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Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Filed under: Imported

"No actual mothers were harmed during the making of this motion picture"

It never fails-- when I think a quiz is easy, it isn�t, and this week�s seemed to be a stumper for almost everybody. Usually, that doesn�t bother me (much), but this time it did, because I�m a near-lifelong fan of Albert Brooks, and I think last week�s mystery movie, Mother, is his best film to date.

If you haven�t seen it, and apparently most of you haven�t, it�s possibly the best place to start with Albert�s small body of filmwork. It�s not as gimmicky as Defending Your Life, which is further spoiled by the presence of the loathsome Meryl Streep, or relentlessly neurotic as Modern Romance. His first film, Real Life, while a very clever satire of the earliest days of reality TV (some of its �predictions� for how far the genre would go are as prescient as Network was about newscasts), is now dated, and The Muse was just too slight. Mother, however, is the kind of comedy that stays with you and stays funny with repeated viewings.

Brooks� character, a science-fiction writer named John Henderson (possibly the most downscale character he�s ever written for himself), moves back into his old boyhood room in his mother�s house, in hopes of figuring out who he is and why he can�t seem to get along with women (he�s just gotten divorced for the second time). He believes that all his problems started with the first woman in his life, and most of the film is him asking his mother questions about why she screwed him up so badly.

The real key to why Mother works so well is Brooks� choice of movie moms, Debbie Reynolds. Brooks told an interviewer that after he talked with her for a short time, he hired her on the spot; when she immediately questioned his authority to do so, he knew he�d made the right choice. She handles their low-key two-person scenes flawlessly, and is actually as funny in them as Brooks himself, which is the highest of comedic praise. The ten-minute scene where the two argue their way through a grocery store is almost a perfect one-reel comedy all by itself, and there are many other equally funny moments before its unexpected Freudian ending, which-- amazingly-- actually works.

So while we have no prizes for the few winners who correctly named the movie, the best gift I can give the rest of you is to recommend this film. Watch it on a day when you�re feeling down, and the chances are good you�ll feel better after you do.

As for the winners, they deserve even more praise than usual for coming through on what was, again, a much tougher quiz than I expected. Kudos to Wayne A. Palmer (who told me so), Steven Jay Gellert (who got it right . . . this time), Hank Parmer (educated guesses count, too) and C. L. Lavorato. Nice work, guys and gal, and thanks especially for not letting this week's quiz go winner-free.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 21, 2005 6:53 PM

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