Random Movie Club

YOUR FEBRUARY 2004 RMC RESULTS ARE IN!

The Preshow Entertainment was: commercials from the 50s and 60s. I love old ad campaigns, the ones where the generic announcer tells you the problem, then the solution. I love when actors act it out in typical 50s "driver's ed" film style. I think the best one was a napkin commercial. The problem: The family couldn't seem to keep their napkins from slipping off their laps. POOF! A 5 inch man appears and tells them about Kleenex. Napkins will never slip off this family's laps again, and they all lived happily ever after Kleenex.

Also included, old ads for: Hai Karate ("Wow! What's that aftershave you're wearing!!"), QT (quick tanning lotion), Pepsodent (pretty much saying, "if you use it, you'll get laid"), a VERY long bit with Arthur Godfrey (from live TV) boring even himself as he hawked Lipton Soup ("I swear there's chicken in there"), a Windex ad with a Tarzan motif, a live Garry Moore skit about S.O.S. from his game show, and lots of cigarette and cigar commercials- Kent ("to a smoker it's a Kent"), Winston(tastes good like a cigarette should), and Marlboro, which had a man working on his car, with his voiceover saying in a rugged monotone: "I like to take my car apart, and put it back together again. Sometimes I even forget to eat." There was also Mr. Clean, Handi-Wipes, and oh yeah, a Band-Aid commercial where they demonstrate its adhesive by sticking it to an egg. Sadly, I remember that ad.

The movie selected was RMC's first DVD. It was SHREK. I'm really glad it was SHREK, because when I saw it in the theaters, I was dead tired and I think I slept through 90% of it. So watching it this time, I felt as if I was just remembering parts from when I saw it when I was a kid.

It's a really clever movie. Maybe too clever. But in spite of that, it's a lot of fun. It was one of the first (huge) kids movies to play to adults as well as kids. It's hip, with tons of suggestive references and inside jokes, (like the diminutive stature of Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow)/Jeffrey Katzenberg rumor (?).

It's the story of a big green ogre (Mike Myers....originally it was Chris Farley, but when he expired, they redid it with Myers doing it with no accent, only to be replaced again by Myers with a Scottish accent) who falls for a soon-to-be princess (Cameron Diaz). There's a lot of fairy tale characters hanging around, but the movie is stolen by The Gingerbread Man ("Eat me!") and his "Do you know the muffin man?" scene with Lord Farquaad.

SHREK is based on a book by William Steig (who died a few months ago in his upper 90s!), and written by Disney Darlings Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot (ALADDIN, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN). My friend (let me qualify that, I haven't seen him in a few years, so, lost friend?) Roger was a writer on it as well. I believe he did a lot of the Eddie Murphy/donkey stuff. Good for him.