The "Blame" Game

 

 

 

 

This is my entry in the Luso World Cinema Blogathon hosted by Crítica Retrô and Spellbound with Beth Ann.

 

 

 

Earlier this month I had a celebration of the drive-in movie. During my altogether too brief experience of actually getting to go to drive-ins (they disappeared, at least in Texas, beginning about the late 80's to early 90's), I got to see some movies that usually never made it to the local multiplex. One of those was Blame It On Rio. Why didn't it get a spot at the indoor theater? I'm not sure. But a check of the movies that were playing at the time include Footloose, Yentl (with Barbara Streisand), Terms of Endearment and Two of a Kind (with John Travolta). I guess teen movies and movies starring Streisand or Travolta probably trumped any movie that had a "yesterday's news" star like Michael Caine.

Then again, maybe it was not meant to play at family theaters anyway... Read on.

In the category of "ooooh... what he said...":  Roger Ebert gave this film only one star, and said that it was a film "clearly intended to appeal to the prurient interests of dirty old men of all ages." At age 22 when this movie came out, I was still a young man, maybe with the makings of a future dirty old man, but definitely not at an age where this kind of movie would have seemed inappropriate to me. 

What a difference getting older makes. Admittedly I never married or fathered any daughters, so I can't connect with either of the older men in this film, Michael Caine and Joseph Bologna, but still, the film comes off just a bit too risque in it's concept. 

What we have at the outset is the last film by a great director, Stanley Donen. The man who brought the public such classics as Royal Wedding, Singin' in the Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Grass is Greener and Charade, all of which you could watch with the kids, must've gone through some kind of mid-life crisis along about the time he turned 50. 

Of the last movies he made, this one really seemed to scrape the bottom of the barrel. The film has problems on more levels than one. Aside from the fact that the main attraction is a middle-aged man having some sort of an affair with the underage daughter of his business partner, the actress playing her is also underage. She was only 17 at the time of the filming. Which means that the topless scenes have basically the tinges of being child pornography. (Her co-star, Demi Moore, was 19 or 20, so she gets a pass, even if she is playing a girl the same age as Johnson's character...)

The music (which is great by the way) and the scenery of Rio are the better parts of the film, but the plot is something straight out of a middle-age fantasy.  

 

 

Blame it On Rio (1984): 

Pre-review note: Blame it on Rio was actually based on a French film from 1977, Un moment d'égarement. I have no idea what that film entails. The French version was remade in 2015 as One Wild Moment. So don't blame it on Rio... blame it on France.

The set up of this movie is that two older men are going through what we would call a "mid-life crisis". Victor  (Joseph Bologna) has just gotten divorced from his wife. He and his friend, Matthew (Michael Caine) are going to go to Rio de Janeiro for a vacation. 

 

Victor is taking his daughter, Jennifer (Michelle Johnson). Matthew is supposed to be going with his wife, Karen (Valerie Harper) and his daughter, Nikki (Demi Moore), but his wife decides she is going to go somewhere else, alone. She is apparently having her own mid-life crisis.

 

That leaves the two men and their daughters on the Rio vacation. Rio is one of those places where it's legal for the women as well as the men to go topless on the beach. Which is OK with the older men. At least until they see their daughters trying to blend in with the crowd.  

 

Jennifer has long had a crush on her "Uncle" Matthew. (He's not really her uncle, BTW. That would make this plot even more cringe-y, if that were the case). When Matthew leaves Victor in a bar where Victor is trying to hook up with a bar patron, he follows the two girls to a wedding party. They are just wedding crashers since they don't know any of the participants. Eventually Matthew and Jennifer end up on an isolated portion of the beach where Jennifer reveals her attraction to Matthew and the two do what comes naturally.

 

Matthew, for his part, does feel some guilt over his encounter, but Jennifer is basically of the mind to continue their illicit affair. Nikki knows about what is going on and even though she professes that she will keep the affair a secret, she isn't exactly happy with it. But as she tells Jennifer, she is not mad at Jennifer; she is mad at her father.

 

When Jennifer tells her dad about having a sexual encounter. she only reveals that the partner was an older married man, not that it was Matthew. This leads to some fairly comic interludes as the angry dad tries to figure out who the guy was. And there are the several instances where he starts fights with other men that he is convinced is the one who violated his daughter.

 

Eventually Nikki's disgust with her father causes her to call her mother who shows up and other secrets get revealed, specifically an extramarital affair that Karen has been having without Matthew's knowledge.

 

OK, I have to be honest. If this was an 18 or 19 year old girl hooking up with a 43 year old (or even older) man, I'd probably have no problem with it. Change just the age to a legal age and  it changes the dynamic for me. So does that mean I'm at heart a dirty old man? Maybe, but I don't think so. After all, the concept has been filmed that way several times with older characters. Take, for instance, Sabrina, with Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn or Charade, with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Both involve romances between two characters with a significant age gap, and both were tastefully approached.

Think of all the June-December romances in today's age. Al Pacino, Patrick Stewart, Dennis Quaid and even Dick Van Dyke have had relations with women young enough to be their daughters or even grand-daughters. (Of course, they're all rich... but surely there's something more than just money involved there...)  

Michelle Johnson, the female star here, was once considered a rising new star. Quick. Name one other movie she was in. Bet you can't. She had a minor role in Gung Ho, but that's the only other movie I ever saw her in. Her biggest claim to fame was she came in as an also ran for a Razzie for Worst New Star (she lost to Olivia D'Abo).  She only has 42 credits to her name on IMDb.

The shame of this film belongs to director Donen, but also to Michael Caine. Most of the other actors were probably just looking for a paycheck, but Caine must have been really hard up to agree to this role. Considering that the same year he also did Educating Rita, for which he garnered BAFTA and Oscar nominations, and winning the BAFTA, its not like the roles had dried up completely. But then, during the 80's his successes were hit or miss. He also did Dressed to Kill, The Island and Jaws: The Revenge during that decade, all three getting him Razzie nominations. 

Rotten Tomatoes only gives this movie a 11% rating. As stated earlier in this review it did not get very many good reviews by the critics. Aside from a few lines from Caine, this movie doesn't even float as a comedy. (I have to admit that I got a laugh from an early scene where a "talking head scene" occurs as Caine is talking to the audience): 

"One time, the company I work for transferred me to an island in the Pacific. Fantastic place. I invited my girl to visit me. I sent her a postcard every day with a single word on each card. I wrote... 'Found a virgin paradise... it's yours-Matthew.' Naturally, they were delivered in the wrong order. The message she got was... 'Found a virgin. It's paradise. Yours, Matthew.' I never heard from her again."

To be honest, that's really the only part of the movie I found funny.

Unless you qualify as a "dirty old man" (and why would you even admit it?), I don't recommend this film. Go watch Sabrina instead. Even the Harrison Ford - Julia Ormand remake from 1995 is much better.

Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy