Matinee

Weak script but a ton of great ideas and made by someone who truly loves and understands the genre.

Fantastic slice of Americana. I love when the Orange Idiot takes to twitter and for brief moments we get to feel the terror everyone lived in constantly during the height of the Cold War.

Someone wanted to write a tribute to notoriously reliant-on-gimmicks B-filmmaker William Castle (he's made a hero), but how do you do that? You parallel his fake scares w/ real-life scares at the time. Unfortunately the real life scare is the Cuban Missile Crisis which we know will turn out as okay as the B-movie. The only time there's any suspense is when kids get locked in a shelter & it briefly seems they may be locked in. But that's resolved quickly. It's like a mediocre Wonder Years ep.

Viewed September 12, 2020.

it's like a poem i once wrote: 'the road, the sacred pavement, we are the traffic, we are... what we traffic in. and the truck stops here, it's no skin off my asphalt. it's just a line, just a yellow line. my socks are red and i'm ready to ride.'

A pleasant throwback to 50's B pictures. Was expecting a wilder satire, but it's a genuine family film proudly made by Joe Dante as his most personal project.

Loved the setting, the references, and the detail including the movie posters in the background. It wasn't advertised well on my blu-ray copy though---I thought it was a horror movie. John Goodman nailed the William Castle style showmanship. Fav scene: the shopping cart uncle.

Sullivan's Travels with an ant-man.

Crazy stuff. Entertaining.

This is also very much b-movie territory. I quite liked that its a film within a film, set in the time of the Cuban missile crisis, highlighting peoples anxiety and concern about a potentially atomic/nuclear war that could potentially have had catastrophic consequences worldwide.

Joe Dante's best film, a wonderfully rich homage to the wonder and the paranoia of the early 60s.

Matinee is a charming and affectionate tribute to B movies and the paranoias that fuelled them. Goodman is great as a minor William Castle like player who self distributes his films and orchestrates elaborate pranks on audiences with a glee that borders on sadism. Dante effectively recreates the early 60's and has a few thoughtful ideas about the relationship between horror films and war, but its impact is somewhat blunted by its overly modest ambition. Its sincerity saves it.

Absolutely kicking myself for not watching this one years ago. It's right up my alley. John Goodman was excellent and the movie was lots of fun. It's actually probably better I saw it now and can appreciate the 1950s/early 1960s monster/sci-fi movies (as I've seen many now). It's clean and takes you to that place.

Joe Dante pays loving tribute to the gimmicky creature features of the 50s and 60s while also exploring the dread of the atomic age that inspired them, all in a film that, as the title suggests, is perhaps best suited to a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Couple of smiles aside it's a family film too dull for children and too clunky with it's news=horror thing for adults.

Shines in its well shot recreation of the times but its storytelling is plain boring and insubstantial - The topics of 50's B movies and the idiotic "things to do in the event of nuclear attack" are an uneasy fit with the real world potential consequences of the Cuban Missile Crisis - some see humour, all I can see is the folly of the misguided.

Pretty good

Delightful homage to a long gone era.

A very nice movie for a weekend afternoon. The plot is just there for Dante to showcase his homage to a beloved bygone age of genre cinema. Downside is that if that homage doesn't work for you, there is little left but a standard family friendly plot, with an not very insightful parable between atomic paranoia and movie scares. But for me this love letter to cinema put a big smile on my face. Goodman is very engaging as the director, who with his use of gimmicks is based on William Castle.

Nostalgic!

Fun little coming-of-age/period piece.

79.500

A delicious, underrated comedy from a great underrated director as Joe Dante.

John Goodman shines as a William Castle like director promoting his schlocko film during the Cuban Missile crisis

Matinee estreava há 30 anos no Chile. Eu tinha esse filme no VHS da Folha, quando o vi há quase 30 anos como cinéfila neófita achei divertido, mas não grandes coisas. Passado essas décadas e um monte de Sci-fis dos anos 50 nas costas pude apreciá-lo muito mais. Blu-ray OP.

Dante's nostalgic love letter to suburban 50's, a decade of monster movies and atomic paranoia. It is a very likeable movie, with bigger than life John Goodman in the memorable starring role. One of Dante's best, in my opinion.

Though you may drift off at times, Matinee is a very creative, intelligent, spot-on homage to B-movies that is well worth your attention.

Terrific family film weaving the terror of the Cuban missile crisis into the premiere of a shlocky horror film. Goodman is great, and the whole thing glows with nostalgia.

Passes the time.

Fun family flick. Wish they would have shown more of MANT--a film so terrifying ONLY SCREAMS CAN DESCRIBE IT!

MATINEE is Joe Dante's love letter to a bygone era of showmanship, featuring a terrific performance from John Goodman as a film promoter who expertly works the levers of hype--even during an international crisis. Alas, the film focuses more on a rather conventional coming-of-age story, among many other subplots uneven in tone and quality. Yet there is no denying MATINEE's infectious passion for larger-than-life stories and the retro kitsch that Dante convincingly re-creates with reverence.

"Matinee" (1993) I recently happened upon this likable comedy directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins, Innerspace, The Howling) and set in 1961 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The young protagonist Gene, a recent resident of Key West, FL, finds himself in a small community with no friends, unhappy and forlorn. When word gets out that his Navy dad is on a ship blockading Cuba, he becomes something of a high school celebrity, who gains acceptance by a small circle of friends. Eventually he hooks up w

Fun, good hearted period comedy with plenty of John Goodman, though I wanted even more. He plays a B horror movie director/promoter in the vein of William Castle who is releasing a movie called Mant (Half-Man, Half Ant) during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The scenes we see from the actual movie are hilarious (the insecticide line had me rolling). The teenage drama aspects are ok--would have liked more of Goodman, actually, which is usually the case in just about anything he's in, but this is fun.

entertaining

Joe Dante's infusion of his own sense of humor and playfulness into an ode to cinema is in full effect in this forgetten gem. There is a lot to juggle and not all of it works, but the palpable nostalgia is wonderful. Goodman has rarely been better.