Dana Carvey Movies
Comic actor Dana Carvey led a near-monastic existence while growing up in Montana, not out of choice but because the truly popular kids were bigger and better-looking. "I was a fetus in shoes" commented Carvey on his high-school years. While attending San Francisco State University, Carvey launched his career as a stand-up comic. The going was rugged for a while, but by 1981 Carvey had built up enough of a reputation to earn second billing on the Mickey Rooney TV sitcom One of the Boys. Though the show was cancelled by mid-1982, Carvey was now on a roll. In 1984, he showed up as a regular on the TV police adventure series Blue Thunder, and was spotlighted in the parody rockumentary film This is Spinal Tap; two years later he was signed as a regular on NBC's Saturday Night Live. Carvey's gallery of comic characterizations is too vast to fully recount here, but his greatest popularity rested on two recurring characters. As "The Church Lady" (an amalgam of all the well-meaning pious neighbors Carvey had known while growing up), Carvey entered the Catchphrase Lexicon with his oft-repeated "Isn't that special?" and "Could it be....SATAN?" And as mop-topped teenage couch potato Garth (again drawn from life--this time based on Dana's brother Brad), Carvey was teamed with Mike Myers in a flawless on-going parody of cheap cable-access television. After a misfire movie vehicle, 1990's Opportunity Knocks, Carvey became a major box-office commodity by co-starring with Mike Myers in the megahit Wayne's World (1992). While the 1993 sequel Wayne's World 2 didn't quite match the take of the original, Carvey was artistically satisfied that same year with an Emmy award for his performance as H. Ross Perot (among others) on TV's Saturday Night Live Presidential Bash. Undaunted by the lack of response to Opportunity Knocks, Carvey once again took a stab at solo success with the similarly panned Clean Slate in 1994. After appearing in a pair of supporting roles (Trapped in Paradise and The Road to Wellville (both 1994)) and a cameo (1996's The Shot) shortly thereafter, Carvey disappeared almost entriely from the public eye until resurfacing in the 1999 Saturday Night Live; Presidential Bash and once again taking a small role in Adam Sandler's Little Nicky (2000). Eager to resume his once lucrative career and make a feature that his children could enjoy, Carvey returned to the silver screen as an Italian waiter who takes the art of mimicry to new and uncharted heights in The Master of Disguise (2002). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1986
- PG
Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas team up one last time in Tough Guys. Harry Doyle (Lancaster) and Archie Lang (Douglas) are two old-time train robbers, who held up a train in 1956 and have been incarcerated for thirty years. After serving their time, they are released from jail and have to adjust to a new life of freedom, now as old men. Harry and Archie realize that they still have the pizzazz when, picking up their prison checks at a bank, they foil a robbery attempt. Archie, who spent his prison time pumping himself up, easily picks up a 20-year-old aerobics instructor named Skye (Darlanne Fluegel). Harry, on the other hand, has to waste away his days in a nursing home. They both have festering resentments --Archie for having to endure a humiliating job as a busboy; Harry for having to endure patronizing attitudes toward senior citizens. The two old pals finally go back to what they know best. After successfully robbing an armored car, they decide to rob the same train that they robbed thirty years ago. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, (more)
Sean Penn graduated to full stardom with the 1984 drama Racing with the Moon, even though the film itself hardly set new box office records. Set in the early years of World War II, the film stars Penn as a small-town teen-aged hotshot, six weeks away from being shipped out to fight overseas. In the meantime, Penn begins to date Elizabeth McGovern, whom he assumes is from a wealthy family. Penn's pal Nicolas Cage, who's gotten his girlfriend Suzanne Adkinson pregnant, imposes upon Penn to hit up McGovern for the abortion money. That's when Penn discovers that the girl barely has a penny to her name. Convinced that Penn cared for her only when he thought she was rich, McGovern walks out on him, but later teams up with Penn to help the unfortunate Adkinson. The plot is pure James Dean, a fact not lost on fans who regarded Sean Penn as the second coming of Dean. A very slight piece, Racing With the Moon is buoyed by the engaging performances of the stars, and by director Richard Benjamin's meticulous attention to period detail-especially in those peerless bowling-alley and skating-rink sequences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sean Penn, Elizabeth McGovern, (more)
Largely improvised by director Rob Reiner and his cast, This Is Spinal Tap looks and sounds like a "real" documentary, with Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Christopher Guest as David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls, and Nigel Tufnel, the key members of a going-nowhere British heavy metal band called Spinal Tap. The "group" started as an informal skiffle band, eventually maturing into an R&B act called the Thamesmen (their hit was "Gimme Some Money"). After going through a psychedelic period with "Listen to the Flower People," the band mutated into Spinal Tap, a hard rock outfit responsible for such albums as "Intravenous DeMilo," "The Sun Never Sweats," and "Bent for the Rent." This Is Spinal Tap finds them in the midst of their first American tour in years as they support their new LP Smell the Glove, with filmmaker Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner), who specializes in TV commercials, on hand to document the occasion. Just about anything that can go wrong does: shows get canceled, stage props go wrong, wireless guitar pickups start broadcasting air-traffic reports, no one shows up for in-store appearances, David's girlfriend tries to take over the band, they wind up billed second to a puppet show at an amusement park, and the group teeters on the verge of breakup. After the film's initial release, McKean, Guest, and Shearer did a short club tour as Spinal Tap; the "band" reunited in 1992 for a new album, Break Like the Wind, followed by a full-fledged tour and TV special, The Return of Spinal Tap. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rob Reiner, Michael McKean, (more)
While John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic Halloween irrevocably changed the style of horror cinema with its simple but relentlessly tense story, it triggered more than a decade's worth of uninspired, exploitative knock-offs, and one could easily list Halloween II among these failures. As with its predecessor, this film was written and produced by Carpenter and Debra Hill, but the terse style and unbearable suspense of the first film are missing, replaced by a more simplistic stalk-and-slash scenario. Directorial duties were handed over to Rick Rosenthal, whose lack of expertise is quite evident (though he managed to hit his stride two years later with the prison actioner Bad Boys). The plot picks up exactly where the original left off: Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), shaken and injured from her battle with unkillable psycho Michael Myers, is taken to the Haddonfield Hospital for observation, while Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) continues his desperate search for his monstrous patient. An interesting plot twist has Loomis' investigations revealing Michael's true identity (some of these sequences incorporate footage of young Michael originally shot for the television version of Halloween, which contained scenes hinting at the link between Michael and Laurie). After slashing his way through the town, Myers manages to track Laurie to the hospital, where the remainder of the action takes place. Numerous night-shift employees are slaughtered in a variety of gruesome ways before Loomis catches up with his quarry, leading to an explosive -- and seemingly conclusive -- confrontation. Pleasence is compelling as usual, but Curtis, who made an auspicious debut in the original, is sadly wasted here, her character reduced to shuffling half-drugged through darkened hospital corridors and screaming helplessly. Carpenter's active involvement in the Halloween franchise continued to dwindle steadily from one sequel to the next, getting scarcely a mention by the time producers Hill, Moustapha Akkad and Irwin Yablans revived the series in 1988 for three more sequels. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, (more)
