BMX Bandits

A new review from The Movie Snob.

BMX Bandits  (C).  Well, I scooped this DVD out of a $1 bin many years ago thinking it was the divine Nicole Kidman’s very first movie. Alas! Now I read on IMDB.com that it was her second, getting released soon after her first movie, Bush Christmas, in December 1983. Oh, well, that gives me another rare gem to quest after. Anyhoo, this is a charmingly goofy movie. Judy (Kidman, Australia) and her two guy-pals Goose and P.J. are teenagers who yearn to get their own BMX bikes. While trying to earn some money, they accidentally come across a hidden box of powerful walkie-talkies. They start selling them off to their friends, but unfortunately they belong to a gang of hoodlums who need them for a big heist they’re planning. So the rest of the movie is basically a couple of hapless goons chasing the kids all over Sydney to try to get the walkie-talkies back. Pratfalls abound. I’m not sure the baby-faced, frizzy-haired, 15-year-old Kidman really radiates the star power she would later acquire, but the movie is mostly harmless, brainless fun. And only about 90 minutes long! Now, do I dare watch the flip side of the DVD, a 1971 biopic of Evel Knievel starring George Hamilton (Love at First Bite)? I think the answer is clearly yes . . . .

The Boundless Sea (book review)

A book review from The Movie Snob.

The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans, by David Abulafia (2019). Wow, this is a doorstop of a book—908 pages, plus 75 pages of endnotes and other supplementary material. The author’s writing style is pleasant, or I never would have made it through! He tells the story of how human beings have interacted with the oceans—Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic—from prehistory through the modern day. A few takeaways: People have been crazy enough to go sailing across the oceans on tiny boats for a very, very long time. The spice trade with the South Pacific is the main driver of human history, getting mentioned on almost every page. (Seriously, its index entry covers half a page.) And Russian Czar Ivan the Terrible once proposed marriage to Queen Elizabeth I. I doubt I will ever forget any of those facts!

If I Only Had Christmas (TV movie)

From the pen of The Movie Snob.

If I Only Had Christmas (B+). We’re still in the Christmas season, so I’m saying it’s not too late to review a Hallmark Christmas movie. This is actually a 2020 release, but it was new to The Borg Queen and me. The reliable Candace Cameron Bure (Switched for Christmas) stars as Darcy, a normally cheerful midwestern gal who works for a PR firm. This Christmas she is feeling a little bummed because she missed out on some prize at work, but then she gets rejuvenated by the prospect of chasing after some big company that is looking to hire a PR company. Of course, the path to success is never easy, and here it runs straight through the company’s VP of Communications, Glenn Goodman (Warren Christie, Apollo 18). To me, he seemed like a standard-issue, bland, Hallmark male lead, but the Borg Queen assures me that he’s handsomer than the norm. Anyhoo, the fun of this particular movie really comes from the fact that it contains a million references to The Wizard of Oz. We didn’t realize it at first, missing the clunky title’s reference to “If I Only Had a Brain.” But when somebody said that Bure’s character was “Darcy Gale from Kansas City,” things clicked, and we spent the rest of the movie watching for other references, which were plenteous. Fun!

Lost in America

A new DVD review from The Movie Snob.

Lost in America (C). This 1985 release escaped my attention at the time (as most movies did back then), but for some unknown reason I picked up the Criterion Collection edition at a 50% off sale at Barnes & Noble a while back. It’s a strange movie, and I’m not sure why it qualified for the Criterion treatment. Star Albert Brooks (This Is 40), who also directed and co-wrote the movie, plays David Howard, a neurotic adman who’s about to drive his wife Linda (Julie Hagerty, Airplane!) crazy as he’s coming up for a big promotion. Lo, instead of a promotion he gets a transfer from L.A. to New York, and he goes berserk and gets fired. Then David gets the idea that he and Linda should get in touch with the real America—he refers repeatedly to Easy Rider, which made me glad I had seen the film—and he convinces her they should sell everything, buy a Winnebago, and drive around the country indefinitely on their nest egg. Unfortunately, they decide to make Las Vegas their first stop, and everything goes horribly wrong. It’s not very funny for a comedy, and if it’s meant to be a critique of what used to be called “yuppies,” it didn’t really work as far as I could see; by the end, David and Linda are only all the more appreciative of the yuppie lifestyle. Anyway, it clocks in at an efficient 91 minutes, so it has that going for it.