This week, Siskel and Ebert review Chevy Chase trying desperately to enjoy the holidays in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
Roger and me takes a satiric look at hard times in a Michigan autotown and Mystery Train takes a look at Memphis life after Elvis.
It's all coming up next on Siskel and Ebert.
I give you the Griswold Family Christmas Tree.
Chevy Chase tries to survive a family get together in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. It's one of five new movies we'll review this week on Siskel and Ebert, and I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times.
And I'm Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune. Our first film is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and unlike the other two films in this series, this one isn't even remotely funny.
It also lacks enterprise. It's the only film in the series where the Griswold Family doesn't go anywhere. They stay stuck in their suburban Chicago home, some vacation.
Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo again play the Griswolds.
The joke here is that all sorts of weird relatives descend on the Griswold household, upsetting everything and everyone. After the in-laws show up, it's suddenly scuzzy cousin Randy Quaid and family.
We were gonna call, but Eddie wanted to make it a surprise.
Yeah, you surprised?
Surprised, Eddie? If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn't be more surprised than I am right now.
The humor is mostly slapstick, bad slapstick. As, for example, when Chevy Chase is locked in his attic by his mother-in-law.
Oh.
Hey.
Hey.
Hello.
What?
I only laughed twice out of perhaps 100 attempts at humor in this picture, and one of them was when Chevy Chase lights up his house with Christmas lights.
There are a lot of lights. In fact, it looks like the sun is in that neighborhood. But other than that, the humor is all of the nerdy in-law, nerdy neighbor variety.
There's no comic energy in the story. The Griswolds can be funny when they go on vacation, but not here when they stay stuck at home.
Well, I probably laughed more than twice, and I would probably give it a better review than you would, but I can't recommend it.
And it seemed to me that what we had here were all the elements, and they just weren't quite firing.
For example, when the in-laws turn up, they're not very funny, and they're not really differentiated, and they're not really made very interesting.
They're just standard joke in-laws, I mean.
Yeah, yeah. In other words, nothing is really done with them. And the whole business of how he gets trapped in the attic.
You can see how that could lead to a whole series of physical gags, but really, they don't quite pay off.
And over and over in the movie, I kept thinking, gosh, it's here. They just give it that extra push. Maybe it's the director, or...
Well, I'll tell you, the director comes who just couldn't quite get it over the top.
It's a first-time director who comes from making TV commercials, and he doesn't make the transition very well.
In addition, I thought, I mean, I really didn't like the film and felt disappointed in it because they can be funny on vacation.
Why not take them on a trip again? It works twice. Why keep them stuck at home in one location?
I thought of Cannonball 1-2, where they didn't have the energy or the wherewithal to take the people on a real cross-country trip.
Why not take these people on a trip?
I'm not sure that's why they didn't go on vacation here, but I wish the movie had gone a little bit more somewhere than where it went.
Okay, next movie. And our next movie is one of the most talked-about films of the last three months,
ever since it started getting standing ovations at film festivals in Colorado, Toronto, New York, and Chicago.
Audiences go crazy for it, and now it's going into national release.
It's called Roger and Me, and all I can say is, if Woody Allen made documentaries, they might look a little bit like this one.
The movie was directed by Michael Moore, a muckraking journalist from Flint, Michigan,
who got mad when General Motors laid off 30,000 workers there.
The Roger in the title is Roger Smith, the chairman of General Motors,
and the movie is the hilarious history of Moore's attempts to interview Smith about the problems in Flint.
You don't have an appointment. You're not going up for it, do you?
Well, can we go up and try and make an appointment?
No.
Why?
I need to tell him that I need it.
Ian, the reason to talk to Roger Smith would be?
Michael Moore.
No, what's your reason for seeing Roger Smith?
Excuse me.
We're doing...
I need to see you.
We're making a film.
I quickly sized up the situation.
Three guards in the booth, plus the one with the corsage.
A dozen security cameras and four new cars with inflated sticker prices parked in the lobby.
If I made a run for it up to Roger's office, what's the worst that could happen to me?
As Flint sinks more deeply into poverty and unemployment,
it makes an ill-advised attempt to turn itself into a tourist attraction.
Jackie, what are some of the things that visitors ask us here?
First off, where's the bathroom? That's the question I get asked most.
Director Michael Moore is a born social satirist with an eye for the perfect detail.
In this scene, the rich people in Flint throw a costume party
while the poor people are hired as living sculptures for the party.
So what advice do you have for those who are having a rough go of it?
Get up in the morning and go do something.
Start yourself. Get your own motor going. There's things to do out there.
One of the stars of the movie is Deputy Sheriff Fred Ross,
the man in charge of evicting unemployed GM workers.
And that deputy sheriff is not a bad guy. He's just doing his job.
He says, I like to treat people the way I'd like to be treated myself.
Roger and me is the right movie in the right place and the right time with the right sense of humor.
I think a lot of people are fed up with corporations that think only of profits
and use a smokescreen of public relations to make their selfish decisions look beneficial for everyone.
This movie convincingly shows that the firings by General Motors have devastated Flint,
but what's amazing is that it's a funny movie. It's a comedy.
Michael Moore uses every weapon in the book, satire, sarcasm, cheap shots, you name it,
and he makes a great comic star for his own movie as he plods doggedly along
wearing that hunting cap and on his mission to interview the elusive Roger Smith.
This movie is so funny, it's merciless, and so merciless, it's funny.
It's on my list of the year's Tim Best film.
Well, it'll be on mine too. This is a great American comedy and made out of a tragic situation,
which is all these people losing their jobs.
And the film really swings wide in its emotional range from being hysterically funny to also really sad,
because the first time we've had a lot of funny things happening
and you see him making fun of some, quote, hick kind of situations,
and then whammo, we start to look at Flint and being devastated,
and he gives us sort of a tracking shot going down the street, and it looks like it's bombed out.
And we see the real devastation that the layoffs occurred.
And so we're constantly being whipsawed between very funny things,
as this Tom tries to recapture his sense of self, and also has been absolutely devastated.
And so you've got the evil villain, Roger Smith, the General of Motors,
but you've also got a lot of side characters who are great American characters.
And who are hilarious. I think Michael Moore is almost like a Mark Twain here,
in the fact that he kind of keeps a poker face and just reports on this stuff.
For example, they pay Pat Boone a lot of money to come to Flint, Michigan, and cheer everybody up.
And Pat says, hey, everybody ought to become an Amway distributor.
And so Michael Moore says, okay, I'm going to go to an Amway party.
So he goes to an Amway party, and then the lady calls him back later, remember,
and she had her wrong color coordinate, so she wants to shoot the scene again.
So then Michael gets his color coordinates done.
And it's just, it's like the logic is hilarious as they go from one step to the other,
into this wonderland of fantasy that is tried, is put on top of the fact
that Flint is totally devastated by these plant closings.
It's really weird how it's so funny, you said it.
It's funny, and it's sad, and then it's funny again.
I think the people that hear plant closing, General Motors, and some executive,
they think, oh, that's got to be boring.
This is easily one of the most entertaining films of the year.
I'll tell you, it's the funniest film I've seen since A Fish Called Wanda.
It's really good.
Coming up next, Triumph of the Spirit, the true story of a Jewish-Greek boxer
who survived the Nazi death camps.
Willem Dafoe stars.
Please tell the stern-bound fear that I will win for him.
He can bet his life on it.
Hey, ham and cheese. Hey, BLT.
You know, you may be a classic, but brother, you're never.
Will it rise? A lot of classic.
Hey, Patty Melton.
I've always felt your taste is certainly a kick,
but brother, you're never.
Will it rise? A lot of classic.
A crunchy, juicy, plastic pickle.
It really makes a sandwich.
Hey, sandwich. You're never.
Will it rise? A lot of classic.
Pain. Pain that throbs.
Aches. Pain that pulses.
When doctors were asked what they take more often for their everyday pain,
Bayer, Tylenol, extra-strength Tylenol, or Advil,
more doctors take Bayer.
More than extra-strength Tylenol or Tylenol.
More than Advil.
More doctors take Bayer.
For pain, Bayer is the wonder drug that works wonders.
At Albertsons, we're always thinking of ways to save you money.
This week is no exception.
This week, you'll find Albertsons family packs of assorted pork loin chops
priced right at only 99 cents a pound.
Or extra fancy red delicious Washington Apples only three pounds for a dollar.
Also, remember to pick up your free official Denver Broncos team picture
at all Front Range Albertsons locations.
At Albertsons, we think like you do.
Pulsar. Precious.
Pulsar. Elegant.
The Pulsar Watch.
An element of good taste.
Our next film is called Triumph of the Spirit,
a well-intentioned dramatization of the true story of a Jewish-Greek boxer
who used his fighting skill to survive the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Willem Default from Platoon in Mississippi Burning plays the boxer Salomo Arush,
whose fighting skills are discovered when he battles another prisoner,
a Nazi collaborator, while on a work detail.
Marbeiten! Move!
Salomo is soon taken to the office of the Nazi leader of the camp
who intends to bet on him in the regular fights at the camp.
The Sturmbannführer says you must understand the officer's bet on these fights.
There is much money at stake, and the Sturmbannführer wants to win.
Please tell the Sturmbannführer that I will win for him.
He can bet his life on it.
After he wins his first fight, Salomo is confronted by a gypsy inmate of the camp
played by Edward James Olmos, who is sort of a toady for the Nazis.
Pass it over so it can have my share.
I fought for it. It's mine.
Connection in this place could help you stay alive.
Triumph of the Spirit also features scenes in the women's section of the camp,
and it does take us briefly into the crematoriums where millions of people were incinerated.
But the problem with the movie is that it is no way as horrifying
as the reality of the concentration camps must have been.
This is a problem that afflicts so many Holocaust dramas, particularly those on TV.
They soft-pedal the horror, a horror so immense that it should never be minimized.
If you're going to tackle this subject, you have to do a better job than Triumph of the Spirit.
It's not so much that it's bad, it's just not good enough to recommend.
That's kind of the way I feel about it. The movie has its heart in the right place,
but it doesn't really have, among other things that it doesn't have, a dramatic parabola.
You want to ask the question, why this movie about this particular character?
Like millions of other people, he was incarcerated in this prison camp.
Like some people, he survived. He survived because he was able to box,
and so they didn't kill him because he entertained them.
And then the war was over and he got to go home.
How interesting is his story?
How interesting is his story compared to millions of other stories?
Why is this movie, why was it compelling to tell this story?
And we've seen some movies that devastated us.
Shoah, for example, about the prison camps.
And so when you see this movie, you say, I just don't understand what the reason was why this story had to be told.
It is very difficult to match his experience with the shots that we don't see.
We feel really cheated when we see the people about to be gassed and then burned,
but we never see that shot.
It's like I want to yell at the director, turn the camera a little bit.
Turn the camera and show us.
It's too difficult to show people being thrown alive into fires or to be gassed.
Well then, don't make the movie in a way.
Maybe they felt that they didn't want to go that far, but in that case, you're right.
In that case, why make the movie? Let's not minimize, let's not make it palatable.
Exactly. Yeah.
Coming up next, mystery train in which three very oddly assorted groups of people turn up in Elvis Presley's hometown of Memphis.
I better be going. I gotta go.