October Positivity: The Climb (dir by John Schmidt)

Posted on October 6, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2002’s The Climb is about two mountain climbers who begin as rivals and end up as friends.

Derrick Williams (Jason George) is an arrogant and cocky climber, the type who enjoys conquering mountains for his own personal glory. (See where this heading?) Even though his girlfriend’s father (Clifton Davis) does not approve of him, Derrick still says that he’s planning on marrying her. Or at least, he does until he finds out that she’s pregnant and he realizes that being a father will require him to take on a lot of new responsibilities.

Michael Harris (Ned Vaughn) is a selfless climber who sees every climb as a team effort and who does everything for the Glory of God. (Again …. see where this heading?)

Businessman Mack (Dabney Coleman, bringing a villainous edge to a character who I don’t necessarily think was meant to come across as being villainous) hires Derrick and Michael to climb a notorious mountain, all as a way to promote his business. At first, Derrick doesn’t want to climb with anyone else but when his girlfriend tells him that she’s pregnant, he decides that he could use some time away from her and promptly heads off to the mountain. Michael, on the other hand, is reluctant to climb because he doesn’t trust Mack’s company to keep all of their promises. Michael feels that climbing the mountain for Mack would be the same as endorsing the company and telling people that the company is an honest company.

You can probably guess what happens. Michael and Derrick climb the mountain. They talk. They bond. They discuss they’re differing views on religion. And then one of them tragically dies and the survivor is forced to reconsider his life. It’s not a surprise when one of them dies because a movie like this can only really work if one of the two friends has tragically passed away before the end credits. And it’s not really a surprise as to who passes away because it’s not like a faith-based movie is going to kill the guy who needs to learn a lesson about taking responsibility and being a father. From the start, it’s obvious who among the two is doomed and, as such, there’s not much suspense to be found in The Climb.

On the plus side — and yes, I realize that I do always go out of my way to find something positive to say about nearly every movie I review but that’s just because I think every movie has something about it that can be appreciated — some of the climbing sequences are visually impressive. It’s obvious that the film’s producers decided to spend a little money on the mountain scenes and, as a result, the scenery is nice to look at. I’m a fan of nice scenery and I’ve sat through more than a few bad films just to see a pretty mountain.

Personally, and this won’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, I’ve never felt the need to climb a mountain. If I can see what the top looks like from the ground, that’s enough for me.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 3.27 “Invisible Maniac/September Song/Peekaboo”

Posted on January 24, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week, The Love Boat has a very special passengers!

Episode 3.27 “Invisible Maniac/September Song/Peekaboo”

(Dir by George Tyne, originally aired on April 19th, 1980)

This week, the pop cultural stars align as a young David Hasselhoff boards the Love Boat!

Hasselhoff plays Tom Bell, a 20-something attorney who is dating a 30-something attorney named Cathy (Shelley Fabares). Cathy insists that they keep their romance a secret due to the age difference. She doesn’t want people to think that she’s a cradle robber or an older woman with a gigolo. (Cathy might also want to consider that she’s a senior partner at the firm while Tom is just a junior partner.) Tom doesn’t care about the age difference. In fact, he wants to marry Cathy!

And yes, they do eventually get married. Tom even has his grandparents waiting for them when the boat docks in Los Angeles so that they can act as witnesses. There’s not really any suspense as to whether or not Tom and Cathy will end up married because this is The Love Boat, the show that combined the swinging culture of the 70s with the morality of the 50s. The Hoff is his usual dramatic but self-aware self while Shelley Fabares is endlessly likable. They’re a cute couple and, minor age difference aside, they just look like they belong together. It was a sweet story.

As for the other passengers:

Fay Piermont (Peggy Cass) is married to Bill (Gordon Jump). Bill’s a nice guy but Fay fears that they’ve become a boring couple. She wants to be an exciting couple and she’s figured out that the way to do this is to get a makeover, buy a new wardrobe, and then toss her glasses and all of her frumpy clothes overboard. (At first, both Julie and Vicki are worried that Fay is planning on throwing herself overboard. One would think that would be cause for ship-wide alarm but Julie and Vicki just check on Fay occasionally to make sure she’s still alive.) At first, Bill is freaked out by Fay’s new attitude but, eventually, he comes to accept it and Fay comes to realize that she loves Bill, even if he is a bit reserved. This is the type of story that The Love Boat did frequently. Fay and Bill are a nice couple, even if they’re no Tom and Cathy.

Finally, Isaac is reunited with a former high school classmate, a model named Janet (BernNadette Stanis). Janet is upset that her husband (Clifton Davis) is more into sports than romance so she tries to make him jealous by lying about what a womanizer Isaac was in high school. Gopher overhears and tells Isaac that Janet referred to him as being “all hands” in high school. Now, most people would understand that Janet was just trying to make her husband jealous but Isaac somehow becomes convinced that he is a womanizer but he just can’t remember his actions because he suffers from dissociative identity disorder and he even goes to Doc Bricker for help! Why would Isaac believe that? It makes no sense that Isaac — cool, calm Isaac — would suddenly be so stupid. This is something that would happen to Gopher not Isaac.

That one silly storyline aside, this was a pleasant cruise on The Love Boat. I’m glad things worked out for Tom and Cathy. Seriously, the world is so lucky to have The Hoff.

October Positivity: Prayer Never Fails (dir by Wes Miller)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2016 film, Prayer Never Fails, tells the story of Aiden Paul (Nick Lashaway). Having survived a traumatic childhood that was full of abuse, Aiden is now the beloved basketball coach at the local high school. (The fact that he never shaves or gets his hair out of his face does not seem to be a problem as far as this school district is concenred.) When one of his players approaches Aiden and tell him that he’s being abused by his father (Lorenzo Lamas), Aiden suggests that the player pray on it. When the player says that he doesn’t know how to pray (because his father is not just abusive but also a hardcore atheist, of course), Aiden takes him into a classroom and teaches him how.

Unfortunately, another teacher sees Aiden and the player praying and reports Aiden to the principal. Aiden is fired from his position. Though Aiden says that he’s just going to give up and find another job, his players demand that Aiden fight to be reinstated. Aiden decides to take the school to court!

Unfortunately, there aren’t any lawyers that Aiden can afford. (And most lawyers would hopefully be ethical enough tell Aiden that, regardless of his good intentions, he doesn’t have a case.) Finally, a chance meeting at a diner leads to Aiden hiring Michael Brown (Clifton Davis), an agnostic lawyer with a gambling problem. Michael takes the case but he soon finds himself going up against master litigator Joseph T. Harrington (Corbin Bernsen). Can Michael somehow win the case?

This is another one of those Christian courtroom films where no one does anything that makes sense. For instance, it seems like, instead of ducking into an open classroom for a quick prayer, Aiden could have reported that one of his students was being abused by a parent, which is something that, as a teacher, he would have been required to do in the first place. (Instead, that subplot is abandoned after Aiden is fired.) As well, to win the case, all Joseph T. Herrington had to do was 1) point out that Aiden had admitted to leading a prayer in school and 2) call to the stand a Constitutional law expert to explain the establishment clause. Instead, Herrington puts the entire concept of prayer on trial and tries to argue that praying doesn’t work. It’s an argument based purely on emotion and bias, which allows Michael to make a counter-argument that’s based purely on emotion and bias. At one point, Michael interrogates the school’s principal as to why he was willing to defend a transgender teacher but not Aiden’s right to pray. The correct answer, of course, is that whether or not another teacher is transgender has nothing to do with Aiden’s case and that the Supreme Court has ruled that prayer is not allowed in public schools. That’s really all anyone needed to say to any of Michael’s arguments but no one does because, if they did, it would be a very short film.

(Along with the dubious legal arguments, this film annoyed me because Aiden didn’t ever bother to shave or comb his hair before the trail began. I mean, seriously, did someone tell him that it was a good strategy to go to court looking like you spend the previous week sleeping in the back of a pickup truck? I would not want him coaching my school’s basketball team.)

On the plus side, Eric Roberts is in this movie. He plays the judge and goes through the film with a bemused smile on his face, as if even he can’t believe the legal arguments that he’s hearing. It’s always nice to see Eric Roberts picking up a paycheck.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Any Given Sunday (1999, directed by Oliver Stone)

Posted on February 1, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

With Any Given Sunday, Oliver Stone set out to make the ultimate football movie and he succeeded.

Any Given Sunday is not just the story of aging coach Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino). It’s also the story of how third-string quarterback Willie Beamon (Jamie Foxx) allows celebrity to go to his head while the injured starter, Cap Rooney (Dennis Quaid), deals with his own mortality and how, at 38, he is now over-the-hill. It’s also about how the team doctors (represented by James Woods and Matthew Modine) are complicit in pushing the players beyond their limits and how the owners (Cameron Diaz) view those players as a commodity to be traded and toyed with. It’s about how the Sharks represent their home city of Miami and how cynical columnists (John C. McGinley plays a character that is obviously meant to be Jim Rome) deliberately set out to inflame the anger of the team’s fans. It’s about how politicians (Clifton Davis plays Miami’s mayor and asks everyone to “give me some love”) use professional sports to further their own corrupt careers while the often immature men who play the game are elevated into role models by the press. It’s a film that compares football players to ancient gladiators while also showing how the game has become big business. In typical Oliver Stone fashion, it tries to take on every aspect of football while also saying something about America as well.

In the role on Tony D, Pacino famously describes football as being “a game of inches” but you wouldn’t always know it from the way that Oliver Stone directs Any Given Sunday. As a director, Stone has never been one to only gain an inch when he could instead grab an entire mile. (Stone is probably the type of Madden player who attempts to have his quarterback go back and throw a hail mary on every single play.) Tony tells his players to be methodical but Stone directs in a fashion that is sloppy, self-indulgent, and always entertaining to watch. One minute, Al Pacino and Jim Brown are talking about how much the game has changed and the next minute, LL Cool J is doing cocaine off of a groupie’s breast while images of turn-of-the-century football players flash on the screen. No sooner has Jamie Foxx delivered an impassioned speech about the lack of black coaches in the league then he’s suddenly starring in his own music video and singing about how “Steamin’ Willie Beamon” leaves all the ladies “creamin’.” (It rhymes, that’s the important thing.) When Tony invites Willie over to his house, scenes of Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur are on TV. Later in the movie, Heston shows up as the Commissioner and says, about Cameron Diaz, “she would eat her young.”

Any Given Sunday is Oliver Stone at both his best and his worst. The script is overwritten and overstuffed with every possible sports cliché but the football scenes are some of the most exciting that have ever been filmed. Only Oliver Stone could get away with both opening the film with a quote from Vince Lombardi and then having a player literally lose an eye during the big game. Stone himself appears in the commentator’s both, saying, “I think he may have hurt his eye,” while the doctor’s in the end zone scoop up the the torn out eyeball and put it into a plastic bag. Only Stone could get away with Jamie Foxx vomiting on the field during every game and then making amazing plays while a combination of rap, heavy metal, and techno roars in the background. Stone regulars like James Woods and John C. McGinely make valuable appearances and while Woods may be playing a villain, he’s the only person in the film willing to call out the coaches, the players, the owners, and the fans at home as being a bunch of hypocrites. Stone’s direction is as hyper-kinetic as always but he still has no fear of stopping the action so that Foxx can see sepia-toned images of football’s past staring at him from the stands. Stone directs like defensive lineman on steroids, barreling his way through every obstacle to take down his target. No matter what, the game goes on.

Any Given Sunday is the ultimate football movie and more fun than the last ten super bowls combined.