Hey everyone! How are your weekends going so far? Mine's been pretty good. Today I'm here to review the 1993 film Matinee, directed by Joe Dante and starring John Goodman, Cathy Moriarty, Robert Picardo, Lisa Jakub, Simon Fenton, and Kellie Martin. So let's get right into it.
Matinee isn't a movie I grew up with. In fact, until about three weeks ago I'd never heard of it before. But Cinephile Studios, a YouTube channel that I'm subscribed to did a review of it and the movie intrigued me even though I'm not a huge fan of B-movie Horror films of the 50s and 60s, which this film is a love letter to. But I am a fan of movies, and this movie is also a love letter to the history of cinema. So, as I've been doing alot since the pandemic started, I bought the movie on iTunes and added it to my movie review queue to end off the summer of 2021. Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from this 1993 movie that I'd never heard of until I watched that Cinephile Studios video on YouTube. I ended up really enjoying myself.
This isn't the greatest movie ever, but it's a fun one. It's the kind of movie that, had I known about it at the time, I would've watched on VHS in 1994 or 1995. The only other movies I've seen that Dante has directed are Small Soldiers and Looney Tunes: Back in Action though I am aware of the Gremlins movies though I haven't seen either at the time of this writing (I have Gremlins 2 on VHS). Granted I was much older when those movies came out so chances are I might not have been allowed to watch Matinee if I knew about it when it first came out. I was only six years old at the time. Oddly enough this movie came out the day I was in Los Angeles on vacation, on the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So that was a nice little tidbit that has no relevance to this review. Lol.
The cast in this movie is astonishing. One of the draws of this movie for me is the fact that John Goodman is in it. I mean he's one of those rare actors who is a pretty safe bet that any movie they're in is either going to be entertaining or at the very least they're going to be the best part of that movie. The rest of the cast is filled with performers that I'm a mixed bag on as to who I recognized, and who I didn't. The main cast I was actually pretty familiar with. Cathy Moriarty was in Casper, Lisa Jakub played Robin Williams's oldest kid, Lydia in Mrs. Doubtfire, and of course Robert Picardo is best known for playing the Emergency Medical Holographic Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager and in Star Trek: First Contact. Kellie Martin, who played Sherry in this movie, was the voice of Roxanne in A Goofy Movie. Simon Fenton, who plays the POV character, Gene Loomis, is the only main cast member I'm not familiar with. There were plenty supporting and background performers I wasn't familiar with, the exception being Dick Miller, since he's been in a few movies that I've seen, including Small Soldiers.
One of the things that I like about this movie is that it reminds us that the 60s wasn't always sunshine and roses. Especially from 1962 until 1969 with the Cuban Missile Crisis, which this movie takes place during, the JFK assassination in 1963, and the various civil rights movements that were happening in the latter half of the 1960s. And in a way it was startling to see just how similar people's lives were back then compared to now. Which is why I felt I could relate to the characters in this movie. Most of them anyway. Our lives were put on hold when COVID-19 hit in March 2020, and are still on hold in a way because the pandemic isn't over. Plus there as much social strife now as there was back then. The only real difference now is that, the United States and Russia aren't a finger away from nuking the entire world anymore. My point is this movie had some startling similarities to what's happening in the world today, though the methods are different.
There's really only one thing that I didn't like about this movie. I thought the Dick Miller and John Sayless characters were unnecessary. They're the ones trying to force people not to watch Lawrence Woolsey's movie, Mant! at the theatre. Which is fine, but they seemed to forget about it in the final act of the film. Again it's one of those things that is weirdly similar to things I see on Twitter on an almost daily basis, plus things like that were also happening in the 90s because there are also going to be people and groups of people who will try anything to convince people not to see a particular movie or TV show, or read a particular book because they themselves don't like it or it goes against their beliefs. I just felt that the movie, be it the script, or how Dante interpreted the script when he filmed it, didn't go far enough with that subplot for it to feel absolutely necessary to the rest of the film.
I'm actually surprised at how well this movie did with audiences and the critics. I mean usually films like this don't do well with critics but do extremely well with the audience, but this was a surprise to me. Mostly because it's not a movie I've heard people talk about aside from Cinephile Studios and James Rolfe from Cinemassacre (I watched his review of the film as well). My dad vaguely remembers hearing about it though he's never seen it, and my buddy Aaron saw it a long long time ago, but doesn't remember anything about it. Yet, the Cinephile Studios video is the first time I'd heard of the movie.
Matinee came out on VHS sometime in either mid-1993 or late 1993 (VHS Collector doesn't give a specific release date for the release) and I don't remember seeing it at the video store. We had moved out to the log house around the time the movie came out on home video so we weren't going to Rogers Video as often as we had when we still lived in the city, preferring to rent movies from a local gas station. So by then trips to Rogers Video were more infrequent than they had been in previous years. They still happened though since we rented the Green Ranger Saga from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on VHS AND my parents rented Alvin and the Chipmunks Go to the Movies: Batmunk on VHS as well around that same time. I just don't remember seeing this movie on the shelf.
Overall Matinee was a fun watch. It's not the greatest movie ever, but I really enjoyed watching it. I would recommend it to those of you who are fans of the history of cinema as well as B-movie Sci-Fi and Horror films. It's a fun little period piece that is under two hours in length, which is cool. The cast is great, and it gets pretty funny at moments, but also introspective as well.
And that my friends is it for me for this week. I will be back next week though with my review of issues #7-12 of The Amazing Spider-Girl. I think I'm going to review Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory for next week's movie review. So until then have a wonderful rest of your weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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