As I mentioned back in December, Love, Actually is a terrific movie. Garry Marshall’s VALENTINE’S DAY (2010) has the same set-up — large cast, romantic story arcs, characters are all interwoven and connected — but while watchable it lacks the magic of the earlier movie (which I’m sure was an influence). Impressively cast, though, with Julia Roberts returning home to her man, Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Garner trying to get past bad love with (respectively) Jessica Alba and Patrick Dempsey, Jessica Biel celebrating loneliness, Topher Grace and phone-sex operator Anne Hathaway hooking up (the equivalent of the porn actors’ subplot in Love, Actually and the most fun story), Taylor Swift dancing (clearly George Soros already had the fix in!), Shirley Maclaine making a big reveal to spouse Hector Elizondo and Queen Latifah demonstrating discipline. Marshall went on to duplicate the formula with New Year’s Eve and Mother’s Day. “I’m 52 and wearing a bright blue shirt to work — please don’t make this day any harder than it already is.”
As I’m giving a talk on steampunk TV next month, I thought I’d finally watch all of Q.E.D., a 1982 steampunk series that lasted all of six episodes (I imagine it was doing theater that kept me from catching it). Sam Waterston plays Quentin E. Deverill, a brilliant but acerbic American scientist in 1912; when his colleagues laugh at his theory radio waves could someday transmit images, he sulks off to England. There he finds himself embroiled in a battle of wits with Scientist of Evil Kilkiss (Julian Glover), who’s latest plot is to provide the Kaiser with missiles that can be launched from Europe and blast London to kingdom come.
This, unfortunately, was the high-point for the science-fictional side of this. Deverill and his team subsequently deal with a deadly poison gas and a super-powerful automobile before things switch to the mundane for the last couple of episodes: no Kilkiss and stories involving a fake ghost and then drug-dealing in Limehouse. I don’t feel distraught we didn’t get more. “I hate doing this but Lombroso’s theory of the innate criminal type was wrong anyway.”
DISNEY’S TEACHER’S PET (2004) spun off from a one-season animated series in which Spot (Nathan Lane) attends school disguised as a boy because it’s the closest to being human he can get. In this film he gets closer when he discovers Florida Man and Mad Scientist Kelsey Grammer has developed a ray that can turn an animal into a human. Of course, things aren’t going to be that simple … Goofy, weird and very, very funny with Easter eggs referencing everything from Young Frankenstein to the Clark Gable/Doris Day Teacher’s Pet. The voice cast includes Debra Jo Rupp, Paul Reubens, Wallace Shawn and David Ogden Stiers. “This is no time to stand around screaming silently!”
GHOSTBUSTERS: Afterlife (2021) has Spengler’s long-estranged daughter (Carrie Coon) and her kids move out to Oklahoma where he retreated to a spooky old farm, taking most of the Ghostbuster tech with im (“He cleaned us out!”). His daughter assumed he was just a loonie who didn’t care for her or his grandkids but brainy Phoebe (McKenna Grace) discovers Spengler’s real agenda was to stop the second coming of Zuul — only he didn’t succeed … A fun sequel that would double bill well with the next-gen Bill and Ted Face the Music. The living members of the original team return and Dana (Sigourney Weaver) and Venkman (Bill Murray) get a cute post-credits scene. “I command you under the National Invasive Species Act to depart this world immediately!”
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