This week, Siskel and Ebert review Dan Aykroyd convinced that neighbor Jack Lemon is a war criminal who's getting away with murder.
William Hurt plays the sinister lord of a mysterious mansion in Jane Eyre.
And the little boy takes an incredible journey in James and the Giant Peach.
Music
What's good, yeah?
Hmm. Are you?
I don't like having sex.
Dan Aykroyd and Lily Tomlin co-star with Jack Lemon and Bonnie Hunt in the dark comedy Getting Away with Murder, one of five new movies we'll be reviewing this week on Siskel and Ebert,
along with a children's film that may hold some of the same appeal as Babe and also a new version of Jane Eyre and a raucous satire of Prozac by the comedy troupe Kids in the Hall.
I'm Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune.
And I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Our first movie is Getting Away with Murder, and it's a very curious film indeed, a sort of black comedy that needlessly involves the holocaust in its plot and therefore sets up all sorts of unnecessary questions of relevance and taste.
As the movie opens, Dan Aykroyd plays a decent chap who discovers that he lives next door to an accused Nazi war criminal played by Jack Lemon.
It's charged that the Lemon character was the Beast of Berkhouse, a district concentration camp commandant responsible for taking thousands of lives.
Aykroyd is horrified.
That's the mull-belly man. Yeah.
Oh, isn't it nice?
Oh, shut your mouth.
When it appears that the old man might not have to pay for his crimes, Aykroyd feels he has to take matters into his own hands.
Then he finds out that the old man was not guilty after all.
I'm not going to go to jail for killing the wrong man. I'd go down as one of the biggest idiots in history.
My name would be a punch line.
Besides, what good can I do in jail? That's not the answer.
To punish himself, Aykroyd decides to break up with the woman he loves, played by Bonnie Hunt.
To further make amends, he marries the old man's daughter, played by Lily Tomlin.
I like the way you phrase things, Jack. I think you are hilarious.
Really, I don't ever remember you laughing at any of my remarks.
Oh, often later, when I'm alone, I would chuckle out loud over something you have said.
Why not just chuckle when I say it?
I am guarded with people, Jack. But when I'm by myself, I am very outgoing.
Now, what bothered me all through this movie and distracted me even during the good scenes, and there are some,
was the thought that this whole comedy is based on a character who may or may not be a mass murderer.
The way it is, the good things in the film, including some of the dark humor,
and also the charm of the relationship between Aykroyd and Bonnie Hunt,
is lost because of the great weight of the Holocaust, bearing down on what is essentially intended as a harmless little comedy.
Nazis can be funny in the movies, but genocide, I don't think so.
Thumbs down from me on getting away with murder.
I think, as this film opened up with its premise, I sat there and I thought, are they really going to try and pull this off?
I then thought of people who would have a vested interest in this,
saying this is being made as a subject of laughter, even brittle laughter,
and even with an attempt to deal with some of the issues, the way the screenplay does, by saying, you know, how can you...
Maybe the screenplay is aware of the issues it raises, but it's not aware that it didn't need to raise those issues.
You could have made this guy a mad poisoner from Italy, or all he has to be is a real bad guy,
and then the comedy would maybe be liberated to work a little more freely.
And I think that by putting this idea out in a quasi-humorous fashion, it is tasteless.
It doesn't work.
Next movie, and our next film is a terrific children's film, The Best Since Babe,
a stop-motion animated tale called James and the Giant Peach about a little boy who goes to America from England,
flying on an airborne giant peach and making friends with the creatures that live inside.
Marvelous things will happen.
Poor Glowworm.
She's a little deaf.
I, however, have exquisite hearing.
Yeah? Well, listen to this.
Let's get out of here!
Everything about this fantasy by Roald Dahl is fantastic, and the writing is smart enough to appeal to adults.
You better not be near our peach!
Oh, please, don't let them spray us.
Spray us? They'll see the yank up there and come after us with a shovel. It happened to my brother.
Awful.
Split him right down the middle. Now I have two half-brothers.
The intricate work in creating James and the Giant Peach has to be seen to be appreciated.
Just look at the wealth of detail in this scene.
What if we don't make it to New York?
I'll die if I have to go back to the way I was, but it can't make me.
Nobody can make you do anything, James. If you do not like them, you are a brave boy.
James and the Giant Peach is so good that I hope it's a hit so that its filmmakers, producer Tim Burton
and director Henry Sellick, who made the wonderful The Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993,
will continue to make more animated films.
I also hope that parents who complain about the lack of good movies for children
don't let James and the Giant Peach get away. It's great.
It is great, and you know what's interesting is that Disney, which is the pioneer of kind of standard animation,
is trying two other kinds of animation. Toy Story was all done in computers.
This is Stop Action, which was pioneered by Ray Harryhausen,
and each kind of animation opens up another realm of possibilities for what can be done with magic on the screen.
Well, didn't you just sit there sort of with your mouth agape as you were...
I mean, they keep topping themselves. It would have been so easier if they were money-minded.
You pull a couple of characters out, it's fantastic enough as it is.
It's one great shot after another, and you know, I had to kind of make a little ironic smile at the beginning
because it starts out with live characters in beautiful, soft-focused pastels,
James and his perfect childhood with his wonderful parents, and then bam, the parents are dead.
I mean, in all of these movies, the parents are always dead, you know, something terrible happens
so that the little kid can go on some kind of an adventure, and it's the premise,
but here they didn't even bother to explain it. It was just like a fly swatter.
Okay, when we come back, William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsburg star in the gothic romance, Jane Eyre.
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What do you think the artist meant here when he...
Convision into a more happier state of mind.
I think the artist was thinking about breakfast here. I see pancakes up here and bacon.
Do you see any of that?
I can see what you're pointing out. You could have pancakes for breakfast or even at nighttime.
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I can see your interpretation, definitely.
This bacon is just under perfection. I never knew art could make you so hungry.
I'm not deceitful and I'm not a liar.
For if I were, I should say that I love you. I do not love you.
Young Anna Paquin, who won an Oscar for her supporting role in the piano, was featured there as young Jane Eyre,
the heroine of Charlotte Bronte's 1847 Gothic romance, which more or less single-handedly inspired the entire romance novel genre
and has been filmed three times previously.
In the story, Jane Eyre is an orphan raised by an aunt who hates her and then farmed out to a cruel boarding school.
Eventually, however, she grows up and gets a job as a governess in the darkly mysterious country house of the enigmatic Mr. Rochester.
Here, Charlotte Gainsburg plays the adult Jane Eyre and William Hurt is Rochester.
I once had a heart full of tender feelings.
The fortune has knocked me about.
I'm hard and tough as an india rubber ball.
Does he hate Jane Eyre or choose to ignore her or is he attracted to her?
The whole appeal of the story is based on the fact that Jane never really knows.
You examine me, Miss Eyre.
Do you think me handsome?
No, sir.
Joan Plowry plays the housekeeper who has some words of caution for lovelorn Jane.
He is a proud man. All the Rochester's were proud.
And gentlemen in his station are not accustomed to marrying their governesses.
But there's mystery afoot, desperate screams are sometimes heard from behind a locked door,
and one night Mr. Rochester is almost burned alive before Jane saves him.
Although they grow closer after his rescue, Jane has trouble believing that Rochester can ever return her love.
Don't struggle, sir. You're like a wild bird clawing at its cage.
I'm no caged bird. I'm a free human being, independent, with a will of my own.
Then stay.
Stay and marry me.
How dare you make fun of me.
I mean what I say.
Stay at Thornfield, be my wife.
And what of Miss Ingram?
Miss Ingram, I don't love Miss Ingram, not as she loved me.
Jane, you strange, almost an earthly thing.
I love you as my own flesh.
If you make an inventory of Jane Eyre, you're going to find most of the furniture of countless other Gothic romances,
the isolated house, the family secret, the alternations between sunshine and shadow,
the near tragedies, and the heroine's hopeless love for an unavailable man.
All of this has been orchestrated in this version by the director Franco Zeffirelli,
who is known for sunnier love stories in movies like Romeo and Juliet,
although of course that one has an unhappier ending than Jane Eyre.
I like the atmosphere of this version.
I thought William Hurt made an interesting Rochester whose threat was more psychological than physical,
and I thought Charlotte Gainsburg was a good choice for playing Jane Eyre,
who thinks she doesn't have a chance with the man she loves.
Oh, I want to focus on the choices of the two actors.
Charlotte Gainsburg has been interesting to me almost every time I've seen her in The Little Thief,
in The Cement Garden.
She's a terrific actress, and she has that spunk, that core of steel,
that is also part of the formula of the Gothic romance.
And then William Hurt, you know, this may sound so easy or so obvious,
but for an American actor to take on an English accent is tough,
and he does it extremely well.
He has the foreboding presence of Rochester, very convincingly.
He has the weight of the character.
It's a very good piece of work, and I'm glad to see William Hurt.
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