SPECIAL FRIENDSHIPS: KID SIDEKICKS DO HAVE THEIR USES
Last Action Hero met the fate it deserved. It was a stinker. Criminally so, because it was a fine idea with a perfectly cast boy but a totally botched script and non-existent direction. The movie within the movie needed to be neat and simple, allowing a realisation of the comic potential of magic boy invading and, as unintending Lord of Misrule, upending a clean and neatly scripted action world. Instead the movie within the movie was a parodic hodgepodge unto itself, one moment playing it for cheap laughs, the next trying to get us to invest. Hopeless. There was no discernible story or character arcs at work. Throwaway jokes were tossed in only to remain limply on screen as half-baked plot points. Something went seriously wrong in the making of this dud.
I suspect the problems may well have flowed from the central irreducible problem: Arnie. The big lunk can play it for laughs, sure--made a couple of fun ones with Danny DeVito--but only as a lunk. This movie called for some subtle and sophisticated comic acting from the lead. Think Bill Murray, or even, at a pinch, Tom Hanks. Actually, I'd love to have seen Clint Eastwood have a crack at this role. He had a naturally subversive undercurrent of humour in even his most gung-ho moments. At least then young Danny's adoration wouldn't have been left stranded like a tin trophy on Arnie's lacquered mantelpiece shoulders.
And, for crying out loud, you can't expect a boy actor--even one as enthusiastic and winning as Austin O'Brien--to carry a man-boy duo. The friendship remained as flat and dull as Arnie's gubernatorial career. The tragedy of all this was highlighted by the final scene of parting between Arnie and Danny. Danny saves his wounded hero by carrying him across the threshold of the movie screen, back to the safety of his celluloid home. In tears, the boy tells Arnie he can't bear to leave him, wants to stay right there with him. Arnie delivers his one convincing line when he softly but robotically says, "But I'm imaginary."
Could have built a movie round that.
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ANON Thursday, 08 July 2021
Was a physical copy of this book ever published?
Editor 09 July 2021
No, sadly not. Publication was intended and was discussed by the author with his friends, but never quite happened. Besides its intrinsic value, the posting of it here is an attempt to fulfill his wishes.
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