Diner (1982)

Director: Barry Levinson

Cast: Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Tim Daly

Have I Seen it Before: Yes, but it has been ages.

Did I Like It: It’s the mark of an unassailably likable fil that it can feature five (six, if you count Paul Reiser’s Modell, but he does seem like he merely orbits the movie more than the others) main characters who range from willfully obnoxious (Guttenberg, and honestly the food, too—who puts gravy on french fries?) to believably pig-headed (Daly) and still be enjoyable.

Maybe it’s that the film is so forgiving of its leads, that I as the viewer can’t help but be forgiving of them, too. They like each other despite themselves, and that camaraderie doesn’t feel desperately co-dependent like some other “the friends of your youth are the best friends you’ll ever have” films of the period. They have enough problems on their own without ruining each other’s lives, minus a roast beef sandwich, a manger, or anything Boogie (Rourke) has cooking up. I’m looking in your direction, The Big Chill (1983).

Maybe it’s that the film reflects the young adult male experience pretty spectacularly. I knew each of these guys. While it may the film’s least believable sub-plot, I knew a guy in college who would have absolutely done the football test for a prospective spouse. I remember going to his wedding quite well, if for no other reason than the marriage was over inside of a year, in case anyone was wondering what an ill-advised sequel to the film might have looked like. 

Although, you can’t help but wonder what became of the characters in the 60s and beyond. As with most great films, I think it is the timelessness written into its DNA. That kind of interaction has not changed much from 1959 to 1982 to 2009 to now. The only thing that has changed now is that you don’t have to wonder about the guys from the diner. You just need to search for them on Facebook.

Short Circuit (1986)

Director: John Badham

Cast: Ally Sheedy, Steve Guttenberg, Fisher Stevens, Austin Pendleton

Have I Seen it Before: The year is 1989. I am on the cusp of joining the ranks of school-aged children. Naturally, I was required to get a full litany of immunizations before being enrolled. Such a requirement is a big part of the reason I’m still alive today, but that’s not even remotely what this review is about. To assuage the fears of an assault from incomprehensible needles, my mother got me two movies I had never seen before on VHS. One was Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), the other was this film. I instantly and equally fell in love with both. Perhaps beggaring all sense, this film is one of those key jewels in my early movie watching crowd.

So, yes. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it probably more than most people on the planet.

Did I Like It: It bears mentioning that even now in the clear vision of adulthood, Johnny 5 (Tim Blaney) is every bit the effective robotic character as either See-Threepio or Artoo-Detoo. Even more so, where Johnny 5 is tasked with being the central star and protagonist of his film, and the other two droids are content to be supporting, largely comic relief characters.

Now the film that surrounds Johnny is where the imbalances become apparent. The first Star Wars film is one of the peak pieces of all pop culture, whereas the adventures of the human characters around this robot are… fine. Guttenberg plays Guttenberg (the story doesn’t really ask him to do anything else), Sheedy admirably marches through a movie that only needs her to squeal things like “You’re killing/paralyzing/huring him!” that should be obvious from the film playing out before us.

And then there is Fisher Stevens. Even now, I find myself laughing at many of the things Stevens (a white actor) does as Ben (a character one assumes to be East Asian, despite claiming to be from Bakersfield), but I have long since stopped feeling good about it. It’s hard to damn so thoroughly a movie of this era so pointedly turning away from anything resembling meaningful representation, but I’m not prepared to grade it on much of a curve either. Such is the way with many of the films from our youth, I suppose.

Three Men and a Little Lady (1990)

Director: Emile Ardolino

Cast: Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, Ted Danson, Nancy Travis

Have I Seen It Before?: As I continue my deep dive into the pulsating wormhole that is Disney+, I am particularly struck by the clear memories I have of seeing this movie in the theaters. Is anyone else having this strange nostalgia epiphany as they dig into the deeper corners of the app?

Did I like it?: In most ways, this probably unneeded sequel to Three Men and a Baby (1987) either meets or exceeds the promise of the original. The storyline—involving the mother (Travis) the Little Lady nee Baby potentially marrying a director friend, thus tearing asunder the commune they have built in New York—actually fits with the setting far more than the hare-brained heroin-smuggling scheme that nudges events along in the original. Danson had been previously relegated to playing a version of Sam Malone in the original, whereas in this film his Jack Holden is far weirder than the movie might otherwise want him to be. Sure, the sight of Tom Selleck being the front man to Danson’s rapping is something I’m not sure any human needed to see, but the chemistry of the three leads is still easy and breezy, and that’s all the poster is interested in selling us.

My only problem with the whole thing is:

Why is Steve Guttenberg here?

This is not to say that the actor is unpleasant to watch. He’s just as charming as Selleck or Danson. I’m asking why his character, Michael Kellam, still feels the need to live with and help raise a child with whom he has very little actual connection? Danson plays the biological father, him I get sticking around. Selleck bonded with the child early on in the first film, and the story of the film runs on the notion that he is in love with the mother. That’s great. Does Guttenberg’s character not have a life outside of the other characters? No other identity? It almost makes the film an existential horror film, if we view the proceedings from his point of view. If we are ever to see the occasionally threatened Three Men and a Bride, and these characters are still living together, the film would almost have to be directed by Ari Aster, wouldn’t it?

Three Men and a Baby (1987)

Director: Leonard Nimoy (no, really)

Cast: Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, Ted Danson, Nancy Travis

Have I Seen It Before?: Yep!

Did I like it?: I would watch the three stars of this film do almost anything. Well, I’d watch Ted Danson do anything. I’d watch Tom Selleck do most things, besides guest star on Friends, which I just can’t anymore. I usually only get interested in Guttenberg if he’s paired with a wise-cracking robot.

At any rate, the film uses the amiable chemistry between the three leads to fuel its way through a heroin smuggling storyline that is completely and totally abandoned by the time the third act begins.

Goddamn, this movie is weird. And that’s before we even get to the ghost.

A long since debunked urban legend posits that just beyond the curtains in a scene with Danson, the specter of a young boy with a shot gun. Back in days when humanity had any sort of credulity left, the legend about the image grew to suggest that the set of the apartment shared by the titular men was occupied and quickly vacated by a family whose son had shot himself.

It’s a really dumb mystery because this fabled ghost is clearly a carboard of Danson himself. It’s not even kind of hard to figure it out. No wonder we as a society need snopes.com.

The much truer mystery is how Leonard Nimoy came to direct such an otherwise workmanlike comedy that is so much of its age. Did Disney read the script and say that the man behind Spock was the only one who could bring this story to life for an American audience? Why would Nimoy be interested in it? He had always expressed an interest in allowing actors mostly identified for the television roles to play against type, but there are very few parts of Jack Holden (Danson) that aren’t Sam Malone at their core, especially when we’ve been allowed to see the menagerie of weirdos that he has played in recent years. Maybe <Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)> was the most successful fish-out-of-water comedy in recent years, and the Mouse House was willing to ignore the spaceships and whales.

Either way, it boggles the mind, and regardless it speaks to Nimoy’s talents as director that he was able to pull off such a perfectly watchable film.