I was 1 for 2 against them Saturday night. It was our yearly trip to the Big-Mo Drive In and the double bill was Showtime with Robert DeNiro and Eddie Murphy and Murder by Numbers with Sandra Bullock.
I was suckered in by Showtime. I think I was suckered in because the movie didn’t try to be something other than exactly what it was. It was a silly little plot littered with holes and full of clichés, but I still was entertained – here’s why: Eddie played a caricature Eddie, DeNiro play a meld of every DeNiro character since, well, the beginning. William Shatner played himself or what we have come to believe is himself and he is just like that in real life or he is as brilliant an actor as Andy Kaufman was. I laughed and I wasn’t even upset like I usually am by the every-car-in-the-sector police chase/blow ’em extravaganza.
And I almost bought into Murder by Numbers, but it tried to take itself to seriously. I’m sure when Sandra took the role it was because the character she was to play appeared to have depth because of her tortured past. For whatever reason it just didn’t come out that way. The collapsing balcony fight scene and subsequent rescue thing looked like it was thrown in because everyone involved knew it was a dog of a movie and felt that it would punch it up. Then when we got our now Hollywood standard triple twist in the end about the actual killer nobody really cared.