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Hair (1979)
A botched opportunity.
Hair is one of the most important, innovative, and influential musicals of the last century. To me, This musical is to broadway as Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys was to rock music. You got to understand, there weren't any other musicals on Broadway like this in 1968, so this really blew people's minds when it debuted on Broadway. Without Hair, we wouldn't have Jesus Christ Superstar, Rent, Spring Awakening, Be More Chill, Fun Home, Next To Normal, and other musicals. Hair was extremely controversial when it came out because of it's political nature and onstage nudity. The musical's songs stood against the Vietnam war, racism, and pollution and had a genuine heart behind it.
The 1979 film adaptation has no heart. It completely botches what Hair was about. It cuts a majority of the songs from the show out, changes the parts of the songs by giving certain parts to other characters (EX: The musical's title song is a duet between two characters named Claude, and his friend Berger. The movie gives both parts to supporting character Woof), turns the characters into the direct opposite of what they are (EX: In the musical, the protagonist Claude was a hippie. The movie makes him into a square.), and ruins the ending by sending Berger off to 'Nam to die in Claude's place, making Claude's sudden sacrifice in the stage version useless.
The show's creators James Rado and Gerome Ragni were not happy with how the film turned out, saying that a movie version of Hair was yet to be seen. I really hope someone who really understands the musical and it's morals makes a film adaptation of Hair that actually sticks to the original script and songs.
In my opinion, I feel like Michael Weller, who wrote the screenplay for this movie, didn't even SEE the musical and only read a part of the musical's script and just made his OWN movie, rather than adapting Rado and Ragni's musical. They REALLY botched the opportunity to make a good version of Hair. It shames me, because the musical REALLY changed the way I look at musicals, and my taste in music.
If you wanna see a good version of Hair, watch a video of the stage play that inspired the movie on YouTube. It is so much better, believe me.
We Can Be Heroes (2020)
A poorly-established, low-budget film with a decent, but poorly-executed message.
Before we begin, I just have to say that I genuinely respect Robert Rodriguez. He is a man who shows that you can make a good film with a low budget, as seen with his movies like Sin City, From Dusk Till Dawn, and The Faculty.
Not every good filmmaker is without a bad movie, or in Robert's case, several (Spy Kids 4, anyone?). It's been a rough couple of years, movie-wise, for Rodriguez; he was a producer and writer on the critical and box-office failure Uglydolls, he directed/written/produced Alita: Battle Angel, which had lukewarm (but mostly positive) reviews, and he directed/written/produced Red 11, which gained negative reviews. He also directed an episode of The Mandalorian, the episode was well-received from what I heard.
As I said before, Robert Rodriguez CAN make a good movie, but those are his movies for adults/or teenagers. When he makes movies for children, like The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and pretty much every Spy Kids sequel, he really fumbles the ball.
For example, his children's films usually have some issues: Bad special effects that make you realize the low budget, lackluster writing, and less-than-stellar performances from both the child actors (which I can excuse, due to them having not a lot of experience) and the the adult actors.
His latest venture into children's filmmaking, the Netflix original "We Can Be Heroes", is no exception.
My first complaint is about the message of the movie, and by that, I mean how the message is delivered. The message is your standard "the children are our future" pap, but it's done in such a bland, half-hearted way, it reminds me of that scene in School Of Rock when Jack Black's character (who pretends to be his roommate to get a job as a substitute teacher at a prestigious prep school) quotes the first two lines of Whitney Houston's 'Greatest Love of All' ("I believe the children are our future, teach them well and lead the way.") upon being asked on his opinion on the students that he's teaching, as a way to seem like he's genuine, but not really. What I'm saying is that the way the message is delivered feels fake, and cheap.
The script of the movie is VERY poorly-made, at some points it feels like a first draft. The movie's main story concerns a superhero team called The Heroics. Early on in the story, the Heroics get kidnapped by aliens and its up to their kids to save them. When they get kidnapped, we get a sad sequence of the kid's watching in horror as their parents get kidnapped, and the movie tries to make us feel bad too. Here's where the movie fails at that, we barely get to know seven out of the eleven Heroics, the other four member's names are mentioned in the credits. We only get to see the parent-child relationships for fifteen seconds per parent/kid scene at the end. The reason why people feel sad when they see Simba's dad die in The Lion King, is that we get to know Simba's dad Mufasa, and the type of relationship they have until Scar kills Mufasa! The movie doesn't show the type of relationship each member of The Heroics have with their kid, we only get a of insight with the main character Missy Moreno and her Dad, Marcus Moreno (Played by Pedro Pascal) who is the leader of the Heroics.
Now, there's a plot twist involving an alien takeover that raises more questions than answers: The twist is that the evil aliens that kidnapped the kid's parents and tried to take over the world were good all along, and it was all a training exercise for the kids. But, here's the real kicker, the president of America (who is supposed to be a parody of Donald Trump, because he fumbles his words up) is secretly an alien, and Priyanka Chopra's character, who is supposed to be the mean, child-hating human adversary, and a kid character who was on the kid hero team named Ojo are also aliens who were in on the test. They openly admit to infiltrating the government and the Heroics, but they don't get ANY punishment for their heinous crimes. Like, the announcement of the takeover and the adult superheroes getting kidnapped got coverage on national TV in the film, so I bet the people wouldn't be happy with finding out that the government AND the Heroics are being ran by aliens, so it means that the alien takeover ALREADY HAPPENED.
If you're a little kid, you'll like it, but if you're an adult, the plot holes will be a little too much.
A Troll in Central Park (1994)
A decent film for kids, but a slog to get through for adults.
This movie is pretty much the movie people talk about when they say "it's just a stupid kid's movie!". It's not as bad as films like Delgo, or Quest for Camelot, but it's extremely bland and cheesy. The plot is rather mediocre and thin, and seems very unfocused at some points. Some points in the movie involving Stanley, the titular Troll in Central Park (played by Dom Deluise, frequent Don Bluth collaborator) feels like it's just Dom Deluise rambling in character. The songs in this movie are bland and forgettable at best, and horrible and unimaginative at worst. The worst song in the film is Queen of Mean, sung by the film's main antagonist Gnorga (voiced by the late Cloris Leachman, best known as Frau Blucher in the classic Mel Brooks film Young Frankenstein). The song is the worst kind of villain song, the one made with no imagination. It's your standard "look at me, I'm very evil!" villain song that only works if we know a bit about the antagonist and see them onscreen for a bit BEFORE they sing it, we're introduced to the character WITH that song! The movie also stops dead in it's tracks just to pad the runtime with scenes like anthropomorphic flowers doing a soft-shoe routine and Stanley running through New York city and nearly getting eaten by someone at Tavern On The Green. For a little kid, this seems like a decent movie to sit down and watch, but its a NIGHTMARE to get through for older kids and adults.