Moondogging
Moondogging
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco [Video Troll]
Published in: The Manila Times, October 19, 1987
LOVE is blind, and unfortunately, so are a good number of professional video advisers. To make matters worse, possibly no other genre is as strewn with rubbish as the Contemporary Romance, and good romantic yarns on video cassette are as difficult to come by these days as their counterparts in real life. Here are some of the more recent titles making the rounds at Betamax rental outlets:
HAREM - A lady stockbroker on the emotional rebound is drugged and abducted on a New York harbor ferry while enroute to the Statue of Liberty. She awakens to find herself hoisted on the strong arms of an obese black eunuch, in a harem on some uncharted dune in the Middle East. This may be a bit too much for us to endure at this point, except that the shanghaied brokerage beauty happens to be Nastassja Kinski, who is far too alluring in the buff for us to care either way. The obligatory shiek arrives in the person of Ben Kingsley, and we wonder how he'll manage reconciling Gandhi with the canopied nuptial bed. Believe me, seeing these two wiggle out of this one is worth the price of admission.
THE ROSE CAFE - You'd think that with the proliferation of soap, the dimestore romance would have grown up enough in recent years to transcend inexcusably-cockeyed junk like this. An accomplished lady-chef makes good on her dream to have the best little restaurant in Montreal, banking on some financial assistance from a fiancee virtually devoid of goodness. With an altar date fast approaching, and her posh eatery in dire straits, who should appear on her doorstep in the nick of time but an old high school flame literally oozing with charm, nauseating benevolence and hard-earned dough? The cast alone (Parker Stevenson, Linda Smith and Damir Andrei) should give you some inkling of the torment that lies in wait.
INFIDELITY - What a shame that this potential epic romance flattened out in the baking! Lee Horsley's Nicky and Kirstie Alley's Elliot are an engaging enough couple — a baritone-belching commercial photographer and a lady-Albert-Schwitzier who meet in the heart of Africa and carry on as husband and wife in an otherwise lackluster tale that weaves through the Himalayas, the good ol' USA, the French Riviera, and back into the wilds. Much of the blame should go to a script as staggeringly inept as it is incredibly hollow. Lines like "I stopped being your wife when you s----d my best friend," or "I'm still in love with Elliot but you make it hard to say no, Robin," make one shiver and gag in turn. And such a grandiose title for such a tiny indiscretion, muddled by 90 minutes of keystone-cop endearment.
LETTER TO BREZHNEV - Probably the only interesting aspect about this English romance-cum-political-satire is that it was so phenomenally successful with English audiences of its time. The film is completely nonsensical from where we stand. Its professed aspirations to the humorous and the poignant left me cold, attesting to the very vastness of the cultural chasm that its storyline seeks to disprove. A self-effacing cockney lass and a sweet-talking Russian sailor on shore leave meet by chance in a Liverpool discotheque, eventually throwing east-west protocol and all caution to the wind in an evening of forbidden love. Not nearly content with the sailor's promise that he will return to her someday, our chubby Liverpoodlian Miss writes posthaste to the Soviet premiere at the Kremlin, sparking an international controversy that finds her switching citizenships. Absolute poppycock starring Peter Firth and a sadly miscast Alexandra Pigg.
HANNAH & HER SISTERS - (Also known in tape shops as "Sisters 3") This Woody Allen hit-comedy has a package deal for moondoggers that's much too difficult to resist: a great many cross-referenced romantic liasons in one not-so-dormant tape. For openers, there's Michael Caine and Mia Farrow, Michael Caine and Barbara Hershey, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey and Max Von Sydow, Woody Allen and Carrie Fisher, etc. Allen, once married to Farrow, marries Fisher, who's Farrow's sister. Caine, now married to Farrow, strikes up a secret romance with Hershey, who's Farrow's kid sister and Von Sydow's wife besides. Despite a decidedly incestuous storyline, or perhaps even because of it, this rollicking and delightfully-wicked tale will have you wishing you were short and Jewish. Shalom!
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Moondogging” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, October 19, 1987
