MILES PARKS, HOST:
Some movies age like fine wine. It can be five years, 10 years, 20 years after they came out, and when you rewatch them, you appreciate them maybe even more than when you first saw them. The movie I think of is "Ocean's Eleven" for that. I mean, if I am on a flight over two hours, I am locking in, and I am robbing a casino with the boys.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "OCEAN'S ELEVEN")
GEORGE CLOONEY: (As Danny Ocean) Play long enough, you never change the stakes, the house takes you. Unless when that perfect hand comes along, you bet big, and then you take the house.
PARKS: Today in our weekly movie chat, however, we are not looking at those movies. In honor of Day 3 of those Thanksgiving leftovers staring at you in the fridge, we are taking a look at the movies that upon revisiting, they haven't stayed so fresh. And joining me to do that and to explore exactly what makes a movie expire is NPR producers Marc Rivers and Mallory Yu. Hi to you both.
MARC RIVERS, BYLINE: Hey, Miles.
MALLORY YU, BYLINE: Hey, Miles.
PARKS: So let's start with you, Mallory. Is there a movie that you watched recently that you started watching and you were just like, oh, no?
YU: Yes, actually - so I just watched this year's remake of "The Wedding Banquet," which then reminded me to go back to the original directed by Ang Lee, and it came out in 1993.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE WEDDING BANQUET")
MICHAEL GASTON: (As Justice of the Peace) Now repeat after me. I, Wei-Wei...
MAY CHIN: (As Wei-Wei) Wei-Wei.
GASTON: (As Justice of the Peace) ...Take you, Wai-Tung...
CHIN: (As Wei-Wei) Wei-Wei.
GASTON: (As Justice of the Peace) ...In sickness and in health, till death do us part.
CHIN: (As Wei-Wei) Till sickness and death.
YU: Honestly, 90% of the OG movie is lovely, an ahead-of-its-time rom-com about a gay man. But there's one pivotal scene in which the main character gets very drunk at his wedding banquet and is forced to undress and get into bed with his new fake wife. It's a long story. She pounces on him. And then the scene goes to black, and you later find out that she's pregnant. And the whole scene is sort of handwaved away, but the implications of consent and whether he was even able to consent would not fly now. So that scene was completely rewritten and redone in the remake, which made it very clear that this was something that - it was something that was already established between the two characters.
PARKS: And it's probably clear then to the people who made the remake that this - you're not alone in thinking this moment may...
YU: Oh, yeah.
RIVERS: That's implied (ph).
PARKS: ...Have aged poorly (ph). Marc, what about you?
RIVERS: Yeah. Well, speaking of weddings, I revisited recently "Rachel Getting Married." This is from director Jonathan Demme, came out in 2008. And it stars Anne Hathaway as this recovering addict who leaves rehab for the weekend to attend her sister's wedding.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "RACHEL GETTING MARRIED")
ANNE HATHAWAY: (As Kym) So I would very much like to take this opportunity to not only congratulate my extraordinary sister - the future explorer in matters of the mind, thank you very much - but also to apologize to said extraordinary sister, future explorer of matters of the mind. For what? I don't know, everything (laughter).
RIVERS: Anne Hathaway's character has this trauma in her past that is - that's affected the whole family, this tragedy that she's kind of responsible for. But that's not really what the subject of the movie is. The subject of this movie is the wedding, which is this, like, ethnic gumbo of sorts. This white family is having this Indian-style wedding, and Rachel's getting married to this Black musician. So he has all these, like, musician friends, and you're hearing, like, samba, you're hearing kind of folk, you're hearing R&B ballads (ph).
YU: It's cultural appropriation soup.
RIVERS: But at the time, I think we were all feeling, like, the Obama craze, you know, of, like, you know, this is the age of hope, and this is an age of multicultural acceptance.
PARKS: That's what I was going to say. Progress in racial (ph) democracy is here (inaudible).
YU: No.
RIVERS: Exactly. Exactly. And honestly, at that time, I was like, yes. I was feeling all this. I want to be at this wedding. And looking back at it now, you know, one, why are these white people from Stamford, Connecticut, wearing saris, you know? And as sincere as I think the kind of multicultural kind of utopia that it's presenting is, it just feels so naive and even just uncomfortable and backwards now. And so, as much as it was made with, like, good intent, it can't help but feel dated.
PARKS: Social issues are probably the most prominent example of how a movie can very quickly feel dated, but there are other ways, right?
RIVERS: Yeah, I mean, it can also come down to kind of just, like, our own kind of matters of taste or sensibilities. Like, I think these movies with, you know, these high body counts - think about a film like "The Punisher" from 2004, which is, you know, based on the comic book character.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE PUNISHER")
THOMAS JANE: (As Frank Castle) The law is inadequate. In order to shame its inadequacy, it is necessary to act outside the law.
RIVERS: In that movie, his entire family is just gunned down, you know, massacred at a family reunion. And in an age of mass shootings, we just would not do that scene again. I don't think a person could stomach a high body of kind of innocent people in a movie like that. And then sometimes it comes down to, like, creative or aesthetics that have grown dated. I'm thinking, some might say the whole shaky cam action of, like, the "Bourne" movies...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) OK. There he is.
DAVID STRATHAIRN: (As Noah Vosen) There he goes.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) There he goes. Tell grab team A, go.
STRATHAIRN: (As Noah Vosen) He's still talking to somebody.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) He's getting instructions. Jimmy, get me the conversation. Lock the box. Lock the box. Move in, grab team C.
RIVERS: ...Made popular by Paul Greengrass', "Bourne Supremacy," "Bourne Ultimatum." I think those movies are actually kind of a great example, but I think that was overdone. And now, today if you were to do that, it would kind of be like, I can't see anything. I can't focus. I'm getting queasy, you know?
YU: Right, right. I was going to say, like the shaky cam thing feels dated because it's been overdone.
RIVERS: Yeah.
YU: You know, like, I remember when things like "Hangover" or "Bridesmaids" came out, they felt really, like, fresh and surprising, like, oh, these, like, groups of people...
RIVERS: (Inaudible) yeah.
YU: ...Being bad and going through shenanigans together, right?
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BRIDESMAIDS")
MAYA RUDOLPH: (As Lillian) Hey, buddy.
KRISTEN WIIG: (As Annie) Hey.
RUDOLPH: (As Lillian) How you doing? You look like you're feeling better.
WIIG: (As Annie) I'm good. I feel - I'm so much more relaxed. Thank you, Helen. I just feel like I'm excited, and I feel relaxed. And I'm ready to party.
YU: And now they just sort of feel dated. It's like, OK, enough already. Like, can we do something new?
RIVERS: And specifically with "The Hangover" films, which I revisited recently, like, just this whole subgenre of just white men running amok, you know, and wreaking havoc...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "[TITLE]")
BRADLEY COOPER: (As Phil) Can't you see the fun part in anything?
ED HELMS: (As Stu) Yeah, we're stuck in traffic in a stolen police car with what is sure to be a missing child in the back seat. Which part of this is fun?
ZACH GALIFIANAKIS: (As Alan) I think the cop car part's pretty cool.
COOPER: (As Phil) Thank you, Alan. It is cool.
RIVERS: I think that has just gotten so tired, and it's not really very funny. You know, I think, obviously there are certain jokes that would not fly from "The Hangover" movies. But there's such a mean streak (ph) and such a kind of - there is such a lack of consequence overall for the - like, it always winds up fine. And I feel like that kind of lack of consequence is only afforded to certain races or certain genders, right?
PARKS: OK, so "Ocean's Eleven" group of dudes - good. "Hangover" group of dudes - very, very bad, basically.
RIVERS: (Laughter) You got it.
YU: (Laughter).
PARKS: OK, I'm figuring this whole thing out (ph). Are there any modern movies that you can already see, like, I don't know, five years, 10 years from now, I don't know that we're going to be talking about this one?
RIVERS: I mean, thinking of a recent movie that really struck me as far as just how kind of immediately antiquated it felt - it's a new film from Kathryn Bigelow - "House Of Dynamite." This is on Netflix, and it presents different levels of America's national security apparatus responding to an imminent nuclear threat.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE")
GABRIEL BASSO: (As Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington) If we get this wrong, none of us are going to be alive tomorrow.
RIVERS: This film presents America as, like, kind of the center of things and a potential victim, and I think it'll be more resonant today and more topical today to present America as a rogue nation, if anything. So that film, I'm not sure how that will age. But I immediately thought upon watching it, I just don't buy this.
PARKS: Mallory, anything from you, modern movies that you think just - this might not make it?
YU: "Joy Ride" from 2023 is one that sort of falls in that genre of, like, people in a strange situation acting poorly for whatever reason.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JOY RIDE")
SHERRY COLA: (As Lolo) OK, just stick your hand up there like a claw machine trying to get the stuffed bear.
STEPHANIE HSU: (As Kat) OK.
COLA: (As Lolo) Deeper.
HSU: (As Kat) OK.
COLA: (As Lolo) Higher.
HSU: (As Kat) OK.
COLA: (As Lolo, yelling) Get that bear.
HSU: (As Kat, yelling) I'm getting the bear.
YU: And while I think that there's a lot in this movie that will age well in terms of, like, the characters' journeys discovering their identities or their sexualities, there is something about the way that the movie treats sex where the comedy around sex and bodies I could see becoming dated or old or just old fashioned, like the attitudes or the responses to things. And I think that's why comedy is so hard to stay relevant or...
RIVERS: Yeah.
YU: ...Like, 100% relevant or fresh because what we find funny, those, like, beats, the kind of unspoken jokes, those are the things...
RIVERS: Who gets to be the punch line of a joke as well.
YU: Exactly. Those are the things that really change and mutate through time. So it's hard to say whether something funny is going to be funny 10 years from now, even.
RIVERS: Right.
YU: So I think maybe that's one where some attitudes will have changed.
PARKS: Right. I mean, if anything, I feel like society changes all the time, and then also we as people are changing as well. So it kind of makes sense that, you know, these movies are going to hit for a while, and then hopefully - hopefully - we do all grow out of them potentially, right?
RIVERS: With any luck, yeah.
YU: Exactly. Like, I hope "Joy Ride" feels dated because it's for Asian women being, you know, bad or whatever and we've had too many of those in the next 15 years. I would love that.
PARKS: Fingers crossed. NPR's Mallory Yu and Marc Rivers, thanks to you both.
YU: Always a pleasure.
RIVERS: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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