Here’s a story: in 1990 I bid farewell to the knuckle-cracking penguins who had been terrorizing me since the first grade and moved to the neighboring town of Grafton, where I entered the public school. And I’ll tell you--it was far from a seamless transition. I got dunked on...HARD. I’d always just worn a uniform to school so I didn’t know how to dress myself...or act myself. I just threw on whatever duds my mother brought home for me. How the hell was I supposed to know that I needed to wear baggy MC Hammer pants and tight roll them at the ankle?? Even when I tried to go full hesher and started wearing my jean jacket with the sewn on Van Halen and Ozzy Osbourne patches I was called a poser. I had short hair and was therefore “not metal enough.” When class would let out for the day, I would have to sprint to the principal’s office and hide until the halls of Grafton Middle emptied out. Otherwise, a buffet of embarrassments almost always awaited me. I was thrown in a garbage can...stuffed in a locker...de-pantsed and dragged down the hall in front of the entire school. Shit, no wonder I’m still in therapy! One afternoon, while I was in the Principal’s office trying to duck a spitball shower, I turned to him and said “Yo Prince--aren’t there any other unhip kids at this school?? You know, indoor kids? Dudes that can quote Steve Martin movies from start to finish on the spot?” The Principal chewed it over for a second and said “you just described Brett Warwick! I bet you two would have a lot to talk about!” And you know--we did! We still do! We started hanging out after school, drinking RC Cola and watching John Candy movies and remain great friends to this day. Eventually, fall turned to winter which turned to spring (obvi) and the 1991 summer movie calendar became a hot topic of conversation. Everyone and their damn momma knew that the #1 spot belonged to Terminator 2...but my pal Brett had a boner with a capital O for Walt Disney’s The Rocketeer. And the reason for this was that his uncle Richard was slated to appear in said film. Me? I had The Rocketeer finishing in the Top 5...easy. Any reasonable oddsmaker would. A Disney flick about a newfangled superhero with a bomb ass art deco poster? From the director of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids?? Sheeiit...this Rocketeer cat was gonna be Disney’s Batman. We’re talking endless merchandising tie-ins and sequels upon sequels and spin-offs and reboots. What ended up happening was: The Rocketeer opened on June 21, 1991 and only did medium business. And the reason for this is that it’s a thoroughly medium movie. It’s the cinematic equivalent of an iceberg salad with the dressing on the side. No one hated it yet no one really liked it either. The number of people who walked out of the theater and said “I need to see more of THAT” was around zero. In October of that year I threw myself a 13th birthday party where I forced the attendees to play a game of movie trivia...because of course I did. When I asked the partygoers to name the actor who had played The Rocketeer NO ONE KNEW! The movie had already faded from view THAT HARD. Jesse Smith answered “Joe Campbell” and Danny Rovezzi answered “Tommy Lee,” which is the same answer he gave to every single question I asked that night. Incorrect...but also hilarious. Before I went to see The Rocketeer I called Brett and asked him to describe his uncle to me and he said something like “he has a mustache and is in the scene where the Rocketeer shows up at the airfield.” While I forgot about the movie the second the lights came up just like the rest of y’all, I was quite impressed by Uncle Richard’s acting chops. I was even more impressed when I saw him turn up again in Barton Fink later that summer. When the first day of 8th grade rolled around, I marched straight up to Brett all “DUDE!! Your Uncle Rich is KILLING it! You think he can get me Michael Lerner’s autograph??” After some confusing back and forth we discovered that the man who I had wrongly assumed was Brett’s uncle was actually the great Jon Polito. After school, we went over to his place and he cued up the scene featuring his uncle (Of course they owned a copy. The Warwick’s remained huge Rocketeer stans ‘cuz of that whole family connection thing). Turns out his uncle was just some schmo extra in the bleachers during the air show! I don’t know if he ever did any more acting, Uncle Richard, but I do know that he is now deceased. And actually...so is Jon Polito. Rest in power, dudes.
Since we’re exclusively featuring films from the summer of ‘91 this summer and my copy of Doc Hollywood is temporarily unlocatable, I thought I’d pull out The Rocketeer and see if it plays better than it did 30 years ago. Answer: it does not. The end! Seriously though...what happens is this: We open at a Los Angeles County airfield in the year 1938, where daredevil pilot Cliff Secord (next big thing who never was Bill Campbell) is about to take his Gee Bee racer plane for a test run. He really manages to get that thing cooking too, much to the delight of his airplane mechanic pal Peevy (academy Award winner Alan Arkin, sporting the world’s most unfortunate toupee), who shouts instructions at Cliff from the ground even though he cannot possibly hear them up in the sky. Everything’s going swell until Cliff flies into the vicinity of an in-progress car chase/shootout deal. I’m not sure who is chasing whom and why, but when one of the occupants of the pursued vehicles notices the plane flying overhead he aims his tommy gun skyward and shoots the plane JUST TO BE A DICK! Like...why would you shoot a random plane out of the sky?? For a goof?? RUDE! The bullet pierces the plane’s important fluids line and Cliff starts to plummet earthward. Peevy sees the plane spinning like a top and says “something ain’t right.” Something sure ain’t, my dude! Cliff prepares to ditch his plane like Sully Whatsitberger but crashes into the car chase on approach, sending one of the cars careening into the gasoline tanker that’s forever lurking on the outskirts of the runway during this film, just begging to be blown to bits. Cliff survives but a bunch of explosions explode. Property is damaged. Feelings are hurt. It turns out that the FBI were chasing a crew of gangsters in possession of a stolen something or other. A top secret package, you dig? When the smoke finally settles it’s the FBI who are all pissed at Cliff for crashing his plane into their hot pursuit. Dude, maybe if they didn’t shoot the plane out of the fuckin’ sky! Cliff punches the head FBI guy in the mouth. That Cliff must be a real hothead, right? I mean...I HAVE NO IDEA what he’s like as his character is not fleshed out in any way! It’s as if he literally fell out of the sky (I mean...not literally...although I guess he did just literally fall out of the sky). We don’t know where he’s from or how he became a pilot. Like...what kind of name is Secord? Is that French-Canadien? He doesn’t even appear to have a home! He just hangs out with his mechanic buddy Peevy who’s about 40 years older than he is (when he isn’t with his girlfriend...more on her in a sec). He’s just a tall, handsome drink of water. A haircut. That’s all. And this is a real problem when you’re developing a superhero character. I need to know who I’m rooting for here otherwise I’m gonna root for Alan Arkin’s wig. Maybe we’ll get a Rocketeer origin story movie where he walks around Brooklyn talking to himself and murdering people on the subway. But...I don’t know...I kinda doubt it.
The G-Men assume that the secret package was destroyed in the explosion and have to sheepishly break this news to the package’s rightful owner: Howard Hughes. The actual Howard Hughes...played here by the guy who played The Stepfather in The Stepfather. Hughes says that he’d much rather the package be incinerated than fall into the wrong hands. “The dream is over,” he says, quoting a John Lennon song that wouldn’t come out for another 32 years. Then he locks himself in a screening room for a year and surrounds himself with bottles of his own piss. Back at the airfield, Peevy and Cliff get a ration of shit from airfield owner and man who is not my buddy Brett’s Uncle Jon Polito. Polito wants Cliff to pay for the exploded gasoline truck, which sux extra hard ‘cuz his ride is totaled. No airshows means no income. BUT! Later that night, when the fellas are dicking around in the plane garage, they discover a package in one of the planes. As in THE PACKAGE! One of the crooks stashed it before he was apprehended/blown up! They tear it open and find it’s a stainless steel Ghostbusters proton pack. What do they do next, these couple of numbnutses? They turn the friggin’ thing on and it goes flying through walls like the tilt-a-whirl spaceship in Explorers! It’s a rocket-fueled jet pack! They somehow manage to hit the off switch and look at the thing with wide-eyed wonder. “Wow! It runs on alcohol!” says Peevy. Hey, just like Gary Busey!
Meanwhile up in the Hollywood Hills, a mafia boss played by a didn’t-even-bother-changing-his-costume-on-his-way-over-from-Goodfellas Paul Sorvino is meeting with Hollywood superstar Neville Sinclair (Two-pump chump James Bond Timothy Dalton). What I took away from their conversation was that the mafia stole the rocket pack from Howard Hughes to try to give it to Sinclair but got fouled up by the FBI. It really just seems like there's a shitload of scarcely necessary characters in this film, almost all of which are men. This movie is one Jennifer Connelly away from being Glengarry Glen Ross. I half expected Alan Arkin to start shouting “they took the….they took the phones!!” Unfortunately for all of those various organizations I just mentioned, the rocket pack is still with our boy Cliff, who has decided to strap it to a wooden statue and let that sucker rip. Cliff and Peevy light the fuse and that thing soars through the night sky like BASTA! I immediately have a million questions. Most pressingly: howwww does a flame-powered jetpack NOT incinerate the legs of the person wearing it!?? Dude, your ankles would be ASH! And how do you control its speed and trajectory? How do you control it AT ALL!? What kind of alcohol does it run on and how far can you fly before you need to land at the liquor store and filler up. Why does the wooden statue just eventually fall back to the ground on its own? I guess we’ll have to keep right on guessing ‘cuz it is never properly, or even improperly, explained. After the successful test flight, Cliff heads to Hollywood to meet his aspiring actress girlfriend Jenny, who...again...is played by Labyrinth star and lady who nearly died of boredom in the middle of her Oscar acceptance speech Jen Connelly. She’s got a real hankerin’ for the high life, this Jenny. She’s constantly complaining that she wants to hobnob with stars and starlets and sip highballs at the Brown Derby and Spago’s and wherever. So what does ding dong Cliff do? He brings her to the same shitty greasy spoon out by the airfield that he kicks it at seven nights a week. Cliff talks about his flying career and Jenny is like snorrrrrreeee. She complains that he’s weird and distant and that he treats her like a stranger. Oh! And he didn’t even tell her that he was in a fiery plane crash earlier that same day. Why are these two people together?? Who even is this friggin’ guy?? Jenny storms out.
The next morning, Jenny has to work a gig as an extra on the latest Neville Sinclair swashbuckler. Cliff, looking to make amends for how shittly their date ended, shows up on set wearing the most unfortunate brown leather jacket I’ve ever seen. I was pretty sure I had seen this jacket somewhere before The Rocketeer...and I was pretty sure that somewhere was on one of the dude’s from Milli Vanilli. After accidentally destroying the set and getting his GF fired from the picture, he takes her aside and tells her about the jetpack, figuring this information will cause Jenny to forget the events of the last five minutes and swoon. Neviile Sinclair overhears Cliff telling Jenny that he has the pack because of course he does. Instead of simply murdering both of them and stealing the pack he decides to rehire her for his movie and starts hitting on her something fierce. He asks her if she’d like to accompany him to dinner. Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Cliff is scheduled to participate in an airshow in his other uncrashed plane...but when he shows up to the airfield he discovers that his pal Malcolm has stolen his plane and is up there flying dangerously and who the FUCK is Malcolm?? Did I completely snooze on this character? And why is he dressed up like a fuckin’ clown!? A clown named Malcolm!? I know that my attention occasionally wanders during these flicks but I feel like I would remember that. (Although I see here that the next thing I wrote in my notes is “Water Country” which is a waterslide park in New Hampshire that I went to once in my 20’s. I...I got nothin’). So Malcolm the Clown is probably going to give himself the John Denver unless someone happens to have some sort of rocket pack they can strap on and fly up there to help the guy. As luck would have it...someone does! And it’s a good goddamn thing too because this movie is, like, halfway over and NOTHING of note has happened yet. Nothing worse than an actionless action movie, man. Cliff tells Peevy he’s gonna suit up and fly right and Peevy is all “you better not! But if you do you should wear this sick ass steampunk helmet that I just welded together for you.” Cliff flips the switch and is ping ponging through the sky in no time. I gotta say--even though it was still 1991 the special effects only look about half bad! Cliff rescues his clown buddy in front of the airshow audience members, all of whom promptly shit in their respective drawers. When Cliff lands, he tells Peevy that his neato helmet really helped him steer. My understanding of how this rocket pack works jumps to about a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10.
What happens next is that Cliff makes the front pages from here to Hanoi and is an instant worldwide sensation. Like...within hours. Dude went viral before viral! And I guess my question is, you know, WHY?? All he did was fly around above an airshow and rescue one sad clown. Haven’t these filmmakers ever heard of the montage? They could've had this dude rescue people from burning buildings with his burning jetpack….maybe have him defrost Santa’s sleigh so he can deliver presents on Xmas and shit. He just isn’t particularly super, this superhero. The press swarm the airfield and ask Jon Polito what they should call the fly guy and someone suggests “Rocket Man,” which is quickly shot down for copyright reasons. Imagine if they DID name this movie Rocket Man? And you went to the video store and tried to rent the 1991 Disney flick for your kid but accidentally rented the 2018 Elton John movie? If memory serves correctly Elton John actually DOES fly in that film...but only after ingesting an unreasonable amount of cocaine. One guy’s a hero...the other did a heroic amount of the devil’s dandruff. Same deal. Now everyone and their great granny annie is hot to trot for the rocket; Howard Huges...the FBI...Paulie from Goodfellas….Timmy Dalton...Timmy Dalton’s 7-foot tall henchman Lothar, who looks like he was bounced out of Dick Tracy for being too scary. Someone (the FBI?) shows up at Peevy’s place and pumps it full of lead. When Cliff and Peevy hear about this they decide it’s high time to call authorities to try to negotiate the rocket pack’s safe return. Before they get a chance to drop a dime, though, the mafia portion of the cast track the fellas down at that greasy spoon and start a bunch of shit...waving their pistols around and knocking over gumball machines and whatnot. Oh, and they also try to cook Peevy on the flat top to try to get Cliff to spill the beans about the location of the rocket thingamabob. The diner patrons fight back and there’s a victimless shootout. Eventually, the mafia dudes retreat and scramble to a decommissioned restaurant set from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where Jenny is in the middle of a date with Nevile Sinclair. Paulie, who is also at the resturant, tells Neville he doesn’t understand why he doesn’t just torture Jenny until she gives up the location of the rocket pack. I also don’t understand why he doesn’t just torture Jenny until she gives up the location of the rocket pack. We’re ALL OF US growing impatient with this movie at this point! When Cliff straps on his jammy pack so he can fly to the resto to save his dame he notices that it has a fresh bullet hole in it. Peevy sticks a wad of gum in the hole and tells the kid it SHOULD be fine. Gum.
Cliff shows up at the supper club in a waiter disguise and spills Baked Alaska all over Neville’s balls. While he’s in the loo toweling off Jenny is like “something I can help you with, Cock Blockington?” He tells her that he’s The Rocketeer. You know...from the newspapers? The title character. That’s him. Jenny is like “That’s YOU? Kid, you are TRENDING!” She also decides that she doesn’t give a flying shit and tells poor Cliff to piss off. Before Neville returns, Cliff slips a slip of paper in her vichyssoise that says “they’re gonna kill you!’ or something. I already can’t remember. Before anyone can do anything, all of the various gangs of rivals descend on the restaurant and bedlam ensues. Cliff puts on his pack and flies through the dining room, which is super confusing because A--Why would you ignite a flame-powered jetpack INSIDE A BUILDING...and B--That thing looked like it had an ONLY speed of about 150 MPH. But now Cliff is just gingerly puttering around the restaurant like he’s on some gondola sightseeing tour. Even though Cliff is essentially ON FIRE the FBI capture him by throwing a net over his head. Neville chloroform’s Jenny and brings her up to his ultra villain mansion. When she regains consciousness, she and Neville have a conversation that goes on for about three and a half hours. When Neville is temporarily distracted, Jenny breaks a houseplant over his head and attempts to escape, only to be foiled by Lothar.
The FBI brings a freshly captured Cliff to see Howard Hughes, who screams and pulls out all of his hair when Cliff tries to shake his hand. Hughes explains that it was actually the Germans who invented the rocket man technology and had planned to use it to rain thousands upon thousands of Nazi Rocketeers down upon the United States Capital Building in an all out assault on one of our greatest symbols of democracy. A bunch of Nazis storming the US Capital?? Now that would never happen! Oh...wait a minute. Problem was--the Germans weren’t very good at Rocketeering and their dudes would always explode on takeoff. A newsreel video is shown depicting everything I just mentioned (minus January 6, 2021, of course). This is a HARD PG, this film. Some dark shit right here. Hughes designed a more efficient rocket pack, only to have his blueprints stolen by a goon working for a Hollywood Nazi double agent...and it is 100% this Neville Sinclair fucker. Duh! They tell Cliff that he has to give up the pack but he’s all “sorry! I need to rescue my not-a-girlfriend who could not possibly give less of a shit about me if she tried.” He then hang glides out of the room on a, you know, hang glider.
Sinclair brings Jenny up to Griffith Park Observatory to do some observing and to await the arrival of a Nazi zeppelin that will ferry them back to the Fazzahland. I was about to bust balls about the idea of a blimp flying from LA to Germany but...no dude...those motherfuckers can travel up to ONE MILLION MILES!!! Joke’s on me, folks. Paul Sorvino shows up and is like “dude, are you seriously a Nazi??” Sinclair is indeed a Nazi and quickly devlops a thick German accent and starts shouting “Schnell! Schnell!” at people. Sorvino takes this information in, looks Sinclair up and down, and says “now I gotta turn my back on you.” Ohhh...that scene kills me every time! Poor Henry Hill. Or actually...whatever. When the FBI shows up with the swat team they agree to let sleeping dogs temporarily lie with the mob guys and join forces in machine gunning Nazis to death in the name of the good old US of A. America. Fuck yeah? Sinclair manages to load Jenny onto the Zep but here comes pyro Peter Pan to save the day...which will mark the second and final time a day is saved by The Rocketeer in this film. A bunch of bad guys are murdered on the airship and Sinlair keeps howling in over-the -top fake German, maybe hoping that someone will see this movie and want to put him in a third James Bond flick (Note: they did not). Some stupid with a flare gun (Jenny) sets accidentally sets the ship on fire and that thing is fixin’ to go down like a...Led Zeppelin (sorry...had to). Sinclair demands that Cliff give him the rocket pack...so he does. Not sure where he’s planning on going, being a hugely famous movie star and a wanted Nazi war criminal. Florida? Sinclair blasts out of the ship...but oh shit, y’all--Cliff pulled that wad of chewing gum out of the bullet hole when Sinclair wasn’t looking. He bursts into flames and careens into the “Land” section of the “Hollywoodland” sign. I give that a 6 out of 10 on the clever scale. The blimp is still in the process of destroying itself but Hughes comes to the rescue in his Autogyro, which is not, to my insane disappointment, a flying Greek sandwich. Of course I only know what an Autogyro is because I read it on wikipedia. You think I’d be able to tell that sort of plane by sight? Shit. I also see that, in the middle of this action-packed climax, I scribbled “How old is Leo DeCaprio?” in my notes….which should tell you everything you need to know about my interest level in the outcome of this film. Enraptured….positively. I’m pretty sure I wanted to know how old Leo was when he played Howard Hughes in The Aviator. Answer: 29 years old. Now you know.
So Cliff and Jenny survive the Zeppelin disaster and return to being a couple ‘cuz this movie is stupid like that. I couldn’t tell you what became of the FBI or Paul Sorvino as they are never spoken of again. We haven’t seen the last of freaky double H yet! He shows up at the airfield and styles Cliff out with a spankin’ new airplane. Then he retreats to the restroom and washes his hands with steel wool. After he heads back to do whatever the hell it is that Howard Hughes did, Peevy mentions that he ganked a copy of the rocket pack blueprints...and that he thinks he can make an even BETTER version of the rocket pack just in time for the sequel. Well folks...Alan Arkin is currently 87 years old...so the clock is TICKING, motherfuckers. The end.