Director Report Card: Michael Lehmann (2007) - Part Two

9. Flakes

When talking about “Because I Said So,” I mentioned that it was one of two new Michael Lehmann movies to come out in 2007... Kind of. While “Because I Said So” was a major studio production that had a wide release in February of that year, Lehmann's next film was “Flakes.” “Flakes” was a low budget, independently produced project. The movie had an extremely limited theatrical release in December of 2007. How limited exactly? It played in one theater, for a span of nine days, ultimately grossing all of 778 dollars. Judging by several images I can find online, “Flakes” was later released on DVD as a Blockbuster Video exclusive. Eventually, a more easily acquired disc would arrive but the fact of the matter remains: “Flakes” was barely released. I didn't even know the movie was readily available at all until years after first reading about it. What exactly is this motion picture about and why was it essentially discarded?  

The film follows Neal, who dreams of making rock music but spends most of his time working at Flakes. That's a cereal bar in downtown New Orleans, which specializes in the rarest and most collectible types of sugary breakfast grains. While Flakes has a small customer base of die-hard cereal nerds, Neal's girlfriend – an artist who calls herself Pussy Katz – feels like he's stagnating. She keeps pushing him to take a week off from work and focus on making an album. When a son of a rich lawyer opens a more commercial cereal bar with a nearly identical name directly across the street, Pussy marches over there and gets a job. Neal's attempts to bankrupt the rival business backfires and soon the original Flakes is run out of business. Directionless and now unemployed, Neal is forced to confront his dying ambition and fracturing relationship.

As someone who is fascinated by weirdo subcultures and strange fandoms, I think setting a movie inside the world of hardcore cereal people is an interesting idea. Some folks might not even be aware that such a group exist but it's true: There's a cereal collector community out there. They trade packs of unopened product from decades back, rating specimens on freshness and preservation. They scrutinize box designs over the years and detail every minor alteration made. They endlessly debate their favorite flavors and mascots. Passionate fan followings like this are certainly rich grounds for storytelling. Cereal bars were a concept also just starting to pick up steam in 2007, giving “Flakes” a degree of novelty.

However, “Flakes” is not really about cereal fandom. Characters discuss forgotten brands, talk about the history of the industry, and debate obscure facts. Freakies is a minor plot point, for one example of that. Yet “Flakes” isn't truly concerned with breakfast food. Instead, this is a movie about a different subcultures that was a topic of conversation in the mid-2000s: Hipsters. Neal doesn't show his superiority over others by claiming to be into some band before they got popular. Instead, he lords his cereal knowledge over other people. Yet he still considers himself cooler and more sophisticated than other people around him. Despite, in truth, being an emotionally arrested man-child in an extended state of adolescence. If the mumblecore films that came to dominate indie film culture in the years directly before and after “Flakes” came out were cinema made for and by hipsters, this film feels like a deliberate attempt to replicate the cultural movement those filmmakers belonged to on-screen. Hipstersploitation, if you will.

I don't think riding the coattails of the Duplass Brothers and Joe Swanberg was the goal of “Flakes.” Mumblecore wouldn't formulate as a genre until after this movie came out. Aside from being about insufferable twenty-somethings, “Flakes” has nothing in common with those movies. The film's screenwriters, Chris Poche and Karey Kirkpatrick, have worked almost entirely in animation otherwise. Michael Lehmann was obviously a seasoned pro, by this point. In a lot of ways, “Flakes” feels like the sitcom version of hipster life. Yet it still touches upon maybe the biggest aspect of that style: The appearance of being genuine, of having real street cred. Neal hates the knock-off Flakes because it's corporate. It's not indie. It's a capitalistic repackaging of a ramshackle, sincere idea. When Pussy gets a job at the rival Flakes store, he sees it as selling out. He spends a lot of time talking about this. It reminded me of how the doofy metalheads in “Airheads” hated anything compromising the “realness” of the rock music they loved. 

Yet, as much as Neal talks about his integrity, he doesn't actually do much. Pussy criticizes him for wasting all his time at Flakes, at a pedestrian job, instead of pursuing his supposed dream of making real art. In a weird way, I can't help but wonder if this idea didn't speak to Lehmann in a personal way. Here's a guy who started out making off-beat movies like “Heathers” and “Meet the Applegates.” Who then ended up directing forgettable, crass studio products like “40 Days and 40 Nights” and “Because I Said So.” Was making a tiny indie film like this an attempt by the director to recapture the edgy weirdness of his acclaimed early work? Did Lehmann see himself in someone who wants to make real art but is instead wrapped up in the daily grind of working? Is directing TV and mediocre romantic-comedies the equivalent of working in a cereal bar? Ultimately, Neal comes to the conclusion (rather out of the blue) that it's his calling in life to remix low culture into something new. Is that how Lehmann saw himself, the goal he found himself pushing towards?

It's a tempting idea but one that falls apart quickly enough. Because Neal isn't a frustrated artist forced to participate in a monotonous system. Instead, he loves Flakes. He talks about being a musician and seems to like the idea of starting an indie rock band. Yet it seems sitting around and bickering all day with other cereal bros is his actual passion. While this is actually a pretty accurate depiction of real hipsterdom, “Flakes” doesn't delve into Neal's psychology very much. Instead, he's characterized simply as a man-child that needs to grow up. When it seems like the film is leaning into making Neal an irredeemable asshole – when he tries to sabotage the other cereal bar, by passing out bogus flyers or getting a job there – that is when it's most interesting. When the script ultimately decides that Neal earns redemption by doing some minor (and mostly off-screen) maturing, it feels like a cop-out. If this had been a movie about the malignant narcissism and petty bitterness of hipsters and all gatekeepers, it might've been something. Instead, “Flakes” decides this dick becomes less of a dick when he starts seriously pursuing an actual life goal. (I can't imagine starting a band would make a guy like Neal less insufferable.)

This is far from the only way “Flakes” ending cops out. Neal and Pussy are obviously ridiculous characters. He's a cereal hipster and she's an impossibly quirky bohemian artist. It's very difficult to be invested in whether or not these two will get together at the end. Especially since Neal is obviously an asshole and no self-respecting woman like that would ever put up with his bullshit. She repeatedly antagonizes him before they officially break up, all in some misguided attempt to help him mature. So when he makes all the changes she asked for to his life over the course of a montage, and they reunite in a farcical manner, it feels both unlikely and dishonest. The movie gets weirdly serious before springing back towards wacky again, all in preparation for a bullshit happy ending that feels overly neat.

Maybe Pussy Katz devotes so much time to fixing a maladjusted boy-man because she's a textbook Manic Pixie Dream Girl. You can tell that's what she is because she's played by Zooey Deschanel. This was just around the time when the blue-eyed and black-banged Deschanel's reputation for playing exactly this character type had started to crystallize. The self-reflective “500 Days of Summer” was a few years out and the self-parody of “New Girl” was even further off. As much as Miss Pussy Katz is a standard MPDG, Deschanel is one of the best things about “Flakes.” She's gorgeous, funny, charming, bubbly. The film actually spends less time on defining the character's overbearing quirkiness than you'd expect, allowing Deschanal to bounce off Aaron Stanford as Neal more. It reminds you why we all fell for her around this time. She really was pretty adorable when doing this kind of thing. 

And what of Stanford? The stubbly, bug-eyed actor is an oddball choice for a leading man, that off-beat physicality being emphasized by the long, greasy hair he wears here. That makes him pretty believable as a self-centered cereal nerd with vaguely defined dreams, petty motivations, and a girlfriend way out of his league. When trading goofy dialogue with Deschanal, Stanford is even likable. In a better film, more willing to follow this character down the clearly self-destructive path he's on, he probably would've given a much stronger performance. When paired with a script that wimps out, Stanford can't make Neal anything more than a caricature of a particular type of person. A realistic one, sure, but not a fully formed one with much in the way of depth.

Even if the script fails them in some ways, Stanford and Deschanel give decent performances. They are surrounded by likable actors and characters. Christopher Lloyd plays Willie, the extremely burnt-out old hippie that owns the cereal bar. This is the kind of colorful supporting role Lloyd excels at, of course. His rants about the origins of cereal, and the riots and civil wars that followed, are a highlight of the film. Frank Wood is similarly entertaining as Bruce, the hyper-knowledgeable and conceited dork who likes to challenge everyone on cereal facts. This is a personality type which will be very familiar to anyone who frequents comic book shops. Wood exactly inhabits that style of sweaty obnoxiousness. John McConnell also shows up for a small role as a boisterous, colorful lawyer in the last act. 

And yet, for all its flaws, I can't help but find “Flakes” kind of compelling. It's definitely the Michael Lehmann movie that feels the most like his work since the early nineties. The dialogue is profane. The characters have weird conversations, trading hyper-specific language and insults back-and-forth. There's effective bursts of surrealism, like when a rare donut-sized Cheerio becomes a minor plot point. The sets of the cereal shops have some real home-made personality to them, reminding me a little of the exaggerated sets of “Heathers” and “Meet the Applegates.” The cinematography looks pretty cheap and the movie is lit like a TV show. Yet even that is somewhat endearing, reflecting a certain D.I.Y. sensibility that works for me. Even if “Flakes” still feels like a script that was watered down by studio notes, it's definitely the most Lehmann-y Lehmann project he made in a long time. 

Whatever hopes and dreams were wrapped up in “Flakes,” they would ultimately go unfulfilled. The film obviously hasn't been seen by very many people. It has the fewest amount of views of all of Lehmann's feature work on Letterboxd, with only 1443 users claiming to have watched it. It's obvious that very little effort was expended in marketing the film. It's sole poster is of a nondescript shot of Deschanal sitting at a table, that tells you nothing about the film's story. The DVD art features images of Zooey and Aaron Stanford that aren't even from this movie, against a blinding green background. What critics that did see the film trashed it. I wouldn't exactly call “Flakes” a hidden gem either, as it's pretty mediocre in a lot of ways. Yet it does have a handful of things about it that are mildly interesting. I would rather Michael Lehmann made more movies like this than things like “Because I Said So.” [Grade: C+]

Regardless of the film's actual quality, it seems “Flakes'” total non-reception was the last straw for Michael Lehmann's career as a feature film director. He has since devoted himself entirely to directing television. He's actually proven quite prolific in that field, directing 92 episodes of various series since 2007. That includes lengthy runs on shows like “True Blood,” “Bored to Death,” and “Californication.” His most recent credit is also the closest thing to a movie he's made recently: He directed all three and a half hours of the Netflix mini-series, “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window,” a parody of Lifetime domestic thrillers that got pretty mediocre notices. But I still might give it a look.

Obviously, just looking at Michael Lehmann's career as a feature film director, you can't help but be disappointed. This guy knocked it out of the park with a great movie on his first go. He then made a couple of other things that weren't as strong but were at least weird and interesting. After that, he directed a string of movies that weren't very good or memorable. All along, it's been hard to blame him – or at least blame him totally – for a lot of these projects turning out badly. In that regard, perhaps he's simply been a very unlucky filmmaker, constantly being hassled by meddling execs and pushy stars. I don't know the whole story but the guy does seem pretty self-effacing about it. He's certainly found his niche in recent years, so good for him. And we'll always have “Heathers.” A lot of directors haven't even made one undeniable classic, so that makes Michael Lehmann cool in my book. 

Director Report Card: Michael Lehmann (2007) Part One

8. Because I Said So

Even though "40 Days and 40 Nights" made a little bit of money, the period immediately following that film's release is when Michael Lehmann turned his primary focus from feature films to television. Between 2002 and 2007, he directed 9 episodes of TV, such as installments of "Wonderfalls" and "The Comeback." Maybe those past box office failures caught up with him. Maybe he was tired of trying to sneak his quirky sense of humor into bland studio comedies. Judging from the results, I can't imagine that was very satisfying. Or perhaps TV was just more fulfilling at this point. Whatever the reason, Lehmann has mostly done TV in the last two decades... Except for the year 2007, where he had two new feature films, kind of. The first of these to see release was "Because I Said So," which saw the filmmaker returning to the romantic comedy genre that had given him his greatest commercial success so far. 

Daphne raised three daughters by herself after her husband died. Oldest daughters Maggie and Mae are successful professionals with husbands. Youngest Milly, however, can't seem to find the right man. Manipulative and smothering Daphne decides this is her problem to solve. She places a wanted ad to find Milly a mate. The most promising candidate is Jason and Daphne secretly sets up a meeting. However, the ad also catches the attention of guitarist Johnny, who also meets Milly and becomes smitten with her. Soon, Milly has to choose between two men... But maybe her mother's prying ways is what she should be most concerned about. 

"Because I Said So" is mostly a vehicle for Diane Keaton, who was experiencing an unexpected career resurgence in the mid-2000s after the surprise success of "Something's Gotta Give." Keaton, of course, is an Oscar winning actress of incredible charm and talent. However, Keaton's abilities are not enough to overcome that Daphne is a terrible person. She is constantly criticizing Milly, insulting her appearances and nitpicking every life choice she makes. A mother trying to secretly manipulate her daughter into dating what she thinks is the ideal partner is, ya know, crazy. In real life, that would be horror movie behavior. The film takes its title from Daphne's catchphrase, which is a good example of the tyrannical hold she wants over her children's lives. She's a deeply selfish person. No matter how much "Because I Said So" may or may not acknowledge this, it still wants us to like Daphne. That's just impossible because the character is a nightmare parent whose psychotic actions should not be tolerated in any form.

If "Because I Said So" was a knowingly fucked-up satire, like "Heathers," maybe such an irredeemably awful character would be an interesting choice. But this isn't that kind of movie. Instead, "Because I Said So" endeavors to be a wacky screwball comedy. In order to make Daphne endearing, I guess, the script also makes her ludicrously clumsy. This results in a number of slapstick sequence that are so aggressively wacky, they become obnoxious. Daphne tries to stalk Milly on her date with Jason, nearly crashing her car in the process. She drags a cellphone through cake batter while burning brownies. Her computer repeatedly clicks on a porn site, resulting in erotic noises echoing through the room while she struggles to turn it off. It's pedestrian, at best, and honestly makes me feel embarrassed for Diane Keaton. Is subpar pratfalls like this what Annie Hall deserves?

Unfortunately for the viewer, most of "Because I Said So's" humor is pitched at this manic level. There's so many annoying characters in this movie. Such as Maggie's deeply neurotic patient, that the film repeatedly humiliates in mean-spirited ways. Or Johnny's son, a rambunctious little boy who throws cakes in people's faces, insults people, and shouts about boys having penises and girls having vaginas. (A joke stolen from "Kindergarten Cop.") The scene of Daphne screening potential mates for her daughter features a lot of broad characters doing annoying things. The film is so desperate for laughs that it, once again, resorts to the animal reaction shot. Daphne's golden retriever also randomly humps things, in another aggravatingly loud attempt at humor. There's also at least two unflattering racial stereotypes, in the form of Chinese masseurs and a singing Indian man.

"Because I Said So" isn't just annoying, it's obvious too. Ostensibly, the dramatic crux of the story is whether Milly will choose Johnny or Jason as her future husband. Jason is a micro-manager with a bit of a temper, who has no problem going along with Daphne's insane scheme. Johnny, meanwhile, is a calm, endlessly patient man who teaches disabled kids to play guitar on the weekends. It's immediately evident which guy Milly will end up with in the end. I guess the film deserves points for not making Johnny a full-blown villain. He's just a normal, boring jerk. Yet I can't give the script any credit for expecting us to get invested in whether Milly will go with the boring asshole or the most perfect guy the screenwriters could conceive.

Keaton is more or less the star of the film. Daphne even gets her own romantic subplot, eventually developing a relationship with Johnny's stepdad. (There's no acknowledgement of how that's kind of weird.) However, "Because I Said So" is also something of a vehicle for Mandy Moore. Moore, a mildly charming actress I guess, did a string of mediocre rom-coms around this time too. Moore at least succeeds in making Milly less off-putting than her mom. She's also comically clumsy but Moore is thankfully spared any hideously broad physical comedy of her own. Milly also sings in two scenes, seemingly a nod towards Moore's forgettable side hustle as a bubblegum pop princess. Moore may not be all that compelling an actress but her scenes in "Because I Said So" is among the film's more tolerable. 

Milly does have something else in common with her though: She's also a terrible person. Instead of calling it off with Jason when she meets Johnny, she decides to date them both at the same time. Without telling either of them. Yes, she's having sex with both men as well. Yeah, the movie's down-to-earth protagonist is a cheater. Usually rom-coms consider infidelity the most unforgivable of crimes. For some reason, Milly mostly gets a pass for it. The cheating provides the obligatory end-of-the-second-act contrivances that forced the boy and the girl apart, that all rom-coms must include. Ultimately, both men forgive her selfish, deceitful actions and Milly still ends up with the right guy. I guess it's okay when Mandy Moore does it

Perhaps there’s a reason “Because I Said So” deemed it necessary to have Milly sleep with both of the guys pursuing here. Much like Lehmann’s previous movie, this one is uncomfortably horny in many ways. The four female leads are introduced in their underwear, the camera lingering strangely on their behinds. It is shown that Milly’s sisters have healthy sex lives of their own. Daphne’s love affair with her daughter’s boyfriend’s dad is consummated on-screen. The thing about this that makes me feel most uncomfortable is the frank way Daphne’s daughters talk with their moms about their sex lives. Maybe that’s not an unusual habit for some families. Maybe I’ve got hang-ups. But the idea of my mom ever talking to me about how often she orgasms makes my skin want to crawl right off my body. All the humping was expected in a crude comedy like “40 Days and 40 Nights” but definitely feels a little unsightly in a light PG-13 flick like this. The film’s weirdly horny side extended to the marketing, which included panties with the character’s names written across the back. 

This, it turns out, is not the only aspect “Because I Said So” shared with “40 Days and 40 Nights.” Much like “My Giant” as well, this is a wacky comedy that develops a strangely maudlin streak in its last third. There’s an extended phone conversation where Daphne breaks down in tears, trying to apologize to her daughter for being such a horrible mother. The film stops just shy of the character truly accepting full responsibly for her controlling actions. Daphne is forgiven far too easily. Even if the film was, somehow, able to pull off a tonal shift like this, it’s difficult to take an emotional moment like this too seriously when Daphne’s humanity has already been stripped away by so many scenes of broad slapstick. The character is a total cartoon character and trying to have her cry and emote about her flaws simply isn’t believable.

I’ll admit, this was actually my second time watching “Because I Said So.” I rented it from Netflix not too long after it first came out on DVD, largely because “Gilmore Girls’” Lauren Graham plays Maggie. Graham is, in fact, one of the film’s few bright spots. Though the character is still ridiculous, the relationship she shares with her most dysfunctional patient is mildly amusing. It was also nice to see an energetic Piper Perabo as Mae. The rest of “Because I Said So’s’ cast isn’t really worth mentioning. Neither Gabriel Macht, as Johnny, or Tom Everett Scott, as Jason, can rise above the material. However, one face does stick out… Stephen Collins plays Johnny’s dad. He shares several scenes with the young boy playing Johnny’s son. Collins was best known, at the time, for his role on wholesome show “7th Heaven” but is now perhaps better known for being a convicted child molester. This certainly adds a very different uncomfortable layer to many of his scenes. 

Once again, it’s wholly impossible to see much of the visual playfulness that defined Lehmann’s earlier work in this bland studio rom-com. However, you can see the director, straining to add some sort of energy to the movie in a couple of scenes. A few moments feature split-screen phone conversations with the sisters and their mother. There’s at least one sped-up montage of Milly and Daphne rearranging a living room together. (Another strained metaphor for how the mother controls her daughter’s life.) The film concludes with a cartoonish close-up of a wedding cake careening off a cliff side. All of these touches come off as desperate and overly wacky. Yet, at the same time, they are still the most likable moments in a movie otherwise defined by shrill obnoxiousness. 

At the very least, I am not alone in disliking “Because I Said So.” The film received heinous reviews over all, with the majority of critics agreeing that it’s painfully unfunny. A small audience still turned out for the movie in theaters and it was not a total box office loss, though still far from a runaway hit either. It’s possible, had “Because I Said So” not made its mother character such an unforgivable monster, that it might have been a salvageable project. Yet even if you changed that, you’d still be left with a movie far too reliant on rom-com clichés and annoying sequences of cartoonish slapstick. It all adds up to be a wholly unpleasant viewing experience. The director, the cast, and audiences deserved far better than this. [Grade: F]

Director Report Card: Michael Lehmann (2002)

7. 40 Days and 40 Nights

In 1999, Jason Biggs fucked a pie. Gross-out gags like that, alongside other debatable merits, made “American Pie” a surprise blockbuster. That film's success would revive the teen sex comedy. There were sequels to “American Pie,” of course, alongside flicks like “The Girl Next Door,” “Van Wilder,” “Slackers,” “Tomcats,” and trips both “Road” and “Euro.” There was even a parody, the surest sign a type of movie had reached pop culture saturation. This disreputable subgenre even reached a certain level of critical respect once Judd Apatow got involved. Eventually, the 2000s teen sex comedy would die in the same place all overexposed fad genres do: The direct-to-video market, the halls of Blockbuster Video clogged with movies heavy on boobs and fart jokes but not brains. A few years into this misbegotten wave came “40 Days and 40 Nights,” which once again saw Michael Lehmann trying to enliven uninspiring material.  

Matt Sullivan works for a successful dot-com company. He's recently broken up from his girlfriend, Nicole. Though he has no trouble getting laid, he remains emotionally stuck on her. After discovering Nicole is engaged, Matt decides to make a change. He gives up all forms of sex for the forty days and nights of Lent. Literally the night after swearing off orgasms, Matt meets Erica. The two have an immediate chemistry together. His vow of abstinence is further complicated when his co-workers start a betting pool around it. Matt now has to romance Erica, maintain his commitment, keep his friends off his back, and not go crazy.

Referring to “40 Days and 40 Nights” as a teen sex comedy is technically a misnomer. All the characters are young professionals, in their twenties. Despite that, they all have a totally juvenile fascination with sex. The guys, both the young and old, constantly talk about sex. Erica works for a company that censors internet porn. His boss is an old horndog, talking about his sex life and seeing sexual scenarios in every image. Even his parents talk about sex! Doin' it seems to be the only thing his friends ever discuss. It seems unlikely to me that a bunch of co-workers would be as obsessed with their friend's sex life as these guys are. At one point, they even follow him into the public bathroom to see if he's masturbated. I think about sex plenty but all of this strikes me as excessive. It's been said that some guys think with their dicks. I think “40 Days and 40 Nights” was written with a dick.

Our hero in this copulation fixated story is a guy that has no problem attracting women. Matt is introduced having sex with a beautiful woman. He's in bed with another supermodel shortly afterwards. His pledge of chastity is complicated by random babes trying to seduce him. His trouble is actually that he's fucking too much to emotionally resolve his baggage for his ex. A protagonist doesn't always have to be relatable for a movie to be good. But I would say the majority of young men cannot relate to Matt's strife here. “American Pie” was about guys trying to get laid, which was maybe a factor in its popularity. A guy like Matt, a philandering lothario who picks 'em up and knocks 'em down, is not immediately endearing. In fact, he's kind of guy a lot of guys hate. Many men go far longer than 40 days without sex and the implication that such a stretch would be unbearable is kind of insulting.

Josh Hartnett stars as Matt. According to IMDb trivia – admittedly a less than reliable source – Hartnett attempted to replicate his character's abstinent lifestyle and gave up after twenty days. Hartnett is the type of blandly handsome actor a lot of nerds hated exactly because he was such a stud. Compared to a lot of his contemporaries, Hartnett definitely has limited range. There's a certain stiffness to his delivery no matter the circumstances. Yet, truthfully, Hartnett does his best. He's got a winning smile. As a physical comedian, he does pretty well. A scene where he catches his shirt on fire is a bit of decently executed slapstick. Hartnett manages to make the running gag of Matt building model cars, whenever he thinks about sex, mildly amusing. He plays Matt as someone who sex just happens to, instead of a guy who actively goes looking for. This at least doesn't make the character a sleaze ball. Yet it would take a star a lot more innately likable than Hartnett to overcome “40 Days and 40 Nights'” off-putting content.

A lot of sex comedies have not aged well. Movies packed with crude humor and designed to be wish fulfillment fantasies for teen boys are, unsurprisingly, frequently problematic. “40 Days and 40 Nights” is no different in this regard. The film is set in the dot-com industry before the bubble bursts and reflects that gross tech-bro corporate culture. The men and women in Matt's company are seemingly segregated by gender. The guys are constantly bragging about their sexual conquests. They seem to consider sex nothing more than a game of who can fuck more. Unsurprisingly, the boss is eventually depicted sexually harassing his employees – female and male, in fact – without any condemnation or irony. The entire movie is rooted in this rotten mindset. In fact, “40 Days and 40 Nights” might be a little worst than your average sex comedy because all its characters are ostensibly grown adults who should definitely know better. 

Of course, nothing makes old sex comedies more politically incorrect than their nonexistent respect of consent. Yes, “40 Days and 40 Nights” inevitably features a rape joke... And somehow it's worst than you might expect. After successfully getting through Lent without ejaculating, Matt's friend handcuffs him to his bed for reasons that aren't well defined. That's when Nicole, who wants him now that she can't have him, breaks into the house and fucks him while he's restrained and unconscious. Yes, the protagonist of this movie is raped by his ex-girlfriend. No, she is never punished for this horrible crime. Yes, Erica accuses Matt of cheating and blames him for what happened. He even has to apologize to her for unambiguously assaulted! This light hearted comedy features victim blaming, the myth that consent doesn't matter for men, and that sexual assault is no big deal. This, somehow, makes “40 Days and 40 Nights” equally offensive towards women and men. 

Obviously, “40 Days and 40 Nights” is an incredibly crass movies. There's an early sight gag involving semen and a condom. There's an extended joke about a spontaneous erection. Matt eventually begins imagining every woman around him naked, giving the movie its required gratuitous nudity. Yet I could almost accept all this if the movie committed to its sleazy misanthropy. Instead, “40 Days and 40 Nights” also tries to be a traditional romantic-comedy. Matt and Erica's romance is played totally straight. It has all the hacky writing of your usual rom-com, the couple being forced apart by contrived misunderstandings at all the expected points. Seemingly, the script wants us to be invested in these two actually getting together. Frankly, it's a bit insulting that the movie wants to have it both ways. Don't spend the majority of your run time reducing all the complexity of male/female relationships down to just fuckin' and then expect us to care about whether Matt and Erica fall in love at the end.

By the way, Erica is played by Shannyn Sossamon, underrated nineties siren. Despite sporting a series of truly unfortunate haircuts, Sossamon is as charming and alluring here as ever. The scenes where Sossamon and Hartnett meet in a laundromat and bond over drying sheets would almost be cute, in a movie less suffocatingly gross than this one. Unfortunately, Sossamon does not get out of this movie with her dignity intact. Matt and Erica do not consummate their relationship, because that's the entire premise of the movie. But that doesn't stop them from having a sex scene of sorts. The two strip down and Matt paws at her semi-naked body with rose petals. This, somehow, brings her to orgasm. I never doubted that the writer of “40 Days and 40 Nights” didn't understand women before this scene. Yet this uproariously goofy and un-sexy moment raises questions about if they even understand basic physiology. 

Sossamon, for whatever it's worth, is not the only likable performer who is humiliated during the film. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Erica's best friend and roommate, forced to crack some embarrassingly randy dialogue. Griffin Dunne – who once played a much more likable horndog – appears as Matt's boss. The overly horny script sees Dunne drooling over every female he sees and climaxing in a bathroom stall. I hope he got paid well because I felt so bad for him. Vinessa Shaw is reduced to the worst kind of feminine stereotype here, a succubus who destroys men both by denying them sex and conquering them during it. The rest of the guys in the movie are total douche bags and the actors – who I'm sure are nice enough in real life – embody the parts wholly.

Sadly, the off-putting quality of “40 Days and 40 Nights” extends behind the camera too. The visual composition of the movie is frequently unpleasant. The camera jerks around, weird crash-zooms and unfortunate bursts of handheld footage, at random intervals. I can only assume this was done to incorporate some manic energy into the proceedings. It just results in making the film seem badly photographed. For whatever it works, I can see a little more of Michael Lehmann's trademarks here than in his last few movies. A dream sequences where Matt imagines himself flying over a sea of giant breasts does, if nothing else, have some of the same absurd qualities of “Heathers” or “Hudson Hawk.”

While reviewing “The Truth About Cats & Dogs,” I noted that the movie's soundtrack was frequently intrusive. This was not an uncommon feature of nineties rom-com, as I guess studios hoped they could squeeze a few more dollars out of a film if it had a hit soundtrack. The song choices in “40 Days and 40 Nights” are often distracting as well. INXS blares in one unimportant scene, while a mildly funky cover of “Loves Me Like a Rock' is plastered over another montage. The most baffling musical choice occurs when alt-rock hit “Wonderful” plays over a scene of Matt contemplating pornography. Because what makes you hornier than the guy from Everclear's broken childhood? An ear-splitting number from the Prozzak playing over the end credits is the final nail in the audiovisual coffin. I do like the Semisonic song included in one romantic montage, the subject of the song even lining up with the subject of the film.

“40 Days and 40 Nights” managed to be a modest box office success, grossing 37 million dollars against a 17 million dollar budget. The reviews were mostly negative, though Roger Ebert gave it a weirdly positive review. In the years since the film's release, few people have had cause to talk about it... Even the movie's writer, Rob Perez, seems to look back on the production with many regrets. When the film is remembered at all, it's usually to mock that ludicrous flower-assisted love scene. The past is really were an unfortunate farce like this belongs, where its skin-crawling sexual politics and pedestrian gags can be dismissed as acts of a less enlightened period. And these days, it’s impossible to watch the movie without thinking of the infamous NoFap subculture, a well intentioned movement that was quickly co-opted by he-man woman haters and spawned several disturbing spin-offs of its own. I doubt if even those guys are aware of this film. Even if “40 Days and 40 Nights” wasn't rapey and sexist, it still wouldn't be funny. [Grade: D]

Director Report Card: Michael Lehmann (1998)

6. My Giant

It might be impossible to imagine this now but, once upon a time, Billy Crystal was an actual box office draw. Here in 2022, Crystal's shtick is so stale that he seems like a relic of another era. And yet, for many years, Crystal was a popular comedian, propelled on the backs of cultural forces like “Saturday Night Live” and “Soap.” As the nineties started, he had two of the biggest hits of his careers, with “When Harry Met Sally” and “City Slickers.”  Even though Crystal had some box office disappointments throughout the decade, like “Mr. Saturday Night” and “Fathers' Day,” the star still had enough pull in 1998 to get a project greenlit. 

“My Giant” was, in fact, a passion project for Crystal. The movie was inspired by the friendship Crystal forged with Andre the Giant while filming “The Princess Bride.” He co-wrote the story with David Seltzer. In a bizarre turn of events, Crystal originally wanted to play the titular giant before being talked into being the shorter co-star. Michael Lehmann chose the film as the follow-up to “The Truth About Cats & Dogs” (and two more episodes of “The Larry Sanders Show”) for reasons I can only speculate on. Directing a movie with a beloved comedy icon and proven hit-maker probably seemed like a good idea to the director, following his first actual box office success. Alas, “My Giant” would not be as sure a shot as it seemed. Let's dissect this further.

Sammy Kamin is a sleazy talent agent. His wife is getting ready to divorce him, his son resents him, and the promising young actor he represents has just fired him. Lost in the Romanian countryside, he crashes his car. A massive pair of hands pulls Sammy from the wreckage and he awakens in a monastery. There, he meets his savior: A nearly eight foot tall man named Max. Impressed by the gentle giant, Sammy immediately tries to get him cast in the historical epic filming near-by. All Max wants is to be reunited with his childhood crush but Sam convinces him to try acting. Sam soon has Max traveling to America, to pursue performing, equally growing fond of and exploiting his new friend.

Probably the most interesting question “My Giant” grapples with is the same one that has always surrounded people born with extraordinary differences. When Sammy meets Max, he's blown away by his physical appearance and charming personality. He gives Max a path to see the world, to leave his home and become famous. At the same time, Sammy is using Max's unusual appearance as a way to make money. This comes to a head in the sequence where Max does a one-night stint as a pro-wrestler, where he's humiliated and mocked for his appearance. Considering the movie is inspired by Andre the Giant, one assumes this is Billy Crystal's opinion on how the pro-wrestling industry treated his friend. At least “My Giant” is self-aware enough to depict its protagonist as equally in awe of and exploiting his friend.

That's about the only really interesting thing “My Giant” does. Crystal might have set out to make a homage to his deceased friend – the film is dedicated to Andre's memory – but the film is ultimately not about its giant so much. Instead, “My Giant” occupies itself with Sammy Kamin's completely predictable character arc. He begins the movie as a complete heel. (And not the pro-wrestler kind.) He's obsessed with his career, neglecting his family. He uses Max's naivety as a way to further his own career. It's only after he becomes friends with the guy, and after he realizes Max is living on borrowed time, that he starts to behave responsibly. This is the standard story of a self-centered jerk defrosting and finding his heart again. 

Yet, as many ethically dubious things as Sammy does, “My Giant” is too chicken-shit to actually make him a proper scoundrel. Like all dads in a nineties family comedy, he's on the verge of divorce from his wife. He's never there for his son, who doesn't respect him. Naturally, both of these very relatable plot points are resolved in as sappy a way as possible. Because isn't a film about an eight foot tall man ultimately the story of a mediocre middle-age white guy about to leave his wife? One of “My Giant's” many failings is that it wants us to like Sammy too much, building much of the movie around his unremarkable plotline. Instead of running with the parts of its script that are actually interesting. 

That's because, no matter how much “My Giant” pretends it's about Max, this is ultimately Billy Crystal's project. The film begins and ends with him delivering pithy voice-overs, directly to the audience. He gets to throw lots of easy one-liners around, especially when faced with the monastery or Max for the first time. And, sure, one or two of these lines are worth a laugh. Yet it feels like Andre the Giant's extraordinary life probably could have inspired a pretty good film, if it actually focused on the giant. Instead, Crystal's ego prevails here. This is presumably why any director trademarks of Michael Lehmann are completely impossible to spot here. Crystal might as well have directed “My Giant” himself. 

Andre the Giant's unique screen presence could not easily be replicated, for many reasons. To fill the titular role, “My Giant” went similarly outside the acting world. Romanian basketball player Gheorghe Mureșan, who really is seven feet seven inches tall, was recruited to play Max. Mureșan is not an actor. His line delivery is frequently stiff and awkward, further hindered by his thick accent. And yet there is something to be said for his performance here. The guy does have an easy-going, goofy charm. He seems genuinely delighted to be in a movie. He has decent chemistry with Crystal. The few times “My Giant's” emotional elements work is strictly because Mureșan brings a certain pathos to the role, largely owing to the fact that he really does know what life is like when you are especially tall.

Whatever comedic value “My Giant” has is also owed to Gheorghe Mureșan. The big kid enthusiasm he has enlivens a handful of scenes, such as when he squeezes into a tiny car or pretends to be an established movie star. Otherwise, the humor in the film rarely elicits laughter. Lots of Crystal's one-liners are hammy. There's several moments of broad slapstick that simply feel out-of-place. During Max's first day of acting, he gets drunk to ease his nerves. This climaxes when he unleashes a geyser of on-screen vomit. (One bottle of wine achieves this when, in real life, Andre the Giant could effortlessly consume massive amounts of alcohol.)  There's also some misplaced burp and fart jokes. Probably the comedic low point of “My Giant” comes early on, when there's a reaction shot form a stunned sheep. 

These moments of low-brow humor stick out even worst as the movie goes on and develops an unsightly sentimental streak. Once the story turns towards the revelation that Max only has so much time left, the film gets increasingly goopy in its emotions. There's more focus on reuniting him with his childhood crush, as well as Sam's dissolving marriage. The two storylines meet in a scene that might've been sweet in a different movie but comes off as utterly mawkish here. It's always a tricky tonal balancing act when a goofy comedy suddenly decides to get heartfelt in its last act. “My Giant” absolutely does not have the skills to pull that off. The big emotions the final scene tries to summon are in no way earned by the movie that proceeded it.

About the only pleasure “My Giant” really gives me is its strangest subplot. Sammy's estranged son is a big fan of Steven Seagal. The plot hinges around Sammy getting onto the Las Vegas set of Seagal's new movie. He convinces the producers to rewrite the script on the spot so that a Shakespeare quoting, heavily-accented giant is the villain. This strains belief but not as much as Steven Seagal being considered a major star in 1998. That was the same year Seagal made his first direct-to-video film, after increasingly diminished returns in theaters. Only a few years later, Seagal would totally disappear from multiplexes, rarely allowed to return ever again. Considering Seagal's raging ego, I can only imagine what hoops he made Lehmann leap through. Seeing Seagal try and act like a normal human being, much less deliver humorous dialogue during a phone call with Sammy's son, is far more surreal and entertaining than anything else in “My Giant.” One really can't help but assume that the film was written with another action hero in mind and Seagal was the first one that said yes. 

Aside from Vladimir Putin's favorite aikido instructor and his ropy attempts at comedy, there are a few other familiar faces in “My Giant.” In fact, the movie features some surprise appearances nearly as unexpected as Seagal. Dan Castellaneta – Homer Simpson himself – has a bit part as a production assistant. He's immediately recognizable to people who know what voice actors look like. Verne Troyer, a year before he became Mini-Me, has an even bitter part as one of the wrestlers Max grapples with. Sammy's extended family, during an embarrassing scene where Max joins him at dinner, includes Doris Roberts and Estelle Harris. Both play extremely Doris Roberts and Estelle Harris-like parts. Of the supporting cast, only Kathleen Quinlan as Sammy's wife gives a genuinely sweet performance. She's the primary reason a key moment in the last act is kind of cute, as opposed to totally stiff.

Unsurprisingly, “My Giant” was another box office flop for its director. It only made 8 million against a 20 million dollar budget. I can't imagine a premise this gimmicky, especially when attached to a star as hammy as Crystal, attracted audiences much. The reviews were even more unkind than the grosses. Critics largely trashed the film, with most agreeing that its sentimentality did not blend well with its broad comedic instincts. I actually like the movie a little more than that but agree it's a misfire. Crystal's career would snap back the next year, with the equally gimmicky but far funnier “Analyze This.” Gheorghe Mureșan, on the other hand, would stick to basketball and never attempt acting again. Who could blame him, as “My Giant” was an instantly forgotten piece of nineties pop culture debris. [Grade: C]

Director Report Card: Michael Lehmann (1996)

5. The Truth About Cats & Dogs

None of Michael Lehmann's movies had ever made much money. “Heathers” quickly became a beloved cult classic but flopped in 1986. Nobody saw “Meet the Applegates,” “Hudson Hawk” was a notorious failure, and “Airheads” came and went without much notice at all. Yet Lehmann was able to continue working, by shifting his focus to television. Between 1994 and 1997, he would direct five episodes of beloved comedy series, “The Larry Sanders Show.” That obviously showed that Lehmann could still get something made on time and under budget. This was presumably a factor in him getting hired to direct “The Truth About Cats & Dogs,” an entry into that most light-weight and predictable of genres: The nineties romantic-comedy.

Abby is the host of a radio advice show geared towards pet owners. Every day, she fields advice from people with sick or misbehaving pets. One day, she receives a call from Brian, a dreamy-sounding photographer who is having trouble with a dog he's photographing. The two immediately hit it off. Abby, however, lacks confidence in her appearance. In a moment of insecurity, the short, mousy woman describes herself as looking like a tall, leggy, blonde model. Coincidentally, that model – a woman named Noelle – happens to live in Abby's apartment. The two become friends and she talks Noelle into posing as her in-person, while Abby continues to romance Brian over the phone. As feelings grow more complicated, the question arises over how long the two women can keep up the deception.

Within a few minutes of watching “The Truth About Cats & Dogs,” you figure out what the movie is doing. This is a gender-flipped “Cyrano de Bergerac,” updated for the nineties. Many of the classic story's themes, such as the fear of presenting yourself honestly to someone you love, are timeless. Yet the screenplay, from late writer Audrey Wells, is also clearly about issues that were facing women at the time. As a woman, Abby feels how physical appearance is valued over anything else, much more than personally. One assumes that Wells' script was inspired by the pressures put on women to align their personal value with their beauty. This is a pretty important topic to discuss and one that easily could've made “The Truth About Cats & Dogs” an insightful and cutting motion picture.

Instead, “The Truth About Cats & Dogs” is a nineties rom-com, a style notorious for relying upon formula and cliches. The film uncritically follows many of the hallmarks of the genre. Naturally, Noelle begins to develop feelings for Brian too. This leads to a wedge being driven between the two women, the dramatic events that shakes the story up in the last third. Simple misunderstandings that easily could've been talked out are instead allowed to escalate into big arguments. Despite that, everything works out for a syrupy, happy ending. “The Truth About Cats & Dogs” even includes a wise best friend character for Brian, played by future superstar Jamie Foxx in a role absolutely anyone could've done. At least he's not a sassy gay man. (Though the Cool Black Friend feels like as much of a cliché on its own.)

The most ridiculous contrivances of “The Truth About Cats & Dogs” is irrevocably baked into its premise. Brian has to be a pretty enormous idiot not to immediately figure out what is going on here. Noelle sounds nothing like Abby. She clearly has a totally different personality from Abby. The type of conversations she has with Brian are completely unlike his talks with Abby. Meanwhile, he never notices that “Donna,” “Abby's” friend, happens to sound and act exactly like the woman he talks on the phone for hours with. It's a hard pill to swallow. Also difficult to swallow is the idea that nobody would be attracted to Janeane Garofalo. Maybe she's not a supermodel – and I understand that it's more Abby's hang-ups holding her back than her appearance – but she's hardly a Cyrano either. Garofalo is lovely all throughout the film and suggesting otherwise is honestly insulting.

But maybe complaining about the cliches and contrivances of the rom-com genre is besides the point. I love eighties slasher movies and action films, finding the reoccurring tropes and stereotypes in those movies to be charming and fun. For fans of this type of thing, maybe "The Truth About Cats & Dogs'" commitment to formula is a feature, not a bug. Yet I still think this movie fails on its own standards in some big ways. If this was meant to be a vehicle for Janeane Garofalo, it definitely lets her down. Garofalo got famous for her sarcastic stand-up. The character of Abby allows her few chances to flex this muscle. Only the scenes where she talking to increasingly ridiculous callers, or a brief moment where she has to improvise a personality for "Donna" in seconds, show Garofalo's gift for snark.

Abby is obviously the film's protagonist but Uma Thurman as Noelle gets top billing. Because Hollywood marketing pays more attention to leggy blondes than short brunettes too, I guess. Noelle is one of many roles where Thurman, a versatile and intense actress, is underserved by the material. Noelle is flighty, shallow, and impulsive. She repeatedly points out she never eats anything. She dates a jerk, despite everyone around her pointing out he's a jerk. She gets caught up in the act and starts making out with Brian. While the film seems to be making some sort of point about how society's expectations twist women up, Noelle is never given any real depth. Thurman plays a goofy, ditzy blonde and is rarely given a chance to expand beyond that archetype. Only the scenes where she interacts with Garofalo generate much interest. 

Brian, the third corner of the story's triangle, is played by Ben Chaplin. The minute Chaplin appeared on-screen, my brain just kept thinking "Who the hell is this guy?" Chaplin is a blandly handsome leading man, distinguished more by his British accent than anything else. Chaplin presumably got cast because of his prior appearance in "The Remains of the Day" and would go on to a largely forgettable character actor's career. He's fine here, I guess. Again, it's hard to get over how gullible the character must be to accept this fabrication, making it hard for the viewer to get invested in Chaplin's performance. If the guy is so blinded by Noelle's beauty, that he barely even notices Abby, you wonder why she's attracted to him in the first place. I suppose Chaplin and Garofalo do share some okay chemistry during their phone conversation scenes but that's about the only thing that's memorable about him. 

The best romantic comedies build their humor out of the interactions between the characters. "The Truth About Cats & Dogs," on the other hand, goes for increasingly broad slapstick to try and inject some humor into the proceedings. This is really evident in two scenes. When Abby and Noelle are getting lunch together, a random guy attempts to impress the blonde with a random act of fly snatching, a sequence that feels totally out-of-place and adds nothing to the film. Similarly, the scene where Noelle plans on revealing the truth to Brian escalates to a silly scene of him driving her to the radio station, the knob on his car radio getting yanked off as Noelle crawls around the vehicle. These moments stick out badly and feel like desperate attempts to generate some laughs. 

Like all nineties romantic comedies, "The Truth About Cats & Dogs" is visually indistinct. There's little about its use of color, camera movement, lighting, or framing that's memorable or interesting. It mostly just looks like a TV show. You see little of the trademarks that distinguished Michael Lehmann's earlier movies. The exaggerated set design or surreal dialogue of "Heathers" or "Hudson Hawk" are not present. Really, the only element of "The Truth About Cats & Dogs" that sticks out to be are its montage sequences, which feel distinctly nineties in a way I can't quite describe. A scene where Abby and Brian have phone sex has the kind of soft focus and slow dissolves that just define the decade of my youth for me.

One thing about "The Truth About Cats & Dogs" did surprise me though. While watching the opening credits, I did not expect to see Howard Shore's name pop up. You did not expect the guy best known for composing sweeping scores for "The Lord of the Rings" or intense music for the films of David Cronenberg to work on an ephemeral rom-com like this. I guess not every gig can be "The Silence of the Lambs." Shore provides a light jazz score that is not especially memorable, though occasionally gives the movie a fitting peppy energy. Shore's music is frequently subbed out for a series of pop songs from Adult Contemporary hitmakers like Sting, Blues Traveller, or Suzanne Vega. This was from the days when even mid-tier studio products had soundtracks filled with notable names. The needle drops are pretty intrusive, though I did like the random Ben Folds Five song that pops up. 

After "The Truth About Cats & Dogs" wrapped up, I found myself wondering something: What was the truth about cats and dogs supposed to be? Brian adopts a big slobbery dog early in the film, while Abby has a fluffy cat she cuddles in a few scenes. It's easy to compare Brian, so stunned by a pretty lady that it takes the whole movie for him to figure out the obvious truth, to the absent-minded goofiness of a friendly dog. Yet if we are meant to presume anything about Abby from her being a cat person, I didn't catch it. Lots of people have observed that men are more like dogs while women are more like cats but the film doesn't really offer any insight on that. The title, which is also the name of Abby's radio program, seems to have been chosen because it was catchy and not because it reflects anything about the film. Maybe that's a petty complaint but, if your title is professing to reveal some truth about our animal friends, the actual contents of the film should probably attempt to do that. 

"The Truth About Cats & Dogs" does mark an important turning point in Michael Lehmann's career: It was the first one of his movies to actually be a box office success. The film would gross 34 million in North America and a little more than that overseas. I can't find what the movie's budget was but I'm betting it was a lot less than that. The reviews were fairly positive too, though there was at least one notable detractor. Janeane Garfalo herself would dismiss the film years later, saying the original script had a lot more nuance and that the final product was a bland studio product. Which I would agree with. The film would successfully launch the career of screenwriter Wells, a former radio DJ herself who would go on to write similarly light-hearted comedies like "George of the Jungle" and "The Kid," and direct two movies of her own, before passing away unexpectedly in 2018. As for Lehmann, he'd get to make a few more movies, so I guess that's good. [Grade: C-]

Director Report Card: Michael Lehmann (1994)

4. Airheads

How do you come back from making one of the most notorious critical punching bags of the nineties? This was the question facing... Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, after writing the widely loathed “Problem Child” films. The screenwriters found themselves emphasizing with a man widely considered the worst filmmaker of all time: Edward D. Wood Jr. They wrote a script about the man, that celebrated him, instead of mocking him. The duo found a kindred spirit in Michael Lehman, whose own career had been stained by making “Hudson Hawk.” The project would've been a fitting comeback vehicle for Lehman. The “Ed Wood” script ended up in the hands of Tim Burton, who loved it and desperately wanted to produce it... But only if he could direct it too. And, I guess, if you had to choose between the guy who made “Batman” directing your movie and the guy who made “Hudson Hawk,” you'd choose Burton too. 

Instead of “Ed Wood,” Lehmann chose a goofy comedy script from Rich Wilkes as his next project. “Airheads” follows Chazz, would-be rock star and lead singer of struggling metal band The Lone Rangers. After another failed attempt to get a record exec's attention, and getting dumped by his girlfriend, Chazz and his band mates – scheming bassist Rex and simpleton drummer Pip – get desperate. Armed with water pistols filled with hot sauce, the trio break into radio station KPPX. Things accidentally escalate into a hostage situation. Left on the air, the band tries to locate a playable copy of their demo, struggle with their newfound infamy, butt heads with the cops, reconnect with the women in their lives, and become rock folk heroes. 

There's an underappreciated little subgenre that I'm unusually fond of. I call them “dude movies.” These are motion pictures, always within the comedy genre, that follow goofy best friends on some sort of wacky adventure. There are usually two of them. They are almost always male. (Though a “dude movie” starring women would be a really neat twist.) Frequently, though not always, these dudes are made dudes by their surfer slang and love of heavy metal music. “Bill & Ted” and “Wayne's World” are the superstars of this small subgenre. “Airheads” fits comfortably into the dudes template, even if it follows three metal-obsessed screwballs who get into some shenanigans. A built-in fondness for exactly this kind of wackiness means I might be more susceptible to “Airheads'” questionable charms then some might be. 

While many dude movies just use the metalhead aesthetic for ambiance, spinning their stories off in off-beat directions, “Airheads” is explicitly concerned with the value of rock music. Like all true rock 'n' roll movies, it's really about the struggle to maintain the integrity of the music. Chazz and his band mates consider themselves “real” rock musicians, compared to the posers that fill the scene. Upon discovering that KPPX is going to be converted into a soft jazz station, everyone is outraged. When their infamy as criminals seemingly secures the Lone Rangers a contract, he's ultimately aghast. He wants to be famous for his music, not his reputation! The film repeatedly puts these clueless rock wannabes in conflict with feckless executives and square authority figures. This puts “Airheads” in a long line of movies and stories in which rock musicians struggle for authenticity in an industry built upon selling out.

The dudes genre is, in many ways, forever linked to the eighties idea of what a rock star is. “Airheads” is too. At one point, Chazz dismisses the music coming out of Seattle at the time, which is obviously a reference to the grunge genre that would completely displace metal's prominence in popular culture for most of the decade. Yet, watching “Airheads” tonight, I can't help but feel it's one of the most nineties movies I've ever seen. The central trio wear a lot of sleeveless flannel, headbands, Doc Martens, and acid-wash jeans. CDs and cassette tapes are reoccurring plot points. Rex works in an unnamed toy store that is pretty clearly a Toys-R-Us, back in the days when that chain was a series of dingy warehouses. The shelves are lined with then relevant but now retro toy lines, like “Crash Test Dummies” or the 90s version of “Stretch Armstrong.” The film begins with a stop-motion animation opening credits scene, which just hangs heavy with the atmosphere of my youth. And Beavis and Butthead have a cameo. Through no intentional moves, “Airheads” became an amusing time capsule of a specific time. 

Watching “Airheads” after seeing Michael Lehmann's first three features, you don't see too many of his trademarks. The stylized production design and heightened cinematography of “Heathers” and “Meet the Applegates” is nowhere to be seen here. Cinematographer John Schwartzman and production designer David Nichols do largely forgettable work. Yet there is a little taste of “Heathers” in “Airheads,” largely thanks to its frequently surreal dialogue. The metalheads toss around a number of bizarre insults, such as shouting “penis” in a weird way or referring to each other derisively as “femmes.” The script even mocks its own weird language, in a moment when the radio station owner attempts to replicate the style of speech. There's nothing here as iconic as “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw” but someone does threaten to stab a person with his dick.

Truthfully, what ends up making “Airheads” really work for me is, I think, its cast. Years before Brendan Fraser would be critically reevaluated as an incredibly charming matinee idol, and even before the peak of his goofy action hero stardom, he made wacky comedies like this. There's no doubt that “Airheads” makes good use of Fraser's himbo charms. From any practical perspective, Chazz is sort of a dick. He does disregard his girlfriend's feelings in favor of obsessing over his rock star dream, which definitely seems increasingly pathetic as the story goes on. Yet Fraser manages to make him more lovable than not. Chazz is definitely a doof but Fraser also gives him a vulnerable side, allowing us to warm up to him and even root for him eventually. 

“Airheads” is also notable as an off-beat starring role for Steve Buschemi. Buscemi has starred in a couple of comedies over the years but he's not usually playing a long-haired metalhead type. Yet he's good casting in the role of Rex. Buscemi, after all, has an edgy, slightly unhinged quality. When you pair that with long hair and punk fashion, it really makes Rex look like a greasy weirdo. (A fitting addition to any metal band.) The character also fits comfortably into the kind of comedic roles Buscemi usually plays: That of someone who grossly overestimates his own brilliance and frequently rushes into plans without thinking them through. It's a good use of the eccentric character actor. 

If “Airheads” is remembered for nothing else, it's for being an early role for Adam Sandler. This one was released a year before “Billy Madison” came out, taking Sandler from a popular stand-up and beloved “SNL” cast member to the biggest comedy star of the decade. And even this early in Sandler's cinematic career, his screen persona was fairly well established. Pip is utterly child-like in his personality. He talks in a stilted way, often makes bizarre leaps in logic, and is prone to mistakes. The explosive rage and inexplicable talent Sandler characters usually have is, in Pip, replaced with an mysterious popularity with the ladies. Women find Pip irresistible, which plays like another one of “Airheads'” absurd jokes. Whether you find Sandler's act charming or obnoxious is a matter of opinion but he does provide a nice counterbalance to the other characters in the film.

Sandler isn't the only adored “Saturday Night Live” cast member of the nineties to appear in “Airheads.” Chris Farley appears as one of the cops assigned to meet the Lone Rangers' ridiculous demands. Farley steals the few scenes he's in, as a nervous guy who is eager to please and prone to occasional outbursts of genius. “Airheads” actually has a surprisingly stacked supporting cast. Ernie Hudson is Farley's commanding officer, doing a good job of being a straight man to the movie's wackiness. A young David Arquette has a largely unnecessary appearance as an oddball guy in the station, who doesn't contribute anything to the story but is appreciated. Michael McKean appears as the duplicitous manager of the radio station, who is suitably whiny and square. Joe Mantegna is well utilized as the deejay, who is sympathetic to the band's scheme and gets off a couple of good one-liners.

Another way you can tell “Airheads” was made in the nineties is that it contains an extended parody of “Die Hard.” And it stars Michael Richards, back when he could've parlayed his status as Kramer into some sort of stand alone career. Richards plays an incredibly neurotic radio employee who unwittingly ends up hiding in the ventilation system of the radio station, communicating with the cops on the outside. Richards gets to enact some amusing slapstick in these sequences, hurting himself in increasingly unlikely ways as he stumbles through the vents above. He also has a line to the cops on the outside, who – in a funny gag – constantly misunderstands what he's saying. Honestly, I could imagine someone trying to expand this entire concept into its own movie. In “Airheads,” it's just one amusingly silly component of the story. 

It's hard to say a movie like “Airheads” is really about anything. This is a gleefully dumb comedy and not one to be thought about that deeply. However, a theme of sorts does emerge. At the beginning of the story, Chazz doesn't really respect his girlfriend. He prioritizes his own ambitions over her's, expecting her to do all the work while he pursues his wild dream. Similarly, a minor character in the film is a police captain who is going through a psychotically tense break-up with his wife. Ya know, maybe it's just the standards of nineties comedies aimed at teenage boys, but it definitely feels like men having issues with women is a topic rolling around in this movie's empty head. Notably, Chazz' girlfriend comes to forgive him largely because he drops his macho demeanor and not so much because he changes his behavior, so don't think the film is progressive in any way. Yet it's kind of interesting. 

And, of course, it's only fitting that “Airheads” has a pretty good soundtrack. It features some choice cuts from White Zombie, Motorhead, Dim Stars, and Primus. (Rob Zombie and Lemmy both have cameos in the movie, to boot.) While mocked throughout the film, the Lone Rangers' single actually isn't a bad vaguely hardcore style punk/metal number. Despite seemingly having a lot in its favor, “Airheads” was not successful upon release. It grossed far less than its 11 million dollar budget at the box office. Critically, it was reviled and even made a couple of Worst Of lists at the end of the year. That definitely seems like a bit of an overreaction to me. “Airheads” is goofy, kind of dumb, and light-weight as can be. Yet it's also frequently charming, has a surprisingly good cast, and made me laugh a decent number of times. This has earned the movie a small cult following, that has kept it being totally forgotten. When watched on a lazy afternoon, with no expectations, it can definitely scratch an inch for a silly comedy. [Grade: B-]