If
seeing a nude Diane Keaton in Something’s
Gotta Give tested your gag reflex, you might want to skip Calendar
Girls (opens Friday, January 2, at the Little Theatre). Instead of one
middle-aged woman in her birthday suit, you get 11 in Girls.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Even though Girls is based on a true story, it still comes off as another
desperate attempt to replicate the same success enjoyed by The Full Monty. Both films are about an unlikely group of people
who take their clothes off for money. Both are set in quaint British villages.
Both follow the same cookie-cutter story. But only one is a good film.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Instead of unemployed steel-mill
workers, Girls offers bored
housewives who suffer through local Women’s Institute meetings focusing on such
exciting subjects as milk, rugs, and broccoli. Annie Clarke (Julie Walters) is
one of them, and when her husband (John Alderton) dies from leukemia, fellow WI
member Chris Harper (Helen Mirren) cooks up one zany idea: Get other WI members
to pose nude for a calendar and use the proceeds to purchase a new couch for
the family area of the local hospital.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย The photography session for the
calendar is Girls‘ best feature and,
despite the nudity, I wished it were longer. Like the real-life calendar, the
women’s privates are covered up, Austin
Powers-style, by various objects, which accounts for the light PG-13 rating
(we see more skin than is revealed in the photographs, though). Girls‘first two acts are relatively harmless, but the wheels fall off in
the third, in which the calendar becomes a surprise hit. The women end up on The Tonight Show, and we all learn a
very important lesson about fame.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Girls was directed by Nigel Cole, who also helmed the instantly forgettable Saving Grace. True story: I looked
on-line to see what Grace was about
and was surprised to find one of my own reviews, despite having no memory of
seeing the film.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย That’s
the same kind of empty experience you’ll get from Girls. The cardboard-cutout characters and typical jokes are aimed
at 50-plus women and people who laugh out loud at the hysterically unfunny Will & Grace. I guess some folks
might crow about how empowering Girls is, but is it still empowerment when you have to get naked for people to notice
you?
You’ll get much stronger empowerment in Come
Drink with Me (screens Friday, January 2, at the Dryden Theatre), the
1966 film that raised the bar for two generations (and counting!) of the
historical martial arts epic. Come Drink kicks off the Dryden’s Heroic Grace program, which runs throughout January on
every Tuesday and Saturday evening (except January 30 — visit www.eastman.org
for more scheduling info).
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Come
Drink is just one film from the impressive and staggeringly large catalog
(over 800 full-length movies) of the Shaw Brothers, who also produced Five Fingers of Death and 1978’s The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (screening
Tuesday, January 20, at the Dryden). The Shaws made more than just action
pictures, but the chop-socky is what defined their careers. If the names ring a
bell and their pre-credits logo looks familiar, you must have gotten to the
theater on time to see the very beginning of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, which was nothing if not an
homage to the Shaws and the insanely fun wuxia films they made over several
decades.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Essentially a spaghetti western in a
dusty Asian setting rather than the Wild West (that genre will be Tarantino’d
up in the second installment of Bill),
Come Drink is about a band of thugs
who kidnap a governmental emissary to use as bait to free their captured
leader. The area’s most ferocious sword-wielder is sent to negotiate the
ambassador’s release, but it becomes clear pretty early on that Golden Swallow
(Cheng Pei-pei) isn’t going to be doing much bargaining with bandit leader Jade
Face Tiger (Chen Hung Lieh). Along the way, he meets and is aided by a
stumbling boozer named Drunken Cat (Yueh Hua), who turns out to be more than
just a stumbling boozer. And at some point, Golden Swallow reveals himself to
be a woman.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Come
Drink establishes characters (the drunken bum who can really kick a whole
lot of ass) and situations (the two-story tearoom brawl) that have practically
become clichรฉs of the genre in the subsequent four decades. It also gets points
for not forcing a romance between Golden Swallow and Drunken Cat, and for, as
rumors suggest, director King Hu allowing Hua to get loaded during most of the
filming.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Hu, by the way, went on to become a
Cannes winner in 1969 for the three-and-a-half hour epic A Touch of Zen. And I bet more than a few of you have seen Pei-pei
in the last year or two — she played the villainous Jade Fox in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Golden
Swallow, who must have been the archetype upon which Elektra was created,
continues her journeys in 1968’s Golden
Swallow, which screens at the Dryden next Friday (January 9).
Interested
in raw, unsanitized movie ramblings from Jon? Visit his site, Planet Sick-Boy (www.sick-boy.com),
or listen to him on WBER’s Friday Morning Show.
This article appears in Dec 24-30, 2003.
