Bob Wells Movies
Director Frank Darabont created this Frank Capra-inspired drama based on a screenplay by his friend and one-time schoolmate Michael Sloane. Jim Carrey stars as Pete Appleton, a screenwriter in the Hollywood of the 1950s. Pete's on top of the world with his first motion picture "Sand Pirates of the Sahara" just released to theaters and his romance with a beautiful starlet (Amanda Detmer) heating up. However, his triumph turns to dismay when he's called before the commie-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee and advised by a studio lawyer and his agent to play ball with the witch hunters. Depressed by the film industry's weak-kneed reaction to the hearings, Pete gets drunk and drives his car north along the California coast, where he crashes from a bridge and wakes up on shore the next morning suffering from amnesia. Wandering into the nearby small town of Lawson, Pete is mistaken for Luke Trimble, a lost hero of World War II who, like most of the area's young men, never returned from the war a decade earlier. "Luke" has soon reunited with both his father (Martin Landau) and his one-time girlfriend (Laurie Holden), and finds that his reappearance has given the citizens of Lawson an emotional boost that's sorely needed. When he refurbishes and reopens his family's decrepit movie theater, the Majestic, Luke revitalizes Lawson just as his memory of his true identity begins to reassert itself. Sloane's original script for The Majestic (2001) was entitled The Bijou. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jim Carrey, Bob Balaban, (more)
This routine comedy is about a series of misadventures during a family vacation at the beach and stars John Candy (who died of a heart attack while filming in Mexico in 1994) as John Chester and Karen Austin as his long-suffering wife Sandy. When the family leave for what turns out to be a pretty decrepit shack on a public beach, Jack eventually locks horns with the owner of this dubious piece of real estate, and their conflict terminates in a boat race in which Jack and his motley crew are at first glance, and even second, no match for the others in the race. In the meantime, there are plenty of skits with Jack dressed as anything from an ample, unintentional likeness of a geisha to the normal tourist dude in a Hawaiian shirt. His wife and daughter tackle their own problems, related to sex in one way or another, mostly another. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Candy, Rip Torn, (more)
