Into the Night (1985)
2.5/4
John Landis's muddled version of an "After Hours" like story is extremely flawed, but minorly entertaining. The opening scenes of this film are extremely promising, and to be honest, very well made. It's about 20 minutes into the movie that it falls apart. It becomes a murky mess.
The movie goes somewhat like this. Ed Okin (Jeff Goldblum) is a bored insomniac aerospace engineer, and finds out that his wife is cheating on him. During one night, he accidentally meets a beautiful model named Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer), and tries to help her on the run from a collection of dangerous people.
Jeff Goldblum's performance at the beginning of the movie is inspired, and very well directed by Landis. They know how to get you to relate to this character, and it really does work. It's when he meets Diana when the film falls apart. They seem to give up their craft, and it just becomes a tired, confusing mess. It slowly turns into an action thriller also, with a collection of dangerous people constantly chasing them. The cast is littered with famous names, and to give you a rough representation, Jim Henson plays a man on the phone. That's right, that small of a role - can you imagine what the other players have? Some of the cast is good, Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer are all right, but I really liked Paul Mazursky.
I personally think this movie loses all of its feel when it becomes an unnecessary by-the-numbers action picture, with little to no thought put into it. Aside from a few highlights, this is a mostly confusing mess of a movie - but it never becomes dreadful to sit through thanks to the reliability of an action formula.
2.5/4
John Landis's muddled version of an "After Hours" like story is extremely flawed, but minorly entertaining. The opening scenes of this film are extremely promising, and to be honest, very well made. It's about 20 minutes into the movie that it falls apart. It becomes a murky mess.
The movie goes somewhat like this. Ed Okin (Jeff Goldblum) is a bored insomniac aerospace engineer, and finds out that his wife is cheating on him. During one night, he accidentally meets a beautiful model named Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer), and tries to help her on the run from a collection of dangerous people.
Jeff Goldblum's performance at the beginning of the movie is inspired, and very well directed by Landis. They know how to get you to relate to this character, and it really does work. It's when he meets Diana when the film falls apart. They seem to give up their craft, and it just becomes a tired, confusing mess. It slowly turns into an action thriller also, with a collection of dangerous people constantly chasing them. The cast is littered with famous names, and to give you a rough representation, Jim Henson plays a man on the phone. That's right, that small of a role - can you imagine what the other players have? Some of the cast is good, Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer are all right, but I really liked Paul Mazursky.
I personally think this movie loses all of its feel when it becomes an unnecessary by-the-numbers action picture, with little to no thought put into it. Aside from a few highlights, this is a mostly confusing mess of a movie - but it never becomes dreadful to sit through thanks to the reliability of an action formula.