Innerspace (1987)

Martin Short is back on television screens featuring in the new Disney+ streaming series 'Only Murders in the Building' alongside long-time comedic partner, Steve Martin. It got me to thinking though how Short like Martin has been a mainstay on American screens for nearly forty years from his break in Second City and then Saturday Night Live to his filmic role opposite Martin and Chevy Chase in the brilliant Three Amigos.

That film like the one I am writing about was released in 1987, and it earmarked Short as a comedic force to be reckoned with. Whereas, Martin was as cool as the other side of the pillow and Chase wanted to be the smartest and sexiest person in the room; Short was a different breed of comedian - a mimic and vaudevillian who could contort his face into any gurn, and deftly make you laugh without saying a word much like the legendary Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin.

Innerspace is one of those wonderful American original films that they just do not make anymore. Directed by Joe Dante, that conduit for science-fiction cinema in America who takes those small nuggets of ideas and creates majesty out of them, helped by the producer that is Steven Spielberg. Based upon the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, the film tells the story of Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid) a Navy pilot who volunteers for a crazy experiment following a break-up with girlfriend Lydia (Meg Ryan) to be shrunk to the size of a microbe whilst in a small vessel and then injected into a rabbit, all in the name of science. However, upon the day of the experiment and after being shrunk, Tuck's laboratory gets raided by a villainous firm who want to kidnap the miniaturisation technology for themselves. Supervisor Ozzie Wexler knowing their intentions flees the scene with Tuck holed within a syringe, upon being chased Oz injects Tuck into the unknowingly Jack Putter (Short), a lowly supermarket clerk who is a hypochondriac and about to start a vacation.

Tuck soon realises that Jack is not the rabbit he hoped for, and upon learning that the limited oxygen supply is diminishing so begins a race against time for Jack to save Tuck whilst rekindling the relationship between Tuck and Lydia.

The film could have been the run of a mill science fiction throwaway fodder, yet throughout the 1980s especially during the summer blockbuster season you had films that took on a life of their own as they became cult classics or well regarded films from Batteries Not Included to Cocoon to Flight of the Navigator.

Those films had the benefit of a great ensemble cast, those familiar faces that bring comfort and solace to you none more so than those faces in Cocoon a mixture of Hollywood veterans - Hume Cronyn, Don Ameche- and up and comers, Steve Guttenberg and Brian Dennehy.

Innerspace featured three bright young stars - the matinee idol Dennis Quaid who like Kurt Russell has worked consistently and solidly for 40 years but at this stage of his career had not yet had the lead role to show his charisma and the role of Tuck Pendleton was a risk, he was for the majority of the film restricted to a box and had to carry that role mostly on his own when conversing with Short's Jack. Martin Short was from Saturday Night Live, a goofball but able to garner human emotions with his vulnerability and appeal. They were matched with America's sweetheart, Meg Ryan, this coming a year after her appearance in Top Gun and a year before her lightning in a bottle performance as the eponymous Sally in When Harry Met Sally. The director Dante, himself not long from the success of Gremlins had three stars at the start of their ascendancy and this very much helps the film.

For all of the stardom and good looks of Quaid and Ryan though, the star of the film is Short. His career-best performance is so impressive as his character goes on an arc from hypochondriac and meek mannered Jack to courageous Jack by the film's conclusion.

At the beginning of the film, Jack is in a psychoanalysis session where he tells a dream of having a gun pointed at him by an unhappy customer, he wakes up and soons causes chaos in the doctor's office due to his nervous neuroses. Following the literal injection of Tuck into him, Jack begins this reawakening of something inside of him and Tuck becomes a guardian angel or seemingly the strength within Jack he did not know he had, at Tuck's insistence he downs some vodka, dances uncontrollably and even punches out a villain. Jack hunts down the people who want to steal the technology, he tracks down Lydia, kisses Lydia and ultimately saves the day with a combination of bravado and new found resilience.

Once Tuck is returned to normal size in the nick of time, Lydia (who is pregnant) and Tuck marry with Jack as best man. The villains attempt to follow the newlyweds, yet Jack recognised an accomplice of theirs, 'The Cowboy' posing as a limousine driver. Jack commandeers a vehicle himself and chases after them to save the day again.

Short steals the film with his contorting face, quick one-liners and his believability as a man gaining new powers. On his small shoulders does the film rest, with Tuck essentially sidelined for much of the film contained within his capsule, Jack must be the thrust of the narrative engaging with antagonists and helming the plot to his advantage.

He is an unlikely hero which is in direct contrast to the bombastic 80s action films featuring the muscle bound behemoths of Sylvester Stallone's Rambo or Schwarzenegger's range. However, that is what makes the film so gratifying and pleasing to return to, Jack Putter is a man who finds the strength within to make the change for the better using the device of listening to that voice inside yourself, of course it took having it injected directly into him.

It is a shame that producers continued to cast Short as second fiddle in more films from the unheralded Three Fugitives (opposite Nick Nolte) to the Three Amigos, he was never given the chance to lead a film himself until Clifford in the 1990s when again he is supported by Charles Grodin.

In a decade full of memorable performances - Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley, Bruce Willis as John McClane, Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly - which remain cemented in your consciousness, it is important to throw light on those that have been somewhat forgotten or lost in the weeds. 

Short (like Steve Martin) is having a twilight period of his career, some may think he is reborn. The truth is Martin Short has never gone anywhere, his greatness has always been apparent.

Catch Me If You Can - Spielberg Review

 

The Sins of Our Fathers

Catch Me If You Can is a film directed by Steven Spielberg and was made in 2002 starring at that point two of the most bankable stars of that era - Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. It tells the story of Frank Abagnale Jr. (DiCaprio) who before the age of 19 achieved a level of cheque fraud unseen before or since, he stole millions of dollars from the government by posing as a pilot, doctor and lawyer while being chased by Carl Hanratty (Hanks) of the FBI, all the while hoping to rekindle the marriage of his father, Frank Snr (Christopher Walken) and his mom, Paula (Nathalie Baye).

Spielberg's tact at this point of his career was to make films that were entertaining, illuminating and as always married with a rich composition and combination of efficiency and economy thanks to his directorial flourishes and the script by Jeff Nathanson.

Bookended by a flashback sequence, with Hanratty finding Frank in a foreign cell and extraditing him to the United States to face trial, we then start in 1963 where Frank attends his father's life achievement at his lodge ceremony but already the seeds of discontent are being sown by an ongoing inland revenue audit against Frank Snr's stationary shop forcing an estrangement of the marriage culminating in a legal divorce extrapolated by Paula's affair with Jack Barnes (James Brolin), her eventual second husband.

From the outset as Snr talks about seducing Paula, a French native while he was deployed in her town of Montrichard during World War II, it is clear that both Abagnale's are capable of weaving stories and tales to manipulate women (mostly) to obtain financial benefits and suits on hire.

In a pique of rage, following the divorce Frank goes on the run heading for New York City to start a life of independence all while still technically a minor. His first escapade as a pilot leads him to fly the country for free and his first sexual conquests. Hanratty is on the trail and it leads him to a hotel where unknowingly, he comes face to face with Frank who poses as a Secret Service Agent - Barry Allen, and able to evade capture while keeping hold of his machine to forge cheques still. Hanratty is behind the eight ball as he thought he was attempting to capture an adult yet the fact that Frank is a minor is a positive for him as he has no record or fingerprints for the FBI to work off of.

The scene where Hanratty meets Barry Allen is quite brilliant, it shows two actors going head to head but with the junior in a superior position but it is also the power of language in terms of that spoken and body language - the looks and tells that people give away but also the confidence of speaking to strangers gives off great power of authority when used effectively. Hanks is the elder, he has the gun and yet he is quickly into a position of submission with egg on his face. And he still gives his colleagues their ice cream.

Throughout the film, the characters are set up and brought down by the behaviour of their fathers most notably Frank and Carl himself has become an absent father to his daughter; like much of Spielberg's oeuvre this film reflects or looks upon male protagonists from broken homes and troubled childhoods. 

Spielberg's parents divorced when he was in his teens like Frank himself, and it would have been around the same timeline as Frank getting his wings so to speak, so this in a way is Spielberg's nostalgic look at a time of innocence and shot with a fondness such as the scenes at exotic getaways such as Miami, yet the scenes shot with the two Franks together are more claustrophobic and darker in terms of their setting and context. Frank keeps returning to his father in the hope of making him proud, yet Senior is too concerned with suing the government than to praise his son with the blessings he so desperately requires.

What remains on the film is a triumphant light tale that is entertaining and from a look back of Spielberg's filmography perhaps his last light fun film before he got bogged down by a darker palette and cinematography - see Munich, War of the Worlds, Lincoln and War Horse. That is not to discern the quality of those films yet they are shot with less of a rose tinted lens as previously and with a more downbeat perspective.

This film comes when Spielberg is nearly 30 years into his career, and he is a director very much at a crossroads of his filmography. Moving from the popcorn, light fare to the more discerning, thought-provoking adult maturity he is now more renowned for; this is also the last time Spielberg identified with a kid in one of his movies, much like Elliott in ET or the Goonies - from here on in it is adults who are broken or coming from broken homes for future projects. Abraham Lincoln has to overcome the death of a young child, Tom Cruise's Ray in War of the Worlds is a single father while combatting an alien invasion and the children in Jurassic Park have no parents present when running away from dinosaurs seeking solace in the arms of surrogate parental figures who are strangers but yet idols in their eyes.