Tag Archives: Dan Schneider

Insomnia File #74: Listen To Me (dir by Douglas Day Stewart)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were struggling to get to sleep last night, you could have jumped over to Tubi and watched the 1989 film, Listen to Me.

Listen to Me tells the story of two poor but ambitious teenagers who receive debate scholarships to fictional Kenmont University.  Monica Tomanski (Jami Gertz) is a liberal from Chicago.  Tucker Muldowney (Kirk Cameron) is a “shit-kickin’ conservative” who is from Oklahoma.  Despite their different political beliefs, Monica and Tucker find themselves assigned to be debate partners by the college’s legendary debate coach, Charlie Nichols (Roy Scheider).

At Kenmont, debate is as popular and as important as football is at some other colleges.  The entire student body shows up to listen to the debates and to cheer for their side.  It’s like Oxford, if Oxford was solely populated by 80s teen actors.  (Seriously, there’s a lot of familiar faces wandering around that campus.)  Charlie is convinced that this could be the year that he wins the national tournament.  Gar McKellar (Tom Quill), the troubled son of Sen. McKellar (Anthony Zerbe), is one of the best debaters in the country.  However, Gar fears that winning a national debate tournament will somehow lead to him going into politics.  He wants to be a writer and he’s got a self-destructive streak.  As you probably already guessed, this all leads to Tucker and Monica debating the arrogant Harvard team in front of the Supreme Court.  The topic?  Whether or not Roe v Wade should be overturned….

A few thoughts on Listen to Me:

Kirk Cameron’s “Oklahoma” accent is, without a doubt, the worst that I have ever heard in any film ever made.  When I was growing up, I did occasionally live in Oklahoma.  I still visit Oklahoma frequently.  Yes, people in Oklahoma do have an accent.  However, that accent sounds nothing like whatever Cameron was trying to do in this film.  Whenever Kirk Cameron speaks, he sounds less like an Oklahoma farm boy and more like the tubercular son of a once proud New Orleans family.  Beyond the accent, Cameron just isn’t believable as a quick-on-his-feet debate champ.  He overplays when he should underplay and underplays …. well, I can’t think of a single scene that he underplays.  It’s just not a good performance.

Jami Gertz is a bit more convincing as Monica.  (It perhaps helps that Gertz, like her character, is actually from Chicago.)  But, for the majority of the film, Monica is seriously underwritten.  She’s a straw feminist, who largely exists so that Tucker can tell her to loosen up.

As for the other debaters, we don’t learn much about them.  That’s a shame because some of them — like Amanda Peterson’s crippled debater — seem like they would be much more interesting to follow than either Gar, Tucker, or Monica.  It’s a crime to cast Peter DeLuise as an Ivy League debater without giving us a chance to actually see him debate.

Roy Scheider gives the best performance in the film, which isn’t really a surprise.  That said, Charlie Nichols was a terrible debate coach, one whose entire philosophy seemed to be based on teaching his debaters to make loud and emotional arguments and hope that the judge doesn’t understand how competitive debating is supposed to work.

Would the Supreme Court really judge a national debate tournament?

As for the debates themselves, it’s hard not to notice that all of the arguments are emotional.  There’s little talk of evidence or research or anything else.  Instead, the characters talk about how abortion has personally effected them.  (The Harvard team is portrayed as being snooty villains when they dare to bring up an actual clinical study about abortion.)  Admittedly, I did not do college debate but I was involve with Speech and Debate in High School and, when it came to debate, I always tried to get by with the same cutesy techniques that everyone uses in this film.  If the judge was a man, I definitely showed a little leg.  If someone asked me about a study that disproved my argument, I’d respond by citing a fictional study that disproved their study.  I was the Queen of Dramatic Personal Anecdote!  And I rarely made it out of the preliminary rounds because most judges — the good ones, at least — were able to tell that I hadn’t bothered to do my homework and that I was just trying to skate by on charm and wit.  My coach often told me that if I would actually do the work, I’d probably make it to the semis and beyond but …. eh, doing the work was just too much …. well, work.  So, you can imagine my surprise when Tucker and Monica used the same techniques that I used and were declared to be the best debaters in the country!

Seriously, I was robbed!

Listen to Me is a very 80s film, right down to the debate montages and the explanations about why Roe v Wade would never actually be overturned.  It tries to do for college debate what numerous other college-set films did for football an binge-drinking.  Unfortunately, the film’s intentions are defeated by a didactic script and a miscast lead.  It feels considerably longer than 100 minutes, which might help you with your insomnia.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House
  64. Once Upon A Midnight Scary
  65. Girl Lost
  66. Ghosts Can’t Do It
  67. Heist
  68. Mind, Body & Soul
  69. Candy
  70. Shortcut to Happiness
  71. Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders
  72. Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders II
  73. Don’t Kill It

 

Back to School #40: Better Off Dead (dir by Savage Steve Holland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Better-Off-Dead

There’s something really sad about knowing that John Cusack does not like the 1985 teen comedy, Better Off Dead, despite the fact that he himself starred in the film.

Just how much he dislikes the film depends on who you talk to.  I read an interview with the film’s director — the wonderfully named Savage Steve Holland — in which he said that Cusack approached him after a screening of the film and told him that he totally hated the film and would “never trust” Holland again.  (What’s truly sad is that Holland also said that this encounter caused him to momentarily lose all interesting in film making.)  However, a few years ago, Cusack said, while answering questions on Reddit, that he didn’t hate Better Off Dead, he just felt that it could be better and that he was glad that other people still like it.  In another interview, Cusack said that the “absurdist humor” of Better Off Dead just wasn’t his thing.

John, I understand that you’re a serious actor and I’ve always had a lot of respect for the fact that you’re an outspoken liberal who is still intellectually honest enough to hold Obama up to the same standard to which you previously held Bush.  But honestly, John, maybe you should loosen up just a little.  Not all of your movies have to be The Butler!  There’s nothing wrong with enjoying yourself onscreen.  And there’s nothing wrong with entertaining an audience and leaving them happy.  Better Off Dead may be one of more lightweight films that I’m reviewing for this Back to School series but it’s a lot of fun!  It makes people smile.  And you know what?  A lot of those smiling people are going to be more willing to see you in a film like The Butler because they’ve also seen you in films like Better Off Dead.

Add to that, you give a pretty good performance in Better Off Dead.  In fact, you provide the film with a much-needed center.  A lot of the comedy in Better Off Dead may be absurd but John, your performance is so likable and so grounded that you keep the film from getting too weird.  You do such a good job as Lane Myer and are so convincing as a well-meaning but dorky high school student who is trying to win back his ex-girlfriend (Amanda Wyss) by skiing down a mountain that it allows everyone else to be as weird as the film will allow.  Without your excellent performance, John, the film would be a total mess.

BOD

Better Off Dead is essentially a collection of skits.  There’s a plot but the plot is really only there as an excuse for the nonstop jokes.  For instance, there’s Lane’s best friend, Charles (Curtis Armstrong, essentially playing the same character he played in Risky Business) who spends the entire film looking for things to snort and who, when standing atop of snowy mountain, says, “This is pure snow!  Do you have any idea what the street value of this mountain is!?”

And then there’s Monique (Diane Franklin), the foreign exchange student who lives next door to Lane and who pretends that she can’t speak English because she’s trying to avoid being set up with creepy Ricky Smith (Daniel Schneider).

There’s Lane’s mother (Kim Darby), who cooks some of the strangest looking meals ever seen in an American film.  There’s also Lane’s younger brother, who never speaks but who knows how to build a laser gun.  Even Lane’s father (David Ogden Stiers). who seems relatively normal, still manages to destroy the garage door.

There’s the fact that Lane’s romantic rival is named Roy Stalin (Aaron Dozier).  Is that not just the perfect name for a villain?

There’s my favorite scene in the entire film, where a geometry teacher (Vincent Schiavelli) explains a complicated problem to his class and the class responds by cheering him along.  “Who wants to come up here and solve the problem?” the teacher asks.  The entire class raises their hands and goes, “Me!”

There’s quotable and memorable lines like: “I’ve been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I’m no dummy,” ” Now that’s a real shame when folks be throwin’ away a perfectly good white boy like that,” and “Gee, I’m really sorry your mom blow up, Ricky.”

And, of course, there’s that paperboy who wants his two dollars…

Seriously, John, Better Off Dead might not be your favorite movie but it’s really not that bad!

Want to see just how not bad Better Off Dead really is?  Watch it below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Q8oM_AnK8