Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Michael Keaton, Gedde Watanabe, George Wendt, Mimi Rogers
Have I Seen it Before: Actually, I don’t think I have. Odd, I know. I would have thought that Clean and Sober (1988) is the only Keaton film I had managed to avoid, and that’s mainly because I had heard it was a stone-cold bummer. Maybe I’ll come around to it eventually.
Did I Like It: Right from the outset, you’re probably anticipating that I’m going to give this movie more credit than it might be worth, and you might be right. Had anybody else played the role of Hunt Stevenson, the thorough blandness of the film might have been unavoidable. The film isn’t quite funny enough for a Bill Murray. It’s also not quite edgy enough for an Eddie Murphy*. With Keaton, he’s able to be just relatable enough (while also seeming like he could become unglued at any minute) that I enjoyed the film despite itself. There’s also plenty to be said for a film that gives Gedde Watanabe the opportunity to be something more than the caricature he’s most famous for in films like Sixteen Candles (1984) and UHF (1989).
And yet, there is still that blandness at its core. It attempts to be a Capra film or a new age (which itself feels quaint), but between every technical choice throughout the film, the entire affair is so dated, one needs only look at a few scant seconds of it without any other context to guess when it was made. I would say that Howard was so committed to the ambition of proving himself as a director outside of his notoriety as a child star that he forgot to get much of a POV. I’d say that he grew out of that once people started forgetting about Opie, but even his best films betray a journeyman quality to his work.
*A quick search indicates both turned down the role.