'Blonde' misuses acting; 'Hocus 2' recaptures original

Bewitching ladies in blasts from the past dominated this past week's streaming releases, targeted toward different ages of audiences, and to wildly varying degrees of success.

Blonde

Christopher Lee said actors occasionally can't avoid appearing in bad films, "but the trick is to never be bad in them."

Ana de Armas has made a career out of abiding by that advice, with breakout roles in quality films, including 2017's "Blade Runner 2049" and 2019's "Knives Out."

When I saw that Netflix's "Blonde" was based on the 1999 novel by Joyce Carol Oates, my spider-sense started tingling, because for all her espoused feminism and public hectoring of others for not recognizing the gravity of death, Oates' storytelling has perpetrated both internalized misogyny, under the guise of feminism, and empathy-free exploitation of real-life deaths.

But I decided to watch "Blonde" anyway, because "Jaws" was a terrible novel by Peter Benchley that became a great film by Steven Spielberg, and every preview clip I saw of Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe blew me away.

Of course, two things can be true at the same time. Ana de Armas has set a gold standard for playing Marilyn Monroe in director Andrew Dominik's "Blonde," just as Val Kilmer did for playing Jim Morrison in director Oliver Stone's "The Doors" in 1991.

But both actors delivered their excellent acting in spite of the films that showcased their definitive performances as those real-life stars.

Stone and Dominik focus less on the creative sparks that drew audiences to their real-life subjects than on dragging us down with them on their downward spirals.

Worse yet, Dominik emulates one of the more glaring flaws of his source material, courtesy of Oates, by playing even more fast and loose with the facts of Monroe's life than Stone did with the facts of Morrison's life.

Although aspects of Monroe's real life and career did indeed resemble the clichés of Hollywood starlets working their way up the ladder of fame, at least in part because she helped pioneer those clichés, "Blonde" still does her a disservice by leaning into stereotypes at the expense of depicting her actual experiences.

There can be a fine line between ensuring that a real-life woman's exploitation by a patriarchal system is not glossed over, versus recreating that exploitation through the portrayal of her life, and Dominik marches carelessly across it.

No, there was no "throuple" between Monroe and the adult sons of Charlie Chaplin and Edward G. Robinson, nor was there likely a moment when Marilyn shocked future husband Arthur Miller with her insights on his former love, Magda, since Monroe did not, in fact, audition for the role of Magda in Miller's play.

And yet, I wish there had been more moments like the latter, portraying Marilyn with some agency, as she possessed in real life when she stood by Miller while the FBI investigated him for his alleged communist ties.

Dominik compensates for his lack of insight with stylistic trickery that's Freudian at best, juxtaposing Monroe and her "throuple" against Niagara Falls, and dehumanizing at worst, including a specific closeup angle on de Armas' face during a purported encounter with President John Kennedy, and a single, brief camera shot during a hallucinatory abortion procedure - this film is fixated on Marilyn's miscarriages and abortions, both rumored and confirmed - that's pornographic.

I'm hardly a prude. I believe the NC-17 rating, which "Blonde" bears, can have legitimate artistic justifications. But as the kids say, this ain't it, fam.

It's a shame, because Monroe deserved better than what she got in life, and she deserves better than "Blonde" in death, and de Armas deserved a better vehicle for her luminary talent.

Hocus Pocus 2

As a welcome palate-cleanser from the streaming premiere of "Blonde" on Netflix, I caught "Hocus Pocus 2" on Disney+ two days later, which had me feeling weirdly nostalgic, even though I'm a relative newcomer to the franchise, having only just seen 1993's "Hocus Pocus" when the Skyline Drive-In Theater in Shelton screened it in October 2020.

Not only are Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy all back as witchy Salem sisters Winifred, Sarah and Mary Sanderson - along with Doug Jones, aka Saru from "Star Trek: Discovery," reprising his role as Winnie's put-upon zombie slave, Billy Butcherson - but so is all the chemistry, energy and comic timing they had together in the original film.

"Hocus Pocus 2" would almost feel more like the next episode in a weekly series, rather than a nearly-30-years-removed sequel to a film from the 1990s, if not for how contemporary Salem has yet again changed around the timelessly anachronistic Sanderson sisters.

Our wickedly goofy gals still delight in breaking the fourth wall with show-stopping musical interludes, but this time, they're facing a post-millennial generation of kids who not only call out such metafictional strangeness ("Who are they performing for?" "YOU!") but who also dabble in magic of their own.

"Hocus Pocus 2" is smarter about its own audience than the original film was, but in a way that couldn't have happened without multiple generations of girls growing up on 1996's "The Craft" during the intervening years, which helped normalize witchcraft as an acceptable faith in the pop culture mainstream.

"Hocus Pocus 2" also borrows liberally from "The Craft" by becoming a paean to sisterhood, starting with an extended flashback to the Sanderson sisters being driven out of Salem as little girls - the child actresses playing them are adorably spot-on to their adult counterparts - then meeting a "Mother Witch" in the woods (Hannah Waddingham from "Ted Lasso"), who gifts them their living book of spells, and whose initially unexplained loneliness presages how seeking too much power can cost you what (and whom) you care about most.

I was not expecting to encounter two alumni of Armando Iannucci's "Veep" in the same tween-targeted Disney film, but both Sam Richardson, as the bookish and relatably cowardly owner of the magic shop that was once the Sanderson sisters' home, and Tony Hale, as the cluelessly well-intentioned Salem mayor who's descended from the Sanderson sisters' Puritan nemesis, are endearingly wholesome here.

Hale in particular is so childishly enthusiastic, in his quest for the perfect caramel apple, that even his daughter's friends, who roll their eyes at how out-of-touch he is, still agree he's a great guy, in stark contrast to his bullying ancestor.

Of course, it wouldn't be a "Hocus Pocus" without the Sanderson sisters clashing with contemporary culture, as per their hilarious misunderstandings, and gag-inducing samplings, of various cosmetic products at a modern Walgreens.

And just as the original film made a gag out of Sarah and Mary Sanderson flying on a mop and a vacuum cleaner, respectively, as broom substitutes, this sequel sees Sarah riding a Swiffer WetJet, complete with a trail of bubbles behind her, and Mary balancing her feet on a pair of Roombas, the latter of which wind up being employed in one of the film's more clever plot twists.

Stay tuned for a post-credits teaser, because it may not be Marvel, but it's still Disney.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]