Anyway, it's a fun comedy with a good amount of action. Lily Tomlin is hilarious, Dolly Parton is pretty funny, Jane Fonda is... the Zeppo of the group, I guess. She's fine for the part but it's not very comedic, although her "I'm into everything!" speech is great. Dabney Coleman is as slimy as when he was pursuing Miss Piggy in The Great Muppet Caper. (Correction: that wasn't him, he was the villain in The Muppets Take Manhattan.)
Bonus (IMDB-confirmed) connection to Unfaithfully Yours in that Lily Tomlin's character freaks out when her fantasy happens in real life.
The best scene IMO was one where Christina lays down the feudalism to disperse an angry mob of peasants, saying basically, "I don't tell you how to carry out your inherited trade, don't tell me how to rule Sweden." From a character whose other attitudes are so modern as to seem anachronistic, that was really satisfying. Also the scene where Christina's in disguise and is given a tip: a coin with her face on it. A classic royalty gag!
Sumana is a big fan of Kieslowski, and we bought the Three Colors trilogy during one of those Criterion flash sales, so more is in my future. I will say I like his general style where characters who are very important in one storyline will show up tangentially in another.
There's no missing the point of this movie: censorship is a farce and creative freedom rulez. It's not up there with University of Laughs or Goodbye, Lenin! because its message is way too simplistic, but those movies were made long after the fact, where this movie wrapped the same day Poland's censorship regime shut down.
Nota bene: this film includes a clip and a crossover from Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo, which might conflict with whatever Woody Allen boycott you've got going on. I'm just letting you know, the way I'd let you know that a salad contains peanuts.
Over Thanksgiving I also saw a bunch of Phineas and Ferb with kids, and it's a fun kids' show, but not gonna review it. Okay, fine: it's a fun kids' show. The characterization is pretty bad and based on stereotypes but the multi-layered plots are very clever. There's your review.
(2) Tue Dec 02 2014 22:53 November Film Roundup:
2014's penultimate roundup! Here it is.
20): Perhaps the final thrust of American social democracy against the Reagan eighties. I saw this movie when I was young, it came up in conversation with Sumana (probably because of Lily Tomlin's great Snow White parody), so we watched it. It definitely holds up. I couldn't remember what happened after the initial setup, and maybe that's because it goes all over the place, with car chases and dead bodies and whatnot. Or maybe it's because when I was young I only watched the first act of this movie.