Welcome, friends, welcome to my neighbourhood! Yes,
it’s Burl, here to review a picture that fits into a few subgenres! Ha ha, it’s
called Echo Park, and, set as it is in
that patch of Los Angeles by the same name, it’s one of those movies named for
and defined by the neighbourhood, or district, or borough, in which their
action takes place! I suppose Wicker Park,
A Bronx Tale, City Island and many others would fit into this loose category!
Another subgenre into which Echo Park fits is the Eccentric Dreamer
movie! UFOria is one of those pictures,
and Melvin and Howard is another! The
director of this movie, Robert Dornhelm, made another Eccentric Dreamer picture
too, Cold Feet, starring my buddy Tom
Waits! Ha ha, I’ll have to review that one sometime!
The story concentrates on three properly
eccentric inhabitants of Echo Park, which back in the mid-80s was a little more
downmarket than it is now, ha ha! Susan Dey, the famous TV law-lady, is the
single mother who works in a bar while dreaming of being a waitress! Tom Hulce,
who was in Slam Dance (a combination
Eccentric Dreamer film and crime picture, also emphatically set in L.A.), is
the pizza man who delivers his pies in a car shaped like a neon piece of pizza,
but dreams of being a songwriter, and of entering into a romantic relationship
with Dey! And Michael Bowen from The Wild Life plays the pongid bodybuilder who lives in the other part of the house,
an Austrian émigré who dreams of becoming the next Arnold and who quickly does enter into a relationship with Dey!
And these three interact in various ways,
surrounded by friends and employers, and go through a series of small, episodic
adventures! Dey becomes a singing strip-o-grammer, ha ha, and Hulce is punched
on by bikers! Dey’s son changes his name from Henry to Hank, and Bowen plays a
Viking in a deodorant commercial He’s later thrown out of the German embassy
for trying too hard to meet his idol, Schwarzenegger! Hulce’s boss, played by
the great fartiste Timothy Carey,
from Beach Blanket Bingo and The Long Ride Home, dispenses pizza-based
wisdom! A Burt Reynolds lookalike wanders around! And then everyone goes to the
beach!
The supporting cast features plenty of
Groundlings, like John Paragon in the role of Hugo, and Cassandra Peterson from
Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold!
Ha ha, it’s a wonder Pee Wee doesn’t show up! Cheech Marin from Fatal Beauty makes a friendly appearance
too, and gets the last word in a scene where Bowen goes nuts and can only be
restrained by other bodybuilders! The saddest scene comes when Hulce,
delivering pizza to a recording studio, is encouraged by the producers and
musicians there to expand on one of his songs that he’s been absently singing,
but he suffers nerves, and flees!
It’s a nice, enjoyable movie, with a fairly
realistic indie-picture magic realism and a peculiarly 80s indie vibe! The
acting is pretty good, and it looks very nice and very L.A. and very 80s, but
it suffers at times from contrived situations, sitcom logic, and Bowen’s
occasionally shaky Austrian accent! (Why couldn’t they find an Austrian to play
the part? It was an Austrian production, after all!) It all ends somewhat
inconclusively, which I like, but the version I watched included an extended
ending in which the main cast all stand on top of an Austrian mountain, sniff
eidelweiss and do handstands! This did not provide clarity, ha ha, but it did
provide scenery! And I suppose it also satisfied the Austrian funding bodies
who helped finance the picture!
Anyway, I give Echo
Park two and a half bum-cakes! Ha ha! You won’t want to miss that bum-cake!
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