Main Cast: John Goodman, Cathy Moriarty, Simon Fenton, Omri Katz, Lisa Jakub
Release Year: 1992
Country: US
Run Time: 98 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
John Goodman's full-throttle performance as a William Castle-inspired schlockmeister propels Joe Dante's delightful and charming comedy Matinee. The film takes place during the fall 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, a time when America's innocence began to crumble. Goodman plays film producer Lawrence Woolsey, who is in Key West to premiere his latest horror epic, "Mant," the story of a man who turns into a giant insect ("Half Man! ... Half Ant! ... All Terror!"). He's busy rigging the local movie theater with all manner of gimmicks, such as Atomo-Vision and Rumble-Rama, and stationing a buxom nurse -- played by Woolsey's girlfriend and leading lady Ruth (Cathy Moriarty) -- in the lobby to assist potential heart attack victims. Amidst all the hubbub, a quartet of local teenagers gear up for the big premiere: Gene (Simon Fenton), a Navy brat whose father is on alert for the duration of the crisis; Stan (Omri Katz), Gene's friend who has a furious crush on Sherry (Kellie Martin); and Sandra (Lisa Jakub), the daughter of two beatnik free-thinkers. As the premiere of "Mant" gets closer and Soviet-U.S. tensions increase, the four teenagers' problems and desires also mount to the boiling point. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Review
Joe Dante is a guy who loves his exploitation films, as anyone who has read his early writings for Famous Monsters of Filmland or Film Bulletin knows, and his 1992 feature Matinee is a delightful and heartfelt valentine to the gimmicky low-budget schlock of his youth. John Goodman, a fine comic actor who is rarely used well onscreen, is (for a change) perfectly cast as big and blustery Lawrence Woolsey, a low-rent showman who is sincere and honest about only one thing -- giving the audience what they came for. While Woolsey is obviously meant to stand in for the great gimmickmeister William Castle, at the same time he seems the embodiment of every low-budget would-be mogul who struggled to get his movies seen by popcorn-eating crowds across the nation, and Goodman's engaging performance makes even his crassest hucksterism endearing. (He also has a fine foil in Cathy Moriarty, the least convincing fake nurse in film history.) Simon Fenton is also funny and engaging as Gene Loomis, the youthful monster movie fan who gets to know the great Lawrence Woolsey as he arrives in Florida to open his latest picture, Mant! (which, starring Robert Cornthwaite, Kevin McCarthy, and William Schallert, would probably be a pretty good movie), as the Cuban Missile Crisis threatens to end the world as everyone knows it. And while Dante does pass along a semi-serious message about the importance of fun scares in a terrifying world, he seems to be having a great time invoking the "are the Fifties really over yet?" vibe of 1962, as kids listen to Lenny Bruce records on the sly, juvenile delinquents ape the method-acting angst of James Dean and Marlon Brando, and the local beatnik couple would never dare be seen in public without their copy of Jack Kerouac's Dr. Sax. Matinee manages the neat trick of being genuinely nostalgic without being sappy about it, and understanding the adolescent mind without seeming immature; it's funny, charming, and a must for anyone who loves '50s and '60s scare flicks. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Kellie Martin - Sherry; Jesse Lee - Dennis Loomis; Lucinda Jenney - Anne Loomis; James Villemaire - Harvey Starkweather; Robert Picardo - Howard, the Theater Manager; Jesse White - Mr. Spector; John Sayles - Bob; David Clennon - Jack; Lucy Butler - Rhonda; Mark McCracken - Bill/Mant; William Schallert - Doctor; Robert Cornthwaite - Scientist; Kevin McCarthy - General; Belinda Balaski - Stan's Mom; Glenda Chism - Teacher; Archie Hahn III - "Shopping Cart" Star; Luke Halpin - Man in Crowd; Danny Haneman - Man Outside Theater; Marc Macaulay - "Shopping Cart" Crook; Allison McKay - Teacher; Dick Miller - Herb; Shane Obedzinski - Bleeding Kid; Ike Pappas - Newscaster; Brett Rice - Genes Dad; Kurt Smildsin - Mob Actor; Chris Stacy - Gas Station Attendant; Naomi Watts - "Shopping Cart" Starlet; Elizabeth Dimon - Theater Cashier; Charles Haas - Mr.Elroy; Jeff Breslauer - Movie Theater Actor; Steve Zurk - Cop; Gretchen Rennell; Simone Reynolds; George Carson - Stan's Friend; Georgie Cranford - Dwight; Tracy Roberts - Screaming Woman; Jesse Zeigler - Kid in Line
Credit
Nanci B. Roberts - Art Director, Pat Kehoe - Co-producer, Isis Mussenden - Costume Designer, Donald P.H. Eaton - First Assistant Director, Joe Dante - Director, Marshall Harvey - Editor, Jerry Goldsmith - Composer (Music Score), Pat Kehoe - Production Designer, Steven G. Legler - Production Designer, John Hora - Cinematographer, Michael Finnell - Producer, Fred C. Weiler - Set Designer, Stephen Alesch - Set Designer, Warren Hamilton - Sound Editor, Jeff Smolek - Stunts, Charles Haas - Screen Story, Jack Behr - Screenwriter, Charles Haas - Screenwriter, Sandy Kroopf - Screenwriter, Ed Naha - Screenwriter, Jericho Stone - Screenwriter
Gene Loomis (Fenton) and his brother Dennis (Lee) live on a military base in Key West, Florida; their father is away onboard one of the nearby submarines. After leaving the announcement of an exclusive engagement of Lawrence Woolsey's (Goodman) Mant!, including Woolsey's appearance in-person, they arrive home to John F. Kennedy's television interruption, stating the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Woolsey finds this atmosphere of fear to be the perfect environment in which to open his film, Mant! in Atomo-Vision and Rumble-Rama.
Woolsey brings along Herb Denning (Miller) and Bob (Sayles) to stir up the yokels, but Howard, the theatre manager (Picardo), assures him that "the people of Key West are not yokels". Indeed, the progressive Jack and Rhonda (Clennon and Butler) find a strong free speech argument in allowing the film to proceed.
New to the local high school, and not getting along with the similarly-aged Andy (Nick Bronson) on the base, Gene ends up associating with Stan (Katz), and becomes infatuated with Jack and Rhonda's daughter, Sandra (Jakub), after she takes a detention for protesting the uselessness of an air raid drill and yelling the truth of the faux protection at the students in the hall. In attempting to get a date to the dance, Stan goes for Sherry (Martin), who was seeing a prisonpoet, Harvey Starkweather (Villemaire), who regularly bothers Stan about his interest in her (and hers in him).
The film is structured in halves: the first half leading up to the screening, and the second half depicting the screening and what goes on at and around it. The film also showed the differences in two young women who would eventually become the girlfriends of the two boys in the film. The girlfriend of Gene had more progressive ideas of what a woman might become, whereas the eventual girlfriend of Stan was more in line with what society at the time of the film thought a young lady should be.
The film also includes scenes from Mant! ("Half man, half ant, all terror!", the tagline parodying RoboCop's) that sharply skewer cheap '50s sci-fi and horror flicks.
Joe Dante casts character actor Dick Miller in every one of his movies, casting him here as one of the men protesting the monster movie's release. Also appearing in supporting roles are Kevin McCarthy (perhaps best remembered for the first film version of The Body Snatchers) and Robert Picardo, both of whom appear occasionally in Dante's movies. John Sayles, who collaborated with Dante on earlier movies, appears as one of the men protesting the monster movie's release.
Reception
Matinee was well received by film critics and has a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert gave the film three and half out of four stars and wrote, "There are a lot of big laughs in Matinee, and not many moments when I didn't have a wide smile on my face".[1] In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "Matinee, which devotes a lot of energy to the minor artifacts of American pop culture circa 1962, is funny and ingenious up to a point. Eventually, it becomes much too cluttered, with an oversupply of minor characters and a labored bomb-and-horror-film parallel that necessitates bringing down the movie house".[2]Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B+" rating and wrote, "In Matinee, Dante has captured the reason that Cold War trash like Mant struck such a nerve in American youth: The prospect of atomic disaster was so fanciful and abstract that it began to merge in people's imaginations with the very pop culture it had spawned. In effect, it all became one big movie. Matinee is a loving tribute to the schlock that fear created".[3]
