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Car Breakdowns in Movies

It’s never going to be an easy thing.  Even in today’s day and age, with advances in communications technologies, a breakdown on a trip is not fun.  It is very different, however, now that it’s not such a threatening experience to be stranded in the middle of nowhere.  Remote regions often have signal, and gps has done wonders for keeping people on the beaten path.  But it does happen, and not everyone wants or needs automatic roadside assistance, and can take care of things with a little foresight, and an oldsmobile online repair manual.  But everyone who has been in the situation more than once can tell a story or two that are more than a little cinematic.

 

Not everyone is going to have an experience that is worthy of another “It Happened One Night,” where the lead characters fall in love for the very first time.  Not everyone is so lucky.  Even more, very rarely are they lucky enough to be traveling with Clark Gable or Claudette Colbert.  But just as the actors in a film are meant to stand in for the people in the audience, personal experiences with being stuck on the side of the road come to stand in for larger metaphors in the world.  That is the great appeal about those scenes, in fact, where the leads are stuck somewhere between places.  It’s not a coincidence that they can serve to remind the viewer of a time when they were stuck, and at the same time serve as a dramatic suggestion that the characters in the film are lost.

 

Being lost in a film is different than in real life, of course.  If the film is memorable at all, it won’t be as boring as a real experience can be, in part because in film there are no Haynes manuals online to get the characters out of the situation.  When the leads are lost, like in the “Sure Thing,” they are forced to do things that are heroic or extraordinary.  The Cusack character pretends he is crazy, recalling his previous goofiness and turning it into an asset so that we can accept the Zuniga character’s falling for him.  Colbert shows a little leg, which literally stops traffic and sets up the attraction.  In both of these actions, the characters are revealing themselves in very significant ways, demonstrating through action what they are capable of.  When people off screen are stuck, there are more methods that may seem a little less heroic, but perhaps in the larger picture they do amount to the very same things.

 

 

Hot Rod: SNL Returned

There are some movies that change people’s lives for ever. Films that top the critics’ lists, like “Jaws” or “Blue Velvet,” are capable of introducing a whole generation of movie goers to a new way of looking at reality. And then there are films that, like Hot Rod,” don’t do much of anything. Except, for the 90 minutes that we spend watching it, those are some of the most fun moments we may have had in awhile. If we’re daydreaming, it’s about raceline wheels or something equally elegant, slick, and cool, and not about the usual problems that we tend to take with us into the movie theatre.

The zany, feel-good movie may have been in hiding for awhile, but in 2007, these SNL regulars brought it back to life. There have been plenty of comedies, and plenty by other SNL cast members, for sure, but they were tending toward a rather dark and cynical look at the world. To enjoy them fully, audiences had to enter into the outlook fully, but “Hot Rod” made it all right not to be embarrassed not to be gloomy. It even made it cool again. That’s not a small task, either, considering the way the show has gone in the popular opinion over the last decade. With few exceptions (Will Ferrell being perhaps at the top of the list), there haven’t been many shining moments on the show, and fewer still by the SNL alumni on the big screen. It’s been more than one critics’ experience where, seeing one of the offshoot films is a bit like chewing on exploding caps. Eventually, it’s going to get a little bit painful. However, that seems to be shifting, and one might wonder exactly what kind of turn things have taken.

Interviews with SNL cast members involved with the film reveals a dynamic that hasn’t been around for a very long time. In a film where everything could be reduced to michelin jokes in order to fill out a prescription for a comedy, this one took chances. The chances seem to have come from the very center of what’s risky for anyone in the comedy business: the things that make people laugh to begin with. And there’s a certain sense that these folks are used to making each other laugh, on and off the set, and they still enjoy it. There’s a freshness to the sharing of each other’s company, one that rubs off on television as well as in the movies. It looks like things have taken a wonderful turn.

Tags: hot rod, snl