1980 Week: Oh, God! Book II

The sort of unimaginative and unnecessary follow-up that gives sequels a bad name, Oh, God! Book II reprises almost exactly the same storyline as its mildly amusing predecessor, Oh, God! (1977), but the second film fails to replicate the original picture’s novelty, purpose, or wit. Instead, Oh, God! Book II is pure cash-the-paycheck junk, with leading man George Burns phoning in a few scenes while pint-sized, single-named costar Louanne, playing a spunky little girl to whom God speaks, does all the hard work. In the first picture, God (Burns) appears to a supermarket employee played by John Denver because the Supreme Being worries that humans have lost touch with His principles. Denver’s character is ostracized as a lunatic until God presents Himself in a courtroom, performing miracles that exonerate His messenger. Exactly the same thing happens in Oh, God! Book II. Tracy (Louanne) is the daughter of divorced parents Don (David Birney), an advertising executive, and Paula (Suzanne Pleshette). One day, God appears to Tracy and asks her to write a slogan reminding humanity about the Holy Word. Yes, that’s the plot: God wants an ad campaign. Together with her Asian-American neighbor, Shingo (John Louie), Tracy comes up with the slogan “Think God,” which she and her young friends plaster around Los Angeles. As with Denver’s character in the first picture, Tracy is considered mentally ill until God shows up to do his shtick. Directed by Gilbert Cates with detached professionalism and lacking any standout humor—Burns delivers a few wheezy one-liners, and the comedic “highlight” is a boring, FX-laden scene of God driving a motorcycle while Tracy rides in a sidecar—this movie has no discernible reason for existence except for wringing a few extra dollars from people who enjoyed the first movie. Unwilling to leave well enough alone, Warner Bros. went to the well a final time with the awful Oh, God! You Devil (1984), featuring Burns in dual roles the nature of which should be clear from the title.

Oh, God! Book II: LAME

Just You and Me, Kid (1979)

          If you can overlook a premise that stretches credibility far past the breaking point, Just You and Me, Kid is a pleasant bit of fluff starring a charming veteran and a spunky newcomer. Nothing in the movie is remotely surprising, but star power keeps nearly every scene watchable. Eightysomething comedy legend George Burns, who was in the midst of one of Hollywood’s unlikeliest comebacks when he made this picture, stars as Bill Grant, a former vaudevillian now living alone in a Los Angeles mansion. Brooke Shields, the precocious teen model whose sexualized image in widely seen advertisements led to a wobbly acting career, costars as Kate, a street kid on the run from a thug named Demesta (William Russ). After fleeing Demesta’s place without clothes (don’t ask), Kate hides in the trunk of Bill’s vintage car and then threatens to accuse him of molesting her unless he lets her hide in his house.

          Absurd and salacious as this situation sounds, Just You and Me, Kid actually gets off to a decent start by focusing on vignettes of Bill’s eccentric daily life. He uses automated music recordings instead of alarm clocks, keeps traffic cones in his car so he can scam great parking places, peppers every conversation with tart one-liners, and so on. Burns floats through Just You and Me, Kid on a cloud of perpetual calm and perfect timing. Shields, meanwhile, adds spice to Burns’ salt by delivering all of her lines with more attitude than skill; she manages to come across as appealing even though much of the film’s dialogue relates to implications that older men are desperate to sleep with her. While it’s true that the storyline of Just You and Me, Kid goes exactly where you might expect—Bill and Kate discover they’re good for each other, because Bill needs someone to love and Kate needs a caretaker—director/co-writer Leonard Stern keeps things moving along briskly, and he organizes nearly every scene as a showcase for Burns’ amiably dry humor.

          That said, subplots involving Bill’s anxious daughter (Lorraine Gary) and Bill’s institutionalized best friend (Burl Ives) are woefully underdeveloped, and the whole business with Demesta is merely a half-assed plot contrivance. Plus, of course, placing a bachelor and a young girl in the same house for much of the picture is unavoidably suggestive, no matter how many times the filmmakers use jokes to keep viewers’ minds out of the gutter. Just You and Me, Kid is far from the best of Burns’ comeback-era vehicles, but considering how bad his pictures got just a few years later—here’s looking at you, Oh, God! You Devil (1984)—this movie ends up seeming relatively harmless.

Just You and Me, Kid: FUNKY

Oh, God! (1977)

          Gently satirizing the commercialization of religion and the changing role in everyday American life of traditional spirituality, Oh, God! became an unexpected hit during its original release. However, the movie plays like a time capsule today. In addition to exuding such sweetness that it seems hopelessly naïve by modern standards, the picture ends where a 21st-century take on the same material would begin. Yet because Oh, God! was made in an era when less was more, much of the film’s charm stems from the fact that it concludes before the central contrivance wears out its welcome.
          When we first meet Jerry Landers (John Denver), he’s a soft-spoken everyman working as an assistant manager in a grocery store and building a quiet life with his wife, Bobbie (Teri Garr), and their son. Jerry starts receiving mysterious invitations to meet with God, which he figures are gags. But then, one morning, God appears in Jerry’s home. Taking the unlikely form of a short 80-year-old in thick eyeglasses, a ball cap, and a windbreaker, he seems a lot more like an escapee from a senior home than an all-powerful deity, but after several meetings—and after the performance of tiny miracles like starting a rainstorm inside Jerry’s car—God makes a believer out of Jerry.
          Thereafter, He explains that Jerry has been chosen to be a modern-day Moses, spreading the word about God’s existence and reminding people about their responsibility to treat each other well. In addition to making Bobbie worry that her husband has lost his mind, Jerry’s claims of a divine mission put him in the crosshairs of skeptical religious scholars and of charlatans like Reverend Willie Williams (Paul Sorvino), a showboating evangelist whom Jerry calls out as a fake. The whole affair climaxes in an understated courtroom scene, during which Jerry challenges his critics with an appealing mixture of common sense and faith.
          As written by ace satirist Larry Gelbart, from a novel by Avery Corman, and as directed by light-comedy veteran Carl Reiner, Oh, God! is less about the tenets of Christianity and more about the role of decency in 20th-century society. As such, casting wholesome singer-songwriter Denver in the leading role was clever (even if fans later learned he wasn’t actually so wholesome). With his childish bowl-cut hairstyle and kind eyes, Denver seems like a personification of guilelessness. Conversely, Burns’ casting as God was effective on many levels. Funny, knowing, and sly, Burns comes across like the grandfather everyone would like to have, so it isn’t much of a leap to accept him as the Father everyone might like to have.
          Thanks to its enjoyable acting, gentle comedy, and humane themes, Oh, God! is an endearing flight of fancy for those willing to meet the movie on its own terms. The picture did well enough to inspire two sequels, Oh, God! Book II (1980) and Oh, God! You Devil (1984), but neither is worth much attention even though Burns reprised his title role for both movies.

Oh, God: GROOVY

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)

          One of the Bee Gees’ catchy disco ballads, released a year before they conquered the world’s dancefloors with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, was titled “Love So Right.” The song’s anguished chorus laments, “Maybe you can tell me how a love so right can turn out to be so wrong.” It seems apropos to paraphrase the sentiment when considering Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which costars the Bee Gees and ’70s rock god Peter Frampton: Can anyone tell why an idea so right turned into a movie so very, very wrong? It’s not as if there wasn’t ample precedent for translating the music of the Beatles into amiable motion pictures.

          During their ’60s heyday, the Fab Four appeared in several lively flicks powered by tunes from the Lennon-McCartney songbook. And if the Beatles were no longer a band by the time this project took shape, who’s to say a fresh batch of mop-topped kids couldn’t have carried the cinematic torch? Unfortunately, producer Robert Stigwood transformed the Beatles’ LP Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band into one of the most deranged flops in cinema history: Every frame of Sgt. Pepper’s is so mind-bogglingly inappropriate that the film is mesmerizing for the wrong reasons.

          Here’s the backstory. In 1974, Stigwood produced a London stage show called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road, which combined the Beatles’ music with a loose narrative. Three years later, Stigwood produced the movie and soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever, which made the Bee Gees into superstars. Combining two of his assets, Stigwood hired the Bee Gees to act in a film adapted from the stage show. He also recruited white-hot English guitarist/singer Frampton to round out the principal cast. (The fact that none of the leads had significant acting experience apparently didn’t matter.) Pressing forward, Stigwood hired first-time screenwriter Henry Edwards to pen the screenplay, then enlisted Michael Schultz, best known for helming a series of African-American-themed comedies, to direct. (Again, the fact that neither Edwards nor Schultz had demonstrated affinity for musical storytelling was disregarded.)

          Stigwood’s hubris was compounded by the choice to make Sgt. Pepper’s on a grand scale, employing gaudy special effects, opulent production design, and random guest appearances. A mishmash of clichés culled from the worlds of fantasy fiction and showbiz melodrama, Sgt. Pepper’s plays out like a fever-dream fusion of A Star Is Born and The Wizard of Oz. From the very first scene, the bad-movie die is cast. A title card announces that we’re in “August 1918, the tiny village of Fleu de Coup.” Against a World War I backdrop, we meet the original Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, an American marching band so likeable they convince soldiers to stop fighting. Returning to their U.S. hometown, Heartland, the band continues entertaining people through to the World War II era, and the citizens of Heartland decide to erect a golden weathervane in Sgt. Pepper’s honor.

          The now-aged musician strikes up the band for one final performance at the weathervane unveiling, then drops dead after a few notes. A generation later, circa the ’70s, four new musicians take up the Sgt. Pepper mantle: Billy Shears (Frampton) and the Henderson brothers (the Bee Gees). Barely 10 minutes into the movie, Sgt. Pepper’s is already buried in convoluted hogwash. Yet somehow, it gets worse.

          While an evil record executive (Donald Pleasence) seduces the young musicians with drugs, money, and women, the bizarre villain Mean Mr. Mustard (Frankie Howard) conspires to steal the original Sgt. Pepper instruments from a Heartland museum. Later, the musicians encounter a madman (Alice Cooper) who brainwashes America’s youth, and a plastic surgeon (Steve Martin) who gives rich old people new bodies. There’s also a love story between Billy and his hometown sweetheart, Strawberry Fields (Sandy Farina), and battle between the heroes and a villainous rock group (portrayed by Aerosmith).

          The whole thing climaxes with the weathervane coming to life as a super-powered messiah (played by real-life Beatles sideman Billy Preston) in a bizarre scene that completely reverses every significant dramatic event that happened previously. In a word, Sgt. Pepper’s is insane. Consider the dream sequence in which costar George Burns, then 80-ish, straps on an electric guitar to croak “Fixing a Hole.” And we haven’t even discussed the dancing robots. The Bee Gees and Frampton feel like guest stars in their own movie, since none of the quartet delivers a single line of dialogue, and even their musical performances are wildly erratic (although Frampton sings “Golden Slumbers” nicely). Therefore, the only people who don’t completely embarrass themselves are Martin, who gets to be funny on purpose, and Preston, whose natural funk somehow elevates him above the ludicrous surroundings.

Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band: FREAKY

Going in Style (1979)

          Matching a whimsical premise with a pitch-perfect cast and a skilled writer-director hungry to show off his comedy chops, Going in Style is a charmer from start to finish. The plotting is a bit on the predictable side, and some might find the picture’s juxtaposition of melancholy elements with a frivolous story jarring, but the movie overflows with what used to be called, in less cynical times, “heart.”
          Joe (George Burns), Al (Art Carney), and Willie (Lee Strasberg) are three seniors sharing expenses by living together in New York City. They fritter away their days feeding pigeons from park benches, and they’re all close to going stir crazy from the monotony of their eventless lives. One day, Joe gets a wild idea: Why not rob a bank? Watching the three men debate and plan their crime is a hoot, since none can muster a good argument against becoming criminals; the threat of life in prison, for instance, isn’t much of a deterrent for men already facing death in the near future, and the idea that bank deposits are federally insured convinces them nobody will get hurt.

          Al pilfers pistols from his sweet nephew, Pete (Charles Hallahan), a working stiff who collects antique guns, and the seniors pick out novel disguises for the big heist—they wear Groucho glasses. Offering a reasonable explanation for why the trio gets away with their crime, writer-director Martin Brest (working from a story by Edward Cannon) plays up the idea that bank employees are stunned by the sight of gray-haired bandits with shuffling gaits and stooped shoulders. After the heist, Brest sweetly illustrates the new spring each man has in his step; the point is not that the men have become callous law-breakers, but that they’ve recaptured what it feels like to be alive.

          The movie takes some colorful turns after the robbery, leading to a bittersweet finale that’s quite satisfying, and Brest walks a fine line by balancing fun narrative contrivances with more realistic considerations. (His deft approach to character-driven crime comedies delivered blockbuster results in the ’80s, when he made Beverly Hills Cop and Midnight Run.) Each of the leading performances is lively and warm, with Burns putting a deadpan capper onto his amazing run of ’70s comeback roles, and Carney relishing a substantial part at a point when his own ’70s comeback was starting to run out of gas. As for Strasberg, the revered acting teacher best known for playing Jewish gangster Hyman Roth in The Godfather: Part II (1974), he counters his showier costars with a gently touching performance distinguished by expressive wordless moments.

Going in Style: GROOVY

The Sunshine Boys (1975)

          Boasting one of Neil Simon’s best scripts, two master comedians in the leading roles, and smooth dancer-turned-director Herbert Ross behind the camera, The Sunshine Boys should be sheer pleasure from beginning to end. And indeed, the premise is wonderful: Two aging vaudeville comedians who haven’t spoken since the breakup of their world-famous duo reunite for a TV special, only to discover they still detest each other. Furthermore, Simon’s characterizations are sharp, his signature one-liners are plentiful, and the “doctor sketch” he contrives for the comedians masterfully evokes vaudeville’s mile-a-minute style of corny jokes and sight gags.

          In the story, Willy Clark (Walter Matthau) is a belligerent, self-involved senior living in Manhattan, constantly haranguing his agent/nephew, Ben (Richard Benjamin), for new work even though Clark’s memory is dodgy and his attitude is so terrible no one wants to deal with him anymore. Meanwhile, Clark’s ex-partner, Al Lewis (George Burns), has spent the last decade enjoying a quiet retirement in New Jersey. When Ben receives a lucrative offer for the duo’s TV reunion, the old partners slip into a familiar dance of hostility and recrimination—Lewis makes sport of driving Clark crazy, and Clark can’t keep his temper in check.

          The long sequences of Ben trying to coax the aging vaudevillians into doing the TV special are terrific, because Benjamin’s amiable frustration grounds the leading actors’ respective shticks. Burns is fantastic in a role that represented a huge comeback for the showbiz legend at the age of 80, and he won a well-deserved Oscar for unleashing his avuncular charm and perfectly preserved comic timing. So why doesn’t this movie go down more smoothly? These things are a matter of taste, but for me this is a rare instance of Matthau being the weak link. He’s hindered by the fact that Clark is written as an insufferable son of a bitch, a man so deeply unhappy that he attacks everyone in his path.

          To his credit, Matthau commits to the character wholeheartedly—his performance is so grating that it’s hard to trudge through the muck long enough to discover Clark’s redeeming qualities. And in the movie’s defense, the characterization is believable even though it’s not particularly entertaining. As Lewis points out, Clark is a hard-working professional who derives no joy from his work, whereas Lewis is a naturally funny individual whose professional life was a breeze. Therefore Clark is understandably embittered by the fact that he can’t practice his trade anymore, because he feels like a man without a purpose. This deeper aspect of Clark’s character is what makes The Sunshine Boys more than just a laugh machine, and the last scenes of the movie are quite poignant because Clark gets a much-needed reality check.
          Getting there, however, is more of a chore than seems absolutely necessary.

The Sunshine Boys: GROOVY