Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Against the Crowd Blogathon 2018



Each year, Wendell over at the blog Dell on Movies hosts a blogathon known as Against the Crowd. the way the blogathon works is that you're supposed to take one movie that has an extremely high reputation (based on the score at Rotten Tomatoes) but that you hate, as well as a movie with an extremely poor reputation that you love. It's a lot of fun, especially trying to come up with the movies that you love but everybody else hates. With that in mind, here are my selections for 2018:

Everybody else loves, but I hate: Gigi (1958).



Gigi (Leslie Caron) is being raised by two aunts to be a courtesan, or specifically, a mistress to Gaston (Louis Jourdan). Things get complicated when Gigi wants to get married. Maurice Chevalier co-stars as an older man who had a relationship with one of the aunts.

Why I hate it: I'm not a fan of musicals in general. The more I watch, the more I find that while Fox's musicals can be tolerable, I have a much stronger dislike of most of the "Freed Unit" musicals over at MGM, which seem over-produced and increasingly charmless as the 50s rolled on. (Singing in the Rain is the big exception.) The songs don't particularly excite me either.



Worst, however, is the presence of Maurice Chevalier. I wasn't a particular fan of the movies he made at Paramount at the beginning of the sound era, but a quarter century on, it's even worse. Chevalier is particularly creep in the film's opening, when he's going aroiund a Parisian park singing "Thank Heaven for Little Girls". The scene makes Chevalier look like a pedophile, and I wonder whether the movie wouldn't be better served with Chevalier riding around in a windowless carriage emblazoned with the words "FREE CANDY". And the movie drags and drags and drags.

Everybody else hates, but I love: Endless Love (1981)



David (Martin Hewitt) is in love with Jade (Brooke Shields), despite the fact that she's underage. Jade's dad (Don Murray) finally puts his foot down, and David gets the brilliant idea to try to show his good character by putting out a fire on their porch. Except he has to start the fire himself, and the fire gets out of control, resulting in David's forced placement in a mental institution. David pines for Jade, and when he is finally released, goes looking for Jade.

Why I love it: Endless Love is endlessly tawdry. All of the main characters are nuts, with a good glimpse of this being seen early on when Jade's mom sees her daughter making sweet sweet love to David -- Mom hangs around to watch surreptitiously, seemingly pleased with her daughter's budding sexuality! And it seems as though, Graduate-style, she's trying to seduce David too. As for David, he doesn't get on so well with his own parents (Richard Kiley and Beatrice Straight), so he's obsessing with making himself a part of Jade's perfect-to-him family.

The movie goes from mildly nuts to careening off the rails with the fire scene, and then even more once David gets out of the mental institution. And the ending is so fabulously wrong. Is Endless Love a good movie? Not really; Brooke Shields and Martin Hewitt make for one of the most wooden couples in screen history. But my word is it fun. Over the closing credits is the famous Lionel Richie/Diana Ross version of the Oscar-nominated title song, which was a huge hit in the summer of 1981, spending nine weeks at #1. Of course, everybody thinks the song is about love, when the movie is really about obsession.

6 comments:

joel65913 said...

There are things about Gigi that I admire, it's beautifully produced, Hermione Gingold is a favorite of mine and I like her duet with Chevalier but a film about the training of a young girl to be a prostitute no matter what fancy name they give it is just wrong.

I can't say that Endless Love is a guilty pleasure of mine but it is a whackadoddle ride. Hewitt was very attractive but as you say incredibly wooden.

Dell said...

Haven't seen Gigi, but that sounds icky.

Haven't watched Endless Love in its entirety, but have seen bits and pieces. Of course, it's been 30 years I last looked at any part of it. Forgot, or never knew since I was pretty young, that all that was going on. I have heard that song about 3 billion times, though. I got soooo tired of it back in the day. And I like both Richie and Ross.

Thanks so much for doing this!

Brittani Burnham said...

I haven't seen any of these but that opening you described in Gigi just makes me uncomfortable now. wtf?

Ted S. (Just a Cineast) said...

Well, Chevalier doesn't go around in a carriage like that, but the way he sings "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" is really creepy.

The scene is currently on Youtube if you want to watch.

Birgit said...

Oh now, I always wished I had a couple of Aunts who would have trained me to be an upscale hooker but, alas, I didn’t have that luck. Now, I do really enjoy this film and Chevalier is the creepy old granddad whom you never want your friends around but he never bothered me nor the song actually. I enjoy this musical although it is not my favourite because of the holes in the writing. I always wondered how the old aunts can live in such nice apartments...they never explain that. Endless Love....oh gosh, I remember when this came out and hated the song. I have only seen clips of this film and have no desire to see it but you never know....

Katy said...

I haven't seen Endless Love, but as a huge musical fan, I can never remember watching or ever liking Gigi. It's fascinating to watch movies from the 1950s and realize what scenes might've not seemed creepy then, but definitely do now.