Fancy-free

As much as comic books, science fiction, horror, and other things I enjoy necessitate a suspension of disbelief, I think musicals require that as well. Somehow I can marginally accept it when animals in a Disney movie spontaneously break into an expository musical number, at least most of the time. But whenever I see real people doing it, credibility is strained, moreso on film than on the stage. I've always accepted it on stage, probably stemming from an unrequited attraction to a girl who starred in plays at my middle school several lifetimes ago. I acknowledge films that are classics as well, so the “oh, come on!” factor is less severe with The Sound of Music and West Side Story. Actually, due to the subject matter, there are moments in West Side Story where belief has to be suspended with the greatest of effort. Try to roll up on 50 Cent snapping your fingers and harmonizing with your friends, and see how far choreography will go to save you.

On a recommendation from 97% cowboy Darrell, I watched Footloose this weekend, after which I subtracted the 3%. Actually, the real reason he had mentioned the movie was in light of the recent and untimely passing of Chris Penn. It featured a much younger and skinnier Penn than the one I knew from Reservoir Dogs. For the two or three people besides myself who haven't seen Footloose, it tells the tale of a young city boy played by Kevin Bacon who comes to a small town where dancing is illegal. As outrageous a premise as that sounds, it was in fact based on a true story. It's actually a pretty good movie, and I really related to Penn's character, who himself couldn't dance. There's a fantastic scene where Bacon and his love interest, Lori Singer, are dancing up a storm at a bar while Penn sits on the sidelines drinking and looking miserable. I've been there. Eventually his girl, Sarah Jessica Parker, gets tired of watching everyone else dance and heads out to join them. He does an awesome job looking as miserable as a guy would feel in that situation, and in interviews on the DVD shared that he could not in fact dance when they started filming the movie.

I suspect it would be blasphemous, especially for someone my age, to criticize this film. It has a lot of solid performances, especially John Lithgow as Singer's strict preacher father. A lot of the songs, modern for the time, really set the mood. During a game of tractor chicken, for example, the song Holding Out for a Hero is used as effectively as it was in Shrek 2. The one scene I really struggled with however, occurs early in the film when the weight of the challenges facing Bacon's character finally overwhelm him. He storms out of his house, takes his yellow volkswagon beetle to an old train yard, and what could be a profound emotional scene suddenly takes an odd turn. In the midst of his rage, pounding on the hood as we get flashes of the various characters he's encountered, he suddenly breaks into a highly choreographed and gymnastic dance. What?! When I was a teenager and got angry, I usually punched a wall. If I could do flips and skips, maybe I could have been as popular with the ladies as Kevin Bacon. I know this is what people do in musicals, and it's a major scene in the movie, but he was way too footloose and fancy free to not end up with Penn's character. I guess we should be glad the movies of the 80s weren't made today; who knows what we might see?

Also on Darrell's recommendation, I watched At Close Range tonight, which was “fancy free” in a different sense. I can't believe they made movies like that in the ‘80s, or that I never even heard of it. This one stars Sean Penn in his only role opposite his brother. The Penns play brothers in the movie, and their lives take gritty and deadly turns when their dangerous dirtbag father, Christopher Walken, comes back into their lives. Surprisingly, Sean doesn't annoy me, and my only regret is that we don't see enough of his brother. When he is on screen, he does a great job. This movie is violent, beautiful and heartbreaking, and makes True Romance look like a fairy tale by comparison. It's sad that the world's lost Chris Penn, but I'm glad I had the opportunity to check out some of his earliest roles.