alegault

I never "review" movies, but when horror breaks what I consider to be the #1 cardinal rule of the genre, it makes me almost angry for some reason. That rule, which is an entirely personal one, is that if you're going to take yourself dead seriously with your horror movie, you damn well better have good acting. Your story has to embrace camp in order for bad acting to have any hope of working. The lead actors ability is to me only a few small steps above infomercial quality. There is no feeling to his performance here whatsoever, especially when it calls for dire emotion which it does much too often. The story's execution, although interesting on paper, really doesn't do him or the lead actress any favours. I couldn't in good conscience rate it as low as possible because there are three things, a star for each, that to me must be commended: 1) The location and cinematography that takes place outdoors is fantastic. Beautiful stuff. 2) The lead actress is absolutely gorgeous here, and her performance singlehandedly carried me through to the end, which I could barely believe I made it to. She is embarrassingly cheesy in the third act, which I won't spoil here, but that is entirely the fault of the filmmakers. She did what she could with what she was given. 3) The movie is dedicated to Christopher Lee. This one is self explanatory.

3/10

I've never understood people who can't see great comedy underneath the surface of a plot. Secret agents, spacemen, UFOs, bad clowns, all haphazardly wrapped up in a road trip/buddy movie. Sure, it's equal parts ridiculous and bizarre, but the plot feels a lot less dumb the more you pay attention to the actors and their hilarious dialog. There is a subtle and likeable brilliance to the chemistry between Jim and John here. Ritter's timing and expressions in particular are incredible and the result is one of his funniest roles ever, and it really shows his talent as an actor. Easily one of the most underrated comedies of the 80s.