When the combined star power of Couples Retreat rolls over the box office this week, what's also taking place is the second act of an American life. While the film's stars, producers and writers are indelibly Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau (enthusiastically abetted by Kristen Bell, Jason Bateman, Malin Akerman and others), the man behind the camera is Peter Billingsley, best known to America as Ralphie Parker from 1983's A Christmas Story -- which in the quarter-century since its release has become the definitive yuletide classic.
That Billingsley has called the shots on such an A-list project as Couples Retreat comes down to his ability to transcend a childhood spent as a star and his enduring friendship with the film's drawcards. But an important factor is also Billingsley's barely known sci-fi horror film from 1993.
In Arcade, Billingsley stars as the leader of a bunch of kids used as the test market for a new virtual-reality game called... you guessed it, Arcade. Problem is, it sucks them body and soul into its clunky 3-D graphic environment. It's very Tron, a little bit Videodrome and Brainstorm, but also Poltergeist and A Nightmare On Elm Street -- just not very well-executed via primitive graphics and sets dressed mostly with dry-ice smoke lit with colored gels.
Crude though it is, Arcade makes you wonder why V-R games didn't take off. And then you realize that perhaps movies like this -- and Virtuosity and Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace -- may have had something to do with it. The visual effects are terrible. Mostly the game action is kids in bodysuits and helmets skateboarding through unconvincing corridors lined with easily avoidable spikes. And the actual game play itself -- go through said hallways, collect keys, open doors -- is less sophisticated than a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Tron cycle-race and Dactyl Nightmare rip-offs don't help things.
And rather than Tron's MCP or Nightmare's Freddy, we get "Arcade", a seemingly 10kb chip made with an assist from 100,000 brain cells of a dead 4-year-old child whose spirit is none too pleased with the situation. Dialogue like, "I'm cold, and I need young souls to keep me warm; now kiss reality goodbye forever" -- delivered in a faux Megatron voice -- provides no menace but at least regular mirth. For such lines, thank screenwriter David S. Goyer, who'd catapult from here to the higher heights of Batman Begins before slinging himself into the lower lows of The Unborn.
Goyer's script, however cornball, might've been better served by a director other than Albert Pyun. This disciple of Akira Kurosawa made a promising B debut with 1982's The Sword and The Sorcerer but it was pretty much downhill after that. Here he's on autopilot, seemingly content to let the camera run in longer dialogue scenes before wrapping up with a lazy zoom. On the Pyun-o-meter, Arcade ranks lower than his charming lo-fi 1990 turkey Captain America but is at least stratospherically better than the putrid Urban Trilogy he'd churn out in 1999.
The director certainly doesn't give his actors much help in Arcade. A young Seth Green doesn't need it, being already fully fledged and amazingly haired as the comic sidekick, and at least Megan Ward (now of General Hospital) gets to save the day by being the last girl standing in V-R goggleland. But putative star Peter Billingsley is allowed to roll his shoulders and eyes a lot and spends the last third of the movie staring at a blocky graphics on a TV screen.
Thing is, Billingsley wasn't there for what he could do on camera. While A Christmas Story had been undervalued on its release, by 1993 it was elevated to an American institution, its star's face beamed into homes 24/7 over the festive season. But Billingsley had outgrown Ralphie and new cult fame wasn't assisting his career. Instead, he was making a living doing guest spots and after-school specials, such as 1990's steroid drama The Fourth Man, where he met Vaughn. (See the diminutive Billingsley and the towering Vaughn recreate their oddly assigned roles here.)
Then, Arcade. In a recent interview for Couples Retreat, I reminded the affable Billingsley of the film; he confirmed there was a method to the seeming madness of starring in such a low-rent production. Acting on the advice of his mentor, the late Bob Clark, director of A Christmas Story, he'd decided to learn the nuts and bolts of filmmaking. After all, he'd been around it longer than anyone his own age, having done his first commercials, aged 2, which in turn led to his first national screen incarnation as "Messy Marvin."
Thus Billingsley took Arcade with the proviso that he also have behind-the-scenes roles, securing his first credits as post-production supervisor and as an editor, albeit under the nom-de-schlock Peter Michaelsen. Straight after Arcade, he starred in a short film that he also wrote, directed and produced. Then he did further editing work on other people's projects and joined Vaughn's start-up production company. Billingsley subsequently co-produced Made in 2001 and then executive produced on Zathura, The Break-Up, Iron Man and Four Christmases.
His Vaughn-Favreau connections matter a lot. But so does the man's due diligence. No doubt Billingsley would've found his way back to the limelight without Arcade, but for its place in the comeback of one of America's most beloved child stars, it's a Bad Movie We Love.
Michael Adams is the author of the upcoming comic memoir Showgirls, Teen Wolves, And Astro Zombies: A Film Critic's Year-Long Quest To Find And Watch The Worst Movie Ever Made (HarperCollins)