Something Wild

It's easy to take actors like Ray Liotta and Jeff Daniels for granted with the benefit of hindsight. Both of them have had ups and (horrible) downs, crossing genres seamlessly or inexplicably. It can also be argued that neither one of them has been more gratifying, more liberated, more, well, wild than in their breakthrough roles in Johnathan Demme's road movie. With the help of Melanie Griffith's femme fatale they make a very interesting movie about finding your wild side, but also finding out about the nasty underbelly lurking beneath society's pickett fences.

After being accused of ripping off a diner, a yuppie accountant named Charles sets off on a wild road trip with the free-spirited Lulu. Along the way she manages to bring out something special in Charlie, accusing him of being a closet rebel. They decide to get themselves in various troublesome situations, like running out on roof-splittingly expensive restaurants. They soon run into trouble, however, when a former love of Lulu's (or Audrey's), Ray, turns up at her high school reunion, after what appears to be done time in a jail.

Demme's film switches from screwball situation comedy to black farce and then to an uncomfortable menace. At times we're not really sure what this woman wants with Charles, whether she is after money, scheming, or indeed really has fallen for our floppy-haired protagonist. Daniels injects his hapless hero with all the dopey charm and middle-class wit one could ever hope to see in an 80s suit-wearing yuppie. He wants to eschew his suburban divorce style for a rebellious wild-at-heart rebel, and insists upon doing it with the impulsive, slightly reckless, but utterly alluring Lulu. The problem is, when he discovers his wild side, he has to deal with the ensuing problems: He's just been made Vice-President at his firm - What would his work mates think? How does he deal with the psychotic ex-con boyfriend? Does he really know what this woman wants? He appears, for most of the movie, to be a sap, who could fall for more than he could handle. But coincidentally, he's a pretty good liar, so maybe he's no better than the rest of them.

But even if the underlying philosophy doesn't hit you, then the comedic set-pieces definitely should. One particular scene involving handcuffs, suspenders, a dinky motel and a a phone call to his work office particularly sticks in the mind. It's not often you get movies like this. Movies that share a good balance between intelligence and farce. How can you go wrong?

Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) is outwardly a stuffy businessman in NYC. He tries to dine and dash, but gets called out by Lulu/Audrey Hankel (Melanie Griffith). She sees him as a secret rebel. She offers to drive him back to his office but instead takes him on a wild trip. She's stealing and sleeping with the married Charles in a motel. She brings him back to visit her mother and go to the class reunion as Charles' wife. Ray Sinclair (Ray Liotta) and his girlfriend Irene (Margaret Colin) show up at the reunion and take Charles and Audrey for a drive. Ray turns out to be Audrey's ex-con husband and he holds up a convenience store.

Melanie Griffith delivers one of the most memorable character in cinema. She's a Manic Pixie Dream Girl before that term existed. She's also more three dimensional than that. Jeff Daniels is almost as good and shows his versatility. My main problem with him is the first half where he is supposedly a married man cheating on his loving wife. Instead of a compelling reveal later on, I would have started with Charles as a lonely non-married guy. It kept me from liking Charles and thinking that he's a lousy cheater. Ray Liotta is always great as a crazed maniac. It's a wild times.

Sometimes you have to search high and low, but you really can find some interesting films made in the late 1980s. Though Jonathan Demme's film is not perfect, it still brilliantly outshines most of the crud made back then. Something Wild is the study of two souls who seem to come from different worlds going on a crazy road trip full of sex, violence, and even a high school reunion.

It all begins inside a tiny diner in New York City when openly free-spirited Audrey (Melanie Griffith) notices yuppie Charlie (Jeff Daniels) sneak out on paying his bill. She confronts him outside, and the two of them end up jumping in her car and taking off on a sunny Friday afternoon. At first it would seem that this trip across the state line will merely end in a sexual tryst in a cheap motel, but little does Charlie know, Audrey has all sorts of plans for him that weekend. After some serious hanky-panky, Audrey takes Charlie back to her home town, introduces him to her mother as her husband, and then takes him to her high school reunion. In a development a little bit contrived for this critic's liking, one of Charlie's co-workers also happens to be attending this reunion. This could potentially destroy the facade of the family man on a wild weekend that Charlie is trying to perpetrate. (at this point we learn his wife left him quite a while ago) Further complicating matters is the arrival of Audrey's psychotic ex-husband, played with fearsome intensity by Ray Liotta. From that point on, this film which has largely gone for laughs, becomes rather intense and often violent.

This film scores major points by absolutely keeping the audience guessing. At least until the third act when the film can likely conclude in no other way than it does. The film avoids making Charlie out to be a totally predictable sap who is just along for a wild ride with a crazy woman. Charlie has his own secrets, and a whole hidden side of his own that comes out when it has to. Demme places some marginally famous people in some truly odd cameos, and spends a little bit more time with peripheral characters than some people would. It gives the film a very "human" kind of feeling as we get to know at least a little something about even someone working as a waitress or at a motel. The film maybe meanders a bit here and there, but that is understandable since so much of it plays out like a road trip. The actors are exceptional, and the film is full of color and energy. Highly recommended. 9 of 10 stars.

The Hound.

Not even remotely corny like one would expect of a 1980s romantic comedy, this fierce, libidinous entertainment stars Jeff Daniels as Charlie, an externally button-down banker whose mojo is readily fluttered by audacity in women, and Melanie Griffith as Lulu, an alcoholic sex machine with an amply fertile mind. Daniels plays some of the same notes here that he used in Terms of Endearment, where he was the firm, competent, straitlaced husband and father who liked to have relations with perky coeds. He looks like he was born to wear a suit and a tie, but he has that insubordinate glint in the right light. Griffith's performance is founded not so much on sexual excitement as on nerve: She is able to persuade us, and Daniels, that she is likely to do almost anything, particularly if she thinks it might shock him.

Even while they're standing on the sidewalk in front of that restaurant and she's making like she's charging him with theft, there's a spark between them. The casting is critical in a movie like this. There has to be some kind of brutish cohesion between the man and the woman or it doesn't make any difference how sharp the dialogue is. Once they've made their connection, Daniels freely goes along for the ride. After awhile she even takes his handcuffs off, although he sort of liked the idea of having lunch in a restaurant with the cuffs dangling from one of his wrists.

They drive down the East Coast from New York to Tallahasee, while she steals money from cash registers and he capsizes into the conscious daydream of the sensually exhausted. At Griffith's high school reunion, Daniels runs into the last person he wants to see, the accountant from his office. And Griffith runs into the last person she wants to see, her husband, Ray Liotta. I will stop here. The uncertainty of the tension must not be ruined.

If Demme and screenwriter E. Max Frye had developed this movie as a madcap comedy, it most likely wouldn't have worked as well. Their feat is to think their characters through before the very first scene. They know all about Charlie and Lulu, and so what happens after the confrontation outside that restaurant is virtually inescapable, cnsidering who they are and how they look at each other. This is one of those few movies where the story acts shocked by what the characters do, and not the other way around.

Rewatching Something Wild recently some 30 years after I first saw it, I was struck by how vividly the craziness of the story stayed in my memory, but also how surprising and unexpected the plot turns were. This is a good sign that that someone took time to craft an excellent plot. In fact, the film makers have lavished tender loving care on every aspect of this film and given it a lot of heart.

Melanie Griffith does everything but set the screen on fire as she takes Jeff Daniel's humdrum office worker life and turns it upside down. We're then taken on a helter-skelter anything-goes trip where the couple leave the city and the staid conventions of middle class life behind as they plunge into a passionate affair and journey deep into the comforting familiarity of small town America with its motels, folksy shops and and kindly people. Ironically this is where the greatest danger lurks in the shape of old flame Ray Liotta, grinning maniacally and flipping the madcap whimsy into insane violence.

Every minor character on this trip fills you with good vibes, in sharp contrast to the sinister kind of twist that current-day Hollywood mainstream gives to bit players. The soundtrack, for fans of 80s music, is fantastic - you're bound to hear stuff you haven't heard for ages.

This film works on many levels: the actors are charming and charismatic, and their parts are well and sympathetically written. It's a loving memoir of a materialistic decade that many thought was money-obsessed but was filled with many hapless characters like this reviewer who lived similar episodes in their own lives: except not so wild!