Don't Tell Her It's Me (The Boyfriend School) -- 1990 -- PG-13

The Queen had me on a Shelley Long marathon with this one and Hello Again. Shelley takes more of a back seat to Steve Guttenberg here, and he plays her overweight, bald brother (having just undergone "radiation treatment") who transforms himself into a suave hunk on a motorcycle with long flowing hair that the girl totally falls for.

Long plays a romance writer who uses her writer creativity to setup her brother with the girl he loves. So her brother plays along but gets second thoughts along the way since he feels like he's deceiving the girl and no good will come of it. This being a typical RomCom, this revelation comes about right on schedule at the third act break.

Like Hello Again, not much to complain about. It's a firm story with some good characters, and a happy ending. Makes for a easy evening of movie watching.

Goodfellas -- 1990 -- R

Ah, the inspiration for Animaniacs "Goodfeathers." I laughed at several points during this film for that reason alone, but I digress.

I'm not sure to what to make of this one. We're mostly cheering for the bad guys -- our hero being a boy who grew up wanting to be a gangster and dragging his family into the business with him. It runs like a series of tableaus of his life starting from when he was young and moving through his life until the end of his relationship with the wiseguys. One the one hand, we have great character development, and know very well who is who and why they act the way they do. That being said, on the flip side, the voiceover does 90f the explanation of why stuff happens. Maybe that's my beef. As soon as we get into the film, the voiceover reminds us that we're watching one.

It does give us some solid characters that we do feel for on some level, and it does give us the life of Henry and his family to follow as he winds through his trials and pitfalls working for Paulie and the rest of the crew. Through the latter part, it just becomes him working to support his family, and at some points it is very touching.

I do have some difficulty feeling very sympathetic for him or anyone else though. Business aside, he places the business before his family at many points and even has a few girls on the side that he supports as well.

It ends well enough for how it ran, and it does make sense. I understood this to be a contrapunctual film to the romantic mafia The Godfather presents. This one is more of a gritty, down to earth kind of film that says "this is how it is; deal with it." On that level, it works well.

The Gate II: Trespassers -- 1990 -- PG-13

So I opted to suffer through the sequel to a film I didn't think was very good to begin with. How's that for dedication? What I found was a film that actually measured up to itself pretty decently, and was actually crafted quite a bit better than the first one if you can get past some rather sloppy contrivances.

Terry, from the first film, is having some problems at home with his father in a slump of a depression and needing work something awful. To help his father, Terry decides to do the remarkably intelligent thing of going to Glen's house which (like all good former horror movie house) still stands in pieces where it left off at the end of The Gate in exactly the same state, but fenced in. I guess the city couldn't bring itself to tear the place down? There's your sloppy contrivance, nevermind the idea of someone who was practically killed the first time around willingly summoning something out of The Gate.

Anyway, he is discovered during his chanting by a group of rowdy teens who make fun of what he's doing before joining in with the summoning for some reason. What they get is one of those little demons and use it like a genie out of a lamp to fulfill wishes...and wishes it does fulfill, but with a bit of a humorous price.

What this one does that the original fails to do is keep the pace up enough to maintain interest in this mess. The original was slow, and made you wonder if anything was ever going to happen. This one starts right off with stuff going on and keep us moving through the questionable plot right through to its weird and somewhat unbelievable (and I don't mean that in a good way) conclusion.

Another thing this film does right is try to paint us some actual characters. Since body count is not the goal here, it works to create some characters who feel real enough and have a consistent personality throughout the duration of the film. You want Terry to succeed in fixing the mess he created even if you think he's dumb for making the problem to begin with. Even the little demon critter is given a bit of a personality, and I admit to even feeling a bit sorry for it in the midst of its treatment from our human characters.

But, ending = corny. Quite ridiculous there.

So it's a sequel in the classic sense of not being as believable as the original, but at the same time, doesn't make the same mistakes as the original...no, it makes all new mistakes. I guess no one's perfect, huh?