PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED

Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage

PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED  (1986). 

Director: Francis (Ford) Coppola. 

Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) is separated from her husband, high school sweetheart Charlie (Nicolas Cage of Ghost Rider), due to his adultery. She has mixed emotions about going to her 25-year high school reunion, but her daughter, Beth (Helen Hunt), importunes her to attend. After being crowned queen, Peggy Sue passes out and wakes up a quarter century in the past. She has an adult mind in a teenager's body! Trying to figure out if she's dead or simply going crazy, she has to determine if she wants to make the same mistakes -- such as marrying Charlie -- that she made before. 

Nicolas Cage

The basic premise of Peggy Sue, while not especially original, is compelling. Unfortunately, what the screenwriters have come up with doesn't do nearly enough with the material. Peggy Sue boasts some fine acting -- Turner and Cage are especially good if imperfect -- Jordan Cronenweth's photography is first-rate, and whenever the film seems emotionally moving it's undoubtedly due to John Barry's evocative scoring. The movie is a typical Hollywood "concept" picture which does as little with the concept as it possibly can. What could have been an especially affecting sequence when Peggy Sue goes to see her long-dead grandparents is turned into a weird bit of nonsense involving the old man's lodge brothers. (We never learn if her parents were still alive 25 years later.) It's as if the movie was merely a sequence of bits thrown together in the hopes it will turn into a cohesive whole. By the ending, nothing is really resolved. Peggy Sue is right back where she started. The whole time travel business is handled too prosaically anyway. 

Barbara Harris

A disturbing aspect of the picture is that more than once Peggy Sue mentions how much she loves and misses her two children (we only see one). This begs the question: how can she not marry Charlie when it means her beloved children (at least one of them) will no  longer exist -- but this never seems to occur to her. The superficial script doesn't wrestle with metaphysical issues in any case. So we're left with some interesting casting: Barbara Harris [Family Plot] as Peggy Sue's mother; Leon Ames and Maureen O'Sullivan as her grandparents; Barry Miller as the high school geek who makes good; John Carradine as a lodge member; and Kevin J. O'Connor [Deep Rising] as the romantic, mysterious school poet. While Barry's score adds a lot to the movie, it is not as good as his work on Somewhere in Time or Out of Africa. 

Verdict: Well-acted and reasonably entertaining, this is still a perfect example of how Hollywood can screw up fantasy-type movies. **1/4. 

OCTOPUSSY

OCTOPUSSY (1983). Director: John Glen.

Ian Fleming wrote a short story featuring James Bond for Playboy magazine and gave it the provocative title of "Octopussy." The film that emerged uses only the title and little else. The renegade Russian General Orlov (Stephen Berkoff) has a diabolical plan to cause world-wide chaos by setting off a devastating bomb at a circus in Berlin. Orlov's allies include the exiled Afghan Prince Kamal (Louis Jourdan) and the woman only known as "Octopussy" (Maud Adams), who has a bevy of beautiful gals doing her bidding in both criminal and legitimate enterprises; she is unaware of the bomb plot. Then there's her ally, Magda (Kristina Weyborn), who engages with Bond (Roger Moore) over a certain suspicious Faberge egg.  Much of the movie takes place in Delhi, where we're treated to a variety of typical Indian stereotypes and cliches. There's a suspenseful climax with the circus and the bomb, and an excellent and harrowing epilogue with Bond trying to survive on the wing of a plane. Never considered the greatest of the 007 movies, Octopussy is nevertheless a very sleek and entertaining picture, extremely colorful, and with opulent settings and interesting set-pieces. Moore is fine, Jourdan is excellent, Adams is not bad as Octopussy, and Kristina Wayborn is lovely as Magda but isn't given enough screen time to really show what she can do, acting-wise, although she's a trifle stiff in her dinner scene with Bond. Vijay Amritraj scores as Vijay, an ill-fated agent, and Kabir Bedi makes an impression as Kamal's rather striking assistant, the master assassin, Gobinda. Another assassin uses a kind of buzzsaw/yo yo as a weapon. The theme song "All Time High" [Barry/Rice] is one of the best for a Bond movie, although Rita Coolidge's voice isn't quite sexy enough to do it justice.

Verdict: This seems to get better each time you see it. ***.

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (1987). Director: John Glen.

Timothy Dalton inherited the role of James Bond from Roger Moore and made an excellent, much more realistic 007 in an outing that has little of the overly campy humor and absurd situations of Moore's films. The pre-credit sequence, in which a training exercise at Gibraltar goes horribly wrong, is outstanding. The main story has to do with the defection of General Georgi Koskov (Jeroen Krabbe), whom Bond protects from a possible sniper attack. The "sniper" is a pretty cellist named Kara (Maryam d'Abo) but Bond resists killing her when he sees what an amateur she is and suspects something's up. The two wind up teaming up as assorted factions try to kill them. The action takes Bond from Czechoslovakia to Vienna to Tangiers and finally Afghanistan where the thrilling climax takes place on a plane as Bond and the assassin Necros (Andreas Wisniewski) dangle in the air and struggle even as a bomb is ticking in the cargo bay. Dalton makes a fine, more human Bond; Krabbe is wonderful; D'abo is hardly a classic Bond sexpot but she is effective and convincing; and there are good performances from Joe Don Baker [Criminal Law] as an American arms dealer, John Rhys-Davies as General Pushkin, and Art Malick as rebel Kamran Shah. "M" and "Miss Moneypenny" have been replaced by other actors, but Desmond Llewelyn is back as the marvelous "Q." Thomas Wheatley deserves special mention for his portrayal of fellow agent, Saunders, who is a bit tight-assed but likable. John Barry's music is a plus, especially the end title song "If Someone Was You." Followed by Licence to Kill, Dalton's second and last appearance as Bond.

Verdict: Entertaining, highly credible 007 outing. ***.