Like Father, Like Son

The other day I watched Walk, Don't Run on TCM without knowing much about it besides it was a remake of The More the Merrier and it starred Cary Grant and Samantha Eggar, who I've become infinitely curious about since I saw The Collector awhile back. As I was watching it, I realized that it also starred Jim Hutton, father of Academy Award-winner Timothy Hutton of Ordinary People fame (I really can't escape that movie lately, can I?). Having never seen a photo of him, much less a movie, I was absolutely stunned when he walked on screen the first time.


They look exactly alike and not just in that "we share the same DNA" way. There were moments where it looked Timothy Hutton had gone back in time and dressed up in adorable 1960's suits just to be in this movie. It was freaky. I literally could not get over it during the whole movie. Jim would come on screen and I'd be like "Wait, why is Conrad Jarrett in this movie?" I guess that's the price you pay for being an Ordinary People fanatic.

As for the rest of the film, there isn't much to say really. I was never really a huge fan of The More the Merrier; it has a bloody good first half but stalls out somewhere towards the middle with horrible melodrama and a lengthy scene where Jean Arthur would not fucking stop crying. Walk, Don't Run, on the other hand, never even gets off the ground. I like Samantha Eggar and Jim Hutton but they are definitely no Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea. Eggar, in particular, doesn't have an ounce of comedic timing in her body. The morning routine scene where Eggar is supposed to describe in too great of detail how the bathroom shall be divvied up in the morning falls completely flat, whereas in the original Jean Arthur had me howling with laughter. It should have been a sure thing for Eggar, but she completely mangles it. The film has a couple of good bits towards the middle, Cary Grant is always a treat and the ending is nowhere near as irritating as the original, but, overall, Walk, Don't Run fails to live up even to the modest triumphs of The More the Merrier. C-

Weekend Rental Picks

A weekly series in which I try to help emerging cinephiles reduce their anxiety by pointing them in the right direction at their local Blockbuster.

The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980)
The David Lynch film for people who don't really understand David Lynch. I understand why people love him, but I personally need a coherent story to go along with the visuals. The Elephant Man is the first film of Lynch's I saw and the only one that hasn't made me question his sanity. In any one else's hands, this film would have been turned into dreck; with Lynch, it's still uplifting and touching, but the emotions don't feel cheap or forced on us. The friendship between Anthony Hopkins' kindly doctor and John Hurt's grotesquely deformed man (he's not an animal) is a surprising treat as well.

Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)
The greatest screwball comedy ever made. The film is so layered and well-constructed that it may take a couple of viewings to begin to understand just how brilliant it is. In comparison with romantic comedies of today, Bringing Up Baby just makes them look so lazy and lifeless. The character actors here (Charlie Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald and May Robson) are all fantastic, but the film really belongs to Cary Grant as the befuddled professor looking for his missing interclostal clavicle and Katharine Hepburn as the motormouth heiress who's in love with Grant, both giving the greatest performances of their careers (although I'm sure that there are others who would disagree).

Bad Education (Pedro Almodovar, 2004)
I was just talking with J.D. about how amazing this film is and I really, really want to see it again. Almodovar's self-proclaimed "fag noir" is really hard to describe since it's basically a strange combination of Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, a Hitchcock thriller, RuPaul and the infamous make out scene at the end of Y Tu Mama Tambien with sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests thrown in as well. As a bonus, Gael Garcia Bernal burns up the screen as the mysterious femme fatale and let's us now that he is an actor to be reckoned with.