Bovie Movie

Robin Williams’s dizzying and hilarious voicing of the Genie is the main attraction of Aladdin, the third in the series of modern Disney animated movies that began with 1989’s The Little Mermaid and heralded a new age for the genre. After a sultan (Douglas Seale) gives his daughter, Jasmine (Linda Larkin), three days to find a husband, she escapes the palace and encounters the street-savvy urchin Aladdin (Scott Weinger), who charms his way into her heart. While the sultan’s Vizier, Jafar (Jonathan Freeman), weaves a spell so that he may marry Jasmine and become sultan himself, Aladdin discovers the Genie’s lamp in a cave, rubs it, and sets the mystical entity free, leading the Genie to pledge his undying loyalty to the dazzled youth. Aladdin begins his quest to defeat Jafar and win the hand of the princess, with the Genie’s help. Monsters, Disney’s trademark talking animals, and a flying carpet all figure into the ensuing adventures, but Williams’ Genie, who can change into anything or anybody, steals the show as he launches into one crazed monologue after another, impersonating figures from Ed Sullivan to Elvis Presley.

Prolific television director Gary Nelson made the Walt Disney live-action comedy Freaky Friday, based on the novel by Mary Rodgers. Barbara Harris stars as suburban housewife Ellen Andrews, the wife of Bill (John Astin) and the mother of Annabel (Jodie Foster) and Ben (Sparky Marcus). Ellen just can’t understand what’s going on with teenaged Annabel, who hangs around the house making snappy remarks, eating ice cream for breakfast, and calling her brother Apeface. They each make a separate wish to be in the other’s place, and they get their wish on Friday 13th. Ellen has to go through the day as a kid, playing on the field hockey team and dealing with typing class. Annabel has to deal with grown-up problems like getting appliances fixed and preparing a banquet. The whole silly story ends with a wacky car-chase/water skiing/hang-gliding conclusion in keeping with other Disney movies of the day. Freaky Friday was remade twice with the same title, and spawned a whole subgenre of body-switching movies in the 1980s.

This romantic melodrama reunites The Devil’s Advocate (1997) co-stars Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron, and is directed by Irish filmmaker Pat O’Connor (Circle of Friends). Sara Deever (Theron) is a beautiful young woman who begins a new romantic relationship with a man each month, then helps him to evolve into a better and kinder human being before she moves on to the next partner. Although she’s remained friendly with some of her former lovers, she’s never broken her one-month rule. November’s candidate is a particularly heartless business exec named Nelson Moss (Reeves), who takes a while to come around. Once he does, however, Nelson falls deeply in love, hoping to woo Sara for good; eventually, her resolve weakens. What Nelson doesn’t know is the tragic secret behind the brevity of Sara’s romances. A remake of a 1968 Sandy Dennis film by the same name, this contemporary version of Sweet November is less comedic and emphasizes more of its story’s tearjerker qualities than the original.

At the time of its release, this lavish period war drama from hyperkinetic director Michael Bay became the most expensive motion picture ever green-lighted by a studio. Ben Affleck stars as Rafe McCawley, a military pilot stationed under Jimmy Doolittle (Alec Baldwin) in New Jersey, along with his best friend from childhood, Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett). Rafe is chomping at the bit to get involved in World War II, but America has not entered the conflict, so he is forced to fight on loan to the Royal Air Force in Britain, leaving behind his beautiful girlfriend Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale). After Rafe goes overseas, both Danny and Evelyn are transferred to the naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where word arrives that Rafe has been killed in action. A grief-stricken Evelyn and Danny become romantically attached, a situation that becomes a lit powder keg when Rafe suddenly reappears, having survived his ordeal in the European war. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor puts the romantic triangle on hold, as the best friends are ordered to undertake a top-secret and highly dangerous retaliatory mission to bomb Tokyo, once again under the command of Doolittle. Although the trio of leads are entirely fictional, Cuba Gooding Jr., Tom Sizemore, and Jon Voight (as FDR) co-star in the roles of real-life historical figures. Pearl Harbor is based on a script by Randall Wallace, writer of Braveheart (1995) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1998). Taking a page from the production history of James Cameron’s Titanic (1997), many of the actors and filmmakers involved with Pearl Harbor deferred their usual salaries until the film “broke even” at the box office.

Purple Rain, the first starring film for Prince, is the story of an arrogant, young black singer, born and raised in Minneapolis, who reaches the pinnacle of stardom. The dramatic complications include “The Kid’s” (Prince) miserable home life, where he suffers the brutalities of his father (well played by Clarence Williams III) and the youth’s efforts to win the love of the beautiful Apollonia. Despite the misogynistic undercurrents in Purple Rain, the film’s biggest fans were young women. Gorgeously photographed by Donald Thorin, Purple Rain is essentially a glorified music video, highlighted by a catalogue of Prince’s hits, including I Would Die 4 U, When Doves Cry and Let’s Go Crazy; the score deservedly won an Academy Award and a Grammy.

In this downbeat drama, a reformed criminal finds himself led back to a life of crime. Fresh out of prison, former safecracker Victor Kelly (Christopher Walken) wants to support his daughter Miriam (Vera Farmiga) and Aunt Dierdre (Anne Pitoniak) with his new career in auto repair. But Victor’s deep in debt, and he’s in no position to say no when he and his Irish gangster cousin Michael (Peter McDonald) hook up with two security guards (Jose Zuniga and (Donal Logue) looking for someone who can open a safe. The Opportunists was written and directed by Myles Connell in his feature debut; the supporting cast includes pop singer Cyndi Lauper as Victor’s girlfriend.

A sixth grader discovers the joys and sorrows of first love — as if he doesn’t already have enough problems — in this comedy. Eleven-year-old Lloyd (Todd Bosley) is short, skinny, awkward, and wears thick round glasses; in most any American school, these qualities are enough to make you the target of every bully within shouting distance, and Lloyd has gotten accustomed to his status as the butt of his classmates’ jokes. Lloyd has also started to notice girls, which makes for even greater humiliation at home, as his eight-year-old brother Nathan (Sammy Elliott) has already mastered the fine art of sweet-talking the opposite sex. Lloyd has one close friend, the significantly less geeky Troy (Brendon Ryan Barrett), but their friendship begins to show signs of strain when Lloyd falls in love with Tracy (Kirsten Parker), a cute girl in his class. To Lloyd’s annoyance, Tracy only has eyes for Storm (Patrick Higgins), a charismatically sullen junior high student; can Lloyd’s mastery of magic tricks and way with a joke win him the girl of his dreams? Lloyd also features cameo appearances from Tom Arnold and Taylor Negron.

In this comedy from Austin Powers director Jay Roach, Ben Stiller plays a young man who endures a disastrous weekend at the home of his girlfriend’s parents. Greg Focker (Stiller) is completely in love with Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo), and views their upcoming trip to her parents’ house on Long Island (where her sister is to be married during the weekend) as a perfect opportunity to ask her to marry him. Once Greg is introduced to Pam’s parents, however, things stampede steadily downhill. Pam’s father, Jack (Robert De Niro), takes an instant and obvious dislike to his daughter’s boyfriend, lambasting him for his job as a nurse and generally making Greg painfully aware of the differences between him and Pam’s family. Where Greg is grubby, relatively unambitious, and Jewish, Pam comes from a long line of well-mannered, blue-blooded WASPs. Things go from bad to worse in less time than it takes to spin a dreidel, with Greg incurring the wrath of both Pam’s father — who, it turns out, worked for the CIA for 34 years — and the rest of her family, and almost single-handedly destroying their house and the wedding in the process.

With the Jerry Zucker-Jim Abrahams-David Zucker team absent, this sequel to the cash-cow 1980 spoof Airplane once again finds garrulous man-with-a-past Ted Striker (Robert Hays) compelled to take over the controls of crippled aircraft, all the while trying to patch up his relationship with stewardess Elaine (Julie Hagerty). This time, the first passenger space shuttle is launched into orbit — and takes off for the moon - but the on-board computer malfunctions and sends the craft hurtling toward the sun, threatening the lives of everyone on board. Lloyd Bridges and Peter Graves return from the first Airplane, while William Shatner, Chad Everett, Sonny Bono, Raymond Burr and Chuck Conners join the cast, as they too lampoon their established images.

The second of the George Lucas/Steven Spielberg Indiana Jones epics is set a year or so before the events in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1984). After a brief brouhaha involving a precious vial and a wild ride down a raging Himalyan river, Indy (Harrison Ford) gets down to the problem at hand: retrieving a precious gem and several kidnapped young boys on behalf of a remote East Indian village. His companions this time around include a dimbulbed, easily frightened nightclub chanteuse (Kate Capshaw), and a feisty 12-year-old kid named Short Round (Quan Ke Huy). Throughout, the plot takes second place to the thrills, which include a harrowing rollercoaster ride in an abandoned mineshaft and Indy’s rescue of the heroine from a ritual sacrifice. There are also a couple of cute references to Raiders of the Lost Ark, notably a funny variation of Indy’s shooting of the Sherpa warrior.