As so often happens, I've watched a light and frothy animated movie from Pixar while you were polishing up your essay on the play of light and shadow in Hiroshima, Mon Amour. But that doesn't make me a bad person, does it?The animation in this one is great, as you'd expect from Pixar, and the voices are up to the animation: Bonnie Hunt, Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Click & Clack (The Tappet Brothers), and even Paul Newman, to name a few.
The story is a variation of what I call "The Mayberry Story." You remember the one where the hotshot, shelfish businessman who's in a big hurry to get somewhere speeds through Mayberry, gets arrested, and has to spend a couple of days there? When it comes time for him to leave, he's grown to love the slow pace and simple life of the small town and to appreciate and like the people who live there. Okay, if you remember that, then you have the plot of this movie in a nutshell. Hey, it works. Toss in some funny bits, and you have a winner. Check it out after you finish the revisions on that essay.
13 comments:
Was that the Bill Bixby in the Mayberry episode?
They used that plot a number of times. Bixby might have been in one.
I'll take your expert opinion on that, Bill. But, librarian that I am, I had to look up the episode with Bixby, "Episode 47: Bailey's Bad Boy".
Perhaps the most heavy handed of these was SMALL TOWN GIRL which starred Farley Granger as a speeding playboy and Jane Powell as the Judge's daughter who falls for him while he serves 30 days in the small town jail. It's also the film where Bobby Van (I think it was) does that stupid dance where he is bouncing all over the town, just jumping up and down. TCM shows it on a semi-regular basis.
Hey, maybe there's a scholarly essay in this after all!
Was there ever really any doubt?
Worst title I can come up with.
"Rockefeller Humbled: An Analysis of Small Town Class and Social Structure as Portrayed in Film and Television"
It has the all-important colon. I think we're in business, guys. And when I say "we," I mean, not me.
Make sure there's at least a footnote referring to the Michael J. Fox movie Doc Hollywood, which also employs this plot.
Although he didn't settle down in Mayberry, this was the essential plot of the episode of Danny Thomas's Make Room For Daddy that served as the pilot for The Andy Griffith Show.
I'd forgotten that one. I'll bet they used that plot more times than I thought.
Vince, whoever writes the essay will give you credit for the footnote, I'm sure.
I saw this mute on a plane and it seemed to me to be too long and the story cliched. Sorry. I'd take Hiroshima, Mon Amour anytime. But wouldn't show that to my kids, though, so I'll probably have to check it out anyway. (My dad used to show Eisenstein's Potemkin to my kid brother and sister when they even didn't go to school! Should there've been videos, when I was a kid, he'd showed the film to me, too.)
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