{"id":1652,"date":"2017-07-03T08:34:01","date_gmt":"2017-07-03T14:34:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/?p=1652"},"modified":"2017-07-03T08:34:01","modified_gmt":"2017-07-03T14:34:01","slug":"under-the-rainbow-a-bad-movie-ive-watched-many-many-many-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/under-the-rainbow-a-bad-movie-ive-watched-many-many-many-times\/","title":{"rendered":"UNDER THE RAINBOW: A Bad Movie I’ve Watched Many, Many, MANY Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bad<\/a>You know, a movie like Under the Rainbow<\/i><\/b> really helps you appreciate the screenwriters of the 70s and 80s.\u00a0 I mean, some of what they did\u2014including Under the Rainbow<\/i><\/b>\u2014was completely batshit crazy, but at least you never went, \u201cOh, this same old thing again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because, while Under the Rainbow <\/i><\/b>is chock to the gills with uncomfortable levels of racism, sizeism and general bad taste that probably should have raised an eyebrow back then, let alone now\u2026. you can\u2019t say it\u2019s predictable formula.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>To whit: Depression Era Kansas, where a midget named Rollo is eagerly awaiting the news that Hollywood Wants Him.\u00a0 After almost killing himself falling off a barn fixing the radio antenna, he gets word that, in fact, Hollywood does<\/i> want him.\u00a0 Or, at least, midgets and dwarves in general, since the casting call for a little picture named \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d has gone out.\u00a0 So Rollo is off to Hollywood.<\/p>\n

BUT<\/i><\/b> also on his way to Hollywood is a German Spy, since the Nazis are on the move!\u00a0 This spy?\u00a0 Also a midget, played by the always reliable Billy Barty.\u00a0 He\u2019s supposed to meet a Japanese agent in Hollywood, and give him a secret America-invading map. \u00a0This is a crucial point that really gets glossed over: The Nazis already have<\/i> a secret America-invading map.<\/p>\n

BUT<\/i><\/b> <\/i>also on their way to Hollywood is a paranoid Duke and his half-blind wife, under the protection of Secret Service agent Chevy Chase.\u00a0 The Duke is convinced someone is trying to assassinate him.\u00a0 And that\u2019s because someone is, but for a while Chevy doesn\u2019t believe that.<\/p>\n

BUT<\/i><\/b> due to some sort of mix-up involving a secretary not doing her job, hotel reservations aren\u2019t made properly, and the end result is poor Carrie Fisher is the poor movie studio lackey tasked with finding a place to put 150 midgets and dwarves.\u00a0 She shoves them all into a hotel, which is the same one as the Duke and Duchess, as well as the German Spy and his Japanese counterpart.\u00a0 Oh, and a tour group of Japanese photographers.<\/p>\n

See, there\u2019s the joke: the German and Japanese spy were su\"\"<\/a>pposed to have an easy time finding each other, since they\u2019re looking for a midget and a Japanese man in a white suit with a camera, respectively.\u00a0 Which, normally, would be things that stand out in a crowd, except the crowd is nothing but midgets and Japanese men in white suits with cameras.\u00a0 And a Duke and Duchess, Chevy Chase, a series of suicidal dogs, a beleaguered Adam Arkin as the assistant hotel manager (desperate to prove his worth to his father), and Carrie Fisher in her period appropriate underwear.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of story balls in the air, people.\u00a0 This movie is 97 minutes long and it uses them all<\/i>.\u00a0 Not well<\/i>, mind you.\u00a0 But it\u2019s always got stuff happening.\u00a0 Batshit is better than boring.<\/p>\n

A big problem is the movie doesn\u2019t commit to who the hero is.\u00a0 It kind of wants it to be Rollo (Remember him?\u00a0 Way up at the beginning of all this?), but it second guesses having him be the center of the movie, so it sticks Chevy Chase\u2019s Secret Service Agent in the mix to do the real Hero Work.\u00a0 But it keeps Rollo in orbit of Chevy, probably because when it comes time for someone to throw down with Nazi Billy Barty, if Chevy Chase did it, it\u2019d just be weird.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So, while Chevy and Adam Arkin are mostly just replacing the Duchess\u2019s dog (they keep dying, but she\u2019s too blind to actually tell the constantly replaced lineage of dogs apart), Nazi Billy Barty gives the map to the wrong Japanese man, who is then accidentally killed by the Duke\u2019s incompetent assassin, but not before he leaves the map in Carrie Fisher\u2019s copy of the Wizard of Oz <\/i>script.\u00a0 So Nazi Billy Barty, of course, holds her at swordpoint, takes the script and her dress, and leaves her locked in the freezer.<\/p>\n

You think I\u2019m kidding about Carrie Fisher in her period-appropriate underwear, but it\u2019s a prominent aspect of this movie.\u00a0 The poster for the movie features her in her underwear, front and center, as if that’s just how she is the whole movie. \u00a0 It isn’t. \u00a0It’s just for this dramatic action centerpiece where she waits in the freezer with Rollo until Chevy rescues her.<\/p>\n

Things come to a head as the assassin confronts the Duke and the real Japanese spy kills him, but Nazi Billy Barty escapes with the map, and Rollo chases him on a wagon\u2026 but then the wagon crashes.<\/p>\n

And Rollo wakes up, having just fallen off the barn from the beginning of the movie, and it was all just a dream.\u00a0 Chevy and Carrie and Adam Arkin and the Duke and Duchess and even the Japanese spy are all amongst the Depression-Era hobos living in the barn.\u00a0 But the radio really does work, and there really is a casting calling for Rollo in Hollywood.\u00a0 He gets on the bus, and the driver is: Non-Nazi Billy Barty!<\/p>\n

It was<\/i> just a dream, right?<\/p>\n

No, but it was our collective nightmare.\u00a0 Despite that, I know I saw it many, many\u2026 well, you know.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know, a movie like Under the Rainbow really helps you appreciate the screenwriters of the 70s and 80s.\u00a0 I mean, some of what they did\u2014including Under the Rainbow\u2014was completely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1653,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions\/1653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}