This week the world lost two great entertainers. Don LaFaontaine, voice over guy for countless movie trailers and actor/musician/ composer Jerry Reed both passed away. LaFontaine was one of the most recognizable voices in the world as he promoted everything from Scream to George of the Jungle, Gieco finally put a face to voice in one of their best and funniest commercials. Reed made such great hits as When You’re Hot, You’re Hot and Elvis Presley’s return to form Guitar Man as well as being an ingratiating presence in Burt Reynolds’ Smokey and the Bandit movies (If you want to see the perfect good old boy, badass villain check him out in the Reynolds vehicle Gator). They will both be missed.
I like Kevin Smith, he is one of the few major film makers from my generation that isn’t pretentious or boring as a person. He seems rather normal and has been able to maintain his normalcy even while working in the craziness of Hollywood. I’ve liked all of his films, with the exception of Jersey Girl (I’m just not a romantic comedy kind of guy) and his books, his college lecture tour DVD’s and his interview with Stan Lee. Now it seems Smith has added a new title to his burgeoning resume, film critic.
Before Ebert and Roeper was officially canceled, Smith had occasionally appeared on it as a special guest critic during Ebert’s surgery. I enjoyed the novelty of it but thought that that was just a one time thing. Apparently not. Smith has popped up on online chat shows talking about movies (his thoughts on the direction the next Batman movie should take were very interesting) and now he has been allowed to see secret screenings of both Watchmen and the new Star Trek (he gives rave reviews for both without revealing any spoilers).
Some guys have all the luck. He has a beautiful wife, beautiful daughter, owns his own production company and comic book shop, gets paid lots of money to do what he likes and to top it all off, gets to indulge his ubergeekness for free. If he wasn’t such a great guy I would hate him.
I have just seen the best spin off piece of merchandise from a movie, the DVD film Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control. It is a short film, only 71 minutes, that follows an adventure of the two lab tech friends of Maxwell Smart from the feature film that happens during the time of Max’s first mission. It is a funny and entertaining story with two amusing but likable minor characters that includes some great cameos from some of the blockbuster’s stars ( the best one being 99 calling in to complain that they have given all the best new equipment to Max and she’s still using two year old garrote dental floss and their failed attempts to get Hymie the robot to function correctly).
This is not a cheap little knock created to just make money, but is a well made smaller project that compliments the major film with a decent plot and good special effects. The story has Bruce and Lloyd (Masi Oka and Nate Torrence) scrambling against time when their latest gadget, a self energizing cloak of invisibility is stolen by a foreign dictator, and they have to race against the deadline for their demonstration to get it back while preventing a pair of unscrupulous CIA agents from getting it first and taking the credit for inventing it. An amusing subplot concerns Bruce’s attempts to romance a cute but smelly forensics pathologist. The smaller film works the same way Get Smart worked, the story is serious but the heroes are a bit inept at the spy game and only succeed through a combination of luck and an ability to improvise on the spot.
Oka and Torrence make a great comedy team, playing smart but naive characters who play well off of each other. Their conversations are some of the best comedy in film. Adding to this is Larry Miller playing a dense and bombastic pointy haired boss style head of the lab and his CIA counterpart smarmy twin brother.
The extras (yes they included extras on the DVD too) include an interesting featurette where actual scientists examine some of the gadgets Bruce and Lloyd employ though out the film from a scientific point of view to see if they could actually work in the real world, a behind the scenes look at one of the funnier scenes in the film (to get a CIA agent out the way they use a failed riot control gun to cause him to go instantly bald during a dinner date with a female counter spy), and a surprisingly unfunny candid interview with some of the characters during an office party.
