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Movies I Barely Remember And That I Really Want To See Again #2
posted Saturday, 21 January 2006
There is a great tradition in Hollywood--one that most actors find it nearly impossible to resist. From Hoffman to Hanks to Penn to Gibson to DiCaprio to Rooney to Lewis the list of famous names who have embraced this tradition goes on and on. And it is easy to see why, as it invariably leads to accolades, nominations and even awards themselves. People will inevitably describe your performance with words like 'brave', 'daring' and 'egoless' as your credibility as an artist goes through the roof.
And all you have to do is pretend to be retarded.
Finally, all those years you spent making fun of the kid with Down's Syndrome who lived down the block turns out not to have been in vain! Muss up your hair, look dazed, talk like a dummy and voila-- instant Oscar (or Emmy, if you're doing your feeb-act on television)! And the great thing is that no matter how badly you do, no one will have the guts to call you on it--because you were so goddamn noble and brave to take the part in the first place! I mean how is Dustin Hoffman's Rainman any different from the million of impressions it has inspired over the years? He got a fuckin' Oscar, baby! That's what makes it different.
This brings us to this week's entry in the House of Glib's whenever-I-feel-like-it feature, Movies I Barely Remember and That I Really Want To See Again. Like our premiere entry in this feature, Mad Bull, this week's film debuted on television--mostly, I assume, because no studio dared to release it into theaters. In it, that great teenage heart throb and future whatever-happened-to Robby Benson followed in the footsteps of fellow Tiger Beat mainstay Shaun Cassidy1 by taking the role of Noel 'Nolie' Minor, a 21 year old man with the mind of an child. The film was 1982s Two of A Kind2 and--even though I barely remember it--I will never forget it.
In the film, Benson has grown tired of being treated like a child by his over-protective mother and in his rebellion against her he is joined by an unlikely ally, his grandfather (George Burns doing a remarkable job playing a man his own age), who--would you believe it?--is also tired of being treated like a child by his children and by the people who work at the nursing home he lives at. How then are these two caged souls going to be able to find a way to set their spirits free?
Road trip!
Much amusement ensues as Nolie learns how to drive and the two of them set out on the road of life, where Nolie becomes a (still very stupid) man and--in a shocking twist ending that no one would ever see coming in a million-billion-kajillion years--his grandfather dies.
Over the years my mother has frequently told the anecdote of how I started sobbing at the beginning of this movie--during the scene that took place at Nolie's birthday party, which at that time I found heartbreaking--and asked her "If it's this sad at the beginning, what is it going to be like at the end?"3 I'm guessing that if I saw it today, that answer would be "hee-larious."
1 The Hardy Boys star having taken his turn playing a moron in the 1979 tv movie Like Normal People.
2 Not to be confused with 1983s Two of A Kind, which infamously attempted to recapture the magic of Grease by casting John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in a tale of two people caught in a battle between the forces of Heaven and Hell.
3 Aren't kids just so fucking adorable it makes you want to hurl?
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