The Year of Hanks

" Hi, come on in! Drugs to the right, hookers to the left." I don't really know how to say this diplomatically or gently or without resorting to hyperbole, so I'm just gonna come out and say it. This. Movie. Was. AWFUL. He Knows You're Alone  was pretty bad, but it had the redeeming quality of camp. Mazes and Monsters  was mostly the same, but it had some funny moments, character development, and a plot that at least made some semblance of sense. In my last post, I spoke about discovering a new appreciation for Splash.  But this? Gah. I don't know where to start. So Rick Gassko (Hanx himself) is a crude, juvenile troublemaker who has the best possible job for someone like him - bus driver for a Catholic school. After an afternoon of shuttling around a bunch of dice-throwing, fist-fighting, Playboy-peeping eight year-olds (you know, just another day at the office) with his topless hula gal jiggling her jubblies on his dashboard, Rick, havin...

"You see, drinking is a matter of algebraic ratio. How drunk you get is caused by the amount of alcohol you consume in relation to your total body weight. You see my point? It's not that you had too much to drink. You're just too skinny." It's really got nothing to do with the overall theme of the movie, but it was, for me, the funniest part. I've seen this film a number of times; granted, the most recent of which was probably about a decade ago, owing to the fact that it wasn't one of my favorites as it's a little, well, ridiculous.  We rented this one from Vudu, and the summary of the film contained some surprising information, as did a scene within the first twenty minutes or so. I'm always genuinely delighted to learn something new, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover a few things about Splash that I'd never known before, namely: This film was directed by Ron Howard. And according to the ending credits, his broth...

"The most frightening monsters are the ones that exist in our minds." My sincerest apologies for not having updated sooner. Between work, vacation, visiting family, and illness, we've had a VERY eventful couple of weeks around here. It's going to get a fair bit of catching up to get the Hanksing back on track, so here goes. This one actually threw me for a loop. The year was 1982, and Hanx was fresh off wrapping the second and final season of his breakout TV sitcom, Bosom Buddies, in which he portrayed a man constantly forced to cross-dress in order to live in apartment designated solely for women. Add to this that while his previous film role in a slasher pic wasn't exactly slapstick, his character had a pretty jovial and easygoing nature, and I suppose I figured that with Mazes and Monsters,  we were in for a buoyant comedy-adventure, perhaps a college-age reimagining (or pre-imagining, as it were) of The Goonies. Everything, right down to Hanks' imp...