Footloose -- 1984 -- PG

This film with Kevin Bacon has a far better soundtrack than storyline, though its simplistic story has some measure of uniqueness to it. It follows a boy from the city who is used to all the debauchery of the big city moving to a small town still reeling from a five year old event and all the laws passed to prevent it from recurring. The trouble is this event (involving the deaths of several teens) resulted in the outlawing of rock music and dancing, elements they believe lead to the activites that led to these deaths.

It becomes a face-off between the kid, who ends up representing the teens of the city, and the town's preacher, who represents the adults. Each side has their extremes and these are played out pretty well with some of the adults actually burning books and some of the kids openly condemning the boy's efforts.

One of the issues this film has is in its development. The kids are developed ok, and its possible a lot of this has to do with the amateurish acting by its young leads. They all act like sterotypical teens out to buck the system. This hardly creates an interesting or even sympathetic character. The show is regularly stolen by the preacher and his wife, who being played by actors of greater experience, put forth more depth than the script ever hoped to portray making their scenes far more interesting than the main storyline. in fact, they'd stolen the show so well that near the end, you could follow the preacher's dilemma even better than the kids and even felt for him more. The film even seemed to shift in his favor. This aspect is only a weakness in that the film was supposed to be about the teenagers.

The other part of this film that weakened it is its exceptional soundtrack. A lot of time was devoted on screen to its custom-written songs. So much so that it often detracted from the story so that the songs could complete.One of the special features touted that the songs tell a story. I'm sure they do, but it would be better if they told the story that was going on on screen. Unless Kevin Bacon and his conry he was teaching to dance were in a solid boy on boy relationship, "Let's Hear It For The Boy" is not the most appropriate song to accompany them.

"Holding Out For A Hero" was played under a tractor race, of all things, and I think I can understand this one a little bit, but this is how misplaced it was. The tractor race was about Bacon's character versus the teen town bigshot. They were playing chicken on tractors. Who would be "singing" this song? Why the girl, of course. She was in a relationship with bigshot, but plotwise, she would inevitably go for the new kid. Hence, she needed a "hero." Got that. But the scene is not about her, and she received very little screentime during it.

So, the film wasn't a bad thing, but it made some errors for the sake of vanity that didn't help it.

Some Like It Hot -- 1959

I'd heard a lot about this film before I ever saw it which is what enticed me to finally get ahold of it. I'd heard it was funny, and I'd even heard some of the jokes, but this is no way spoiled any of my enjoyment for this absolute classic of cinema.

The story in a nutshell involves two musicians who narrowly escape a raid on a speakeasy in 1929, and while trying to find work, they witness a mob hit and the mobsters witness them witnessing the hit. With a contract on their heads, these two get themselves into an all girl band on an all expenses paid trip to Florida to escape the people who want them dead.

Dressed up like women, one of them gets more attention than he wants from a wealthy guy who's been married "6 or 7 times," while the other is falling for another member of the band. These situations as well as their attempting to keep their identities secret capitalizes on the comedic potential and makes for a very funny movie.

The plot moves pretty well throughout without any noticable slow downs and only a very slight contrivance near the end. The characters are as well rounded as could be expected for a movie of this genre, but the main thing is that it was fun to watch.

This is a very well put together film and puts a lot of the modern hack jobs and comedies to shame.

A Prairie Home Companion -- 2006 -- PG-13

This is an interesting offering for someone of the post-radio generation who can't fully relate to the very concept this movie represents. Sure, we all have radios in our cars, but to have an entire hour and a half radio show where the songs aren't prerecorded and the commercials aren't either? That's different for us, but was once as normal as live news broadcasts (via satellite from Iraq) are today.

The Prairie Home Companion follows the cast of this radio show during their final broadcast performance. The station that broadcasts it sold out to a modern company who wants to axe the show after this final night where a live audience watches the show as it broadcasts its acts, commercials, and songs live from the decorated stage. We are introduced to each of the characters who perform onstage and backstage, and how they really feel about this final show. Some are distraught and don't know what to know, while the leader seems oddly detached from the proceedings. There is no plot threading through this beyond getting to know these people as their life as they know it comes to an end when the curtain comes down. It's sad in many ways because we are told of the inevitable before it begins, but its enjoyable to watch them put it all behind them for one final evening of performances only to rejoin the real world offstage.

But we're not without a really weird and pointless flaw (in my opinion, anyway). We're introduced at the beginning to a woman dressed in a white trenchcoat, and we wonder who she is and what she wants. Well, her true purpose blows the whole realism of the story. Her presence isn't even touching. Her backstory is all right, but the whole story could have gone without her and  have been far better for the deletion.

This is material based apparently on a play and it really feels like it due to its single set feel throughout. It's nice to see the sheer numbers running around trying to make it all work, the characters are nice, and some of the jokes are quite funny (particularly the final set told by Dusty and Lefty), but it teeters on the edge of being slow. Could be our viewpoint of modern movies and their high action as opposed to the old school films of lots of chatter and character building, but I've seen better paced movies with less action.

So overall, it's not a bad film. The character are nice, and the story makes sense. The ending was a bit cheesy and ambiguous, but barring the "dangerous woman" it was pretty good.