Sure, crowds are forking over bucketloads of dough at the multiplex on a film's opening weekend, but you don't see anyone sneaking out of the office for repeat viewings.
_________________________________________
My son and I had just seen our sixth mediocre movie in as many weeks when he posed an interesting question: "When was the last time we saw a really great film at the cineplex?" At home we'd recently watched Chinatown, Casablanca, The Godfather Part II, The Last of the Mohicans, Lawrence of Arabia, Jurassic Park, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, Shane and Dog Day Afternoon, all great films that represented an effort to compensate for disappointing multiplex outings involving movies like Basic, Tears of the Sun, The Italian Job, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Johnny English. The point he was making was that for at least four years, we'd been going out to theaters to see movies that ranged from the adequate to the entertaining, from okay to pretty good, but not movies that made you want to come back and see them again and again. I saw Gladiator on the big screen four times. I saw The Fast and the Furious once.
No amount of hack work by the flack industry could change this fact. Despite massive success at the box office and impressive technical achievements, the last two Star Wars installments were duds. Spider-man was a pallid rip-off of Batman, with Tobey Maguire in a totally different weight class than Michael Keaton. The Matrix: Reloaded was a pretentious mess compared to the pretentious original. Terminator 3 sucked. And big-budget extravaganzas like Daredevil, XXX and The Hulk all stank. The best popular movies of recent years may well have been Shrek, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo. But those are cartoons. So, in answer to my son's question, I said that the last truly great popular movie we'd seen was probably Gladiator.
Gladiator came out in 1999.
Since we are rapidly nearing the end of the fourth year in this new century, I don't think it's too early to start worrying about the cinematic legacy of the decade. The '60s had Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur, Spartacus, The Hustler, Hombre, Hud, Breakfast at Tiffany's, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Graduate, Space Odyssey, A Hard Day's Night, the classic Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. The 70s had serious popular fare like The Godfather, Chinatown, Carnal Knowledge, and The French Connection, great "fun" movies like Star Wars, Rocky and Jaws. The '80s had classics like The Untouchables, No Way Out, Field of Dreams, The Big Chill and Bull Durham, plus brilliant oddities like Blue Velvet and Blood Simple. And the '90s offered everything from Fargo to Braveheart to Scream to Pulp Fiction to Thelma and Louise to Boogie Nights to Batman to Emma to American Beauty to Speed. And so we return to the question: Where are the great commercial films of this decade?
In using the admittedly ambiguous term "great," I am referring to motion pictures that for one reason or another get an entire society revved up and excited about going out to the movies. Sometimes these films are preceded by fanfare (Schindler's List, The Truman Show), sometimes they appear out of nowhere (The Sixth Sense, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Full Monty). But they are movies that the whole country ends up talking about, movies that people see over and over again, movies that people feel embarrassed not to have seen. I do not recall feeling this kind of excitement since Gladiator.
I am certainly not suggesting that there have not been any terrific films in recent years. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was superb. Chicago was clearly a winner. Traffic was harrowing. Minority Report was no slouch. Mullholland Drive, my favorite film of the past few years, had a decidedly creepy elegance. Add to these the devilishly clever Memento, the brooding Croupier, the charming Amelie, the manipulative but effective Erin Brockovich, the engaging Analyze This, the troubling The Pianist and quirky little numbers like The Good Girl, Adaptation, In The Bedroom, and Ghost World, and you have a lineup to be proud of. But none of these films--none of them--has the combination of quality and popular buzz that we associate with Gone with the Wind, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, The Empire Strikes Back, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The African Queen, High Noon, Raiders of the Lost Ark, From Here to Eternity or Doctor Zhivago. These days the top-grossing film on the first weekend of the month has collapsed by the third week of the month-- and not just because films now open on so many screens that everyone who wants to see them can belly up to the ticket booth immediately. The real problem is: Hollywood hasn't been making juggernauts that get everybody pumped up and keep everybody pumped up. Black Hawk Down didn't have the enduring emotional power of Platoon or The Great Escape. Pirates of the Caribbean isn't Mutiny on the Bounty. T3 is no T1. And Chicago isn't Oklahoma.
By every measure, the first decade of the 21st century is shaping up as a dud. Four years into the new century, we have not seen a horror movie as good as Scream, a tearjerker as good as An Officer and a Gentleman, a romantic comedy as beguiling as Four Weddings and a Funeral or a sports movie as good as Bull Durham. There has not yet been a sci-fi film on the same level as Aliens, a comedy as funny as Ghostbusters, a thriller as good as Speed. Part of the problem is that the older directors are not as good as they once were, and a lot of the younger directors are not good at all. Gangs of New York is not in the same class as GoodFellas. AI pales beside Jurassic Park. George Lucas stopped making interesting movies decades ago. So did Woody Allen.
In the World Series last year, the California Angels, who nobody really cares about, played the San Francisco Giants, who never win anything anywhere. It was a memorable series, but the ratings were dismal, because the public hates sporting events that have no storyline. Personally, I think that something like this is going on in the movies. Though he stubbed his toe on A Mighty Wind, Christopher Guest's previous outing, Best in Show, was one of the funniest movies of the past quarter century. But cunning, acerbic little films like Best in Show can never capture the attention of the American people the way My Best Friend's Wedding can. The American people need blockbusters. And blockbusters worth remembering have been hard to find so far this decade.
This is not to say that small-budget movies cannot reach a wide audience. The Blair Witch Project, a classic case of an entire society succumbing to mass hysteria, is one example. My Big Fat Greek Wedding is another. But they are aberrations, flukes. The fact that My Big Fat Greek Wedding is now the most successful romantic comedy of all time gives you an idea of what a piss-poor decade this has been. What this society, what this industry, really needs is a big, engaging, thrilling blockbuster that we can all leave the office early to see.
And we need it now.
_________________________________________