Guilty Pleasure No. 83: Meteor (dir by Ronald Neame)

Posted on May 16, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1979’s Meteor is about a big rock that is tumbling through space. Earth is directly in its path and, if it hits the planet, it could be an extinction-level event. Unfortunately, little bits of the rock keep breaking off and crashing into Earth, destroying cities and fleeing extras. Goodbye, Hong Kong. Goodbye, Switzerland, which is destroyed via stock footage lifted from Avalanche. Goodbye, New York, which blows up in such spectacular fashion that the scene was later re-used in The Day After.

It might seem like the planet is doomed. The meteor is unstoppable. Bruce Willis hasn’t become a star yet. But fear not! Some of the brightest faces of the 70s have been recruited to stop the meteor. Natalie Wood, in one of her final films, plays a translator and gets covered in muddy river water. Sean Connery wears a turtleneck and curses in that Scottish way of his. Karl Malden wears a hat and tells people to calm down while he calls the President. Brian Keith plays a Russian with all the grace and skill of a cat trying to rip open a bag of treats. Martin Landau is the military official who doesn’t think that the scientist know what they’re talking about. Henry Fonda is the president. That’s a lot of balding men for one movie and it’s hard not to notice that both Malden and Keith often seem to be wearing a hat whenever they share a scene with Connery. My personal theory is that the production, having spent all of their money on blowing up New York, couldn’t afford more than two toupees so everyone had to take turns wearing them. (The few scenes where Malden is hatless while in Connery’s presence are often oddly filmed, with either Connery on Malden standing with their back to the camera, almost as if the scenes were actually done with a stand-in.)

We’re supposed to breathe a sigh of relief when we see that Henry Fonda is playing the President but I’ve seen Fail Safe and I remember him allowing the Russian to nuke New York City. Interestingly enough, New York gets destroyed in this film too. Why didn’t President Fonda care about New York City? Of course, the scientists and the military folks are all located in a control center that’s located under the city. Malden mentions that they’re right next to the Hudson River. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that this is a bad idea but, then again, they also elected Henry Fonda president again.

My late friend and colleague Gary Loggins described Meteor as being a “crashing bore.” I have to admit that this is one of the few times that I have ever disagreed with Gary. Meteor is a tremendous amount of fun, as long as you’re watching it with a group of people and nobody takes it seriously. (The first time I saw it was at one in the morning while I was in college. Jeff and I watched it in the lounge of one of the dorms. We may be the only two people to have romantic memories of Meteor.) Meteor features a cast of champion scenery chewers. Karl Malden, Sean Connery, Martin Landau, Brian Keith, none of them were exactly subtle actors and giving them an excuse to argue about how to deal with a meteor allows for a lot of very enjoyable overacting. As well, the special effects are so cheap and obviously fake that it’s hard not to laugh out loud whenever the film cuts to that shot of the meteor rolling through space or the incredibly shiny American and Russian missiles slowly heading towards it.

Meteor’s a lot of fun, even if it is one of those movies where no one points out that our heroes inevitably seem to make every situation worse with their own stupidity. It’s very much at the tail-end of the 70s disaster boom. Watch it for the stars. Watch it for the rock. And watch it for the hairpieces.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 81: The Replacements (dir by Howard Deutch)

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2000’s The Replacements finds America in crisis!

With the season already underway, football players are going on strike! They want better contracts. They want more money. They want …. well, they want a lot of stuff. Meanwhile, the fans just want to know who is going to make the playoffs. There are only four games left in the season and the Washington Sentinels need to win three of them to make it into the playoffs. The owner of the team (Jack Warden) recruits burned-out coach McGinty (Gene Hackman) to take over a team that will be made up of replacement players. McGinty says that he wants to pick his own players and he doesn’t want any interference from the team’s owner. Anyone want to guess how long that’s going to last?

McGinty’s team is made up of the usual collection of quirky misfits who show up in movies like this. Tight End Brian Murphy (David Denman, who later played Roy on The Office) is deaf. One of the offensive linemen is a former SUMO wrestler. Orlando Jones plays a receiver who has a day job at a grocery store. The kicker (Rhys Ifan) is a Welsh soccer player. (Okay, a footballer, I don’t care, call it whatever you want.) Jon Favreau plays a berserk defender who is a member of the police force. Leading them on the field is Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves), a quarterback with a confidence problem. Cheering for them from the sidelines and falling in love with Shane is bar owner-turned-head-cheerleader Annabelle (Brooke Langton). Backing up Annabelle is a cheer squad made up of former strippers, the better to distract the other teams.

It’s not often you see a film where the heroes cross a picket line but that’s what happens with The Replacements. Then again, it’s not like the folks on strike are driving trucks or unloading freight for a living. They’re multi-millionaires who want even more money and don’t even care about whether the team wins or loses. When the replacement players actually start to win games and become beloved in the city, the striking players react by starting a bar brawl. In the end, striking quarterback Eddie Martell (Brett Cullen) doesn’t even stick with his principles. He crosses the picket line and creates a quarterback controversy, just in time for the last game of the season.

The Replacements is thoroughly predictable but also very likable. The cast gels nicely, with Hackman especially standing out as the gruff but caring coach. Keanu Reeves is not totally believable as a quarterback with a confidence problem. You take one look at Reeves and you don’t believe he’s had an insecure day in his life. But, as an actor, he’s so likable that it doesn’t matter. The same goes for the entire cast, whether they’re on the playing field or singing I Will Survive in jail. I don’t particularly care much about football but I did enjoy The Replacements.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 80: Point Break (dir by Kathryn Bigelow)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Some films are so ludicrous and self-aware of their absurdity that you can’t help but love them and that’s certainly the case with 1991’s Point Break.

Consider what Point Break offers us:

First, you’ve got Keanu Reeves playing a former college football star who, after blowing out his knee, ended up joining the FBI. Keanu, who looks like he’s barely out of high school in this film, plays a character with the wonderful name of Johnny Utah. Keanu gives a relaxed performance. You can tell that he’s having fun in this movie and Johnny Utah’s enthusiasm is infectious. Personally, I prefer Johnny Utah to John Wick.

Secondly, you’ve got Patrick Swayze as Bodhi, the ruthless bank robber who is also a surfer. Much like Reeves, Swayze could occasionally be a stiff actor but in this film, you can tell he’s having fun and again, it’s hard not have fun watching him as he spouts his surfer philosophy, jumps out of planes, and dreams of dying while mastering a 50-foot wave. Swayze is so charismatic as Bodhi that you totally buy that Johnny Utah would like him despite all the times that Bodhi tries to kill him.

You’ve got Bodhi’s bank-robbing gang, who call themselves the Ex-Presidents. Bodhi wears a Ronald Reagan mask. Other members of the gang wear LBJ, Nixon, and Carter masks. “I am not a crook!” Nixon says. The wonderful thing about the Ex-Presidents is that they seem to truly enjoy robbing banks. Of course, they also enjoy surfing.

Gary Busey plays a character who is not Gary Busy. Instead, he’s Johnny’s partner. Everyone in the FBI laughs at him when he says the bank robbers are surfers but guess who knows what he’s talking about! Seriously, though, it’s always interesting to see Gary Busey in the years when he was still a somewhat serious actor.

John C. McGinley does the uptight boss thing. Lori Petty is the waitress who teaches Johnny Utah how to surf. The surf footage is beautifully shot. A soaked Johnny give the camera a thumbs-up. Director Kathryn Bigelow keeps the action moving quickly and, just as she did with Near Dark, uses the film’s genre trappings to explore the bond that holds together a group of outsiders.

It’s an over-the-top and cheerfully absurd film and it’s impossible not to love it. I haven’t felt the need to watch the remake. Why would I? The original has everything I need.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 79: Kate’s Secret (dir by Arthur Allan Seidelman)

Posted on April 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 1986 melodrama, Kate (Meredith Baxter) has a secret. She may look like healthy and young and blonde. She may have a beautiful house and a handsome husband (Ben Masters). She and her fitness instructor best friend (Shari Belafonte) may spend their time making fun of how fat everyone else. But deep down, Kate is convinced that she’s overweight. She gets on the scale and that declaration of 120 pounds feels like a slap in the face.

How does Kate lose weight? She exercises frequently. And she spends a lot of time staring at herself in the mirror, as if trying to mentally burn away the pounds. Mostly, though, Kate just binges on food whenever she gets stressed and then she throws up. Kate has a lot of reasons to be stressed and they are almost entirely due to her mother (Georgann Johnson), who rarely has a nice word to say to Kate and who constantly tells Kate that she’s going to lose her husband to his assistant (Leslie Bevis).

(Who does everyone always assume that assistants are going to be homewreckers?)

Now, to be clear, eating disorders are a serious thing. I know more than a few people who have had eating disorders. During my first semester of college, I got very used to the sound of the girl in the room next to mine throwing up every morning. There’s nothing funny about the idea of someone having an eating disorder. However, there is something funny about an overwritten movie about an eating disorder that features Meredith Baxter literally attacking a chocolate cake then blaming the mess in the kitchen on the dogs. This is one of those well-intentioned programs that takes a real problem and then goes so overboard in portraying it that it’s more likely to make you snicker than feel horrified. You might not feel good about laughing but the crazed look in Meredith Baxter’s cake-filled eyes will make it difficult not to. Hence, the term guilty pleasure.

As always happens in these type of movies, Kate ends up in a treatment center where a doctor (Edward Asner) tries to reach her and the other patients are all either extremely nice or extremely rude. Kate’s roommate (Tracy Nelson) is a model with anorexia. Another patient (Mindy Seeger) harps on Kate’s “perfect life.” Meanwhile, poor Deyna (Mackenzie Phillips) freaks out when someone moves the garbage can. It’s all very well-meaning but also very over-written and overacted to the point that, once again, it’s more likely to illicit a guilty laugh than anything else.

In the end, Kate realizes that it’s all her mother’s fault. That was kind of obvious from the first time her mother told Kate that her husband was obviously planning on leaving her. “I’m getting better,” Kate says as the credits roll. Yay, Kate!

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Guilty Pleasure No. 78: Armageddon (dir by Michael Bay)

Posted on March 20, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Remember that time that Bruce Willis and a team of oil drillers saved all of humanity from a giant asteroid that was apparently the size of Texas?

Sure, you do! Everyone remembers Armageddon!

1998’s Armageddon is a film that doesn’t get a lot of respect but which everyone remembers. There’s been a lot of movies made about giant asteroids on a collision path with the Earth. Ever since scientists announced that a collision with a comet or an asteroid probably killed the dinosaurs, there’s been a somewhat irrational fear that the same thing could happen to us. Back in 1978, Sean Connery and Karl Malden tried to stop a Meteor (and failed). In 1998, the same year that Armageddon came out, Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, and Elijah Wood tried to stop an asteroid from causing a Deep Impact (and failed). Adam McKay made an entire film about everyone saying, “Don’t Look Up,” in an attempt to promote increased panic about climate change (and failed). (“I’m so scared!” Leonardo DiCaprio shouted and audiences responded, “Oh, calm down.”) And yet, it’s Armageddon — ridiculed by critics, endlessly parodied by other movies — that people use as their go-to source for commenting on the prospect of a mass extinction event. Mostly because, in Armageddon, humanity didn’t fail. Bruce Willis showed that asteroid who was boss!

Why do we love Armageddon? A lot of it has to do with the cast. Not only do you have Bruce Willis battling an asteroid but you’ve also got Steve Buscemi, Owen Wilson, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Michael Clarke Duncan, Peter Stormare, William Fichtner, and a host of others working with him. You’ve got Billy Bob Thornton working ground control. You’ve got Liv Tyler, somehow managing to give a decent performance even while Ben Affleck attacks her with animal crackers. It’s not just the cast is full of familiar and likable actors. It’s that the members of the cast know exactly what type of film that they’re appearing in and they all give exactly the right type of performance for that film. They deliver their lines with conviction while not making the mistake of taking themselves too seriously. Bruce Willis announces that his crew will destroy that asteroid in return for never having to pay taxes again and he announces with just the slightest hint of a smirk, knowing that the audience is going to cheer that moment.

But really, the real reason why Armageddon has survived that test of time is because it’s just so utterly shameless. Director Michael Bay will never be accused of being a subtle director but Bay instinctively understood that Armageddon was not a film that demanded subtlety. Armageddon is a film that demands that constantly moving camera and all of those carefully composed scenes that were clearly made so they could be included in the trailer. It’s a film about big moments and big emotions. Unlike something like Deep Impact, it doesn’t get bogged down in trying to be better than it actually is. Unlike Don’t Look Now, it doesn’t degenerate into a bunch of histrionic speeches. Armageddon exists to make the audience cheer and it succeeds. It takes guts to include a slow motion scene of a bunch of kids celebrating in front of a faded Kennedy For President poster but Bay is exactly the type of director who can pull that off. Michael Bay’s style is not right for a lot of films. But it was perfect for Armageddon.

As I sit here typing this, there are some people panicking because there’s speculation that a meteor is going approach the Earth in the 2030s. It’ll probably miss us but who knows? But you know what? I’m not worried at all. I’ve seen Armageddon. So, on this International Earth Day, let’s remember the courageous men who saved this planet back in 1998.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 77: Captain Ron (dir by Thom Eberhardt)

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1992’s Captain Ron opens with Martin Harvey (Martin Short) suffering through another day as a corporate drone in Chicago. What is Martin’s job like? It’s the type of job where there’s broken glass on the sidewalk because someone jumped out a window. Martin is ready for an escape and he gets it when he’s informed that his deceased uncle has left him a yacht that once belonged to Clark Gable. The only catch is that the yacht is on a Caribbean island and Martin will need to sail it to Miami if he wants to sell it. Martin decides this will be a great opportunity get away from cold Chicago with his wife (Mary Kay Place), daughter (Meadow Sisto), and son (Benjamin Salisbury).

It turns out that the yacht is in terrible shape. And so, for that matter, is the sailor who has been assigned to help the Harveys set sail. Ron “Everyone calls me Captain Ron” Rico (Kurt Russell) is a somewhat slovenly drunk who wears sunglasses over his eyepatch and who is in debt to some dangerous people. It also turns out that, despite talking a big game, Captain Ron is fairly incompetent as a navigator. He knows how the boat works. He knows how to keep the engine from overheating. He knows how to borrow Martin’s video camera so he can film Marin’s wife and daughter while they walk around top deck. What Captain Ron can’t do is actually get the boat to where it needs to go. Instead, Captain Ron takes the family to a number of islands, gets them into trouble with pirates, and also becomes the surrogate father-figure that the family needs.

There’s a lot to criticize about Captain Ron. The script cannot quite decide just who exactly it wants these characters to be. Moments of sentimental family comedy are mixed with scenes of Captain Ron leering at Martin’s wife and daughter. Martin and his wife get stuck in the boat’s shower and I’ll admit that I laughed at the scene because something similar happened to me in college but it still felt as if it was included solely to get the movie up to a PG-13. The film has the making of being a wild comedy but it never quite goes as far as it could. Martin gets upset but he never gets truly frantic, which is a waste of Martin Short’s talents. Ron has the makings to be a true force of chaos but the film instead just makes him incompetent. There’s an odd scene where Martin considers shooting Captain Ron with a flare gun. It comes out of nowhere and it’s not ever mentioned again. It hints at a film that could have been a lot more subversive than it turned out to be.

That said, I did enjoy Captain Ron. The island scenery is lovely. The shots of that dilapidated yacht on the ocean do, almost despite themselves, achieve a sort of grandeur. And then you’ve got Kurt Russell, wearing a red speedo and apparently having the time of his life as the incompetent yet rather cocky Captain Ron. It’s a fun performance, even if the film sometimes doesn’t seem to be sure what to do with it. That the film remains watchable is a testament to the charm of Kurt Russell. Much like the title character, Captain Ron is a film that’s likable even when it shouldn’t be.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 76: Code of Silence (dir. by Andrew Davis)

Posted on March 10, 2025 by Arleigh

The 1980’s saw the what film enthusiasts saw as the death of the grindhouse experience. Major cities had begun to clean up their skid rows and the $1 all-day matinee theaters were closing down left and right. By the late 80’s gone were the buckets of stale popcorn, watered down sodas, carpets so sticky that one didn’t even want to think was made them that way and, of course, the sketchy individuals who always seemed to in every showing no matter the time.

Yet, the grindhouse never truly left the cinema, but became a bit more “mainstream” under the many independent studios that came about during the early 80’s. You had Cannon, Carolco, United Film and Orion to name a few. It was with Orion that we get the latest guilty pleasure of mine and that was the one really good film that Chuck Norris ever made: Code of Silence.

Chuck Norris was the Jason Statham and Scott Adkins of the 1980’s action scene. He was cranking out action flicks almost on a yearly basis trying to cash in on not just the Bruce Lee martial arts phase, but also the action hero phase that was beginning to be dominated by Schwarzenneger and Stallone. While Norris never reached the heights of those two action stars, his list of action films from the 80’s and into the early 90’s were decent and, dare I say, very workmanlike.

Code of Silence was the one film that had a decent story of the lone good cop that has to fight not just the criminals but also the corrupt cops and system that allows crime to run rampart. Norris as Sgt. Eddie Cusack of the Chicago PD has become the template for the loner hero cop who ends up not just fighting the mob (of differently nationalities) but also a corrupt partner and, they always have one or two, a couple of retired cops who help him but also die in the process.

Norris doesn’t lean heavily on the martials arts of his previous action films. Code of Silence was the film that helped transition him to the gunplay of the action flicks that the public couldn’t get enough of. While the film could and never truly escape it’s grindhouse influence it was very good enough both in characters, plot and direction (director Andrew Davis would later film later classics with The Fugitive and Under Siege).

The film really gets its grindhouse bonafides with the addition of Henry Silva as the main antagonist. Silva would make a career out of being the villain in many 80’s action flicks and in Code of Silence he steals the limelight with his over the top performance as Colombian drug trafficker Luis Camacho. Where Jack Palance got more praise for being the preeminent villain and tough guy of from the 70’s and 80’s, I do believe that Silva was the more sinister of the pair when it came to their performance.

Code of Silence shows that Chuck Norris can carry a film with minimal dialogue and on the power of his silent, seething stares. He was never one for quippy one-liners and Code of Silence is all the better because of it.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 75: The Night Comes for Us (dir by Timo Tjahjanto)

Posted on January 21, 2025 by Arleigh

Some of the most inventive action films have been coming out of Southeast Asia these past 20 or so years. It was led by the very entertaining and brutal actions films headlined by martial artist turned action star Tony Jaa from Thailand then followed up by Indonesian action star Iko Uwais from The Raid series by Welsh director Gareth Edwards.

In 2018, Netflix bought the distribution rights for an Indonesian action thriller from director Timo Tjahjanto that starred the aforementioned Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Julie Estelle and a who’s who of Indonesia’s acting scene. At first glance, The Night Comes for Us looked to cash-in o the popularity of Gareth Edwards’ The Raid series, but one would be both mistaken and remiss to think such a thing.

The Night Comes for Us looked at Edwards’ The Raid duology and thought to itself that the action wasn’t brutal and visceral enough so decided to rectify that missed opportunity. Timo Tjahjanto took what he learned from his past work on horror films and decided to add some of those visual storytelling techniques to an action film that one would either have a hard time to sit through while viewing or just gobble with up with glee.

Guilty pleasure doesn’t mean the film has to be cheaply made or seen as being bad it’s good type of thing. I always thought that its something that one enjoyed despite knowing that there’s many out there who would look at someone askance for enjoying such a low-brow affair. The Night Comes for Us is both visually stunning in its production yet still has that low-down, grungy feel to it that harkens back to the hey day of grindhouse films of the 70’s and early 80’s. The only thing missing from this film was film grain imperfections such as film scratches and flaws to give it that 42nd street, NYC movie theater circa 1970’s experience (stale, days old popcorn and sticky floors included).

This film has it all and it has it in such abundance that one might just forgive Timo Tjahjanto for overdoing things when it came to the brutal violence that in years past would’ve earned it the dreaded XXX thus endearing it to the grindhouse crowd. The film actually opens up and ends in one of the few calm and introspective scenes with everything else in-between just straight up violence both hand-to-hand and gun variety. The Night Comes for Us is the film version of that saying “it woke up and chose violence.”

Joe Taslim headlines the film and he gives such a visceral and unhinged performance that one would be forgiven for mistaking his character as the villain if seeing the film in the middle after missing the beginning. Iko Uwais usually plays the reluctant hero in his previous films, but gets to let loose in a more antagonist role that more than matches Taslim when the two finally square off each other. The other stand-out performance to highlight would be Julie Estelle as The Operator who can throw down just as extreme as the men and, in fact, her fight scenes are pretty much the most brutal in the whole film and that is saying a lot.

So yeah, The Night Comes for Us, go see it and be horrified and/or amazed in equal measure. I guarantee that even if you hate the experience you won’t say that it was ever boring or bland.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 74: Van Helsing (dir by Stephen Sommers)

Posted on January 16, 2025 by Arleigh

What can I say about this 2004 action horror film that can do it justice at just how it perfectly represent what I call a “guilty pleasure”.

Van Helsing by Stephen Sommers (him being at his most Stephen Sommersist) was suppose to be a new action franchise with Hugh Jackman as it’s lead. One must remember that in 2004, Hugh Jackman was still at the height of his popularity as an action star with roles as Wolverine in the X-Men film franchise and, in another guilty pleasure of mine, Swordfish.

This film was suppose to catapult him to the stratosphere and taking the action star role from aging ones such as Arnold Schwarzenneger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis. Instead Stephen Sommers reached for that brass ring and failed, but did so with a mish-mash of horror properties blended haphazardly to give us a film that tried to be too much yet also not enough.

Hugh Jackman in the title role was more than game to try and prop up the film’s convoluted plot. Kate Beckinsale was stunning as usual and hamming it up in what I could only guess is here version of a Transylvanian accent. Even Richard Roxbrough in the role of Dracula, miscast as he seem to be in the role, gave a campy and scenery-chewing performance that his performance went past bad and circled back to being entertaining.

Yet, for all its flaws, I actually enjoy Van Helsing for what it was and that was a modern version of those Abbott and Costello mash-up with the Universal horror characters of the 40’s and 50’s. One cannot mistake this film on the same level as Nosferatu (Murnau, Herzog and Eggers versions) and Sommers definitely cannot be mistake for the three auteurs who had their own take on the abovementioned film. But Sommers does make thrilling, though some would say repetitive, action films.

Did I turn my brain off watching Van Helsing?

I sure did, but it still didn’t stop me from being entertained…and I cannot ever sat anything bad about a film with Kate Beckinsale in a tight black-red leather corset. It’s against some sort of law to do so.

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Guilty Pleasure No. 73: Days of Thunder (dir by Tony Scott)

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1990’s Days of Thunder, Tom Cruise plays Cole Trickle, a talented but headstrong racecar driver who is recruited by businessman Tim Daland (Randy Quaid) to become a NASCAR champion and to also provide some publicity for Daland’s Chevrolet dealership. Tim convinces Harry Hogge (Robert Duvall) to come out of retirement and serve as Cole’s crew chief. Harry builds cars in his barn and then he talks to them, whispering sweet nothings into their side mirrors. (This happens quite a bit.) Both Cole and Harry have something to prove. Cole has to prove that he’s the best. Harry has to prove, to himself, that an accident that killed one of his driver was not his fault. Harry also has to prove that he’s not insane. That’s not an easy thing to do when you’re always in the barn, talking to a car.

At first, Cole’s rival is Rowdy Burns (Michael Rooker) but, after Rowdy is seriously injured in a crash and told that he will never race again, Rowdy becomes Cole’s closest friend and supporter. With Rowdy off the circuit, Russ Wheeler (Cary Elwes) becomes Cole’s main rival. We know that Russ is a bad guy because he never has a hair out of place and he’s played by Cary Elwes, who for some reason was always cast as the smug bad guy in films like this despite having a rather charming screen presence.

Cole’s love interest is Dr. Claire Lewicki (Nicole Kidman), who is there to help Cole deal with his anger issues and who is surprisingly forgiving of all the times that Cole acts like a complete and total jerk. That happens quite a bit. Cole is a bit of brat but eventually, with the help of everyone around him, he learns how to be a great driver.

The first time I ever saw Days of Thunder, I was pretty dismissive of it. The film was producer and directed by the same people who were behind Top Gun and it pretty much tells the same story, except the jets are replaced with cars and the stakes are a bit less than saving democracy. Like Top Gun, it was a film where Tom Cruise played a character who wants to be the best but who has to learn how to set aside his own ego and take control of his impulsive nature. The first time I saw the film, I shrugged and said that, while Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise had a lot more chemistry than Cruise and Kelly McGillis, it was still nothing that I hadn’t seen before.

But I have to admit that, since then, I’ve rewatched the film a few times. It’s one of those movies that I never specifically seek out but if I see it playing somewhere on cable, I’ll usually watch a bit of it. Some of it is because the race scenes actually are exciting, even if they do get a bit repetitive after a while. Tony Scott was a director who knew how to film action. The other major reason why I often find myself watching Days of Thunder is for the totally over-the-top performances of Robert Duvall and Randy Quaid.

“We looked like a monkey fucking a football out there!” Quaid exclaims, not once but twice. It’s a phrase that doesn’t make the least bit of sense and it’s one of those lines of dialogue that reminds us that Days of Thunder went into production with a script that was being written and rewritten on a daily basis. But Randy Quaid’s delivery is so emphatic that line works despite being totally stupid.

As for Robert Duvall, his performance here is a perfect example of how much fun it can be to watch a legitimately great actor overact. There’s nothing subtle about his performance and I doubt Days of Thunder will ever be a film that shows up when people are talking about the highlights of his legendary career. But when Duvall talks to his car, you believe every minute of it. It’s such a silly scene but Duvall pulls it off like the pro that he is.

Finally, if you’re going to watch a movie about two cocky race car drivers who are constantly taunting each other, wouldn’t you want them to look like Tom Cruise and Cary Elwes? Good lookin’ guys in fast cars, drivin’ around Southern racetracks, what’s not to love?

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