Tag Archives: Daphne Zuniga

On Strike for Christmas (Dir Robert Iscove), Review by Case Wright

Posted on by casewright

On Strike for Christmas was fun because I got to live tweet it with Lisa and that’s always a blast. The story is straight forward- Joy (Daphne Zuniga), a SAHM, is fed up with being unappreciated for her hard work in prepping for Christmas; so, she goes full-commie and strikes/organizes the other moms to fall into the perils of communism by unionizing the moms to stop all Christmas prep! Honestly, I could’ve reviewed this film for Horrorthon based upon the Marxist plot line!

I want to stay as positive as I can because it’s Christmastime but the film took a WEIRD left turn! First, the grandmother, the mom, the dad, AND the two sons were really close in age; so, you had serious teen mom vibe. Second, it was obvious that ALL of the actors had the hots for each other! It was like infamous Folgers ad (see below ).

If you are unfamiliar with the Folgers ad above, the plot is that a brother returns from Africa and the actors couldn’t help but show their attraction for one another. The same distracting event happened in this film too and not just once or twice – no no no – the sexual tension in this film was like Madmen season 1 levels and in nearly every scene.

There was one scene where the mom dressed up and the son gushed on how hot she was and it was very uncomfortable. I swear, find someone who looks at you like these actors looked at each other!!!

There were some funny parts to the film; such as, the obligatory trope that the boys and dad tried to make cookies and it’s a disaster. However, it really felt like the family had a lot of problems before this because the mom proceeded to not only go on strike, but to talk to journalists about all of her family were just POSs. I mean really if you’re already at the point where you feel comfortable going to the press about what garbage people your husband is and your son’s, the marriage is already over. And in her case, it certainly was awkward at Valentine’s Day when her dad and sons/boyfriends gave her chocolate all at the same time!!! I can only imagine what the hallmark card would look like!!!

Lisa noticed that the mom wasn’t just going on strike herself, but she proceeded to break up every family in the town. Joy needs to be stopped! I mean, it’s bad enough that she’s led all these poor people down the path of socialism and communism, which is just painful for me, but she’s also splitting up all these families!

Maybe that’s what happened in Russia? It was all just a big kerfuffle over cookies and icing and the next thing you know – nukes are pointed right at the good old US of A!!!

It should be noted that eventually the strike does end and the families try to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. I think that was very insensitive of Joy because she always had her son/boyfriend’s number to fall back on during those cold winter nights!!!

Spaceballs (1987, directed by Mel Brooks)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…

President Skroob (Mel Brooks), the evil and incompetent leader of Planet Spaceball, has squandered all of the air on his planet and is planning on stealing the atmosphere of the planet Druida.  To pull this off, he arranges for the idiotic Prince Valium (Jim J. Bullock) to marry Vespa (Daphne Zuniga), the princess of Druida.  (All together now: “She doesn’t look Druish.”)  Vespa and her droid, Dot Matrix (voice by Joan Rivers), flee Druida with Lord Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) and Colonel Sandurz (George Wyner) in pursuit.

In debt to the intergalactic gangster, Pizza the Hut (voiced by Dom DeLuise), a mercenary named Lone Star (Bill Pullman) and his associate, the man-dog hypbrid Barf (John Candy), accept a contract from Vespa’s father (Dick Van Patten) to track down his daughter.  They take off in their space Winnebago to bring Vespa home.  Though they start only interested in money, Lone Star and Barf come to learn about love, freedom, and a mystical power known as the Schwartz.  (“No, the Schwartz!”)

Back when I was growing up and just being able to have HBO made you the coolest guy on the block, Spaceballs was one of my favorite movies.  I watched it every time that it came on cable.  As usual with Mel Brooks, there were a lot of double entendres that went over my young head but there was also enough goofy humor that I could laugh at what was going on.  I could quote all the lines.  I laughed whenever Rick Moranis showed up in his Darth Vader-costume.  I laughed at John Candy’s facial expressions.  I laughed when Mel Brooks showed up as Yogurt, the Spaceballs version of Yoda.  Pizza the Hut?  That’s hilarious when you’re a kid!

I recently rewatched the film.  Revisiting it was a lesson in how your memory can trick you.  I could still quote most of the lines with reasonable accuracy but nothing was quite the way I remembered it.  Rick Moranis and John Candy were still hilarious and, being older, I could better appreciated the frustration felt by George Wyner’s Colonel Sandurz.  I also realized what a good performance Bill Pullman gave as Lone Star.  While everyone else mugged for the camera, Pullman played his role straight.

I also discovered that a lot of the scenes that I remembered as being hilarious were actually just mildly amusing.  Mel Brooks was always hit-and-miss as a director, the type who would toss everything and the kitchen sink into his films.  Spaceballs has a lot of hilarious scenes but it’s obvious that Brooks didn’t have the same affection for the source material as he did with Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles or even High Anxiety.  Brooks is poking fun at Star Wars because it’s popular but he doesn’t seem to have any strong feelings, one way or the other, about George Lucas’s space epic.

I still laughed, though.  Even if Spaceballs wasn’t the masterpiece that I remembered it being, I still enjoyed rewatching it.  The jokes that hit were funny enough to make up for the ones that missed.  Even with his weaker films, Mel Brooks is a national treasure.

Retro Television Review: Quarterback Princess (dir by Noel Black)

Posted on 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 Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay.  Today’s film is 1983’s Quarterback Princess.  It  can be viewed on YouTube!

Quarterback Princess begins with Ralph Maida (Don Murray) dropping in on the coach of a high school football team in the small town of Minnvile, Oregon.  Ralph explains that he and his family are going to be relocating to the town from Canada.  His eldest child wants to play football and Ralph is curious as to when the team will be holding the tryouts.  The coach asks what position Ralph’s son plays.  Ralph explains that Tami is his daughter and she plays quarterback.  After an awkward moment of silence, the coach explains that he’ll have to talk to the school board.

Yes, Quarterback Princess is one of those films.  It’s an only girl on the team film, in which an athletic teenager has to convince not only her male teammates but also all of the stodgy old people that she can play just as well as the boys.  On the one hand, films (and shows, as Degrassi had an entire storyline about Jane trying to get on the school’s football team) like this are usually entertaining because it’s fun to watch a girl succeed while all of the men sputter with outrage until the team starts winning.  On the other hand, they’re always a little bit difficult for me to relate to because I would honestly have no interest in doing what Tami’s doing and it’s hard for me to understand why anyone else would either.  I mean, seriously why would anyone want to live in Oregon when Montana’s just a short drive away?

Quarterback Princess is based on a true story.  In real life, Tami Maida was 14 year old when she joined her high school football team as their quarterback.  That season, the team had a record of 7-1 and they won the state championship.  Tami was also elected Homecoming Queen that seem year.  The parts of the movie that seem like the type of thing that only a screenwriter could come up actually happened.  Helen Hunt, who was 20 years old at the time, plays Tami.  When I watched the film, I thought Hunt did a good job in the scenes off field but I thought she was a bit unconvincing when she was actually playing the game and throwing the ball.  Fortunately, I did some research before I actually wrote this review and I discovered that Tami served as Helen Hunt’s stand-in during the film and, in most of the game scenes, that actually is Tami throwing the ball and running around the field.  That shows you how much I know about football.

Quarterback Princes is definitely a made-for-television production.  These are the only high school football players in existence who neither drink nor curse.  For that matter, the coaches are surprisingly nice as well.  That said, it isn’t bad.  The best scenes are the ones that feature Tami and her family adjusting to Tami’s sudden fame.  Daphne Zuniga gives a sympathetic performance as Tami’s sister, who is not particularly happy about how Tami’s sudden fame has changed everyone’s lives.  The always likable John Stockwell plays Tami’s boyfriend and the two of them are a believable couple.  Noel Black, who also directed Pretty Poison, does a good job of keeping the action moving at a steady pace.  Probably the worse thing you can say about this film is that it was a bit predictable but, in this case, all of the predictable stuff actually happened so what can you do?

Lifetime Film Review: V.C. Andrews’ Fallen Hearts (dir by Jason Priestley)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

About 12 minutes into Fallen Hearts, the perpetually aggrieved Heaven (Annalise Basso) goes to the local circus so she can taunt her stepfather, Luke (Chris William Martin), over the fact that 1) Heaven looks exactly like her mother, Angel and 2) Angel’s dead.

Upon arriving at the circus, Heaven runs into her stepbrother, Tom (Matthew Nelson-Mahood), but it takes her a while to recognize him because he’s wearing a big red clown nose.  It’s not until he takes the nose off that she recognizes Tom and then asks him why he’s dressed up like a clown.  It turns out that Tom is a clown now!  I guess he got a promotion.  Tom then asks why Heaven has made herself up to look exactly like Angel….

Unfortunately, Luke has already spotted Heaven and, apparently not understanding how death works, becomes convinced that Angel has returned to life and is standing in the middle of a low-rent circus in West Virginia.  Unfortunately, Luke is apparently now a lion tamer and he’s so shocked to see his dead wife that he loses track of his lion.

And, of course, the lion promptly kills Tom.  Would the lion have spared Tom if he hadn’t removed his red clown nose?  We may never know.

Now, of course, everyone in the film treats this as being a great tragedy.  Strangely enough, no one blames Heaven, even though none of this would have happened if not for the Heaven’s apparent obsession with mentally tormenting everyone from her past.  But I have to admit that I laughed out loud as soon as I saw that lion in the background because I knew there was no way the scene was going to end without Tom getting pounced on….

And really, that’s the type of film that Fallen Hearts is.  It’s the third film in Lifetime’s adaptation of V.C. Andrews’s Casteel Saga (the previous two were Heaven and Dark Angel) and, from the minute that lion pounces at Tom, everyone should know better than to take anything that happens too seriously.  Fallen Hearts somehow manages to be even more melodramatic than the first two films and, as directed by Jason Priestley, Fallen Hearts appears to be fully in on the joke.

Priestley not only directs but he also appears in the film, once again playing Tony Tatterton.  Tony is not only Heaven’s unacknowledged father but he’s also her stepgrandfather as well.  When Heaven finally ends up marrying Logan Stonewall (James Rittinger), Tony invites them to come up to Massachusetts for their honeymoon.  Heaven says no but Logan, being a simple boy from the West Virginia hills, is all about family.  While up in Massachusetts, Heaven discover that her first husband, Troy (Jason Cermak), isn’t dead after all.  He’s just been in hiding for the past five years, mostly because, after the wedding, he discovered that he was also Heaven’s uncle and that type of relationship just isn’t right.  Of course, that doesn’t stop Troy and Heaven from having sex after they run into each other while wandering around a hedge maze.  Troy vanishes the morning afterward but soon, Heaven discovers she’s pregnant.  Is the baby Troy’s or Logan’s?

Actually, speaking of babies, Heaven’s trashy and bitter sister, Fanny (Jessica Clement, stealing the entire damn movie) is also pregnant!  And it turns out that Fanny’s been having an affair with Logan so he might be the father.  Then again, there’s also scene where the town’s preacher looks at Fanny and shouts, “WHORE!,” so who knows for sure.  The one thing we do know for sure is that all of this is going to lead to two pregnant sisters facing off in a court room.  These things always do.

Anyway, Fallen Hearts is not a film that’s really meant to be taken seriously and, as I said before, the film itself is obviously in one the joke.  The melodrama is turned up to 11 and the actors tear through the overripe dialogue like a moonshiner trying to outrun the cops.  Annalise Basso again manages to keep things somewhat grounded as Heaven but the film is totally dominated by Jessica Clement, who brings the wonderfully trashy Fanny to vivid life.  The townsfolk and the hillfolk might not think much of Fanny but she keeps Fallen Hearts beating.

The fourth part of the Casteel Saga, Gates of Paradise, will air on Lifetime next Saturday.

What Lisa Watched Last Night #157: My Husband Is Missing (dir by Brenton Spencer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched more than just The Crooked Man!  I also watched the latest Lifetime premiere, My Husband Is Missing.

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Why Was I Watching It?

Because it was on Lifetime, of course!  Now, I do have to admit that it was something of a disjointed viewing experience.  I watched the first hour of My Husband Is Missing, just long enough to discover that the main character’s husband was indeed missing.  I then switched over to SyFy and I watched The Crooked Man.

After the Crooked Man ended, I started to watch the final hour of My Husband Is Missing off of the DVR but then I noticed that I also had an episode of Cheaters on the DVR as well.  Well, naturally, I couldn’t understand why I would have ever recorded an episode of Cheaters.  So, I decided to watch it.  I was thinking maybe it would be the episode where Joey Greco got stabbed.

Nope, no stabbing.  It was just a normal episode of Cheaters.  Since the show was filmed in Dallas, I saw a lot of familiar locations but I still have no idea why I recorded it.

Life is weird, y’know?

Anyway, after all that, I watched the final hour of My Husband is Missing.

What Was It About?

Dale Bradshaw (Robert Underwood) is a father and a husband.  AND HE’S MISSING!  He was kidnapped out of his SUV and now, his kidnappers are posting videos of him all tied up and gagged.  Are his kidnappers forcing him to act in an Eli Roth movie?  Agck!

Since the police are totally useless — except for Det. Matthews (Aaron Pearl), I guess — it’s up to his daughter (Nicole Munoz) and his wife (Daphne Zuniga) to figure out what has happened to Dale!

As for Detective Matthews, he wants to help but he’s struggling because of government bureaucracy.  Fortunately, to help him out, he has a hacker who looks like he stepped straight out of 1998.

What Worked?

Uhmm…

Actually, I will give the film credit for two things.  I loved the title.  According to the imdb, this film was originally known as Abducted Love but My Husband Is Missing is a hundred times better.  My Husband Is Missing just screams Lifetime.

Secondly, this is yet another Lifetime film that was obviously filmed in Canada.  That’s not a problem because I love Canada.  Still, I appreciated the fact that every scene seemed to have an American flag in the background.  It’s as if the filmmakers were saying, “The film is too taking place in the U.S., regardless of how Canadian most of the supporting cast may sound!”  I appreciated the effort.

That said, I’d like to see a Canadian film on Lifetime that proudly embraced the fact that it was Canadian.  Enough of this “let’s pretend we’re in upstate New York” stuff.  I want to see a Lifetime film that proudly shouts, “THIS MOVIE IS SET IN TORONTO!  YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT!?”

What Did Not Work?

I usually have unconditional love for Lifetime films but this one just didn’t hold my interest.  Part of the problem is that I figured out the mystery after about 20 minutes.  There was no big or shocking twist.

“OMG!  Just like me!” Moments

There is a redhead in the film but she works for the government and that’s something you’ll never find me doing.

Lessons Learned

Canada shouldn’t have to pretend to be upstate New York.