I gotta be honest with you, Joe/Jill, I have missed blogging.
I used to blog a lot at The Huffington Post a few years ago. I had sent the wonderful Arianna Huffington an e-mail and short article I had written, she politely informed me I would be given blogging credentials within a month (that was the longest and most anticipated month of my life!) and after I had been given my login and password info, I was subsequently a blogging fool! Blogging about anything everything under the sun: Politics, music and movies. I was given immense and total creative control over at HuffPost and I could write about anything my heart so desired. There were absolutely no limitations. And if Mr. Mrs. Editor liked what I had written, they'd promote it, and it'd get a heck of a lot more views and shares and comments.
Of course, my first love had always been movies--way before literature, in fact. And now since Arianna Huffington has sold Huffington Post and it has become more corporate, the contributor/blogging platform is no more. I haven't really been blogging at all, or even writing that much since the abolishment of the fantastic Huffpost blogging platform.
That changes today.
I've decided to create my own blog and hop on the saddle again. I could try doing things the "right way." I could try sending my reviews into online movie review websites and magazines. But where's the fun in that? With magazines, online and print, you gotta please some editor. And that's not for me--not anymore. Since the advent of ridiculously easy free online electronic self-publishing, why should I plea and grovel to the middleman just to get my opinion out there?
No way, Jose.
This here blog is primarily to be about my opinion of films and cinema. Of course, I might digress and veer off course every now and again. Maybe I'll mention Trump, maybe I'll gripe about my Lyme disease every now and again. But mainly, this is going to be a blog about one of my biggest passions and modes of artistic self-expression: Cinema.
And what the heck? Every now and again, I might add a movie podcast, if I'm ever feeling a little more energetic--like today.
My first movie review-ever is going to be The Cable Guy, for no other reason than it was the last movie I have seen--e.g, it was just on TV and I was bored so I watched it. For some reason, it was hard for me decide just what this movie was about when I saw advertisements as a young lad. Were Jim Carrey and Broderick's characters lovers? They kinda made it seem that way with the commercials, showing the scene were Carrey presses his right nipple against the separation glass while visiting Broderick's character in prison and shouting, I'm hear for you. Maybe they were trying to market this as a homosexual love story because they didn't know what to market this movie as.
But The Cable Guy is not a love story by any stretch of the imagination. It's a story about isolation, about this crazy stalkerish guy, "Chip Douglas" (Carrey) who craves friendship because he's never had it before. In many ways, this movie reminds me of Taxi Driver, or King of Comedy. This movie makes you cringe, it makes you uncomfortable. Whenever Carrey's character, Chip, commits a faux pas, or acts excessively needy, it makes you want to place your hand on your head, doing the equivalent of the Internet face-palm. The Cable Guy is a movie that isn't afraid to make you feel uncomfortable just so it can make a point. This character Jim Carrey plays isn't just a needy but lovable harmless sap like John Candy's Del Griffith in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. This guy's got some deep-seated psychological issues. Freud would have a field day with this fella.
The film begins with an architect Steven (Matthew Broderick) who has just moved into an apartment and has an appointment for the basic cable package. Broderick's character, Steven, is chatting on the phone with his friend played by Jack Black. And this isn't funny-as-hell-but-dated early 2000's Jack Black. Black's just this random dude, with only a few lines in the movie.
"I know a guy who slipped the cable guy an extra fifty dollars and the cable guy gave him all the channels--even the dirty ones," Black tells Steven over the phone.
So Steven tries to bribe the cable guy with a little extra dough. But the cable guy (Jim Carrey) doesn't want Steven's money. He wants his friendship.
I won't lie: This is a very dark and disturbing movie in many ways. I remember reading somewhere that the original script was much lighter than the finished product but director Ben Stiller decided to darken it up significantly. It kind of makes sense that he would. I mean, if this were a lighthearted comedy, it could very well be considered a What About Bob? clone. But the director decided to go a different route and that, I think, was a wise decision on Stiller's part. In "Bob," the audience starts to love Bill Murray's character (Bob Wiley) but hate Richard Dreyfuss' pretentious Dr. Leo Marvin. Yet in The Cable Guy, we start to hate Jim Carrey's character and side in with Broderick.
I like both movies. What About Bob? is a classic and a laugh-riot. The Cable Guy, however, is brilliant social commentary, and was way ahead of its time. The movie was openly mocking the TV generation, the Jerry Springer generation, The Ricki Lake Show generation. The writers and directors clearly disdained the 90s' era of talk shows, sensationalism and gossip-devouring buttinskies. Personally, I think a sequel to this movie is warranted and badly needed in recent times, in this recent darkened millennial age in which we currently live. The sequel could be called "The Wifi Guy," Chip Douglas--or whatever name he is going by now--could be healed since his great fall in the last movie. The movie could be a grim reminder that, even though we're closer together with the Internet nowadays and Wifi and Androids for all, we're more separated than ever before. I think there's brilliant social commentary and satirization in there somewhere.
I also found the subplot in this movie interesting: Ben Stiller plays these two burnt-out childhood stars/twins from a 70s' sitcom who were on trial for murder. It's an odd thing to put in a comedy but then again, with this movie, the director takes risks. Stiller's characters are standing trial in the movie and it clearly lampoons to the public's morbid fascination with sleazy and sensationalistic headlines. This reminds me a lot of the public's morbid infatuation with the bad instead of the good. What if we focused on the good instead of the bad, the delightful instead of the heinous? The trial in this movie reminded me especially of the infamous headline-grabbing Menendez brothers media coverage back in the early '90s.
This movie came a year after Jim Carrey's uncanny successes with three super-hit movies in 1994: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber. That is quite a phenomenon for an actor to have two surprise hits in a year but three? Carrey was definitely America's sweetheart, and I applaud him and as well the director for going outside the norms of the mainstream and doing something different.
Indeed, laugh-for-laugh, joke-for-joke, "The Cable Guy" might not be quite as funny as Ace Ventura, or Dumb and Dumber, or What About Bob? but the movie makes you think and it had a more profound and ahead-of-its-time statement to make than any of its contemporaries.
They did something different with this movie. And it worked. It made me think. The movie is definitely a piece of art in its own weird way and it makes a powerful statement about technology, humanity, and isolation.
Jack's score: A-Minus.
