Protègè ( 2007 )
On the back of the DVD box are those familiar laurel leaves signifying this movie won some sort of award. Inside those laurel leaves it said "Nominated for Best Action Choreography Hong Kong Film Awards". An odd thing to mention on the box considering Protègè is a drama, not an action film. But lets take into account how few action films were made after 1997. That was the date when Great Britian transfered control of the territory back to China ( their 100 year lease was up ) Many in the Hong Kong movie industry, fearing government censorship under the rule of a Chinese Government, took advantage of their British citizenship and immigrated to Canada, which they used as a back door into the Hollywood film industry. Gradually all the talent returned, disillusioned with how the Hollywood film industry worked, and attracted by the Chinese government that promised little to no censorship, and even began offering billions of dollars in financing movies in an ongoing attempt to turn China into the worlds leading film industry. But as everyone familiar with Asian films knows, there was no that many action films coming out of Hong Kong, and most of them were made by rookies to the industry who didn't' know how o pull off spectacular stunts yet. So basically, the Action Choreography category would have been from a limited selection.
In fact, I did a little research on the 27th Hong Kong Film Awards. The other nominations for action choreography were from a comedy starring Sammo Hung called Twins Mission, a historical saga starring Jet Li called The Warlords , and two films also released on Dragon Dynasty, Invisible Target and Flashpoint which won the category. Funny that the Dragon Dynasty box failed to mention that Protègè had been nominated for several other awards including Best Picture ( it lost to The Warlords, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor Andy Lau who won hat category,, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing which won the category, Best Score 4 other nominations. Dragon Dynasty was only interested in making this release look like an action movie and hose to downplay everything else. The great action in this movie? As far as I could tell, a single scene where the drug dealers escape a police raid by climbing down the balcony to the apartment below.
Okay, so this movie sucks as an action film. But as a drama, it is outstanding. It is the story of an undercover cop who rises in the ranks of a drug gang, eventually becoming the gang leaders second and heir to the business. In the meantime he is caught up in the drama of his next door neighbor who is an addict and her five year old daughter. A very decent film, but by this time Dragon Dynasty was beginning to realize their customers anted action, not drama. Perhaps the reason why they had the rights to but never releases the award winning Painted Faces(1988 ).
Mr. Magoo ( 1997 )
As a sort of side collection to superhero movies, I also intended to collect live action movies based on other cartoon characters, both from comic strips and animation. However, given that these films were usually made by Disney or Spielberg's film company and aimed at kids ( including the campy broad humor and mandatory fart gags ), I wasn't that eager to collect them. Then again, I did seem to enjoy the Scooby Doo films, so who knows. Currently, superhero movies are the priority, so I only buy movies for this side collection if Amazon is unloading them for a couple of dollars or less, or if I find out they are about to go OOP.
Mr. Magoo sort of falls into the later. A couple of years back I looked for it on Amazon, only to discover it was OOP and selling for more than $50 through the sellers who still had them. Even a used copy would set you back $45. And to think, I almost bought the film on laserdisc. This was back in the late 90s when many of my favorite Hong Kong directors were immigrating to Hollywood, and I would buy all of their first films they directed over here. Of course John Woo had already directed a few big budget Hollywood films by that time, but there was also Kirk Wong's The Big Hit ( 1998 ), Ringo Lam's Maximum Risk ( 1996 ) with Jean Claude van Damme, and two more van Damme films, Double Team (1997 ) and Knock Off ( 1998 ), both directed by Tsui Hark. And then there was Warriors Of Virtue ( 1997 ) directed by Ronny Yu. Take my advice. Stay the f#&k away from Warriors Of Virtue unless it is riffed. A terrible TMNT ripoff that makes the live action TMNT trilogy look like Citizen Kane by comparison. fortunately Ronny Yu got the opportunity to redeem himself a year later with The Bride Of Chucky.
Mr. Magoo was the Hollywood debut for Stanley Tong, the director of Rumble In The Bronx and a few other Jackie Chan movies. ( And a year later, would co-produce the series Martial Law. ) Since Chan did most of the work on his films, I didn't think he ranked with the other Hong Kong directors, so ultimately decided to take a pass on buying the laserdisc. Something I thought about when I saw how much the DVD was going for on Amazon. Then a couple of weeks ago it was in stock again, selling for just $8 ( or just $2 for the full screen edition. ) I had no way of telling if this was just an overstock cache that Disney unloaded on Amazon, or if it was actually back in print. But not wanting to take the risk, I added it to my shopping cart.
Mr. Magoo was originally produced by UPA Animation Studio for Columbia Pictures in the 1950s. When Columbia decided to stop distributing shorts, UPA moved the character to television in his own show. The plot of all the cartoons centered around the fact that the elderly Magoo had poor eyesight, but was in denial that he was nearly blind. This always lead to Magoo mistaking people and places, such as walking into a zoo mistaking it for a department store, and a gorilla for one of the salesmen. That is, until 1962 when the television special Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol was produced. In it Magoo plays Scrooge who inexplicably has 20/20 vision. This lead to an entire series of cartoons adapting literary classics where Magoo played a character with normal vision. It's as if the animators completely forgot what made Magoo funny in the first place. Which is probably why the series was cancelled soon after the literary adaptions began. Magoo returned a decade later, with a blind talking dog as a companion, in the series What's New, Mr. Magoo? which lasted about a season. Amazingly the politically correct police had yet to catch up with blindness being turned into a joke. As late as 2012 the Magoo character was still being used in commercials. Only recently had I heard any complaints about Magoo being a politically incorrect character after Trump began calling Jeff Sessions Mr. Magoo.
In the 90s Hollywood discovered a new genre to milk. Baby Boomer Nostalgia. The television shows that generation grew up watching turned into feature films, almost always with a new cast because the original cast was now ancient. Turning the Saturday morning cartoons Baby Boomers watched into feature films should have been easy, considering animated characters never age. But the trend was to make live action adaptions. Disney hired Pat Proft to write the script. Proft was best known for writing the scripts for both the Police Squad series and feature films, as well as writing many other successful comedies. ( In 1984 alone he wrote the scripts for Police Academy, Bachelor here and Real Genius. ) And he had a history with Mr. Magoo, having written episodes for What's New Mr Magoo when he still worked as a television writer.
At the time Proft wrote the script for Mr. Magoo he was also preparing to direct his first movie, a Zucker, Abraham Zucker style parody of The Fugitive called Wrongfully Accused starring ZAZ regular Leslie Nielsen. Coincidentally, Leslie Nielsen was also cast as the star of Mr. Magoo, so there is an implication that the movie could also be in the style of a ZAZ comedy.
Of course, it should also be pointed out that Proft had his fair share of duds. For example, he wrote the Star Wars Holiday Special. Mr. Magoo got mostly negative reviews on release, many which complained about Disney making a movie that mocked the disabled. In fact, Disney got so much negative press, along with advocates for the disabled threatening to protest, that Disney pulled the film from distribution after two weeks. But apparently it wasn't politically incorrect enough for Disney not to release it on home video. Let's put this in perspective. At the same time ( and to this day ) Disney refused to release Song of the South on home video, despite it being one of the studio's all time classics and major demand from Disney fans, because they felt Uncle Remus was politically incorrect. But at the same time they pull Mr. Magoo from theaters for being politically incorrect, but then immediately release it on DVD, VHS and laserdisc? More likely Disney pulled the film from theaters because it bombed, and use the protesters as an excuse to save face.
Perhaps I should have heeded the Critics warnings about this film. But I was sort of hoping that Stanley Tong could at the least deliver some spectacular Hong Kong style action scenes. And there is some action, which is unfortunately not very well edited, and not enough to save this film. Mr. Magoo is bad. And I can easily list the reasons why.
#1. The premise, an old nearsighted man mistaking his surroundings, is not very funny. It can just barely be pulled off in an animated cartoon, but just does not work in live action.
#2. The cartoons were only seven minutes long. This movie attempts to stretch the same premise out to 90 minutes.
#3. Leslie Nielsen looks nothing like Mr. Magoo. This is painfully evident in the beginning of the film. The opening credits are animated with the classic Mr. Magoo, but then morphs into the live action movie. Not only was there no attempt to attach prosthetics to his face, at the least giving him Magoos's signature nose, but they didn't even bother to shave his hair so he was bald like Magoo. Instead there was a half ass shaving of the top of his head and same slight makeup on the forehead. I am guessing Disney wanted Leslie Nielsen to look like Leslie Nielsen as much as possible.
#4. Nielsen's performance gets annoying almost immediately. It is basically a bad Jim Backus imitation. Once again, it seems like Disney wanted him sounding more like Leslie Nielsen than Mr. Magoo.
#5. Not one, but two really dumb clumsy characters are added to the film, a jewel thief and an FBI detective. Most of the film is dedicated to having them trip over shit and fall into shit and make really dumb decisions instead of thinking of mischief for Magoo.
#6. Every now and then the movie forgets that Magoo is suppose to be nearsighted and clueless of any danger he is in.
#7. Which is why it makes no sense whenever he notices another actress is beautiful, or would be charmed by Kelly Lynch.
#8. Even dumber, Magoo goes undercover in the third act as a Spanish crime lord in order to track down a stolen diamond, and does a nearly flawless job of it right down to the accent.
#9. And when he realizes the crime lord he is impersonating is suppose to have a tattoo, he is somehow able to draw a perfect tattoo onto his stomach despite being almost totally blind.
#10. Would someone explain why the film's villain played by Malcom McDowell suddenly disappears a third of the way through the film and never shows up again?
#12. That annoying music and sound effects is something you would expect from any bad Disney film from the 90s.
#13. Clearly Pat Proft siphoned off any decent gags he thought of for this movie for Wrongfully Accused. Both films had the similar premise of the lead character wanted by the police for a crime he didn't comit, and going on the run to clear his name. What is left behind was a waste of a script that had nothing funny in it.
In conclusion, this sucked. Thanks a lot Disney.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1537199 times)
