george of the jungle Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I was 13 years old in the summer of 1997. I don't know if it's my favorite movie summer, but I do know that it was seminal -- at least in the sense that it was the first summer when I made a concerted effort to keep up with Hollywood's weekly output and see as much of it as I could. Already, I was jotting down my thoughts on everything I saw, fancying myself a budding film critic. The following year, I would start my own website on the now-defunct Geocities, and the rest would be history.

But, 1997. I didn't see everything (so I won't try to cover everything), and there's a lot I haven't caught up with. Still, looking back, I can see the beginnings of my current tastes and predilections. And amazingly, I can still remember the circumstances under which I saw some of these movies. Here are some of my memories.

May 23

The Lost World: Jurassic Park: I remember the talk about whether The Lost World would join the exclusive $200 million club, which just seems so darn quaint now. (It did, by the way.) I also remember the hype about it being the largest opening ever (3,281 screens). I saw the actual movie while visiting family friends in Tennessee. I loved it. Arguably, it began my love affair with Steven Spielberg (I had not, at the time, seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, though I believe I had seen E.T.)

Whether or not shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force or The Simpsons succeeded in translating their television dynamics to the big screen depends on your point of view, but the release of Speed Racer this weekend raises a more specific question about the viability of turning an animated series into a live action spectacle on the big screen. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Underdog both suggest how this goal can go wrong -- namely, by imploding on its absurd conceits. You may disagree with the inclusion of some of the following titles, all of which culled their material from animation, but it's fair to say that each of them takes its subject matter at face value, allowing the natural ingredients of the original sources to remain intact. Well, maybe not Super Mario Bros., but that one is a special case (fire away, if you must). Until somebody makes an Animaniacs movie with real actors, I'm sticking to this list.

1. Popeye (1980)

Robert Altman's offbeat ode to the famous Fleisher cartoon starring the spinach-eating strongman and his darling Olive Oil is the great misunderstood work of the director's career. Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall manage to bring utterly ridiculous characters into a realm of believability that you could never imagine when watching the show. Suddenly, Popeye made sense -- goofy, almost surreal sense, but sense nonetheless -- in the real world. Thanks to veteran adult cartoonist Jules Feiffer's screenplay and a soundtrack so catchy Paul Thomas Anderson borrowed from it twenty years later in Punch-Drunk Love, the classic status of Popeye can't be denied.

The director who gave us D2: The Mighty Ducks (aka The Mighty Ducks 2) is set to make another sports movie. But this one doesn't seem to be as comedic, and it doesn't deal with hockey. Instead, it's yet another uplifting basketball movie focusing on a team of bad news players who become champions. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sam Weisman is reuniting with D2 producer Jordan Kerner to make the movie, which is titled The Miracle of St. Anthony.

Based on sports columnist Adrian Wojnarowski's 2005 book, the movie will be about a year in the life of Jersey City high school basketball coach Bob Hurley, Sr. -- father of former Duke point guard, and Sacramento Kings and Vancouver Grizzlies pro Bobby Hurley (who also appears in the basketball film Blue Chips). In more than 30 years as head coach at St. Anthony, a small Catholic school that educates children from extremely poor families, Hurley, Sr., has won 22 state titles. Yet at the beginning of the 2003-04 season, he had mostly players who weren't motivated or focused. I'm sure I'm not spoiling anything by saying that the team shapes up and goes on to great success.

Sure, it is easy to knock this movie as being more of the same as far as sports movies go, but Hurley's story is probably very interesting and could probably make a good film. However, it's much more fair to direct the project's potential problems to Weisman, who is certainly not the guy to make this into a great film. Since D2, he has directed such crap as Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, George of the Jungle and the terribly unnecessary Out-of-Towners remake (sorry Giuliani supporters who like a good Rudy cameo). To quote the title of another of Weisman's misfires, What's the Worst That Could Happen? Well, of course, the worst is that Weisman could make the lamest, most cliched, most generic basketball movie ever, but then, that probably isn't much different from the best that could happen. Am I being harsh? Maybe, but despite the fact that audiences like the familiarity of these uplifting sports movies, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they'd at least like something fresh to go along with the stale. The Miracle of St. Anthony has been adapted by Josh Shelov, who wrote the screenplay for Hooligans, a fairly well-received soccer movie.