Mish Mash 24 (Rookie of the Year Loves Ass, Peggy Sue Got Married (and Slit Her Throat), Fear City Slice and Dice, Mystic Pizza Subverts)

Rookie of the Year Loves Ass

In Daniel Stern’s family baseball freak show movie Rookie of the Year a kid (Thomas Ian Nicholas (Halloween: Resurrection)) injures his arm and suddenly has the ability to throw a baseball over a hundred miles an hour.  Of course the Chicago Cubs want him immediately because, well, they suck and are willing to try anything.  Ignoring all logic is an artform in this picture but a child being exploited by a large organization while also letting him live his dream is what we’re here to see.  If I want reality I’ll watch Weekend at Bernie’s.

Anyway, the part I wanted to bring up is when the doctor examines the golden arm after the cast is removed.  He asks to move the arm around some to check how it healed.  However, he gets slapped in the fucking face by the kid accidentally at an enormous speed smashing his nose.  The doctor’s reaction is to yell out “FUNKY BUTT LOVIN’!!!”  I gotta hand it to Stern on this one, that’s a good sneak on a PG film.

 

Peggy Sue Got Married (and Slit Her Throat)

A woman named Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner (Romancing the Stone)) goes back in time to 1960 and relives her high school life for a week hoping to avoid the same mistakes she made the first time.  Chiefly she doesn’t want to fall in love with her sweetheart Charlie (Nicolas Cage (Moonstruck)) again because in the present they’re going through a divorce.  It’s a lighthearted comedy meant to make you think about your own life choices and what you might’ve done differently given the chance.

If the plot sounds familiar that’s because it’s essentially Back to the Future with a few changes.  But boy it’s amazing what those tweaks do.  I found this film to be mostly very depressing and that’s for two reasons.  Peggy Sue is reliving her own life instead of examining her parent’s youth.  Seeing what your folks were like in high school stirs up some curiosity and removes yourself from the situation by a step.  Reliving your own past sounds like a nightmare because you know everything that’s going to happen and the horrors that lie ahead.  Suddenly you’re living at home again and have all the restrictions of a teenager.  Plus Peggy Sue spends some time with her sister that she lost contact with over the years and visits her grandparents who’ve been long dead.  How the hell can anyone process all this shit?

The second reason the situation is worse is Peggy Sue doesn’t know if she’s dreaming or crazy.  In Back to the Future Marty knows for sure he time traveled and works with Doc Brown to find a way to get him to his proper time.  There’s a goal that’s worked toward.  In this picture Peggy Sue has no idea how long she’s stuck in 1960.  It could be a day, a week, a year, eternity, whatever.  And who knows, maybe when she finally reaches the present the cycle will start all over again.

So with these seemingly small changes the impact is huge.  I mean if I were Peggy Sue I would probably blow my fucking brains out after two days.  The emotional strain would be overwhelming with no end in sight.  Damn dude, what a cruel fate.

 

Fear City Slice and Dice

Abel Ferrara’s Fear City is not a good movie.  He’s done killer-runs-amok-on-the-streets-of-NYC better with Ms .45 and to a lesser extent The Driller Killer except this one is a lot sleazier.  Some asshole is murdering strippers and it’s up to the seedy heads of the talent agencies who supply the dancing girls to flush him out.

The killer (Neil Clifford (Class of 1984) in an uncredited role) has a manifesto, called “Fear City”, about ridding the world of filth.  Naturally his approach is to do martial arts training in an empty warehouse and strike strippers on their way home from work.  Most of the time it’s knife attacks but for one he uses nunchucks which comes across pretty silly.

But the real reason I’m bringing this picture up is the murderer dispatches one of his victims with a samurai sword.  The setup is so fuckin’ ridiculous with the dude standing on a street corner with his back to the building waiting for the poor woman to walk right into his blade.  We’re talking New York fuckin’ City here where there’s no one around and someone can flash a katana in public, hold out for a min and slice a broad in half right on the street.  Who does that?

 

Mystic Pizza Subverts

(Warning: this is gonna be all spoilers)

So I checked out Mystic Pizza and didn’t think too much about it going in.  The plot involves three ladies played by Annabeth Gish (SLC Punk!), Lili Taylor (Leatherface) and Julia Roberts (Mary Reilly) who just finished high school and don’t know where their lives are headed next.  Each gets in a relationship and you feel pretty smart about where this shit is going ‘cause you’ve seen a dramedy or two like this before.  But in a bold move the filmmakers flip the tables on you and subvert your expectations.

Taylor is engaged to Vincent D’Onofrio (Rings) but is having second thoughts.  She wants to fool around some more before jumping right into marriage.  When Taylor tries to have sex with D’Onofrio he can’t do it and is offended that all she wants is his penis.  This is the opposite of every guy in every movie ever.  He wants a long term commitment and not only sex.  Sensitive dude.

Roberts gets tangled up with a rich law school kid (Adam Storke (Death Becomes Her)) who drives a Porsche and lives in a mansion and the whole bit.  So he’s got to eventually reveal himself to be a major asshole, right?  Turns out sure, he does a couple of jerky things but in the end he apologizes for his stupid behavior and at no point does he really treat Roberts badly.  He shows he can grow as a person and better himself and Roberts recognizes that.  So again, another guy that doesn’t go down a path you expect.

The real kicker though is Gish’s relationship with her employer (William Moses (lots of crime solving TV shit)).  She gets hired as a babysitter and develops a crush on the father flirting with him.  The wife is overseas on a business trip so she’s not around.  This sonuvabitch picks up on the googly eyes and makes his move on Gish.  The fact that they have sex is terrible not necessarily because of the age difference but more because this fella’s willing to risk his marriage and the wellbeing of his child for a fling with a teenager.  They don’t seem like they have a lot in common or much chemistry either.  The entire relationship is creepy.  And when the wife returns of course Gish is devastated.  It’s a very shitty situation that I could see the film advancing towards but refused to believe they would actually go through with it until it happened.

Mystic Pizza, not exactly what I thought I was gonna get but in a good way.  I guess I like the movie overall and appreciate that it tries different ideas.

This was written by Amy Holden Jones who also wrote Beethoven and Indecent Proposal and wrote and directed The Slumber Party Massacre.  Interesting career.