“Saturday Night Live” is chaotic, it’s high-stakes, and it shouldn’t work… but for 50 years it has. From the ‘Killer Bees’ to the gritty edge of the new UK reboot, we’re dissecting the house that Lorne built. Is Saturday Night Live the last gasp of ‘Old Showbiz,’ or is it the only thing keeping live performance alive? Today, we’re talking the new Lorne Michaels documentary, the Canadian comedy mafia, and the time I ended up at an after-party with Paul McCartney and Allen Ginsberg. Everything is broken, but the red light is on. Let’s go.
I appear on “CTV News at 6” with anchor Andria Case to talk about the documentary “Lorne,” Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel in the dramedy “The Christophers” and the east coast crime dr5ama “Little Lorraine.”
I join “CTV News Toronto at Five” with anchor Zuraidah Alman to talk about new movies in theatres including the dark comedy “The Christophers,” the east coast crime drama “Little Lorraine,” the documentary “Lorne” and the Montreal coming-of-age “Mile End Kicks.”
I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Scott Hirsch to talk about the recently announced “Top Gun 3” and new releases in theatres, including the dark comedy “The Christophers,” the east coast crime drama “Little Lorraine,” the documentary “Lorne” and the Montreal coming-of-age “Mile End Kicks.”
SYNOPSIS: In “Lorne,” a new documentary now playing in theatres, Oscar winning filmmaker Morgan Neville goes behind the scenes to details the career and influence of “Saturday Night Live” creator and producer Lorne Michaels.
CAST: Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey, Chris Rock, Conan O’Brien, Maya Rudolph, Andy Samberg, John Mulaney, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Kristen Wiig, Mike Myers, Paul Simon. Directed by Morgan Neville.
REVIEW: “Lorne” attempts to peel away the shroud of mystery that surrounds the most powerful, but also most elusive, man in television. For nearly half a century—he took five years off after the show’s fifth season—the Toronto born Michaels created the template for what makes us laugh.
His influence on popular culture is immeasurable, but don’t buy a ticket for “Lorne” looking for insight into his process. Michaels is, as presented in the film, a reluctant subject. Like the Wizard of Oz, he’s the enigmatic man behind the curtain.
As a result, director Morgan Neville frames the film as a kind of comedy, an irreverent look at a serious comedic virtuoso.
Off the top Neville asks him a direct question. “What is funny?”
“It’s one of those things like pornography,” Michaels replies. “You know it when you see it.”
It’s a dryly witty line, cerebral and cryptic, and it is about as close as Michaels comes to explaining his craft.
“SNL” cast members like Tina Fey, Chris Rock, Maya Rudolph, John Mulaney, Jimmy Fallon, Kristen Wiig and Mike Myers reverentially chime in with stories about their time working with the producer.
Among the tales told is John Mulaney’s story about having dinner with Michaels when a random person approached their table with a script. Michaels takes the script with the assurance that he’d have a look. Why? To avoid a repeat of what happened in 1968 when record producer Terry Melcher declined to sign aspiring musician Charles Manson to a contract. Manson got his revenge with the infamous murders on Cielo Drive, so Michaels isn’t taking any chances.
The story has a mythological edge to it, as do many of the accounts of Michaels’s life.
Anecdotes of his calm amid the chaos of “SNL,” his resilience in the high stakes world of network television—” People come in every year and they leave,” Michaels says, “but I’m still here.”—of navigating cultural challenges, and his vampiric hours (goes to bed at 4 am, up at noon, at work by 4 pm), take on a folkloric tone.
In keeping with that fabled tone, Mike Myers uses a pastoral metaphor to explain Michaels and his knack for finding talent. On a trip through the country Michaels spots a pumpkin patch. Free pumpkins as far as the eye can see. In the middle of it is a guy selling pumpkins.
Why should I buy from you when I could just take the free pumpkins? “Because I have the eye,” the seller says, “I know the good pumpkins.”
“Lorne knows the good pumpkins,” says Myers.
The film never quite nails its subject, but it entertainingly portrays a show biz survivor whose legacy is his work; fifty years of “SNL” and countless films as a producer. By the time the end credits roll Michaels remains a mystery, but by his own choice. “All of life is reinvention,” he says. “To be understood? Not gonna happen.”
In 2011, I accused the first movie in the “Puss in Boots” franchise of neutering the once-charming character. We fell in love with the frisky feline, as voiced by Antonio Banderas, in the “Shrek” movies, but his journey from supporting to leading character was far from purrfect. The movies were predictable and worse, had none of the purr-sonality (OK. I’ll stop with the cat puns now) of the “Shrek” movies.
Now, one television series, sequel and video game later, comes “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” a movie, now playing in theatres, that raises the stakes.
The new film opens with the plucky ginger cat (once again voiced by Banderas) in a life-or-death battle against a fur-midable (last one, I promise) opponent. “I am known by many names,” he brags. “Stabby Tabby. El Macho Gato. The Leche Whisperer. I am Puss in Boots!”
He’s been in sticky situations before, but this one is different.
“I have bad news,” says the doctor who attends to his wounds. “You died.”
It looks like the end for Puss in Boots, until he reminds the physician, “Doctor, relax! I have nine lives!”
“And how many times have you died already?”
“Oh,” says Puss, “I’m not really a math guy.”
Turns out, Puss is on his last life and must give up his adventurous ways if he wants to survive.
Rather than become a lap-cat, the swashbuckling Puss, along with love interest Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and chatty therapy dog Perro (Harvey Guillén), sets off to into the Black Forest to find the mystical Last Wish and restore the lives he lost. “I need to get my lives back,” he says. “Without them, I am not the legend.”
But after eight lives lived, Puss has many enemies, all of whom want track him down. “I find the idea of nine lives absurd,” says the Big Bad Wolf (Wagner Moura), “and you didn’t value any of them.”
Animation is generally thought of as entertainment for kids, but legends like Don Bluth and Ralph Bakshi made their careers creating films that addressed darker subject matter. Now, “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” is no “The Secret of Nimh” or “Fire and Ice,” but it is bleaker and more experimental than anything else in the franchise. Like the recent “Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio,” “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” treads into adult territory theme wise, with higher stakes than we’re used to in a film aimed at kids– the Cave of Lost Souls, anyone?—but does so with family audiences in mind.
The character of PiB may be in peril, but the flamboyance that made him such a scene stealer in “Shrek 2” is still on full display. He’s a huge personality in pocket-size, and Banderas brings a perfect combination of roguishness and righteousness to the voice work.
Fun, villainous voice work from Florence Pugh, John Mulaney, and Wagner Moura, as Goldilocks, “Big” Jack Horner and Big Bad Wolf / Death respectively, add some spice and beautiful animation lifts the adventure sequences skyward.
Best of all, the film’s underlying life lesson, that time is precious and we should enjoy it while we can—”When you only have one life,” says Kitty Softpaws, “that’s what makes it special.”—is nicely woven into the film’s fleet-footed, if slightly predictable plot.
A kid’s movie about Hollywood as a boulevard of broken dreams doesn’t exactly scream Disney, but “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers,” a new live action, cartoon hybrid starring John Mulaney and Andy Samberg in the title roles, and now streaming on Dinsey+, is exactly that.
Except it’s WAY funnier than I just made it sound.
Set in Los Angeles, this is the tale of anthropomorphic chipmunks Chip (Mulaney) and Dale (Samberg). Once tight pals and big television stars, relative to their tiny size, they are now has-beens, relegated to the delete bin of popular culture. “We were living the dream,” says Dale. “Dancing the Roger Rabbit, with Roger Rabbit.”
Dale sticks it out in show biz and with some CGI surgery—i.e. plastic surgery in toon world—is now a photorealistic computer-animation version of himself chasing glory on the oldies convention circuit, while Chip gave up his Hollywood dream and makes ends meet by selling insurance.
Worst of all, they’re estranged and haven’t spoken in years. It takes a wild story from their old “Rescue Rangers” co-star Monterey Jack (Eric Bana) about missing animated characters, possibly kidnapped by Sweet Pete (Will Arnett), a middle-aged, paunchy version of Peter Pan, to bring them back together.
When Monterey disappears, Chip ‘n Dale use the sleuthing lessons they learned on “Rescue Rangers” and are drawn into the seedy underworld of Uncanny Valley where the baddies come in all styles—hand drawn, computer generated, claymation, puppets—Muppet fights are a daily occurrence and bootleggers threatens the toons’ lives and careers.
“Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” is a multiverse of toontastic fun. In a wild mix n’ match, characters from movies like “The Little Mermaid” and “My Little Pony” to “South Park” and “The Jungle Book” clash and collide. There’s even Ugly Sonic, the original Sonic the Hedgehog design with human teeth.
The array of characters aside, there are loads of in-jokes for animaniacs to enjoy. A computer-generated Viking (Seth Rogen) is described as having, “those Polar Express eyes,” and director Akiva Schaffer crams the screen with various styles of animation that irreverently pays tribute to, and pokes fun at, these beloved characters who have fallen on hard times.
A riff on “The Happytime Murders,” which brought the Muppets into a crime-ridden, R-rated world, and the Toontown antics of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” is ripe with sight gags and deep laughs that will likely be appreciated more by parents than kids. Once again, my semi-annual reminder that simply because a movie is on Disney+, doesn’t mean it is for the entire family. There are good messages for kids about the importance of friendship but they are tempered by some adult humour and mild language.
Richard will host a “JFL42 In Conversation” with comedian John Mulaney on Thursday September 21 at The Sony Centre Lower Level Lobby. Tickets are sold out for this event!
Why John Mulaney?
Because he’s fresh off an incredibly successful run on Broadway in Oh, Hello alongside his pal Nick Kroll
Because he’s an Emmy Award-winning writer currently writing for IFC’s Documentary Now and for Netflix’s Big Mouth on which he voices the character of Andrew
Because he began writing on Saturday Night Live where he appeared as a Weekend Update correspondent and co-created characters such as “Stefon” with Bill Hader, and that’s pretty darn cool
“Saturday Night Live” is chaotic, it’s high-stakes, and it shouldn’t work… but for 50 years it has. From the ‘Killer Bees’ to the gritty edge of the new UK reboot, we’re dissecting the house that Lorne built. Is Saturday Night Live the last gasp of ‘Old Showbiz,’ or is it the only thing keeping live performance alive? Today, we’re talking the new Lorne Michaels documentary, the Canadian comedy mafia, and the time I ended up at an after-party with Paul McCartney and Allen Ginsberg. Everything is broken, but the red light is on. Let’s go.
