Matinee

I have a lot of time for Joe Dante. Most of his movies are fairly light-hearted, nostalgic fare aimed at kids or the young at heart, but unlike his occasional collaborator Steven Spielberg he really pulls it off convincingly without getting too sentimental and treacly, and always has enough in-jokes and references in his movies to amuse diehard science fiction and horror film buffs. Dante is a BIG fan of film makers like Roger Corman (who gave him his big break), William Castle (a major inspiration for 'Matinee') and Mario Bava, while one has to wonder if Spielberg even knows who they are. 'Matinee' is a slight, but very entertaining picture, concerning b-grade 50s/60s horror movies, and fans of that era will absolutely love it. John Goodman ('The Big Lebowski') plays flamboyant writer/director Lawrence Woolsey. Woolsey's gimmicks and showmanship are inspired by William Castle ('The Tingler', '13 Ghosts', 'House On Haunted Hill',etc.etc.) though the fictional movie 'Mant' which is part of the plot is quite unlike Castle's output and closer to 50s paranoid monster movies like 'Them!' and 'Tarantula'. Goodman is perfectly cast and loads of fun. I also really liked Cathy Moriarty ('Raging Bull') as Woolsey's leading actress/assistant. The chemistry between the two was enjoyable and made for some nice comic touches. The young kid actors were all pretty good, and Dante regulars Dick Miller ('A Bucket Of Blood'), Kevin McCarthy ('Invasion Of The Body Snatchers'), Robert Picardo ('Star Trek Voyager') and William Schallert ('The Incredible Shrinking Man') seem like they are all having a wonderful time. Trivia buffs note that this movie includes an actor from 'The Thing From Another World' (Robert Cornthwaite) and also one from John Carpenter's remake 'The Thing' (David Clennon'). The movie within the movie 'Mant' is hilarious, but I enjoyed the whole thing. 'Matinee' is another fun movie from the underrated Joe Dante.

"This is Lawrence Woolsey and ...." starts this movie in great style as a 1960's style of movie promo. The movie starts starts very well and only gets bogged down late in the film when a couple of kids get shut into a bomb shelter by mistake.

This film portrait of the 1960's schlock entertainer Woolsey (as portrayed by John Goodman) continues to be his best film role. Goodman who is now one of the spokes people for Duncan Donuts (quickly putting Starbucks out of business), is perfect for the role of Woolsey. He is surrounded by a lot of old time talent & some younger folks who manage to put over an active film story.

Two coups of this are the film within a film setting which is employed successfully with the cutting between them being made smoothly without losing the plot line and the melding of some old timers into the film in support. William Schallert is used very effectively in the MANT film within the film. Jesse White is just as effective as the guy who is trying to evaluate Woolsey's show.

The film is a send up of lots of themes from Civil Defense, to the Missile Crisis, to movies in general, to sci-fi 1950's films, to spoofing life itself. There are even spoofs of characters within the film including a broad send-up of two Liberal Parents and their attitude towards raising their daughter.

This film is loaded with everything including the theater sign which has now failed, "Fight Pay TV". If you like John Goodman, this is his best role to date outside of Dan on Roseanne, a must see film for the Goodman fan.

When a light-hearted, nostalgic comedy opens with a nuclear explosion, you know you're onto something weird and original. Yet it's also comfortingly familiar. Matinée was made seven years after Back to the Future and is set (in 1962) seven years afterwards. In its style and tone it echoes Robert Zemeckis's blockbuster, but it wasn't embraced nearly so warmly by audiences.

Maybe it's because the backdrop is the harder sell of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Gene (Simon Fenton) is a young teen who lives on a naval base, and he's coming to terms with an absent military father who may never return. Some solace is arriving, however, as the B-movie tycoon Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) is coming to town to show off his new half-man/half-ant opus… "Mant".

The film establishes a broad cast of characters to populate Key West, including Gene's buddy Stan (Omri Katz), who's obsessed with the flirty Sherry (Kellie Martin). Gene himself, meanwhile, is courting the CND-conscious Sandra (Mrs Doubtfire's Lisa Jakub). While the parents panic about the impending nuclear annihilation, the schoolboys bicker and talk about girls.

The first half of the movie focuses on establishing the many characters, while the second half is dominated by the premiere of Mant itself and the (mostly) orchestrated chaos surrounding it. Suffice to say, the build-up – which does suffer slightly from minor character overload – is justified by the pay-off. The kids must sign a waiver before entering the theatre, and with good reason. "This crowd is turning into a mob," the producer yells at Woolsey – "congratulations!"

Writer Charles S. Haas has a brilliant ear for taut, funny dialogue that doesn't rely on punchlines, and the teenage dynamics are brilliantly observed. (The boys, anyway – the girls are more thinly sketched.) At the core of the film is Woolsey, whom we first see in Hitchcock-style silhouette, warning the audience about "atomic mutation". Goodman absolutely relishes his role, gleefully feeding his "AtomoVision!" and "Rumble-Rama!" to an audience hungry for event movie gimmicks.

Woolsey sees a business opportunity in the lightning-in-a-bottle moment of the Missile Crisis, keen to capitalise on the heightened national anxiety. Yet rather than making him the monster, the film skilfully presents Woolsey as a hero. Through him the film puts forth its paen to cinema as entertainment, and also a philosophical argument for the cathartic value of movie monsters as a way of exorcising a society's demons.

As with Tim Burton's masterpiece Ed Wood, director Joe Dante displays total affection for his subject matter, namely the monster flicks of the 1950s and '60s. Every period movie you can think of is referenced, but particularly Kurt Neumann's The Fly. We see plenty of footage of Mant and it is entirely convincing (by which I mean appropriately unconvincing), and avoids mocking its myriad sources.

"Put the insect aside!" one character begs the half-man/half-ant, to which he replies, "Insecticide? Where?!" Meanwhile, in the world of Dante's film, Woolsey is hurling special effects around the auditorium, spilling smoke and rumbling seats, literally bringing the house down. When the Mant cast start directly referencing the Matinée audience, who are in turn being watched by us, it feels like Amblin's answer to Inception.

For those who enjoy the smart satire of The 'Burbs and the frenetic farce of Gremlins, this is a similarly genre-dodging yet relatively overlooked Dante classic. It's a film about films they don't make anymore – and, in our less kind-spirited age of comedy archness, they really don't make them like this anymore.

This movie explores the marketing and the premier of a B-movie horror flick by a virtual one-man studio (remember American International?) in, of all places Key West during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I think this was intended to be a vehicle for John Goodman as the B-movie "impresario" Lawrence Woolsey (great casting!), with Cathy Moriarty also excellently cast as the jaded B-movie starlet and Woolsey's companion. Simon Fenton plays a young, wide-eyed, horror movie addict who is also a military kid, whose father has just been assigned to the naval blockade around Cuba. The cast also includes Dick Miller from the Gremlin series, and many other B-movies since the 1950's including the original Shop of Horrors.

Matinee is quirky, and the "movie within a movie," called "Mant" (half man, half ant), is about a silly accidental "mutation" of a man into a rather large insect The movie contains a good sampling of all the plot devices (on screen and off screen) used in these sorts of movies. The now-hilarious atomic horrors depicted in "Mant" are juxtaposed against the real-life horrors of the nuclear missile crisis, with interesting effect.

Matinee also offers a lot of not-so-subtle counterpoints between the atmosphere and common wisdom of the era (anybody remember Civil Defense drills? Bomb shelters? The "four" basic food groups?), and its stark comparison to what we know/think today. When this movie was made, the cold war was just over, and a look back to the pervasive feel throughout the 50's and 60's and its worrying about the "bomb" and anti-commie lingo makes the people of this era look supremely paranoid and silly, until one thinks about how even this has changed since the movie was made (think post 9-11: who's silly and paranoid now?).

The movie is enjoyable on many levels, although I feel the comparisons between the 60's and "today" could have been made a bit more subtle. As a counterpoint, my wife, who was never a fan of the horror movie genre, dislikes this movie--she also disliked "Ed Wood" for the same reason.

All in all, it's a wonderful movie that I'm glad to have in my VHS collection.

Certainly John Goodman portraying Lawrence Woolsey as a film director bent on all kinds of creative devices to lure audiences in to see his sci-fi/horror movies is a homage to the King of Gimmicks himself, William Castle. This movie is not great by any standards, but it sure is a lot of fun. It is a trip down memory lane for many. Although I am not old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis nor William Castle movies premiering, I am given a pretty accurate feel of the times through Matinee. The best part of the movie, however, is the movie within a movie....MANT...the story of a man that is half-man and half-ant. The scenes of this film alone are good enough reason to see Matinee. The one scene where the Mant character throws an ant farm to the ground and yells "You're free, You're free" is hilarious. The movie characters are also made up of old sci-fi stars Kevin McCarthy(Invasion of the Body Snatchers), William Shallert(Hundreds of films it seems), and Robert Cornwaithe(The Thing). Also look for John Sayles and Dick Miller in smaller roles hamming it up. Goodman is larger than life in his portrayal, much the same way that Castle was. And certainly, we in the audience that are great genre fans dream what it would have been like to help William Castle...I mean Lawrence Woolsey...make a picture.