Aha!
Eat my photons, small heads!
Why are they all sitting in front?
We're sitting ducks in this thing, if we're gonna make the airport, we'll have to do it
on foot.
When I stop, we'll pile out and take cover fast.
Sounds like a really crappy plan, but okay.
Michael J. Nelson plays Mike and Kevin Murphy and Trace Bullew play the voices of Tom Servo
and Pro-T-Robot.
The villainous scientist named Dr. Clayton Forrester is also played by Bullew, who in
this scene believes he's not getting enough respect.
Okay, Dr. Forrester, geez.
What a dick we.
The favorite targets for MST-3K, as it's called, are the cheesy sets and special effects in
their target movies.
Now this is what went on in Salvador Dali's head.
Now I swear we parked on level C right next to the, oh.
One of the reasons MST-3K has been so popular, I think, is that the human and robotic film
goers get away with doing just exactly what we like to do during a lot of bad movies,
get our revenge by talking back to the screen.
Stand back.
Acting.
I like the idea of MST-3K, and I've enjoyed some of the shows, but for me the novelty
wears off after a while.
I wouldn't be able to watch it every week.
The original movie, This Island Earth, was 87 minutes long, but the whole Mystery Science
Theater 3000 movie is only 74 minutes long, perhaps reflecting the inside of the filmmakers,
you can get too much of a good thing.
In this case, I think they give us just about enough of a good thing.
So you...
Thumbs up.
Oh, okay.
I couldn't tell.
Well, I liked it too.
I guess I liked it more than you did.
I think that it's pretty funny, and yes, maybe after an hour I would have been satisfied,
but in that first hour I was laughing pretty hard.
For example, just the Universal logo, this picture, now it was back then called Universal
International Pictures, so we see that flash up there, Universal International, and they
say, well, doesn't the fact that it's Universal make it international?
I mean, they're thinking fast.
Now you can say, oh, I would get that, or I might have thought of that, but people don't
think of that.
Well, of course.
They're very clever.
I hope I didn't sound down on it.
What I was saying, I liked the movie.
I just couldn't watch this every week.
It's a little tiring.
Okay.
You only have to watch it once.
Coming up next, a case of mistaken identity as working class Ricky Lake enters the family
of the wealthy Shirley MacLaine and the new romantic comedy, Mrs. Winterborn.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa.
You with the hands again.
That's my job, ma'am.
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This will be my fourth year driving a Blazer.
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Makes for great powder skiing, makes for difficult driving, but I never have a problem in my
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I know I sounded kind of hysterical before, so you didn't really want to listen to me.
So I'm going to be real calm when I tell you there has been one major screw up here.
That's Ricky Lake mistaken for a wealthy man's wife in the new comedy Mrs. Winterborn, which
is pleasant but not very substantial.
The story is a little bit complicated to set up, so bear with me.
Ricky Lake is penniless and pregnant as the film opens.
He's caught in a train wreck with a wealthy young couple who both die and Ricky Lake is
mistaken for the dead man's pregnant wife because the family never met the real wife
and didn't even know what she looked like, and then she's taken by the dead man's family
after the train wreck and her fortunes change radically because the dead man was loaded.
Shirley MacLaine plays the wealthy matriarch of the family.
She now views Ricky Lake as her daughter-in-law, and Ricky Lake plays a fish out of water in
ritzy surroundings.
That's nice of you, but come on.
I don't belong here.
I mean, look at me.
I am looking at you.
You're fine.
This is fine?
Oh yes, one more twist if you're still following this.
The dead man has an arrogant twin brother, played by Brendan Fraser.
He suspects that Ricky Lake is an imposter.
You'll have to forgive Bill.
He hasn't yet mastered rudimentary conversational skills.
So, um, where in Hong Kong did you meet my brother?
The mall.
The mall?
Of course, the mean brother eventually comes around to liking the ugly duckling.
Are you surprised?
I know that a picture like Mrs. Winterborne is supposed to be old-fashioned.
It's based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich.
It was first filmed in the 1950s as a melodrama, No Man of Her Own, starring Barbara Stanwyck.
But this remake feels especially contrived, and I guess that every step of the way I felt
that the performers, the actors, were smarter than the words they were speaking.
Attractive actors in a creaky plot, and that for me killed the fantasy.
So thumbs down on Mrs. Winterborne.
Yeah, thumbs down for me too, and for exactly the same reason.
I like the performances in this movie.
I like Brendan Fraser.
They're good actors.
McClean always seems smarter than the words she has, because she probably is smarter.
And Ricky Lake, this is kind of her first big role since she got the talk show, is very
warm and convincing here, although I did feel that she was a little bit too down home for
this family.
I don't know why these three people took this role, frankly.
Brendan Fraser has done some very good work.
McClean is as good as it gets.
Maybe I can understand Ricky Lake's first starring role, but this plot is really beneath
all of them.
Okay, when we come back, soldier of fortune Tom Beringer goes undercover as the substitute.
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There's a tense atmosphere in a Miami high school as teachers Diane Venoria and Glenn
Plummer do their best to stop a fight in that scene from the substitute.
But something is obviously deeply wrong at this school and after Venoria's leg is broken
by a young thug, her boyfriend decides to take matters into his own hands.
Who is her boyfriend?