I can see why this fourth (fifth if you count the Pajama Party spinoff) is considered the best of the series, though I still tip my hat to the original Beach Party.
Category: Legacy
Like the first Beach Party, this movie is fun when it’s about partying and surfing, less so when it leans on its story, which grows very thin by the end of the film.
I kept wanting this to go full Linklater and just show us the kids partying and surfing with no pretext, because those are the best bits.
Categories
The Care Bears Movie (1985)
“There’s something so crass about a movie constructed entirely around selling toys”
Even with the framing story, this feels like some inessential shorts of familiar characters in stock sitcom plots stitched together.
What’s amazing about this movie is that every time you hit 2-3 minutes where you think you know where it is, it throws a curveball at you.
From the podcast recording: “I wanted to be fond of it, because there are lots of things on the surface level I want to root for, and maybe kind of like, but none of it actually pulls through. “
Here’s a quick rundown of the three films in this anthology:
Water and ham
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The Elephant Man (1980)
Still a biopic with too many biopic-y moments. But it’s David Lynch so there’s plenty of weirdness, dual-sided themes, and moral grayness. (Though it is the most conventional Lynch I’ve seen.) Looks amazing, sounds brilliant (Lynch was the sound engineer, too!).
The makeup/prosthesis is masterpiece-level, and John Hurt is phenomenal underneath it, too. Observing a person gradually emerge from something that looks so viscerally grotesque is the film’s greatest strength.