FILM-THRUST!!

Occupy the Planet of the Apes

2012-02-09T23:17:00.000-07:00

By ROBINZON CHAVEZ

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, 2011, 1HR 45 MINUTES, WRITTEN BY RICK JAFFA AND AMANDA SILVER, DIRECTED BY RUPERT WYATT

In early August, the author set sail from Pirate’s Paradise, Florida, in a 12-foot Heron Class sloop. He did not tell anyone of his intention to leave for an extended period, nor his destination. It is not clear if he even had one in mind.

CONTINUE >>

Rubber

2011-07-28T12:47:00.004-06:00

By ROBINZON CHAVEZ

RUBBER, 2010, 1 HR 25 MIN, WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY QUENTIN DUPIEUX

Rubber is not at all what it seems. What it seems like is a weird, little, independent revenge flick, in which a tire gains sentience, blows things up with its “mind,” and wreaks havoc in a small town.

CONTINUE >>

Swayze Was All We Had

2011-04-21T01:11:00.008-06:00

By ROBB WITMER FULL

PATRICK WAYNE SWAYZE, 1952-2009

Originally published Sep. 19, 2009.

America, like the Double Deuce, has turned savage. There was only one man that could save us, and now that man is gone.

CONTINUE >>

The Cable Guy

2011-04-19T12:05:00.008-06:00

By ROBB WITMER FULL

THE CABLE GUY, 1996, 1 HR 36 MIN, WRITTEN BY LOU HOLTZ, JR., DIRECTED BY BEN STILLER

The Cable Guy is mostly viewed as a failure. Coming on the heels of the Ace Ventura movies, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey was the most bankable star in comedy, maybe in all of Hollywood, commanding a $20 million paycheck to star in Cable Guy.

The box office success of his previous movies suggested this was a bargain, and that Carrey’s salary would probably be earned back before the sun went down on the opening Friday.

Of course, it wasn’t. Not that a $60 million haul is anything to sneeze at, but $100 million had become the expectation for anything Carrey was in. That’s why he gets paid the big bucks.

The moderate financial success of Cable Guy -- as opposed to insanely-huge financial success -- has come to define it as the one big “miss” in that era of Carrey’s career.

Which doesn’t make a lot of sense, because all of Carrey’s mega-hits leading up to Cable Guy are for the most part unwatchable pieces of shit. Audiences were used to these pieces of shit, however, and when a Carrey vehicle came along that didn’t involve anyone literally talking out of their ass, it fell short of those lame expectations. Or fell long, depending on how you look at it.

To me, Cable Guy was a sort of underrated classic, a movie easily dismissed by the general viewing audience for all the wrong reasons. It is hard, after all, to go from ass-talking and ball-jokes to comedy that is so dependent on nuance.

On the most recent viewing, I’d have to say that it is indeed underrated. Classic? Maybe not.

Chip Douglas, or whatever we’re supposed to call him, is a seriously flawed character, raised on TV and neglect. The only way he can experience reality is through what he’s seen on TV, and that he’s seen almost everything in the history of TV isn’t exactly helping.

Carrey’s performance is pretty spot-on. As far as manic, dangerous psychopaths go, Chip is sympathetic and fairly likable. It’s hard not to feel sorry for the guy: He’s got a horrible speech impediment and no real friends.

If anything, Carrey and director Ben Stiller were a bit hamstrung by Carrey’s previous success. There’s just a little too much high-energy, Ace Ventura-style goofiness to Chip, and maybe if this movie would have come post Truman Show it might have avoided the Jim-Carrey-being-Jim-Carrey shenanigans.

The most glaring shortcoming of The Cable Guy is the tone. There aren’t enough big laughs to consider it a great comedy, and it doesn’t get dark enough to make anyone uncomfortable. As deranged as Chip is, he is always coming from a need to belong. When he wrecks people’s lives, it’s in the name of getting and keeping a new friend, not out of any malice.

Even Mathew Broderick’s Steven can’t stop feeling sorry for the guy, despite the fact that Chip has managed to destroy almost every aspect of his existence.

If the film had managed to go darker, to make the audience truly scared of what Chip might do next, it could have been more successful as a “black comedy.”

As it is, The Cable Guy is a solid effort. It manages to combine elements of thrillers, comedy and satire, though it doesn’t completely succeed at any of them. Stiller and Carrey gave us something different, just not quite different enough to make it memorable.

Red State

2011-04-04T16:43:00.007-06:00

By ROBB WITMER FULL

RED STATE, 2011, 1 HR 28 MIN, WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY KEVIN SMITH

Maybe since Kevin Smith has always been told that he isn't much of a director, he decided to deconstruct his filmmaking to its component parts and build something new.

Smith has dubbed his foray into self-released films "indie 2.0," but the movie itself is a solid piece of independent filmmaking, very much in the "1.0", or maybe "beta 0.5," mode.

Red State in many ways looks just slightly more polished than what I could produce in my garage. I mean that in a good way. The lack of a musical score gives the whole thing a snuff film feel, and there's plenty of nasty shit happening to keep up the mood.

There is an overall dread in the background of Red State, kind of like the Blair Witch Project, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre... That feeling that we're watching something we shouldn't.

A lot of that is because we're never given a chance to get comfortable in the story. Every five or ten minutes Smith turns the film in a violent new direction, and Joss Whedon's rule of Any Character Can Die At Any Time certainly plays here.

The film has a lot to say, but not much time to say it. What it doesn't do is get overly preachy. (Well, it does get literally preachy, but not figuratively.)

The main thrust of Red State is that there are inherent layers of bull-shit built into any power structure, and when that bull-shit is left unquestioned is when those power structures get dangerous and allow people to get away with horrible, even primitive, acts.

But we're not left with a lot of time to ponder big ideas. And we shouldn't be. The movie's questions don't have any answers. Certainly not answers a movie can provide us.

The pace of Red State is quick, and at times frantic... Sometimes, after all, the speed of the real world sweeps us up, and leaves us with no decision to make. Occasionally you get shot in the head.

There's not anyone to root for in this movie. The most redeeming characters get killed off early, and even they didn't have a lot going for them. But it's ultimately not a movie about character arcs, or redemption, or even any sort of victory.

Red State is about a culture in decline, clinging to belief systems that are crumbling themselves. It's the most nihilistic movie since Fight Club, and if that movie proved anything, watching society and it's dogmas collapse under their own weight can be constructive on its own.

How To Train Your Dragon

2011-03-07T15:36:00.005-07:00

By ROBB WITMER FULL

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, 2010, 1 HR 38 MIN, WRITTEN BY WILLIAM DAVIES, DEAN DeBLOIS, AND CHRIS SANDERS, DIRECTED BY DEAN DeBLOIS AND CHRIS SANDERS

How does one train a dragon? Make it dependent on you for survival, for one thing.

Okay, our hero, Hiccup, and his dragon, Toothless, are fairly equal partners when all is said and done, but without Hiccup, Toothless is still at the bottom of that canyon...

I could have done without all the cutesy names (what self-respecting Vikings name their son Hiccup?), but by almost every other measure How to Train Your Dragon is a thrusting success.

The animation is awesome, on the whole. The people sometimes drift into that video-game sway that's supposed to convey a relaxed posture or something like it, but it never bothered me. I know I'm watching a cartoon, and there's nothing wrong with a cartoon looking like a cartoon.

Any deficiencies in the animation of the characters is more than offset by the flying scenes, which are some of the best looking shots in any movie in years, animated or otherwise. If there's a better movie to watch on LSD, I haven't seen it.

As a staunch opponent of the 3-D fad, I hate to say this, but Dragon would probably be more than worth the price of that extra dimension, if you're so inclined (I'm still not).

There were some parts of the story that I would have liked to see explored, but only if done in an R- or at least PG-13-rated way. Like, the dragons that are kept captive for the students to learn their dragon-killing skills on, they're surely tortured, right? Even Michael Vick would be aghast at the size of the mass grave behind the arena.

Not to mention the psychological torture the students go through themselves, being put by their parents into life-threatening situations on a daily basis... And being taught to brutally murder living (albeit dangerous) creatures in the process.

And why Hiccup's instructors and fellow students simply accept that he has a "way with the beasts" instead of executing him for witchcraft is beyond me.

The Vikings in How to Train Your Dragon do have to be commended for their surprising open-mindedness. Somehow, in the course of, what, days?, they are able to go from existing for the sole purpose of dragon-slaying to accepting them as equals. Er, I mean pets. Accepting them as pets.

If nothing else, they prove to be more enlightened than your average American.

Cedar Rapids

2011-02-23T01:26:00.036-07:00

By ROBB WITMER FULL

CEDAR RAPIDS, 2011, 1 HR 27 MIN, WRITTEN BY PHIL JOHNSTON, DIRECTED BY MIGUEL ARTETA

Watching Cedar Rapids, I felt as though I was really inside Duets, like when you're in a dream, and you know that you are in a specific place, regardless of the fact that it bears no real resemblance. It feels so much like that place that there's no way it can't be.

The reason for that is that they occupy the same universe, the one where the American Midwest is an endless swath of highways connecting hotel bars and crack-houses. The characters' lives in both movies are centered around those bars, and making something of themselves inside of them.

The life of a Midwesterner must seem pretty lame to Big City Folk, and that of Midwestern insurance salesmen doubly so. But everybody's got to get their kicks somewhere, and for working types, that's what conventions are for.

In Duets, the prize was the Karaoke Championship... The NATIONAL Karaoke Championship. (One must assume this is a title sanctioned by the U.S. Karaoke Association.) What the characters are really after in that movie is a chance to be a star, even if it's only in front of a couple dozen people.

The coveted Two Diamond Award is at the center of Cedar Rapids, but like the National Karaoke Championship, it is an award that doesn't have a lot of meaning outside of the room it's presented in.

For the insurance sales representatives, the ASMI convention is their yearly chance to party like they did at state universities and branch campuses, and pretend like that's how they always act. Sleeping around, doing shots, acting like we're some sort of big-shot back home.

There's also always a chance you hang out with the wrong prostitute and get caught up in some crack-enhanced Bad Situations, but that's just part of the territory, a hazing for rookies. This kind of stuff is what the convention/hotel business was built on; Vegas exists because of it.

Cedar Rapids doesn't take nearly as many chances as Duets, not that there are many movies that should, but sometimes the safer choices are the right choices.

In Cedar, it wouldn't have felt right for a main character to be gunned down in front of a room full of people; in Duets, it didn't make any goddamn sense and doesn't work at all, but they had at least earned the right to try it thanks to all the other nonsense leading up to it (National Karaoke Championships, anyone?).

Of course, in both movies we have characters fall into heavy-duty drug benders that they have no business dealing with, so anything's possible.

I'm not sure Ed Helms has the chops to take a movie like this into the upper echelon of comedy, but I'm not sure that's what the aim is here.

We know John C. Reilly has those chops, and maybe the riskier move is to let him take more of a lead. Then it's possible you're left with just another John C. Reilly-playing-a-dumbass movie.

There's enough of those, or at least there will be eventually. What if the point is to make a grown-up comedy about fucking around? We could probably use a few more of those.

Superman: The Movie

2011-02-22T15:21:00.007-07:00

By ROBB WITMER FULL

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, 1978, 2 HR 23 MIN, WRITTEN BY MARIO PUZO, DAVID NEWMAN, AND LESLIE NEWMAN & ROBERT BENTON, DIRECTED BY RICHARD DONNER

Tights and Capes...

Superman comes from a different time in both American Comics and America itself. Comics were pure kids-stuff then, so most of the characters dressed like clowns to catch the eye of any passing children, not at all unlike modern-day cereal boxes, with the use of big, bright, primary-colored mascots to mesmerize the little scamps.

So, I get why the Tights and Capes, I guess, but it's always been a large hurdle to leap, as it were. Why would Superman dress like such a jack-ass?

Or (at least in the movie version), why would his father dress him like such a jack-ass when he made clear to his son that he should try to blend in with humans. And it's not like the film established at any point that Kryptonians ever dressed like that...

Whatever, I'm over it. For now. But, yes, Superman is kind of silly, and he's exactly the sort of character that for so long mis-defined what comic books could be.

There are no shades of gray in the Superman world, very little humor, and absolutely no irony of any kind. People will smile occasionally.

Superman, for all his other-worldly advancement and wisdom, is so oblivious to Earth reality that he thinks there really are only two sides, Good and Evil.

Perhaps he just loves fascism. At the end of the movie, when he's dropping the Bad Guys off at the prison -- without all the mess of a trail -- he waves at the prison guards and tells them that they're all on the same team.

These same prison guards would happily smuggle drugs and weapons into the prison for the Bad Guys, if the price is right. Who's side are they on then, Superman?

And for a guy who is so learned, Superman is still kind of an Aw-Shucks idiot, isn't he? I know, I know, he was raised in Kansas, but small-town values are not the same thing as dopeyness.

The tone of Superman is hard to get right. Maybe this is why any updated version seems so out of place. It operates on a cultural logic that doesn't exist any more, except to be made fun of, and to ridicule it would destroy the whole Superman ethos.

A mid-90's Superman movie, to be directed by Tim Burton almost looked like this:

I'm not making that up. That makes the Schumacher-era Batman movies look like... well, the Schumacher-era Batman movies.

We want Superman to be dorky, and simple, and to wear the the blue and red tights even if they are, as Jon Peters once famously said, "too faggy."

Superman: The Movie gets it mostly right. Does it get too close to Cheese? Yes, dangerously so. Obviously, it's pretty hard to believe that Clark Kent's co-workers, especially Lois Lane, don't get that he's Superman, but at this point if you can't accept that then you are some sort of un-American.

And a bomb that can hit the San Andreas fault right in the G-spot, causing California to fall into the ocean? Even if it were possible, come the fuck on.

Let's not discuss whether or not time will go backwards if the Earth spins backwards.

Christopher Reeve is just un-bland enough to keep the audience awake and Lois Lane interested. Actually, it's hard to see what she sees in Superman, except for the 6'5", studly, and able-to-fly thing.

Reeve is not exactly Mark-Hamill-in-Star-Wars bad, but I don't see what he brings to the character besides looking just like Superman.

Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor is totally underused in this movie. He spends most of it behind a desk, underground, being about half as interesting as Gene Hackman can be.

Brando, on the other hand, if fucking awesome as Jor-El. The opening sequence on Krypton should have been an entire prequel itself. Who wouldn't want to see a whole movie about a planet that runs on Crystal Technology?

That would have been way too cool, though. The movie we did get is exactly what we need a Superman movie to be. Action-packed, kid-friendly, and most of all, BRIGHT.

Catfish

2011-02-17T12:27:00.004-07:00

By ROBB WITMER FULL

CATFISH, 2010, 1 HR 27 MIN, DIRECTED BY HENRY JOOST AND ARIEL SCHULMAN

The surprise of Catfish is that there is really nothing surprising about it. There is a twist, I guess, but it's pretty obvious early on that something is not what it seems. What that is can be pieced together, but it really is best to experience it as it happens, to let the onion peel back its layers on its own.

The Social Network is and will forever be "the Facebook movie," but Catfish is the movie that takes place within Facebook. The site is used as a tool to set up an entire fantasy world for the center of the documentary, Nev.

And he falls for it, hook, line and sinker. But who can blame the guy? He is seduced by an impossibly beautiful and talented country girl who is completely taken with his Big City life and perfect teeth.

That she isn't real doesn't make their relationship any less authentic, their connection any less strong. The truth is that Megan, or Angela, rather, doesn't know the real Nev any more than he knows the real her...

Okay, a little bit more. But Facebook is just another in a long line of technologies, dating back to masks and face-paint, that allows us to hide our true selves, if even just a little. The Internet hasn't changed this, it's just given us a new venue for it.

Who we are on Facebook is not who we are at work, or out for drinks on Friday evening, or at Sunday dinner with our parents. It's like a Fight Club that you can talk about.

But we are all these people. Technology has allowed an unbelievable amount of connection, but also allows us to fracture our personalities in ways we chose, and in ways that we can lose control of.

Catfish is about that loss of control, and the depths to which that fracturing can take us. And like drug addiction, when we've lost that control we often hurt someone we care about.

Angela is a sad, creative person, not happy with who she is, but she's able to live vicariously through her own imagination. Nev fell for her deception, but it's hard to view him as a victim. She did it for his benefit as well as hers, to continue the real friendship going between two fake people.

There's nothing malicious about what Angela did, but it is incredibly fucked-up. She certainly needed the fantasy more than Nev did, and she probably ended up hurting herself more than him.

Maybe nobody was truly hurt in this situation. It is hard to find anyone to sympathize with too deeply. What we get as an audience, however, is one of the most literally jaw-dropping documentaries of all time.

The Social Network

2011-02-17T00:10:00.005-07:00

By ROBB WITMER FULL

THE SOCIAL NETWORK, 2010, 2 HR, WRITTEN BY AARON SORKIN, DIRECTED BY DAVID FINCHER

Maybe Mark Zuckerberg is an asshole. Maybe he's not. If I had to decide where he fits into the Team America Dick-Asshole-Pussy Paradigm, I'd have to say Dick.

Actually, now that I think of it, it's a no-brainer. The whole movie is kind of based on the DAPP.

Team America tells us "the problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate." That is exactly what Zuckerberg does. He fucks his one and only friend (Pussy), and fairly inappropriately.

He also sticks it on into a triumvirate of rich, raging Assholes on his way there. In Zuckerberg's defense, they did want to shit all over him. And since he's a dick -- a reckless, arrogant and stupid dick -- he can't really help it, can he?

Sometimes in this world, that is what it takes to get something great done. Regardless of what your opinion is of the Facebook interface itself, there's no arguing that it rivals Google as the biggest cultural force in the history of the Internet, right up there with the "I like turtles" kid.

The Social Network could turn out to be a goddamn masterpiece. Only several years and multiple viewings will tell for sure, but for now it seems flawless. The script is tight and fast, every performance is spot-on, the score is not only tension-building but sometimes downright frightening, and every frame is visually stunning.

David Fincher must be an enormous prick.

We're definitely knee-deep in ambiguous morality immediately upon entering the story. After the very first scene of the movie, our main character tells us, "That's not what happened." Nobody can be believed.

The emotional testimony that the entire movie is based on is, we are reminded by one of Zuckerberg's lawyers, is 85% exaggeration and 15% perjury. Perfect.

Whether we can believe these people is not the point. They believe what they are telling themselves, and it doesn't matter if it's true or not. As long as it satisfies their desire for money, jealousy, revenge, or recognition, then it's true enough.

Every seduction in the movie leads to a betrayal. The Winklevii were seduced by Zuckerberg's reputation. Eduardo was seduced by the prospect of founding an Internet behemoth. Zuckerberg thought Sean Parker was his best chance at another only friend.

At the end, our main character is left with nothing. Or with everything he's ever wanted. The tragedy is that no one, not even himself, knows which it is.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

2011-02-02T15:47:00.004-07:00

By ROBB WITMER FULL

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME, 2010, 1 HR 56 MIN, WRITTEN BY BOAZ YAKIN AND DOUG MIRO & CARLO BERNARD, DIRECTED BY MIKE NEWELL

I swear that when I first saw a preview for Prince of Persia, I thought the star was Freddie Prinze, Jr. It may have been the Pinze-Prince connection, or that it never dawned on me that Jake Gyllenhaal would be cast in the role of action hero... Not that Prinze would have made any more sense.

But there were a lot of "Wow, where has this guy been?" -type thoughts going through my head. (IYI: Freddie Prinze, Jr.'s resume since the Scooby Doo movies is a bit sparse, but does include a writing credit on an episode of WWE Saturday Night's Main Event, so he hasn't entirely disappeared. I always pictured him and Chris Tucker golfing together on the weekends, trading stories about never having to work again.)

Gyllenhaal, alas, is no Freddie, but that's fine. The actors in Prince of Persia are kind of inconsequential to the movie, and just like the plot and the characters only get in the way of moving on to the next action scene.

Which are actually kind of awesome. Whatever that martial art is that Gyllenhaal is doing to jump onto buildings and around villages is extremely cool, even if it's never explained what it is or where he learned it. Born with it? Sure, why not.

There's nothing to complain about in the swordplay or stabbing-death departments either, though they are decidedly gore-free. However, there are a couple of good dick jokes for a Disney movie.

As for the plot, I've never seen a movie that was so unconcerned how it got from one action sequence to the next. Every plot device seems to happen totally out of context, or accidentally. Mostly accidentally. I vaguely remember one scene where a character says they need some-thing or -one and another character basically says, "Oh, well, that thing or someone is right around this corner," and bam, there it was.

Maybe the scene didn't happen exactly like that. I can't remember, since I wasn't paying close enough attention. But that's only because it doesn't matter. Getting too involved in the plot would only use the parts of your brain that should be turned off when watching movies like Prince of Persia.

At the end, when Gyllenhaal is explaining to his brother what has been going on the whole time, actually saying the plot out loud, the movie seems to take a moment to let it sink in so the audience can accept the preposterousness of it all.

The film itself acknowledges that preposterousness throughout. The moments that Gyllenhaal is made to look cool, or charming, or shirtlessly hunky, are done completely sincerely, but also hilariously off the mark every single time.

At least a few times in these moments, Gylenhaal seems to smirk at the camera as if to say, "Are you still watching? Yeah? Then check this out."

Can Prince of Persia compare to Road House or Only the Strong in the Arena of Cheesiness? Sadly, no. It's just a little too polished and Disney-fied for that. But if you are are drunk, or trying to distract a multi-generational family gathering, it might be the movie for you.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

2011-01-19T20:46:00.005-07:00

By ROBB WITMER FULL

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, 2010, 1 HR 27 MIN, DIRECTED BY BANKSY

"I don't know who the joke is on," says Banksy's former art dealer in the closing moments of Exit Through the Gift Shop. "I don't even know if there is a joke."

If the joke is on anyone, it's on the people who hand over tens- and hundreds-of-thousands of dollars for works of street-art to put in their homes and galleries, the act of which renders these works forgeries, or at least cheap facsimiles, of actual street-art.

In this movie we learn that art is all that matters, and that art is also pure bull-shit. Street-art was the real punk rock for a while. It was taking back public spaces from "crap adverts," creating anonymous superstars, and developing a truly underground scene. Then it got popular.

On my second viewing of Gift Shop, it finally hit me what I was watching: a more sophisticated Windy City Heat. In that movie the joke was on someone who clearly has some sort of brain damage, while Gift Shop's Thierry Guetta is simply a clueless Frenchman.

The glaring difference, of course, is that with Windy City, the project was always the documentary. The movie was intended as the end result. For Banksy, the project was Thierry himself.

Which is why, maybe, some audiences could come to question the genuineness of the film. Clearly there's some sort of ruse going on here, but it's not that the documentary was staged, at least not in the standard sense.

Shepard Fairey admits that Mr. Brainwash is a creation, an up-and-coming street-artist simply because the right people -- including him -- said so.

That Thierry doesn't actually make most Mr. Brainwash pieces himself is beside the point... Or, rather, IS the point. His success is the result of pure hype. He's playing the part, in real life.

It never occurs to Thierry that this is all he's doing, just as Windy City's Perry Caravello, even after watching the movie, still doesn't get that it was all a prank. (I wasn't joking about the brain damage.)

Does it even matter? The joke on Caravello was that he thought he was going to be the star of a movie, but you know what? He is the star of a movie.

Thierry might be a successful street-artist as a rusult of an elaborate hoax/art project put on by Banksy, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a successful street-artist.

Gift Shop isn't the swindle, Mr. Brainwash is, and it's Banksy's big "fuck you" to all the hipsters and cool people who made him successful. That's the most punk rock thing there is.

The Music Man

2011-01-17T15:45:00.010-07:00

By ROBB WITMER FULL

THE MUSIC MAN, 1962, 2 HR 31 MIN, WRITTEN BY MEREDITH WILSON AND FRANKLIN LACEY, DIRECTED BY MORTON DaCOSTA

Sometimes there are movies that end up in one's DVD player by chance of conversation and random memories. The Music Man ended up in mine thanks to holiday-chat about a high school production my sister and I were involved in.

The Music Man is a near-perfect example of a big, Broadway-style stage musical, and for the most part the movie seems like the studio simply brought some cameras to the theater and started filming.

The fact that the blocking and even the lighting are in the style of a stage play actually helps to suspend disbelief, which is needed to a remarkable degree.

As with any musical you have to believe that people will sing and dance for no reason, but with The Music Man any grasp of reality would ruin the entire experience.

The lead character, Harold Hill (not his real name), is a scammer of immense talent. Within hours of his arrival in River City, Iowa, he's able to work every respectable adult into a froth over a pool-table, and the next day he leads the whole town in a mass hallucination.

An old buddy of Hill's, Marcellus, is living in River City now, making a life for himself with his boss' niece in the quiet, small town. Not only does he not seem to have any problem with Hill grifting the entire population of his adopted home, he does all he can to help it along.

Marcellus never seems to reflect at all about his role in what Hill is doing to River City, and that ultimately seems to be the main theme here: there are no real consequences for morally-objectionable behavior as long as people like you.

Marion, Hill's love interest, is never anything more than a mark to Hill until the final few minutes of the movie. His interests are to use her and move on. That she is a tough nut that eventually cracks is what convinces him he loves her, I guess. Hill's interest in Marion is the one thing about him that is not totally convincing.

She falls for him because she can't help herself. I don't blame her. Robert Preston's Harold Hill is so mesmerizing that even though I know he's full of shit, I want to hand him money through the TV screen for whatever he wants to sell me.

Marion tells herself she knows better -- and she does -- but at least Hill is exciting. Before he came to town, the most eligible bachelor in town was her eight year-old brother.

When she finally succumbs to his advances, it's as though she's been drugged. It could have been just a run-of-the-mill swoon, but with all the strange behavior surrounding Hill, mind-altering substances and mind-controlling techniques begin to make a lot more sense.

There is constant reference to something called the "Think System," which Marion's mother claims to have used on Marion in order to get her to agree to Hill's propositioning. The specific dynamics of the "Think System" are never fully explained, but it should be noted that cocaine was commonly available in 1912.

The school board-turned-barbershop quartet provide some of the better musical moments in the film, and usually to the benefit of Hill making an escape from being found out. The quartet, of course, are clearly the victims of hypnotism, but no matter: they can sing. Usually on command. Hill's command.

It's amazing that a story can work so well with a lead character with so few redeeming qualities. Right up until the very end the plan is still to get out of town before anyone catches on. His staying seems to be as much about his fatigue from the grifter's life as it is a connection to Marion or anyone else.

A close viewing shows Hill isn't even sure he's staying until he can hear his train leaving. He decides to accept his fate only when he realizes he's lost a step and can't hang anymore.

And, it never is clear if Hill has any intention of telling the woman he supposedly loves what his real name is, though I would say probably not. This new life in River City is just an extension of his final grift.

Which must keep on going for a while. River City eventually accepts that what Hill has given them is more important than what he has basically stolen from them, though no one contemplates that what he has given them might be a massive dose of LSD-25 through their water supply.

The movie ends with yet another mass hallucination -- or possibly part hallucination, part piercing of space-time -- in which the future River City Boy's Band has grown to roughly ten times the size of the town itself.

So maybe the whole thing is just a dream. Harold Hill's dream -- or whoever he really is -- about living the life of the traveling swindler, going from town to town, hooking up with hot librarians, ruining the name of the hard-working salesman, making just enough of a living to move on to the next town... Harold Hill's dream of America.