Good Times

Cher plays 2nd banana to Sonny in this amiable collection of movie spoofs. At times pretty funny (the final Mickey Spillane bit is probably best), but sporadic and too cute.

Cher, of course, went on to be the reason people watched the Sonny & Cher show and then became an award-winning actress, but apparently the folks who made this movie failed to discern her talent.

The best parts of this movie are Cher singing, Cher berating future U.S. Congressman Sonny ("Why don't you take off that hat...you look like an idiot."), and Cher in a jungle suit lying on a tree (Great Gams, Sonnyman!).

This movie is about Sonny and Cher making a movie. The script is awful -- both of them. And the "satirical" situations are ridiculous. Watch this, if you must, as a period piece of the freewheeling '60s. (Was the scriptwriter on LSD?)

If you like stupid humor, then this movie's for you. Otherwise, this is a movie you can "watch" from another room with your ears.

I recommend that you fast forward through all the dialog scenes and watch only the musical numbers, which are quite good (and the reason I bumped my rating up a point). Or buy the soundtrack, if you can find it, and listen to that while you do housework or something else productive.

I don't own a single Sonny & Cher album, but I thought this film was fantastic. What's not to love about this movie? It's a time capsule to the outrageous 60s where comedy didn't have to make sense to be funny, singers didn't have to be on pitch to sound great, and plots didn't have to be fairytale-simple in order to entertain.

Indeed, the plot of this movie revolves around Sonny & Cher's contract to make a movie and their apprehension to the screenwriter's sappy story. Rather than go along with a lame Hollywood regurgitation of a "sure thing", they take us on a series of trippy brainstorms, showing us how *they* would make a movie. It's weird, it's wacky, at times it's incomprehensible, but it is undoubtedly unique.

This film is basically 3 stories within a story. The first is a western, the second is a jungle flick, and the third is a film noir detective story (in brilliant colour, no less). The comedy is hilarious if it's your style. It's sort of a madcap, deadpan, surrealistic sense of humour a lot like The Monkees TV show (or the Monkees film "Head"), a bit of Gilligan's Island with its intelligent slapstick, and toward the end it's a lot like "Airplane" with its utterly bizarre, over-the-top satire. Definitely stick around for the detective story which is my favourite of the lot. Anyone who's a fan of the Zucker-Abraham-Zucker films ("Airplane", "Naked Gun", "Top Secret", "Hot Shots") should get a kick out of that sequence.

The tunes (again, I know nothing about Sonny & Cher except for "Babe I Got You Babe" from the movie Groundhog Day) are thoroughly entertaining even when they're rough around the edges. Apparently Sonny Bono was sort of a Bob Dylan kinda guy who didn't have the most impeccable voice but knew how to deliver a lyric. Cher belts out those notes like she's a cannon, and that might shock those of you who are used to today's more demure, sultry vocal style. But as we see toward the end, Cher has tremendous versatility in her voice, and she is just as capable of a soft ballad as she is a throat wrencher. To me, the payoff is "I Got You Babe" acoustic version which is delivered at the end in a very subdued & classy way (not the version from Groundhog Day) which immediately clinched it: I'm a Sonny & Cher fan.

Oh, a quick word about the film quality & directing style: magnificent. The DVD I got is the MGM version released in 2004, and although there are no bonus features, the picture is as crisp and vivid as anything done today (perhaps it's been digitally remastered). The director William Freidkin who did, of all things "The Exorcist", throws in some nice artistic touches and creative shots that should be of interest to any cinema geeks in the audience; if nothing else, it's weird to think the same director would, 5 years later, be filming demon girls vomiting pea soup and telling priests nasty things about their mothers. All around, this is a great film which truly deserves a cult following, if only more people knew it existed. Snatch it up if you get a chance.

It's honestly not that bad. Cheeky may be the closest I can come up with because Sonny and Cher play on their pop personas, dress to the nines in mod 60s style, and introduce what would be the skits that would make up the bulk of their variety show of the mid 70s.

There isn't much a plot to speak of, except that Sonny and Cher are asked to come up with a movie and Sonny fantasizes of the myriad ways he could reconfigure established genres and make them successful. Spoofs of note are the ones targeting THE MALTESE FALCON (film noir). Other genres made fun of are the Western and the adventure film. George Sanders plays up his stiff persona to play their boss Mr Mordicus and Sonny's heavy/villain in the skits. And yes, that's William Friedkin, some time before THE EXORCIST, making a cute little film that seems to have been aimed at the teeny-boppers, much like many of the teeny-bopper films promoting the likes of (insert teen idol here) in a fluffy movie about nothing spectacular.

Pop-singing duo (and mod-dressed lovebirds) Sonny & Cher are tapped to star in their own movie, but the couple are distressed over the corny script. Sonny Bono's soundtrack to "Good Times", which he produced and arranged (impeccably so), sounds like the very best of Phil Spector; the songs may give non-fans a glimpse at true musical genius. Unfortunately, all this aural greatness comes at the expense of a wayward, throw-away feature. Sonny & Cher spend most of their time on-screen bickering in a too-real example of marital discord. Debuting director William Friedkin stuffs the proceedings with eye-candy, but he can't get any momentum going in the fantasy scenes and they just peter out. It's a strenuous comedy, the biggest mistake of which was to plunk the leads down in the middle of so much unhappiness. They don't want to make the movie, they're being forced to make the movie, they fight about compromising their ideals about making the damn movie. Only the opening and closing montages are sunny, the rest is much too heavy--even with all that groovy music in the background. ** from ****