Coneheads (1993)

Director: Steve Barron

Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Michelle Burke, Michael McKean

Have I Seen it Before: Sure! Any real discussion of my awareness of the film will veer into what I actually think of the film, but I only add here that I have a strange memory of the film having a line of action figures—what movie didn’t have one in those years?—and I’m not entirely sure why. I also was under the impression that there was a day when Subway sandwiches didn’t exist, then this film came out, and those footlongs never left our lives.

Did I Like It: This movie either can’t or doesn’t try to answer or escape from a central question every film has to reckon with on some level: Who is this movie for?

it takes on the air of a family comedy with some sci-fi seasoning buried deep within the fry batter. On that front, it probably mostly succeeds. It’s inoffensive, and I remember as a kid being fairly amused by it.

A tame enough level of ambition undercuts other things the film might accomplish. An attempt to re-acquire the strange off-the-wall quality of the early years of Saturday Night Live mostly fails in service of the need to make a film the whole family can enjoy. Maybe most of the major players had kids. I’m told that can change a person, especially while those kids are young. Maybe Belushi died and everyone sobered up. It probably made their lives better, but the film does sadly suffer.

Another strange flex that the film can’t quite follow through on is the sheer tonnage of its cast. Almost everyone who has a connection to SNL or to well-regarded TV of the age brings to mind the over-stuffed cast of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Whereas that film expands its scope to accommodate giving everyone in the guild work, this film breaks apart at less than 90 minutes, again, likely in a an attempt to be the most risk-averse commodity possible.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

Director: Steve Barron

Cast: Judith Hoag, Elias Koteas, Corey Feldman, Kevin Clash

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, certainly. In fact, my first viewing of the film became somewhat legendary in my family mythology, but that is mostly because immediately after leaving the theater I puked down an upward moving escalator, thus ruining that particular mall in Dallas forever for a number of people.

But that had little to do with the movie itself, I think.

Did I Like It: A movie based on a cartoon primarily designed to sell action figures that was itself based on a comic book that was a spoof of 80s Daredevil comics* is going to have a hard time producing a film that would be worth watching at all. 

So, it’s saying something that this may be the best big-screen version of the turtles we are going to see. The puppet work from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop (it was one of the last projects Henson worked on before his untimely passing) is remarkable, almost bringing an air of believability to a concept that happily has nothing to do with reality. The mouths of the various creatures don’t quite match up with the voice actors looped in later, but it wasn’t exactly like the cartoons looked like they were pontificating lovingly on the subjects of ninjutsu and pizza. On that front it actually makes the film a pretty solid adaptation of the cartoons, although the more far out concepts like the technodrome and Krang would have to wait for this century and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016).

The film also works where others might have failed by pulling off its most significant illusion and convincing film goers that it actually takes place in New York City. With the massive puppetry work on display, large part of the film had to be filmed in the controlled environment of a studio, but with judiciously edited second unit photography, the film still feels like it takes place in a pre-Giuliani NYC with a crime rate spiraling out of control and a sewer system you might not want to jump into on first invitation.

*Look it up. Just once in a live-action adaptation of Daredevil, I would like to see the young Matt Murdock carrying a box of innocent looking turtles before he gets radioactive waste splashed on his face.