This blog covers Movies, TV, and other Geeky things...... Movie Reviews (over 3,400 movies rated so far) Countdowns of my top movies by year.... and much more.
Steve Martin is having a bad day trying to get home for the holidays and then he hooks up with John Candy in one of his best roles as Dell the shower curtain salesman. The pairing is perfect, the laughs are classic. This is a nearly perfect road picture. Hollywood tried to remake this sort of with Due Date starring Robert Downey Jr. but all I could think of while watching that movie was this is no Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Steve's character Neal reluctantly teams up with Dell in a search for anyway to get back to Chicago for Thanksgiving and the adventure to get there is a blast. With one disaster after another. Then after all the laughs the film has a real heart at the perfect ending. Steve Martin and John Candy work so good together in this film
Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short..... (The Perfect comedy cast) Each comedian brings their A game to this classic comedy.
The Three Amigos......Like the Jerk Three Amigos is one of my favorite movies of all-time... Most of my favorite comedies have either Steve or Chevy in them so to have them together and add Martin Short....was perfection.... It is one of those movies for me where I love nearly every moment of it. I remember laughing so much the first time in the theaters when they shoot the invisible swordsman that I couldn't hear the dialogue that came after that. The movie is basically The Seven Samurai if the Seven Samurai were three out of work silent movie actors.
After the Three Amigos get fired from their acting roles they get a telegram from a small town in Mexico. The town mistakenly thinks they are actual heroes and The Three Amigos think it is an acting gig. Acting gig NOT SO MUCH as they end up face to face with El Guapo and his gang of bandits. The comedy is silly and stupid and so much fun. There aren't many comedies that will every be this tailor made for my sense of humor
The scene where they are crossing the desert looking for the singing bush.....and Steve and Martin are dying of thirst and Chevy takes a giant gulp of water wasting it and then asks them if they want lip balm....Priceless.....
Another classic scene is when Steve is trying to get their attention while they are all standing outside the studio in the underwear before sneaking back in to get their costumes..... "LOOK up HERE" he yells like a bird.
Here is the trailer for this classic movie....
I just recently got the DVD for Christmas......A must have for all Steve Martin and Chevy Chase fans.
I still wish there was a commentary track....I would love to here that....But the DVD was worth it just for an old interview with the cast and the few deleted scenes.....I wish there had been a sequel somehow to this masterpiece.
3 of Steve's earliest films jumped to the screen like stuff straight out of his standup. His first film The Jerk from 1979 is one of his best.... 10 out of 10 and a pure classic in my book.
Listed in IMDB as a movie about " A complete imbecile struggles to make it through life on his own, until a strange invention makes him unbelievably wealthy." Steve takes us on a journey as naive Nathan R Johnson as he goes from being born a poor black child (doesn't realize he is adopted --joins a traveling circus and eventually invents the opti-grab that makes with super wealthy. Every scene is filled with perfectly fun dumb humor. Absuridist and yet simple the story is a delight and Steve is perfect in this role. I could qoute it all day... one classic line while he is working as a weight guesser at the carnival is "For one dollar I'll guess your weight, your height, or your sex. " Or while trying to remember the tips his family gave him before leaving home "Lord loves a workin' man; don't trust whitey; see a doctor and get rid of it." and one of my favorite scenes from the movie...
"I know we've only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days. And the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days. And the fifth day you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day, and then you came back and later on the sixth day, in the evening, when we saw each other, that started seeming like two days, so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days, so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day, it seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half. I have it written down, but I can show it to you tomorrow if you want to see it. " I love this movie so much that I remember being upset when watching the TV version becauseI missed the scenes that were cut and then being upset when I first got it on tape because there were scenes on the TV that replaced the other scenes that weren't in that version. Even the cut scenes from The Jerk are classic.
In the Man with Two Brains- 1983 9 out of 10 --Steve falls in love with a brain in a jar. Enough said.
Steve is a brain surgeon that happens to come across a wonderful brain that he decides to transplant into his bitchy wife. This is an underrated Steve Martin film that has Steve in Jerk mood. Funny and bizarre a great early Steve Martin film. Who doesn't want to see Steve Martin rowing a boat with a brain in a jar.
In 1984's The Lonely Guy 9 out of 10 co-starring in an excellent performance Charles Grodin. Steve is well......A lonely guy. It is bascially a Lonely Guy's handbook or guide to try and not be a lonely guy anymore. It includes great scenes and jokes about his friend having cardboard cut-outs of celebs so when he throws a party and no one shows he feels less lonely. Another great scene has Steve going out to eat alone in a restaurant where he eating alone is highlighted to his dismay.
Here is the Restaurant scene is classic Good stuff and a film many Steve Martin fans may have not seen. Check out the Lonely Guy is you can find it. Here is the trailer for the movie
Abbott and Costello are Detectives straight out of Detective school in this story where they end up working for a boxer that has escaped from prisoner after being wrongfully accused. With the help of a formula he turns into The Invisible Man. Costello does his typical stumbling and bumbling and gasping for air and they eventually end up proving his innocence after Costello poses as a boxer in order to flush out the bad guys that framed the Invisible Man. There are some good special effects for the Invisible Man portion of the film. The one thing it was missing was a really good signature Abbott and Costello bit. The best bit they had in the film was an old money gag that was straight out of the Marx Brothers.
Montana Belle was just a average, ordinary, mediocre, nothing special Western from the 1950's. Jane Russell stars as Belle Star, female bank robbers that in this picture gets mixed up with the Dalton gang. The bank robberies are nothing special. The plot never really has any flow to it and Star's gang deciding to hide out in the place they robbed under fake names is not believable at all.
