Matinee (1993) It would take us 6 hours to write this post if we included all its loving references to the cheeseball sci-fi and horror movies that its director Joe Dante piles into it.
We were always prepared to adore this warm-hearted, sometimes very funny film about the unlikely collision of a shlockmeister low grade movie director (based on the very real William Castle) with the most near-apocalyptic moment in American history, the Cuban missile crisis.
The movie delivered, alas, only a small portion of the fun it promised.....
But what a delicious idea.......when a Florida community's faced with the real horror of a nuclear face-off between JFK and Nikita Krushchev, along comes the Castle-like Lawrence Woolsey promoting his latest mutation-gone-wild horror epic 'Mant!, in which a hapless man turns into a giant ant......(hence the title).
Woolsey, played with slyly satirical bonhomie by John Goodman, has also brought along, just like William Castle, a full array of ridiculous mechanical effects to enhance the premiere screening of his painfully idiotic movie, including electric buzzers for the seats (a la "The Tingler" and 'Rumble Rama' (huge speakers blasting low vibrations at key moments.)
And for added nutty effect, he's hired the town's local delinquent to dress up in a 'Mant' costume and run into the theater and jump-scare the audience, consisting mostly of the town's horror-movie loving teens and tweens.
(We laughed silently when we remembered that in the mid 1970's, Universal did try its own version of Rumble Rama, called Sennsurround, which didn't work too well when placed in twin theaters with a thin walls.....)
All of this sounds like an infectious riot as we're describing it, and every so often, it fulfills its potential.....especially in the priceless clips from 'Mant' which feature the actual veteran character actors from 50's sci fi movies, William Schallert, Robert Cornwaithe and Kevin McCarthy.
If ever a movie needed to be quickly paced, sharply written and brimming with knowing wit it's this one........and as much as we wanted to love "Matinee", (having spent an entire childhood in those horror movie matinees ourselves), it's none of those things, really.
The script eats up a lot of precious time with the Florida tweens , but there's neither humor nor any coming-of-age wisdom on that stuff to justify the time spent and the kid actors are never more than Disney Channel adequate.
And Joe Dante's pacing and editing here are downright pokey and in no particular hurry to get the film going anywhere.
Still there's plenty to savor here, mostly from Goodman's spot-on performance as the larger-than-life Woolsey, who's like the friendliest carnival barkers ever who got the suckers to part with their money......and also Cathy Moriarity, as his fed-up starlet assistant who's along for the ride. And be on the lookout for Naomi Watts making her film debut in another of the film's fake movies, "The Shook Up Shopping Cart", a send up of Haley Mills' 60's Disney comedies.
We'll leave it at this.......for BQ visitors who've stopped in for our reviews of 1950's and 60's sci fi and horror films, then you should attend this 'Matinee' at least once.....3 stars (***)
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