Regular readers know that they can come here every Friday and watch me barf up 3000 words about an 80’s movie that is typically 60 shades of unwatchable. Having just lived through one of the most turbulent weeks in the history of the United States, in my lifetime anyway, I found the desire to crack wise about, say, Steven Seagal and how he’s actually 172 weasels in a human suit has left me completely (unless you want to send me a copy of Above the Law. Then i’ll see what I can come up with). Instead of trolling the cinematic junkyard, this week I re-watched the 1990 black comedy I Love You to Death. I saw it in the theater when I was 11 years-old...after my too-trusting mother allowed me to hit the flicks alone if I promised to watch Ernest Goes to Jail and specifically NOT watch I Love You to Death. All apologies to my dear mother and the late James Varney but there’s just something about the sight of a mustachioed Kevin Kline that inspires confidence in a young man. I watched it again this week after a good long while and, you know, I still love it. Possibly even to death. If I were to make a list of movies that make we want to hit pause and immediately make a beeg-a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs this one would by #2 with a bullet. Behind Goodfellas, of course. You gotta slice the garlic razor thin so it liquifies in the sauce.
I don’t have a whole lot to say about this movie...but since we’ve gathered here anyway I might as well say a bit. I Love You to Death was directed by Lawrence Kasdan, a man whose unimpeachable resume includes screenwriting credits for Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back. He also adapted Stephen King’s novel about alien shit monsters (Dreamcatcher) for the big screen...so there’s also that. I Love You to Death is sort of an amalgam of all three of those movies I just mentioned but with a better ensemble cast and way more onscreen pizza. This film was loosely based on the story of an Allentown, PA lady who tried to murder her philandering husband by shooting him several times and THEN feeding him poisoned soup when he refused to die. The husband’s refusal to die proved steadfast. Not only did he survive...he decided to remarry his homicidal bride after she served a stint in the pokey. They are somehow STILL together, at least of this writing. Someone saw this story on the news and thought “10-part Netflix series!” But since Netflix was still 17 years away from streaming they decided to move the action to Seattle, hire recent Oscar winner (for A Fish Called Wanda) Kevin Kline, and turn it into a comedy. Bold moves, Hollywood people...bold moves.
Kline is Joey Boca, a greasy paesan who runs a pizza shop with his dutiful wife Rosalie, played by hyper versatile comedy utility performer Tracey Ullman. Y’all remember when the Fox Sunday night TV line-up was The Simpsons followed by the Tracey Ullman Show, the It’s the Garry Shandling Show...and....some other show I cannot recall at this time? If you know what that fourth show was please send a S.A.S.E. to vhsoftheweek@gmail.com. I’ll send you back one of my Blockbuster membership cards...in case you find yourself in Bend, Oregon. Anyway, Joey is a family man with a family business. Unfortunately, according to the VHS box, he’s been squeezing more than just tomatoes (dudes...GAH!). I mean...look just look at the guy! All barrel-chested and oozing with machismo. He’s like Freddie Mercury but...umm...less musical? He’s hooking up with Rollergirl, which is cool, and also with lady who was awesome in the 80’s but who is now a piece of shit anti-LGBTQ crusader Victoria Jackson, which is less cool. Rosalie is mostly content to hang around the shop with her much younger co-worker Devo, played by former Aleka’s Attic frontman River Phoenix, and her much older mother Nadja, played by Sir Larry Olivier’s widow Joan Plowright. Plowright is now 90 years old and Phoenix has been dead for 27 years. Crazy how shit works out sometimes. I’ll tell you this, though: every time Devo appears on screen I immediately get Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction” stuck in my head...and I guess...also actual “Satisfaction” by default.
Devo, who is totally sweet on Rosalie, gently suggests that Joey might be afflicted with W.P.S. (Wandering penis syndrome. Prognosis: fatal). She tells Devo that if she ever caught Joey cheating she would kill herself. “And if that doesn’t work I’d kill him too.” Might want to check the sequencing on all of that there, Rosalie. Joey remains blissfully oblivious to all of this. He makes his wife serve him dinner and several brewski’s before heading out to a nightclub where he meets Judge Reinhold wank fantasy Phoebe Cates. They go back to her place and make-a the Frankie Cosmos! That’s not some sort of weird Italian sex move...it’s Kline and Cates’ actual real life daughter (or...her stage name anyway). I don’t know that she was actually conceived on set...but one never knows! Actually...it says here she was born 4 years after this movie came out...so maybe one does know.
Eventually Rosalie discovers Joey and some rando playing grab ass in the public library and decides she will go ahead and kill herself but swallowing a ton of Bayer. It does not work but, you know: lots of aspirin=good for the ticker. She confides in Mama Nadja, who is no fan of Joey to begin with. Nadja says that she will hire someone to rub out Joey. “A good boy...very nice. Not a real killer...only for money,” she tells Rosalie in her spot-on Serbo-Croatian accent. Plowright just absolutely murders every scene that she’s in here. If there’s some sort of retroactive comedy Oscar they should award it to Joan Plowright for this movie. “In America people kill each other left and right. It’s a National Pastime!” she says. Truer words have rarely been spoken. She hires a guy who shows up outside of Joey’s house in an Abraham Lincoln mask and tries to beat him to death with a baseball bat. He fails. Police detectives arrive in the form of the guy who played the coach in Major League and another guy who I long assumed to be Risky Business killer pimp Joe Pantoliano...but who is not actually Joe Pantoliano. They ask Joey what his assailant looked like. Joey: “ehh...he look-a like Abraham Lincoln coming up to bat!”
After a failed attempt at car bombing Joey to death, Rosalie and Mama Nadja decide they will simply sprinkle five bottles of sleeping pills into his dinner. They cook him beeg-a bowl of spaghetti with poison interlaced with the sauce and tell that motherfucker to mangia mangia. He crushes like five bowls of pasta and six beers and comes out feeling like a CHAMP! If you think you can kill a big swingin’ dick like Joey with a couple of fists full of NoDoz, think again! Actually they do think he’s dead at one point but he wakes up and takes a shit and is totally fine. Not only is he fine...he suddenly wants to play Monopoly! This is the part of the movie that I still quote on the regular 30 years. I don’t know why it’s so goddamn funny...but it is! Since they failed to summon the reaper with the spaghetti they call Devo over to finish the job...but dude is a vegan or some shit and he refuses. He doesn’t want to leave his peeps hanging though, so he heads out to a dive bar and offers a couple of local deadbeats $300 to finish off Joey. Shit man--I’ve had raw bar lunches that ran me more than 300 bones. Maybe that was a good chunk of change in 1990...but...I doubt it. One of the hitmen is Keanu Reeves. The other is man who has made an enemy of everyone he has ever met in his life Bill Hurt. This means that there’s suddenly a whole ass ton of famous people in this movie.
Hurt and Reeves take a taxi to the Boca residence because they are the worst hitmen in the history of hitmen. While Mama Nadja desperately searches for a Johnny Mathis album to help drown out the sounds of execution, the killers putter around Joey’s bedroom and fawn over his autographed Reggie Jackson baseball bat. They start to chant “Reggie! Reggie!” The people downstairs think they’re chanting “Reggae! Reggae!” It is medium funny. Finally, they pump one into Joey’s testa. He’s dead. Rosalie breaks into chest-heaving sobs, even though she’s the one who done got him murdered. BUT WAIT!!! Joey wakes up and asks Rosalie to fix everyone a charcuterie board. Dude...will...not...DIE! She carries him back to bed and he suddenly wants to fuck...‘cuz he’s an unrepentant lothario who will not let a bullet in the brain get in the way of a good ball! Eventually the detectives from earlier in the movie turn up at the house and the jig is up. Everyone goes to prison. Well, they SHOULD be going to prison...but Joey manages to pull through his various assassination attempts with little more than a bandage on his head and pleads for amnesty for all of his killers. He’s actually not a bad dude after all, this Joey Boca. He manages to repair his relationship with Mama Nadja with a Whitman’s Sampler. Joey and Rosalie re-consummate their marriage in the janitor’s closet of the courthouse. Just because he’s suddenly faithful doesn’t mean he isn’t still horny! Everyone lives happily ever after. Well...except for River Phoenix. The end.