For the title “Most Overrated Movie of 1989,” there are many worthy – or, rather, unworthy – contenders.
There is, for example, When Harry Met Sally . . . , a pleasant but derivative comedy with one great scene (the one in the diner, of course) and a lot of awkwardly appropriated Woody Allenisms. And there is Field of Dreams, a New Age bowl of mush with a dash of redeeming wit sprinkled on top.
The roll call of the overrated goes on and on – with Always and Steel Magnolias and, well, it’s a long list. And right at the top of that list is Do the Right Thing.
If you haven’t yet seen or heard about this movie, chances are you will get an earful soon. Either you’ll hear about it because it’ll be nominated for several Oscars (on Feb. 14), or you’ll hear about it because some people will be complaining very loudly if it isn’t nominated.
Probably the least-acceptable scenario is that the movie will get some nominations but not enough to please its supporters. Then we’ll have to put up with the nominations and the whining.
Do the Right Thing (which opened theatrically last summer and became available last month on videocassette) tells a semicomic, semiserious story about racial tensions in and around a Brooklyn pizza parlor on the hottest day of the summer. The large cast of characters includes Sal (Danny Aiello), a white Italian-American who owns the restaurant, and Mookie (Spike Lee), a young black man who delivers pizzas for Sal. In addition to playing Mookie, Lee produced, directed and wrote the picture – his third major feature, after She’s Gotta Have It (1986) and School Daze (1988).
Although Lee’s latest project is the most overrated movie of last year, it is by no means the worst. (That distinction belongs to Tango & Cash.) Do the Right Thing contains a few decent performances (including Lee’s), some sultry cinematography and a pugnacious music-video-style opening sequence in which a rap singer exhorts the viewer to “fight the powers that be.”
But for the most part, the film is a tiresome combination of sitcom and message movie – if you can imagine that. It’s full of honest anger but expresses little else.
Fight the powers. Even if Do the Right Thing doesn’t snag any Oscar nominations this month, the awards and praise it already has received qualify it as the year’s most overrated movie. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has been the film’s strongest supporter, voting it the best movie of 1989, giving Lee best-director honors, handing Aiello the supporting-actor award and presenting the musical-score prize to Spike Lee’s father, Bill Lee (and contributing artists).
Do the Right Thing also was a serious contender in the New York Film Critics Circle competition for best picture. After four ballots, it lost to My Left Foot although Do the Right Thing’s cinematographer, Ernest Dickerson, did win a New York critics’ award. (A sensible pick: Dickerson’s cinematography is the most expressive aspect of the movie.) And although the film didn’t win any Golden Globe awards, it was nominated in four categories.
Why is my view of the film a “minority” position in the critical community? I can only speculate, of course, but I’d guess that the LA critics liked Do the Right Thing partly because filmmaker Lee, in interviews, has been openly contemptuous of Hollywood. If there’s anything California critics like better than bashing the big studios, I don’t know what it would be.
I would speculate that some New York critics praised the film extravagantly because it tackles unquestionably important political themes. The movie, after all, was loosely based on a racial incident that actually happened in New York. (And, remember, the film opened in the midst of a New York mayoral campaign in which racial attitudes played an important part.) It’s hard to oppose a film that opposes racism without sounding racist – or at least racially biased – even if the film is superficial in its approach to the issue.
As for the Golden Globe voters, your guess is as good as mine. Those gremlins are just so weird. . . .
In a perverse sort of way, I’m almost hoping that Do the Right Thing ends up getting some Academy Award nominations and maybe even winning an Oscar or two. That would help to confirm my misgivings about contests in general and the Academy Awards in particular.
As everyone should know by now, the best film often doesn’t win. We can generally count on academy voters not to do the right thing.
** Flashback. Like Do the Right Thing, this film (which opens today) has a political agenda. It’s a celebration of ’60s radicalism, wrapped up in an action-comedy package.
The story concerns a Jerry Rubin/Abbie Hoffman-style activist named Huey Walker (Dennis Hopper) who has been living underground since his heyday in the ’60s. Now the FBI has caught up with the 49-year-old Huey and intends to see that he is tried on an old charge – something related to a prank he once may have pulled on Spiro Agnew. G-man John Buckner (Kiefer Sutherland), a 26-year-old straight arrow, is assigned to make sure that Huey shows up in court.
Screenwriter David Loughery (Star Trek V) peppers Flashback with some genuinely funny, politically charged lines. At one point, for example, Huey tells John, “Reagan is working on a book on his eight years in Washington. How do you explain his sudden interest in politics?” And to a couple of aging former hippies, Huey says, “It takes more than going down to your local video store and renting Easy Rider to be a rebel.”
But mixing politics and comedy (or politics and action-comedy, for that matter) is a risky game, and director Franco Amurri doesn’t have the steady hand required to win. At some moments, the antics of the characters compromise the seriousness of the film’s political themes; at others, the political message comes off as pretentious in the context of the comedy.
All things considered, Rude Awakening (1989) was a more successful attempt at this sort of movie although it, too, had problems. Personally, I’d rather rent Easy Rider.
