Benny Jay: Saturday Night Movies

It's Saturday night, which means we're watching a movie, 'cause we almost always watch a movie on Saturday night.

I go to the video store to make the selection and come home with Spike Lee's latest -- "The Miracle at St. Anna." I figure you can't go wrong with Spike. I love Spike Lee. I've seen almost every one of his movies. Some of them -- like "Crooklyn" and "Do the Right Thing" -- at least three times.

The pressure's on 'cause my Wife and I have this thing about movies. Bring home a bad one, and you're gonna get roughed up. I mean, the trash talking gets fierce. And the last movie I brought home was a Class A stinker. It was called "Wristcutters" and I don't even want to talk about it -- it was that bad.

The thing is -- it wasn't all my fault. I was set to rent "Papillon." Had it in my hands and everything. I had a taste for Steve McQueen -- love him about as much as Spike Lee. But my wife has this policy where she doesn't want to see the same movie twice -- even if she hasn't seen it in thirty years. It's a ridiculous policy when you think about it 'cause you can't possibly remember what happened in a movie you saw three decades ago -- so it's like seeing it for the first time. But it was out of respect to her policy that I put down "Papillon" and picked up "Wristcutters"....

So we're watching "Miracle at St. Anna" and after a few minutes I can tell it's not going to be that good. Definitely not up there with "Crooklyn" or "Do the Right Thing." The problem is that the movie's not sure what it wants to be. It's about these black GIs in World War II who are fighting the Germans in Italy. Mostly, it's a remake of "Saving Private Ryan." But every now and then Spike sneaks in a scene from "The Godfather." And then out of nowhere he starts to redo "Jungle Fever." You got this sexy black GI coming on to this really hot-looking Italian peasant girl who lives up in the hills and yet has somehow or other learned how to speak English. And it's amazing how curvaceous and well-fed she looks even though the village is surrounded by Nazis and there's no way to bring in food and everyone else is just about starving to death. Anyway, the black guy tells her something like, Baby, you gotta try it -- cause once you go black you ain't goin' back. And she's like, Ooh, let me see. So he takes her up to this tower and it's like he dims the freaking lights -- I think they might have even lit a candle. (Remember, they're under Nazi siege.) He rips off her sweater and she's panting with expectation. And when they cut to the next scene she's got this dazed smile on her face, like she's thinking -- Yes, it's true, it's true. And he's walking around with this cocky strut, like he's thinking: Told you, girl. I mean, it's as about as hokey as you can get -- and still be in a Spike Lee movie.

After the movie's over, I can tell that my wife's getting ready to let me have it, so I try to cut her off by saying: "I liked it." And she says: "It's not very good." I get a feeling she's going to bring up "Wristcutters,"so I say: "Wasn't `The Wackness' good?" There's nothing she can say because "The Wackness" was great. It's about this 18-year-old kid who just graduated from high school and he's selling reefer out of an ice-cream cart he's pushing all over Manhattan. He hooks up with the girl of his fantasies whose freaky step-father is played by Ben Kingsley and, oh, just see it.

The best thing about "The Wackness" is that I picked it out. My wife had never even heard of it until I brought it home. As a matter of fact, when I put it on, she was saying: "I'm giving this movie ten minutes. If it's not good, I'm going to bed." That was over a month ago -- and I'm still talking about it.

So, anyway, back to our post-"Miracle at Santa Anna" conversation on Saturday night....

"Yeah," she says, "'The Wackness' was good...."

"And who picked it out?"

"You did...."

"Oh, yeah," I say, as I get ready for bed. "That's what I thought...."