Thoughts on Summer Rental and Volunteers

via Metro

"Candy is fun to watch under any circumstances." -- Janet Maslin, reviewing Summer Rental
"... the vastly overrated Tom Hanks ... and the consistently disappointing John Candy." -- Gene Siskel, reviewing Volunteers

Siskel's appraisal of Hanks feels vaguely blasphemous now, in the wake of his longevity as an acclaimed actor and genuine Hollywood legend. Maslin's take on Candy is correct, even if it would take a while for his movies to be worthy of the sentiment. While Candy and Hanks didn't hurt for work following Splash, you could claim that both were still working out the kinks of being leading men. That brings us to today's movies, whose biggest delights come from the men's fledgling star quality.

"Next stop, Citrus Cove, Florida."

*the car reaches the end of the driveway and ..."

"Daddy, I have to pee."

"Now I know what I forgot."

Jack Chester (Candy), ordered to take time off from his job as an air traffic controller, takes his family on their apparently first vacation. While wife Sandy (Karen Austin) and kids Jennifer (Kerri Green), Bobby (Joey Lawrence) and Laurie (Aubrey Jene) mostly enjoy themselves, Jack takes longer to get into the spirit. Who can blame him? It's not easy to smile when the dog's barely loyal, the actual lodgings are less impressive compared to the palace you accidentally briefly stayed at and you've made enemies with the town douchebag (Richard Crenna), whose evil ranges from keeping you and your loved ones from a lobster dinner to demanding you all get outta town after becoming your landlord.

Directed by Carl Reiner from a script by Jeremy Stevens & Mark Reisman (TV writers making their only movie to date), Rental will never make anyone forget some of John Hughes' better works. Candy and company seem to be playing material that was cut from Vacation, while the enmity between Jack and Al foreshadows the funnier rivalry in The Great Outdoors. A sweet, too brief bonding scene between Jack and Jennifer (which is better than Bobby and Laurie got), and a few what has my life become comments from Jack call to mind Uncle Buck. The elements in Rental are enjoyable enough, but they come across like raw meat compared to the steak (or hamburger? beef jerky?) Hughes served.

Al vs. Jack aside, Rental doesn't have much conflict. John Larroquette briefly appears as Don, a single dad who may or may not be attracted to Sandy. It feels like he was supposed to play a bigger role. I mean, how many strangers pay for a woman and her kids' day at the movies, or take them water skiing? Lois Hamilton plays Vicki, a married neighbor seeking approval of her breast implants from every man in the vicinity. This could have been funny if Vicki was especially self-conscious, or had a demeanor other than friendly hottie. As the movie goes on, she's more or less a humblebragging flasher. Anyway, neither Jack nor Sandy seem too upset about not spending enough time together.

Jack spends most of his time with Scully (Rip Torn), a barkeep with a modest restaurant and plenty of time to cosplay (or is he?) as a pirate. Scully, after wasting a few minutes on speeches glorifying the sea, ends up teaching Jack to be a better sailor. Jack and Al, after both nearly choking to death on popcorn (a grim and pointless gag), face off in the regatta that that latter routinely wins. Scully and the family rises to the occasion, there's a reason why the writers gave Jack the career they did, and like Vacation, the movie ends with a montage of photos. Rental wasn't awful. But it also wasn't necessary.

"Hey! John, John, John, this is ridiculous. Really, I am obviously not of Peace Corps fiber. It's not that I can't help these people. It's just that I don't want to."

Lawrence Bourne III (Hanks), Yale '62, has a gambling debt as pronounced as his mid-Atlantic accent*. Unable to pay and wanting to stay alive, Lawrence finagles his way into the company of Peace Corps recruits including Tom Tuttle from Tacoma (Candy) and Beth Wexler (Rita Wilson). Once in Thailand, Lawrence learns he's stuck there. The trio are going to lead villagers including English-speaking At Toon (Gedde Watanabe) in building a bridge across the river. It soon turns out that everyone from seemingly altruistic and apparently nuts John Reynolds (Tim Thomerson) to local leader/motherfucker Chung Me (Ernest Harada) to the Communists have vested interests in the bridge.

*Although it pales in comparison to the real deal coming from Bourne II (George Plimpton).

Directed by Nicholas Meyer from a script by David Isaacs & Ken Levine (also best known for their TV work) and a story by Keith Critchlow, Volunteers has elements that were problematic even then. For example, Lawrence can tell At is lying to him when his eyes get round. Or how about the idea that Chung Me's bodyguards are all amorous for At? "They wanna use me like a woman." "You'll just have to show 'em you can take it like a man." Levine dislikes the moment, devised by Meyer (whom he otherwise got along with), where Lawrence and At are able to read subtitles superimposed on the screen. I understand where Levine's coming from, but like Meyer intended, I did laugh.

The subtitles and an earlier gag where Lawrence drives through a map that had been tracking his and a henchman's chase put me in a Top Secret! mindset. I'm wondering if maybe Volunteers should have been presented as more of an outright spoof than a comedy where a spoiled brat learns just enough to save the day. As it stands, Volunteers is most notable for seeing Hanks and Wilson act opposite each other (even if I couldn't quite buy her as a nice Jewish girl from Long Island). Candy, who ends up playing third fiddle to Watanabe, nevertheless contributes some occasional funny business, like Tom's unique acceptance of (and later, quick deprogramming from) the angry pink menace's cause. 

Still, though, Volunteers is a movie that takes too long to get going (they don't land in Thailand until nearly a half-hour in), doesn't have much to do when it gets there and spends the rest of the time sneering for our supposed amusement. The "Ha-Ha, Hanks" years (thank you, Fancyarcher!) had their share of turkeys. For that matter, so did the "What the Hell Do We Do With John?" years. But Volunteers sticks in my craw a bit more than Summer Rental (which was just hopeless). Volunteers had potential. Levine, quoting Billy Wilder, observed that Hollywood should really "remake okay movies and make them better." To bastardize the moment that opens Volunteers, perhaps we need to ask not what okay movies can do for us, but what we can do for okay movies.

"Time is money."

"You said opium is money."

"Money is money."

"Well, then what is time again?"

I give Summer Rental and Volunteers Not Recommended grades.

Thoughts:
-- "Oh, perfect. ... Come on through. I'm Joe Public, welcome to my beach."

-- Box Office: Grossing nearly $24.7 million on an unknown budget, Rental opened at No. 2 and came in at No. 36 for 1985. Grossing nearly $19.9 million on a $10 million budget, Volunteers opened at No. 2 and came in at No. 45 for 1985. Of the two, Rental appeared to have the sharper second-week drop, but both seemed to have left theaters by autumn.

-- Critic's Corner: "(Rental) has been shot and edited so cheaply that it appears to be the home movies of a summer vacation," according to Richard Christensen, Chicago Tribune. People, which found the regatta finale to be "murderously cinematic," suggested Rental was the first movie where someone got a Frisbee to the groin. Hanks, according to Walter Goodman, New York Times, was "stylishly droll" in Volunteers, "a center of confidence amid the frantic goings-on." Rita Kempley, Washington Post, felt Hanks and Candy's chemistry didn't carry over from Splash and that Candy was "uncomfortable in a role that seems to have been written for John Belushi."

-- Hey, It's 2020!: Seeing Lawrence smoke like a chimney and casually toss his butts in the jungle made me considerably uncomfortable. Volunteers was actually filmed in Mexico, but still.

-- Hey, It's the 1980s!: $2,000 can get you either five weeks at a low quality beach rental, a chainsaw or a boob job.

-- Fanservice Junction: Besides Hamilton in Rental, we have Jude Mussetter as Bootsy, Lawrence's fellow snob, in Volunteers. The beach setting in Rental also allows for plenty of cute extras.

-- In 1986, Candy shared some fascinating tidbits on his career to date with Gene Siskel. He had a deal to write three movies for Disney and made $350,000 for Splash. Because Candy didn't want to lower his salary, he didn't make Ghostbusters. Also of note: Candy was offered Brewster's Millions while he was undergoing treatment for his weight at the Pritikin Center; Volunteers was completed in February 1985 and Rental (which earned Candy $800,000) began production the following month. Knowing what we know now, the last quote is both heartwarming and heartbreaking: "I'm capable of doing a food fight with the best of them. But I know I can do more. And I'd like to be able to show it."

-- Great Moments in Shilling: In addition to Jennifer listening to "Axel F," all the movies at the theater where Don meets Sandy are Paramount releases. Volunteers, meanwhile, has an infamous moment where Lawrence gives Beth a Coke, something she's been missing. It was criticized as product placement (TriStar, which released Volunteers, was a subsidy of Columbia Pictures, then owned by Coca-Cola), which Levine denied (saying the scene pre-dated Volunteers being made by TriStar).

-- Awards Watch: Green, Lawrence and Rental were nominated for Young Artist awards, losing to Sydney Penny (for Pale Rider), River Phoenix (for Explorers) and The Heavenly Kid, respectively.

-- Memorable Music: The score is 37-27, with songs presumably written for movies still leading. Rental's entry is The Love Boat the ... no, it's "Turning Around" by Jimmy Buffett. Volunteers doesn't have an official entry, but I did like the use of The Marcels' cover of "Blue Moon" over clips of the Camelot era, the relentless folk singalong ("Michael Row the Boat Ashore," "Puff, the Magic Dragon" -- an anachronism -- and "If I Had a Hammer") on the flight overseas, "As Time Goes By," Washington State University's fight song (which becomes a Communist anthem) and the "Colonel Bogey March."

-- "What did I say?" "'Move this log and I'll sleep with every one of you.'"

-- Next: Year of the Dragon. On deck: Teen Wolf and Better Off Dead. Coming Soon: Compromising Positions and Crossover Dreams.