Matinee

I remember seeing the previews for Matinee and being interested. From the guy who made Gremlins? Starring John Goodman? It's about B-level monster movies? Sign me up! And yet, I never saw it at the time, and I don't know why. I was 16, and while I could choose to rent a movie, most of the movies that got rented were picked by my parents. Somehow, this one just slid off my radar, and I forgot it existed. And then last year, I remembered it out of the blue. 30 years later, I finally got to rectify the omission. And I'm glad I did. Summarizing Matinee is a bit tricky, because it has a LOT going on: junior high-level romance, the Cuban Missile Crisis (and the movie taking place in Florida, so it's an event that's happening in the characters' backyard), new friendships, juvenile delinquents, and at the center of it all, a preview screening of a new creature feature. It's a busy movie. Goodman plays the director behind the movie, Lawrence Woolsey, a director of B-movie schlock, albeit one who views and markets himself as some kind of Hitchcock-level auteur, when in reality he's more of a carnival sideshow huckster. Director Joe Dante knows a thing or two about balancing tones in weird ways. One need no look further than Gremlins, which successfully moves between slapstick comedy, heartwarming family moments, creature horror, and Christmas. Matinee isn't going for as many tones as Gremlins -- it is, mostly, a pretty upbeat movie -- but it handles most of it well. Even though the poster would have you believe the movie's main story is Woolsey's test screening of his new movie ("Mant!") in the hopes of getting a studio deal out of it, it's really more the axis around which the other events orbit. It exists as a unifying element to bring together one young teen romance that neither saw coming, another that becomes a triangle with the return of a delinquent ex-boyfriend, the fear of nuclear annihilation, and the main character's dad being on the front lines of the crisis. It doesn't always spin all the plates at the speeds they need to go, and some of the story beats either get by or conclude on some convenience and contrivance, but I found myself not really caring. Because Matinee was, as the kids say, a whole-ass mood for me. It was whimsical without being precious, charming without being cloying, and sweet without being saccharine. Even if everything didn't feel 100% real -- the love triangle gets somewhat cartoonish -- it feels 100% genuine, if that makes sense. Matinee is a slightly heighted reality, the volume turned up just a little bit, and it swept me away. I loved the innocence of the teen romances. I loved little moments like the main character showing his new friend all the military deployments being made on the beach just in case (long-range missile launches, sandbag walls, etc.), as if this was perfectly normal scenery, or the moment when two of the kids are stuck in a fallout shelter together and they think the bomb has dropped and they're the last hope for humanity. And then there's Goodman and Cathy Moriarty as Woolsey's exhausted and annoyed girlfriend and actress in his movies. Their relationship, and the tricks Woolsey plans for the movie (rumbling seats, a live actor dressed as an ant that takes cues from the movie's dialogue, and a meta final act that is, to say the least, daring) are a delight to watch. As much as Dante shows a love for the idea of Americana and young love, his homage to old, cheesy monster movies and the tricks they'd use to get people in the theaters (ATOM-O-VISION! RUMBLE-RAMA!) is magical. Audiences now would never get pulled in by such stunts, but back then, it could be a selling point, and Dante clearly loved them and wanted to celebrate them. It's that reverence and authentic charm that made me love Matinee. It may run a touch too long, it may have some rather sudden and cliched endings for some of the many subplots, and it may have a couple too many subplots, but dammit, the atmosphere and charm of this movie won me over. I felt good after watching it, and I could feel that Dante, Goodman, Moriarty, and the rest had a good time making it. Minor missteps be damned, all that counts for something.