Heart and Souls

Heart and Souls
By Peter John Gardner

Allow me to start this one off by saying that I loved this movie. I normally don't care for warm hearted, romantic comedies for the whole family, but this movie kept me smiling throughout and is just plain cute. That being said, the following entry will be overthinking a movie that does not require any thinking at all for the sake of a good read.

The film starts off somewhere in the 1950s where we follow four individuals making one last mistake in their lives before they all take a bus ride home. The bus crashes into a car where a woman is giving birth, and instead of being pulled up to Heaven, the recently deceased get stuck with the newborn child. They aren't allowed to leave the child because they are bound by some kind of invisible wall around the child.

So these four people hang around young Thomas 24/7 and entertain themselves by entertaining him. As the child grows up, family and school faculty grow concerned with Thomas's "imaginary friends". One night, the four dead babysitters overhear a fight between Thomas's mother and father about what to do with their child that they think could be schizophrenic. The spirits decide to become invisible and let Thomas grow up to lead a normal life.

Flash forward to the future where we find Thomas has grown up into yuppie banker that doesn't seem to have the time for anyone. The dead spirits are still hanging around Thomas all day, but he can't hear or see them anymore. They just follow him around and comment on his life. When the bus to Heaven finally arives, the spirits find out that they were left on Earth so that they could use Thomas to fix their mistakes (think Quantum Leap), so they strike a deal with the bus driver to come back a little later after they tie up their loose ends. Hilarity ensues and Downey is a tour-de-force of physical comedy whenever he is possessed by one of the spirits.

The circumstances of the spirits' lives and Thomas's in the film had me asking myself all sorts of questions concerning the logistics of the situation. So these four people are bound to Thomas until they Quantum Leap their problems and are not allowed any privacy. Do the spirits go to the bathroom? What do they talk about with each other for eternity? Did any of the two males have sex with either of the two females?

And what about poor Thomas? These four people have watched him every time he's taken a shit, picked his nose, had sex, masturbated, or stuck a finger up his own ass. Think about that. What if this is actually what happens when you die? You get stuck with three other people as the guardian angels of a newborn baby. Or think about your own life right now. That time you didn't wash your hands after taking a hefty number two at the office? The time you rubbed one out in bed while your wife was sleeping? Or how about when you stuck your finger up your own ass just to see what would happen? Four strangers could have been watching you, and one of them could be played by Tom Sizemore.

Chaplin

Chaplin
By Peter John Gardner

Some people out there were born to do what they do. It's hard to imagine hearing the voice of Aretha Franklin or Thom Yorke and not think that they were born to sing. Kurt Vonnegut and Ernest Hemingway were born to write and Charlie Chaplin was born to entertain. Starting in his early childhood, he was already memorizing songs to sing and devising characters to make us laugh. After watching the film version of Chaplin's life, I now firmly believe that Robert Downey Jr. was born to act. Downey doesn't so much portray Charles Chaplin. It's more like he was possessed by the man himself. Everything from the drunken man routine, to Chaplin's famous character 'The Tramp', to Chaplin himself Downey nails. With 'The Tramp' makeup on, it's easy to forget that it's not actually Chaplin we're watching.

Downey isn't the only actor that brought his A-game to the film. He surrounded by an excellent supporting cast that includes Anthony Hopkins, Dan Aykroyd, Kevin Kline, Moira Kelly, Marisa Tomei, Milla Jovovich, James Woods, and David Duchovney in the only role that I've seen him play where he's not obsessed with sex and/or aliens. Everyone involved does a phenomenal job as the people that shaped Charlie Chaplin's life.

The story of Chaplin's life is framed using an elderly Chaplin discussing the details of his autobiography to his publisher/ghostwriter. Chaplin's life story is quite remarkable. After making a name for himself in British theater, Chaplin is recruited to America to work in the blossoming moving picture industry. We see the development of Chaplin's most famous characters and Charles's own entrepreneurship as he starts making movies himself. Along the way, Charlie courts and fails with a number of lovers, is branded a Communist sympathizer by the US government (damn liberal Hollywood!), and eventually moves back to England out of frustration and disgust with the government's communist witchhunt.

Some followup research proved that some elements in the movie were dramatized, which is to be expected, but there was one scene in particular I thought was written specifically for the film that turned out to be completely factual. At the age of five, Chaplin's mother fell ill during a musical number at a theater. To quell the angry masses in the crowd, Charlie himself went up there and finished the song and dance. Born entertainer.

At the age of 28, I'm still trying to figure out what Peter Gardner was born to do. I tried sports and various other hobbies growing up and quickly lost interest in them. I'll admit that I'm a nerd and that books and video games interested me more as a youth, but when I reached that crucial age at the end of high school where everyone starts asking you what do you want to do with your life, I couldn't think of a good answer. I would look at schools and potential fields of study and just shrug my shoulders. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I figured that the standard two years of general education courses would enlighten me.

After I completed those courses and received my AA degree, I took a break from school to work full time while I figured out what I wanted to do next because at that point, I still had no idea. There were areas that I was better at than others like Computer Science, English, and History, but none of them tickled my fancy enough to want to pursue a career in that field. I eventually settled on getting a degree in English/Creative Writing because that is arguably what I do best. Was I born to write? I doubt that. Was I born to teach? I don't think so. One thing I do know is that I was born to do something or else I wouldn't be here. Maybe I was born just to endure all of Stallone and Downey's films. What a life.

Soapdish

Soapdish
By Peter John Gardner

Soapdish is a comedic soap opera about a soap opera. By nature I shouldn't have liked this movie. The movie does smell of aged cheese at times, but having said that, the film works on all levels. It even has a twist ending which I dare not reveal here because it provided me with the biggest laugh I got from the film.

The film takes a loose soap opera template to tell the story of the backstage drama of a show called The Sun Also Sets (Random thought: Imagine a soap opera based on The Sun Also Rises!) and the show's resident diva Celeste played by Sally Field. Celeste's life is in turmoil since her lover left her. She wants off the show but knows that it'll be the end of her career if she does. Her only support in the production is the show's head writer Rose (Whoopi Goldberg). Montana Moorehead (Cathy Moriarity) is her younger co-star that wants Celeste off the show so that she can become the show's new darling. She cockteases the show's producer David Barnes (Downey) to try to make that happen. We also have a young actress that literally budges her way onto the show played by Elizabeth Shue that turns out to be Celeste's niece. Finally, there's Kevin Kline's Jeffrey Anderson, a former cast member and lover of Celeste's that is now performing Death of A Salesman for deaf, elderly people in Florida that David and Montana lure back to the show hoping his presence will frustrate Celeste and force her to quit.

For a movie with this many subplots and characters roaming around at once, everything flows together beautifully, and you never lose track of what's going on. The movie even throws a few saw-it-coming-but-still curveballs the way that a real soap opera would (Lori is actually Celeste's daughter? Who woulda thunk?).

If the moral of this film is to lead a life without drama, I can't get behind it. Let me elaborate. Some situations in life I consider drama. The rest is just life. Drama is the kind of negative, soap opera-y type stuff that people could avoid if they wanted to but don't. I don't necessarily like drama, and I try to do whatever I can to avoid the kind of drama that seems to follow other people around on a daily basis, but what's the fun in life if there aren't any asinine conflicts that cause a headache for a week but provide me something to laugh about later? I'm not saying people should start cheating on their significant other or try to get someone fired at their job because they don't like them, but if there's not at least a little bit of drama in our lives then the movie that they make about you after you die would either be extremely boring or be forced to take creative liberties in order to make it interesting. Would you really want a cinematic depiction of you shitting on a salad bar because nothing interesting happened in your life?