Movie Details
| Title: | Better Late Than Never | |
| Director: | Richard Crenna | |
| Year: | 1979 | |
| Genre: | Drama | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 10.08.06 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 10.08.06 | Friend's House | So, checking my phone after getting out of the movie, I found out that Eric's running some 16mm tonight. OK, had nothing planned otherwise. why not? First up was this TV movie written by John Carpenter and directed by Rambo's Boss himself, Richard Crenna. Even though I more closely associate him with the antagonist from John Candy's Summer Rental, "Rambo's Boss" sounds better. This movie... well first off, from the credits it looked like Carpenter was just hired to do a draft or something. The story credit goes to other people and he's co-credited with the script. So it's not your average John Carpenter fare... Actually, it's about as opposite as you can get from that. It's about an old guy who's house gets torn down to make room for a highway and gets booked into an old-folks home where a snooty employee gives his defiantly independant spirit some oppression. It's really like a TV-tame version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with old people instead of crazy people. It's actually very easy to see the story the other way around, about a nice enough retirement home worker who's put through hell by some old fart hellbent on giving everyone heart attacks and broken hips. She really doesn't do anything that oppressive or demeaning... but maybe I'm just saying that because I'm not stuck in an old folks home. Ask me again in 40 years and maybe I'll see things differently... in between my bowls of tapioca pudding and episodes of Jeopardy. So this old guys gets the other old people to rile up, ends up getting drunk and shooting guns with one crazy old man, hijacks a bus, and also coordinates a mass escape to steal a train and start a new civilization in an old ghost town. Oh that cooky ol' codger... if only he had some wood to whittle on instead, none of this would have happened. All that said, Donald Pleasance plays one of the old guys... actually all of the old guys are funny and they have some funny little lines and whatnot. It's just a shame that the story is made for the lobotomized. I get that the elderly are people too (unless they're in a wheelchair; then they're just punchlines because they sleep all the time then die), but isn't there some story - any story - better than them arguing over assigned seats? Maybe the first draft included monsters and necrophilia but they had to tone it down for TV. who knows. |
