Bachelor Party (1984)

A MAN'S TRADITION EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

There are few movie concepts that have as much free reign for anarchy as the ‘bachelor party’ story. By contrast, bridal showers tend to be demure, reserved and elegant affairs; whereas the bachelor parties are wild and riotous shindigs, replete with insane amounts of drink, strippers, gambling and escapades with some sort of animal. In fact, two of the most successful comedies of the past 10 years have been The Hangover and The Hangover Part II, which build themselves around three guys trying to figure out happened over the course of their friends’ bachelor parties. Well, early on in the career of Tom Hanks, he was in a picture on this very subject. For love, for friendship, for donkey shows - it’s Bachelor Party.

Rick Gassko (Tom Hanks) and Debbie Thompson (Tawny Kitaen) are set to marry in just over a week. Unfortunately, her parents hate him because he’s a wildly immature party animal, with a bunch of friends just like him. To celebrate, these friends decide to throw him a bachelor party with booze and hookers in a huge hotel suite. Debbie’s father wants to stop the marriage, so he enlists Debbie’s ex, Cole (Robert Prescott), to sabotage the party and split the couple up. However, this proves especially difficult with this group.

So the story goes, the seed of the idea for Bachelor Party came from an actual bachelor party, thrown by producer Ron Moler for his friend and colleague Bob Israel. Obviously, this was attended also by Bob’s brother, Neal. From the wild shenanigans of that night came the idea to make a film that echoed the spirit of unbridled hedonism and craziness, and likely try to take the party torch from National Lampoon’s Animal House. The premise, as you would expect, is very simple: Guys throw wild party, where a series of pranks, temptations and misunderstandings occur and someone learns something. Pretty straightforward stuff. However, the very conscious attempt to make things more outrageous and hilarious often works against it, mainly because simple logic stops it from actually being funny. For example, one of the guys hires two hookers to attend the party and put on a show of sorts. However, owing to some small, but nonsensical shift, they hookers wind up at the bridal shower instead. Logic would dictate that the pair would look at the party, realise it’s a mistake and leave. However, they look at the party, full of women drinking tea and eating biscuits off of doilies, and decide that this is the place. They then strip off, plug things in and start about their business. The fact that the whole room has gone slack-jawed and silent, punctuated with the occasional appalled gasp, seems to mean nothing. This then kicks off a bizarre sequence of events that sees the girls go to a strip-club (featuring another rather unfunny moment with the bride’s mother and a waiter’s penis), and then they all decide to dress like hookers and crash the bachelor party, although they get temporarily re-routed to another slightly creepier get-together on another floor… what? How does any of this come off as funny? It all smacks of that ‘what can we throw in to make things funnier?’ kind of thinking that results in someone eating catfood from the clearly marked bowl because, you know, that’s funny… right?

There are problems with a few of the characters, too. For the most part, they’re okay, but a couple are really quite irritating. Such as Rick’s mechanic buddy Rudy, who spends most of the film screaming about women, and I mean SCREAMING! When they’re there, when they’re not there, all he does is drink beer and scream about women and laying pipe and seeing tits and getting some. Rick’s other friend Ryko, played by American Ninja's Michael Dudikoff, is dumb… and that’s it. There’s nothing else to him except to show up and say things that are pointless and none too bright. He does nothing besides that. Another of Rick’s friends, Brad, is a strangely tragic one. He’s a manic-depressive, out of his face on drugs, but utterly suicidal. He spends most of the film crying about his bitch wife and trying to kill himself. Weirdly, he actually has some moments that are funny, such as when he tries to slit his wrists with an electric razor because he couldn’t find any real ones. Rick quips, “Well, at least your wrist will be smooth and kissable.”

And that Debbie’s father wants Cole to break up her and Rick seems so bizarre, because while Rick may be zany and immature, Cole is a scumbag and borderline rapist. It hardly seems like the decision a father would make, I don’t care how much you dislike the other guy. I’d take the one who jokes around too much over the one who tries kidnap the girl after he literally tries to buy her. I know that films like these rely on the dynamic of the father preferring the rich douche instead of the poor, but lovable clown, but they’ve gone too far with it. Cole is a genuinely dangerous individual who tries to commit murder more than once, and it’s all played like he’s just a dick.

Some of the performances don’t really help, but this is mostly due to poor direction from Neal Israel. In an attempt to keep the energy high, actors will often yell or jump on each other or generally overact to the point of aneurysm. There’s nothing wrong with amping things up (it is a party after all), but it’s clearly here to cover up the fact that nothing is actually happening yet. Craziness will arrive soon, but it’s still currently a zany-free zone. And Adrian Zmed just looks incredibly smug throughout.

And there’s a further discomfort to this film that is almost identical to that of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. In both films, when a character discovers that the woman he’s just made out with is actually a man, he becomes almost hysterically disgusted, leaping into the shower to scrub his junk and brush his teeth. Later, when he finds himself handcuffed to that same person, he starts screaming bloody murder. Okay, I get this was 10 years before Ace Ventura and attitudes were less progressive. Also, no harm or malice is meant. Plus, the reality of it is that the guy feels cheated and humiliated, and reacts in a way that some would… but come on, really? Isn’t this a bit of an over-reaction? I know it’s all meant as fun and games, but I’m not sure it’s healthy to try and make fun of something purely out of sheer ignorance. A fairly simple removal of that scene would have done much to both pick up the pace of the film and spare us all an unnecessary moment of discomfort disguised as comedy.

You may think that because I’ve just spent a little over 800 words talking about the many flaws of the film that it’s not really worth your time, but that’s not quite true. There actually are some enjoyable things to be had in this film. Tom Hanks has always been a great comedy actor, and this is no exception. He’s got the lovable charm of someone who just wants to have fun, and finds great pleasure in having that fun at the expense of people who don’t like him, like Debbie’s father. The film also has a pretty good pace, so you’re unlikely to find it dragging. The party itself looks like a lot of fun, and does have an infectious atmosphere to it. And the end features a very well staged and funny scene in a 3D movie theatre, where two characters have a fistfight that exactly mirrors the one being projected behind them. Naturally, the audience think this is just great 3D. A man says to the woman next to him that the 3D effect is amazing, to which she responds that she’s seen better. That’s a weak laugh at best, but when a ducked punch cracks her right in the nose, it’s superb timing. Not only is her reaction perfect, but the fact that it comes as a surprise on the back of pretty generic joke just makes it funnier.

Bachelor Party is a sporadically funny, though often rather irritating film. It’s got some good lines, semi-decent pacing and it genuinely seems to be a party that a lot people would love to attend. However, there’s a lot that doesn’t make much sense, it shows its own ignorance on more than one occasion, and some of the characters are grating as all hell. It certainly doesn’t bear up to much scrutiny, but that was never the intention. It’s amusing enough for a night with a bunch of friends and little concentration, so approach it with the right frame of mind and you’ll enjoy.

American Ninja (1985)

THE DEADLIEST ART OF THE ORIENT IS NOW IN THE HANDS OF AN AMERICAN

Martial arts were big in the 1970s. Thanks to a major influx of kung fu movies on the grindhouse circuit, many of them courtesy of the legendary Shaw Brothers Studio, and the rise of the even more legendary Bruce Lee, the public taste for martial arts flicks was stimulated. By the time the 1980s had come along, American audiences wanted to see these skills in the hands of people they could more readily identify with onscreen. As such, there was an explosion of low-rent action films with a martial arts theme, making stars of people like Chuck Norris, Cynthia Rothrock, Loren Avedon and Billy Blanks. In 1985, there was another name added to that list. His name was Michael Dudikoff and the film was American Ninja.

Joe Armstrong (Michael Dudikoff), a reluctant private on an American army base in the Philippines, gets caught up in an attack on a military convoy by a group of rebels who are trying to steal the shipment and kidnap the base colonel’s daughter, who happens to be along for the ride. Using his apparent martial arts skills, Joe rescues Patricia (Judie Aronson), but everyone else in the platoon is killed, so his superiors turn on him. Meanwhile, those responsible for the attack want him dead and send an army of ninja after him.

Okay, it’s going to be kind of difficult to do any kind of serious review of this movie because it is so wilfully ridiculous. It’s meant to be. It was never really intended to be anything serious, rather just something that would sell tickets, popcorn and generally cash in on the American martial arts craze. As such, I’m going to resort to an occasional thing I do with bad films whereby I look at it from two different ways: Critic Hat On/Critic Hat Off… here we go.

Critic Hat On: What is going on in this film? Seriously. The conception of the film is so unbelievably hollow, it’s amazing the film doesn’t literally fall to bits in your hands. An American in the Phillipines with amnesia and exceptional martial arts skills finding himself in the US Army because of a court order? Are you kidding me? Did they throw this together in an afternoon? And why does no one know who he is? His name is on his shirt and his locker, and he would have to have gone through some degree of paperwork to get in, but no one knows his name. He’s just “the new guy.” And what is actually happening? A bad guy wants to steal a piece of military equipment, which is apparently a single rocket launcher, to sell to another bad guy. Who is this first bad guy? Where is he from? His accent would suggest French, but his name would suggest South American. The general’s daughter even refers to him as Senor Ortega. Surely it should be Monsieur Ortega. And why is he in the Phillipines? And the other bad guy, is he Italian? There’s something about him wanting supplies to fight Communists or something, but surely there are better ways of getting weapons than buying them from a crooked French/South American businessman who steals the goods from the local military base. And why does Ortega have a private army of ninja, who all wear different colour outfits like the world’s most threatening Benetton advert? Where did he meet this head ninja guy, known as Black Star Ninja because of a black star tattoo on his face? And why do the ninja all wear black when fighting the good guys, even in broad daylight? Ninja are meant to be stealthy, silent assassins, but this lot leap around the place and constantly give away their position long before attacking. And what kind of plan is this overall? If Ortega had the most senior officers on the base on his payroll, why did he have to hijack anyone? He seems to have an import/export business, so why can’t he just have stuff delivered? Seems pretty straightforward with a single truck and a bit of fudged paperwork. And pretty much everything involving the old gardener guy… what in the hell is going on here? How did he find the young baby Joe Armstrong? Why did he choose to keep him in the jungle and train him in the ways of the ninja? Since when is this guy a ninja? At one point he literally fades away because of his ninja skills. And did anyone working on this movie ever bother to find out what a ninja actually is, or was it just a case of watching another bad movie featuring them and going from there? Since when did ninjas follow the Bushido Code? All of the ninja in this film are appalling fighters, doing that ‘attack one at a time’ bit. And they constantly use the smoke pellets when it’s not necessary. And why, amongst all of his other weapons, does Black Star Ninja have a flamethrower and laser gun? That’s right, a laser gun. Why is Italian guy bothering with a rocket launcher when he could speak to Black Star and get himself a freaking laser gun?

That’s a little over 500 words worth of plot holes and half-baked ideas, and I haven’t even touched on the love interest, the best friend, the corrupt sergeant, the colonel, the rebels… Christ, this is weak.

Critic Hat Off: Who cares about the story? It’s really only there as an excuse for the action sequences. If you’re watching this movie for a good story, then it’s your fault you’re not enjoying it. America Ninja makes no claims at being good, just at being action-packed. There’s fist fights, gun fights, car chases and explosions. And besides, is it so hard to swallow the American soldier with amnesia and exceptional martial arts skills? You liked the Bourne films, and that’s not exactly as dissimilar a starting concept to this, is it?

Critic Hat On: The producers wanted their lead to have a kind of James Dean quality because… I don’t know why. So they cast Michael Dudikoff as their American Ninja, despite the fact that Dudikoff had absolutely no martial arts training or knowledge. I’ll say that again. At the time of making American Ninja, the guy playing the title role knew no martial arts whatsoever. Dudikoff doesn’t so much fight as throw poses in the hope that it looks good onscreen. When he’s required to actually act, he’s quite bad. Not the worst thing ever, but still not great. Frankly, no one’s particularly good in this. Most of them are really unconvincing, like Guich Koock’s Colonel Hickock (emote, for God's sake), which actually makes Dudikoff look better by comparison, but he’s still bad.

Critic Hat Off: One thing I will say for Dudikoff is that he really does go for it. You can see he’s trying to be good, and he literally throws himself into the action scenes, even if it’s not really necessary. This certainly goes towards our being able to take him a bit more seriously as a fighting machine. Also, he runs and jumps around with such readiness and skill, that I’m sure there’s a case to be made that Michael Dudikoff was a major figure in the development of parkour. Also, you can see a bit of a James Dean quality in Dudikoff… not in the acting department, just the looks, but still. And, come on, Steven James was awesome.

Critic Hat On: According to the IMDb’s trivia page on American Ninja, director Sam Firstenberg said that he loves this film because it has “a special quality of innocence, true friendship, love and youthful idealism”… what utter horseshit. What kind of a short-sighted idiot thinks that American Ninja has anything even remotely close to any of these themes in there? Why can’t he just admit the truth about the film? I’d at least respect him a bit more if he did. And the editing, good lord… The editing is so choppy, the action sequences so badly done that, in the beginning, you’d be sure that no one has actually thrown a single punch. It’s all close ups of fists and feet and then people falling over. They can’t even keep track of what foot is delivering the kick. At one point, Dudikoff kicks with his left foot and the following shot shows his victim falling away from his right foot. And the fact that there’s a flubbed line still in the film (“I will honour the… code, father.”) is just incompetence. And half of the vehicles seem to be made of nitro glycerin, since they explode on the slightest impact. If you’re going to blow up the car, at least make me think the crash was bad enough that a fire is a possibility. Also, the music seems to have been taken from one of the weaker episodes of The A-Team or Magnum P.I.. And don’t get me started on problems of simple logic between scenes.

Critic Hat Off: … no, no excuses. It’s incredibly piss poor work, even by crap 80s movie standards, and the director’s clearly delusional, but you’re still taking it far too seriously. Just enjoy the nonsense, you ass.

As you can see, I jumped around on this one a lot. American Ninja is bad. Really bad. It’s more hole than plot, the direction is terrible, the action sequences are a mess, the acting is woeful and it seems to have absolutely no conception as to what a ninja really is. However, picking on such things is really taking the film in the wrong spirit. It exists as something to be laughed at and enjoyed as “so bad, it’s good”. The proverbial perfect guilty pleasure. Personally, I can think of other films that do this better, but that’s neither here nor there. So long as you watch this with your brain switched off (or missing), you’ll likely enjoy this.