25 Years Ago This Month: Biloxi Blues Short Cut Movie Review

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues picks up several years after his Brighton Beach Memoirs left off. Eugene Jerome (Matthew Broderick) is now finished with high school and headed for Army basic training in Biloxi, Mississippi, ahead of deployment to the War in the Pacific. His comrades in training include a muscle head and obnoxious jerk named Wykowski (Matt Mulhern); a New York intellectual, Arnold Epstein (Corey Parker); a dim-witted loud mouth, Selridge (Markus Flanagan); and a sort of nervous young soldier lacking in confidence (Casey Siemaszko).

Eugene goes through another coming-of-age tale, this time learning about the rigors of dealing with different personalities and backgrounds in a high stress environment, losing his virginity, and falling love (with the sweet and lovely Daisy, played by the equally sweet Penelope Ann Miller). Eugene, with his never-ending wisecracks, and Epstein, with his stubborn adherence to fairness, justice, and logic and refusal to go along with the army’s code of following orders, are foils for their drill instructor, Sgt. Toomey. In Christopher Walken, director Mike Nichols found the perfect actor to portray the soft-spoken, but menacing Toomey. He doesn’t get results by braying orders and insults a la Sgt Hartman in Full Metal Jacket, but by constantly undermining the appearance that humor and laughter will save these boys. His methods seem unorthodox from an outsider’s perspective, but barring a final act of madness he seems entirely reasonable as a man charged with training boys for war. I believe this was my first exposure to Walken and in a way it’s the quintessential Walken role and undertaken long before he became an object of parody and imitation.

Biloxi Blues works better as a movie than its predecessor thanks to Nichols’ direction. His vast experience in both film and stage means he’s able to make Simon’s screenplay more open while also working well with the actors to breathe fresh life into the dialogue. It never really feels like it was written with a live audience in mind.

Short Cut Movie Review: Brighton Beach Memoirs

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Neil Simon’s semi-autobiographical Brighton Beach Memoirs spoke to me in small ways as a pre-adolescent. It was hard not to identify in some small way with a Jewish kid struggling with puberty and curious about sex while dealing with a nagging mother. Okay, I was barely a Jewish kid and I’m not from Brooklyn and I didn’t grow up in a house where extended relatives lived and my older brother had to contribute his salary to support the family, but you get the point.

For the movie, Simon adapted his own play into a screenplay and Gene Saks directed (after also directing the original Broadway production). The movie hues too closely to the mannerisms of stage acting and blocking. I have to credit Saks a great deal with opening the story up and making it more cinematic than a stage play, at least enough that it’s difficult to imagine this as a play. I’ve never read nor seen the play so I can only guess that the majority of the action is set in the Jerome household. Saks takes us to the beach, a pool hall, the street, the grocer’s, a soda shop, and even the inside of an automobile.  You get a real sense for Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, as a place and not just an idyll in Simon’s head.

As Eugene Jerome, Simon’s alter-ego, Jonathan Silverman at nineteen or twenty was far too old to play the part of a nearly 15 year old boy. He gets the breaking voice down pat, however. It’s the grownups in the cast that stand out to me most now: Blythe Danner as Eugene’s mother Kate and Bob Dishy as his beleaguered father Jack are just about the most marvelous pair of actors you could ask for in these roles.

The laughs roll in quickly and it can be hard to keep up. It’s a beautiful portrait of Jewish family life in New York pre-WWII, and a lovely little coming-of-age tale, but I continually felt throughout that I could ‘see’ the theatricality of every gesture and spoken word. Simon’s dialogue doesn’t come off the page quite enough in this adaptation.

25 Years Ago This Month: December 1986

In December 1986 I was heavy into my obsession with G.I. Joe action figures and the cartoon series used to promote the Kenner line of toys, so with the approach of my ninth Christmas I was eagerly anticipating the arrival of several new figures and vehicles to complement my growing collection. As such I was hardly aware of, let alone interested in, any of the films released to cinemas that month, although three would become staple viewing on cable television during the following two years and one later became a preferred film during my young adolescence.