Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979)

          Movies along the lines of Unidentified Flying Oddball underscore why Walt Disney Productions was in need of fresh ideas just prior to the studio’s first experiments with slightly more grown-up fare. A goofy riff on Mark Twain’s classic novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the movie imagines a nerdy scientist flying a spaceship back through time to Camelot, where he helps King Arthur repel an attempted coup by the treacherous Sir Mordred. Not only had Disney already explored Arthurian mythology with the animated feature The Sword in the Stone (1963), but everything about Unidentified Flying Oddball is enervated. The characterizations are thin, the FX are rickety, the jokes are tepid, and the performances fail to impress. Some very young viewers might find the picture’s compendium of medieval settings, sci-fi concepts, and slapstick comedy distracting, but most viewers with ages in the double digits will grow restless quickly. Even though this movie ticks a few important boxes for live-action children’s entertainment by presenting a brisk and eventful storyline within a compact running time, nearly everything that happens onscreen is contrived and dumb, and it’s plain that Disney allocated a B-level budget for the production. One can literally see the strings on the protagonist during a climactic flying scene, a sure sign no one felt compelled to put forth their best efforts.

          The jam-packed storyline begins with a U.S. Senator refusing to finance an experimental NASA spaceship because flying the vessel would take an astronaut into space for decades. Clean-cut scientist Tom Trimble (Dennis Dugan) is tasked with creating a lifelike robot, so he produces Hermes (also played by Dugan). Thanks to a ridiculous set of circumstances, both Tom and Hermes are inside the vessel when it launches, so both find themselves in medieval England. Evil sorcerer Merlin (Ron Moody) conspires with Mordred (Jim Dale) to dethrone aging King Arthur (Kenneth Moore), but Tom and Hermes ally themselves with local lass Alisande (Sheila White) and others to help the king retain control over the Round Table. Typical of the movie’s gentle humor is the way Alisande carries around a goose, mistakenly believing the fowl is actually her father, transformed by one of Merlin’s spells. For the most part, Unidentified Flying Oddball is harmless, a barrage of misunderstandings and physical comedy peppered with the occasional clever gag. But, man, does this picture lack that beloved Disney magic. By the time the action climaxes with Tom flying in a suit of armor while Hermes uses the spaceship’s giant magnets as weapons, the picture shows the strain of trying to create spectacle without spending big money. This film promises Camelot and delivers Camelittle.

Unidentified Flying Oddball: FUNKY

The Twelve Chairs (1970)

          Having secured his small-screen reputation by co-creating two beloved franchises (Get Smart and The 2000-Year-Old Man), comedy auteur Mel Brooks made a bold move into features by writing and directing The Producers (1968). Despite a fractious production process and a disappointing run at the box office, the picture netted Brooks an Academy Award, for Best Original Screenplay. Yet instead of following up The Producers with another original work, which would have seemed like the logical move, Brooks made The Twelve Chairs, a new adaptation of an oft-filed Russian novel that was originally published in 1926. The movie engendered some goodwill, but it didn’t play to Brooks’ strengths of frenetic pacing and goofy slapstick. Quite to the contrary, The Twelve Chairs is melancholy, and much of the picture is devoted to dramatic storytelling as opposed to comedy. Mel Brooks is many things, but a tragedian is not one of them. Furthermore, because the picture is generally played “straight,” the occasional lowbrow moments—think actors mugging for the camera and/or wild physical-comedy scenes—feel out of place. Partially as a result of this tonal dissonance, The Twelve Chairs is the dullest of Brooks’ features, even though it’s also the most thematically ambitious.

          The story is very simple. In the Soviet Union a decade after the communist revolution, former aristocrat Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody) learns that his mother hid the family’s jewelry stash inside one chair that’s part of a set of twelve. Dazzled by notions of reclaiming his lost wealth, the greedy Vorobyaninov begins to search for the chairs. He’s aided in his quest by a dashing con man, Bender (Frank Langella), but these two must compete with a corrupt priest, Father Fyodor (Dom DeLuise), who hears about the jewels and tries to beat Vorobyaninov to them. Also thrown into the mix is Vorobyaninov’s former manservant, amiable idiot Tikon (Brooks). Virtually every character in The Twelve Chairs is repulsive, and, unfortunately, the leads are the least appealing in the batch: Vorobyaninov is a hot-tempered elitist willing to steamroller over anyone in his way, and Bender is a silver-tongued swindler.
          Moody’s angry, charmless performance doesn’t help matters, and neither does Langella’s overly theatrical suaveness. (This was one of the stage-trained actor’s first films.) As for supporting players Brooks and DeLuise, who perform in the broad manner one normally associates with Brooks’ work, they’re funny, after a fashion, but they’re out of sync with the rest of the picture. Similarly, Brooks’ periodic attempts to juice the movie’s comedy by resorting to the old-time camera gimmick of sped-up action seem desperate. So while it’s true that The Twelve Chairs is the closest thing in Brooks’ directorial filmography to a serious story, there’s a reason he found success with outrageous comedy—he’s a master of screen comedy, and merely a dilettante in the realm of thoughtful cinema. Therefore, if curiosity about Brooks’ oeuvre compels you to check out The Twelve Chairs, follow the advice of the song Brooks wrote for the film: “Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst.”

The Twelve Chairs: FUNKY