So I get Disney Plus which is worth it for WandaVision and The Mandalorian, but when I feel nostalgic, it's great for having childhood memories ruined when I revisit Disney comedies from the '60s and '70s.
When "The Strongest Man in the World" came out in 1975, I saw the commercials, wanted to see it in a theater, but never saw it until it was on "The Wonderful World of Disney" a couple years later. And I vaguely remember liking it then.
But I watched it last night, and wow, what a terrible film!
First, some background: In 1959, Walt Disney produced his first live-action comedy, "The Shaggy Dog." It was made on a TV budget, and pulled in movie blockbuster returns.
And, it would become the template for Disney comedies for the next two decades: Every comedy would have the magic/science hook (turning into a dog, Flubber, invisibility), sight gags galore, some manner of peril ("the college is about to be sold to an evil real estate developer!), ending with a slapstick police chase. Then sequels which would feature recurring villains. Some villains would show up in other films. Oddly enough, The Shaggy Dog didn't get its own sequel until some 27 years later, appropriately bookending the whole genre.)
The formula had gotten pretty old by this point, but the big surprise for me that I didn't notice the first time was Kurt Russell, the top-billed star, is hardly in this movie at all! He disappears for large chunks and instead we have an interminable scene of Joe Flynn comically impressing the board of directors (all doughy white guys, except for a welcome Eve Arden) with feats of strength. Then an interminable scene of Cesar Romero getting stuck on a ladder. Then Russell's sidekick Schuyler gets kidnapped by Romero, and gets hypnotic accupuncture (?!).
Very little of this has anything to do with the plot, and worst of all, none of it is funny.
I'm guessing Kurt Russell, in his third go at playing Dexter Reilly, was more interested in expanding his career and had it in his contract that he didn't have to show up. So pretty much, the old vets had to (ironically) do the heavy lifting.
A lot of missed opportunities here. If it wanted to really satirize the university system in America, there would have been many more opportunities (big money student athlete scandals, slobs vs, snobs, legacy entrenchment) instead of Joe Flynn doing a trapeze act.
In fairness, in the last ten minutes, this low-energy comedy gets its act together and starts being funny. It finally realizes the comic possibilities: Russell uses his strength to fight off a room full of Cesar Romero's thugs, the (inevtitable) police chase where Russell has to push his feet through the floorboard of a super-charged car to keep it from speeding away, the total disintegration of the car just as it reaches its final destination (later stolen by "The Blues Brothers," but I suspect in had been stolen from the silent comedies), and Russell swallowing the last of the super serum from behind a closed curtain and the curtain opens and we just see the smoke in the air. Subtle for once.
But, if it wasn't the end of an era, it was clearly winding down. It would be Russell's last live-action film for Disney for decades (when Disney became cool again), The old-time studio system of reusing the same character actors had been dead for a while, Disney just hadn't caught on, and then 'Star Wars' came along. Disney could no longer make family movies that only appealed to children while boring their parents.
So if you're a certain age, call it up on Disney Plus and fast forward to the last ten minutes.
Some notes:
The Dexter Reilly comedies really screwed me over as far as my expectations for what college would be like.
Disney was extremely loyal to its character actors, they'd show up again and again for decades.
I counted one black person in the whole film. An Asian guy played a villain, so I'll take it. Two little Asian kids were seen.
Joe Flynn died before the movie came out, but his voice would be heard a couple years later in "The Rescuers."
It's amazing how much Kurt Russell here looks like de-aged Kurt Russell in the first five minutes of "Guardians of the Galaxy Part 2." The SFX guys must have used his Dexter Reilly films as a template.
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