Summerfest '08, as you know, is our feature here at the Screengrab wherein we suggest a way for you to kill two hours while waiting for your grill to heat up. Every movie we profile on Wednesdays from now until Labor Day comes with our personal guarantee: these movies may not be essential hot-weather viewing. They may not even be good. But we can assure you with complete confidence that they will have the word 'summer' in the title. This week, we'll be taking a break from our previous diet of decades-old footage of people wearing skimpy beachwear and turning to a more recent effort by the director whose name is virtually synonymous with good-time party movies: Spike Lee. Responding to the demands of filmgoers, critics, and studio executives who wanted to know when he was going to produce a summer blockbuster, Lee, over the 4th of July weekend in 1999, brought us a bright, cheery feel-good movie about a fat psychotic whose neighbor's demonically possessed dog ordered him to murder couples in cars.
Strap it down and get ready for some hot fun in the summertime with Spike Lee's Summer of Sam!
THE ACTION: Boyhood chums Vinnie (John Leguizamo, in a stunning 1970s-style performance that recalls the glory days when all our favorite actors were zapped out of their craniums on cocaine) and Richie (Adrien Brody, wearing the world's least-convincing liberty spikes) are reunited after a long separation. But things are no longer the same between them; Vinnie has picked up the habit of sodomizing his wife (the much-abused Mira Sorvino) in the kind of discotheques Kurt Anderson once described as "fun that isn't", and Richie has become some kind of crazy bisexual punk rocker or something, of the sort once seen on an episode of Quincy. The suspicious behavior of Richie -- dressing all funny, listening to the Who, dancing with his shirt off, and expressing sympathy for the Boston Red Sox -- immediately triggers in his goombah-heavy neighbors the urge to reenact a pasta dinner theater version of the Salem Witch Trials to determine if he is the infamous Son of Sam murderer.
THE PLAYERS: Spike Lee directed this one, apparently in an attempt to prove that he was physically capable of making a movie about white people, albeit coked-up, rough-tradey, and serial-killerish white people. He even has some laughs with this conceit, appearing in the movie as a TV reporter who gets chastised by black residents of Brooklyn for never paying any attention to them. The screenplay -- co-written by Sopranos fixture Michael Imperioli -- gives some awfully hokey dialogue and characterization to Adrien Brody, who is to punk rockers what Maynard G. Krebs was to beatniks, and the rest of the cast, all of whom are quite accomplished actors, are still saddled with being heavily unlikable. It doesn't say much for the people we're supposed to be empathizing with that at the end of the movie, the person we feel sorriest for is that sick fuck David Berkowitz.
SUMMER FUN: Summer of Sam is heavy on the summer and light on the fun. Vinnie tries to have fun, but blowing coke through his every orifice and forcing his wife into omnisexual threesomes proves to be a lot more taxing than he anticipated. Richie seems to be having fun converting the neighborhood strawberry into a Kmart version of Nancy Spungeon, but his bogus English accent, bizarre hustler scenes, and uncanny ability to evoke a time traveler from 1987 Los Angeles is no fun for the rest of us. Even the witch hunt is really a lot more depressing than it is entertaining, though Lee does get plenty of comic mileage out of a scene where the locals consider the possibility that Reggie Jackson is in fact the Son of Sam, and debate whether or not they should turn him in, given that they're going to need him for the World Series. Once again, Berkowitz seems to have more joie de vivre than anyone else on screen.
HAWAIIAN SHIRTS: A few of the the local Italian-Americans embrace the way of the Hawaiian shirt, and you get the sneaking suspicion that Detective Lou Petrocelli, portrayed with gusto by Anthony La Paglia, has at least a few of these coconutty numbers in his wardrobe for the Fraternal Order of Police barbeques. But mostly, it's hideously overdone polyester suits, second-hand wifebeaters, and whatever Rip Taylor version of punk fashion that Adrien Brody is rocking that stands out here. The lesson of this highly meaningful movie -- other than that Spike Lee's powerful visual sensibilities as a director can overcome any number of deficiencies at the script level -- is that having some nut running around pounding peoples' skulls open with a .44 can really throw cold water on your summer fun.
BIKINI PARTY TIME: Everyone seems to be having sex in this movie -- hell, the robust lustiness with which an uncredited John Turturro imbues the talking dog that tells David Berkowitz to kill people implies that even he's getting some -- but hardly anyone seems to be enjoying it. It's a highly Catholic movie where having too much of a good time gets you stuck with an angry spouse who wants to divorce you, an angry mob who wants to lynch you, or an angry lunatic who wants to shoot you in the face. Although there's lots of pretty women in the movie (including Sorvino, Bebe Neuwirth, and Jennifer Esposito), all of them end up crying, and none of them wear a bikini. All that said, it's a damn good movie despite its reputation as a lesser Spike Lee effort, and it has one of the highest occurences of the word "fuck" of any movie ever made. Which, if you've had some of the same kind of summers that we've had, is perfectly appropriate.