Cinema Views

"LAST HOLIDAY"

"I'd like to be cremated. I've spent my whole life in a box. I don't want to be buried in one." -- Georgia Byrd's Last Will and Testament

Attitudes of class, conspicuous consumption and having the courage to put into action that old saying about living one's life to the fullest are all ingredients of the winning Dana Owens' film "Last Holiday."

"Last Holiday" recycles the same idea of a doomed short timer but with a couple of twists, such as "The Honeymooner's"- like substitutions of a primarily African American descended and international main cast.

Georgia Byrd is a coupon-clipping cookwares clerk in New Orleans just living her life when she finds out that schedule isn't happening anymore. She's diagnosed with a rare and terminal disease. After moping around and wailing "Why me?!" Georgia decides to carry out her heart's desires, as many as she can pile in. BASE jumping, ski boarding, even gourmet cooking, as she head out to an exclusive resort in Europe she's only seen in a brochure she saved and dreamed about.

This is a Formula film, but there are plenty of those. We already know the score, but there are little touches that can strive within limitations, in the proper hands. Apparently the director has the skills, because the critics and the moviegoers have reached a consensus: go and see this film for a good time at the movies

The appeal is for everyone, and this can't even be categorized as a Chick Flick, although they are among my "Guilty Film Pleasures," subject of an upcoming article

Owen's character has a winning personality, and people can identify with her outlook. She dresses down a snobby guest who disrespects a worker at the ritzy hotel she's picked to blow her liquidated 401(k) cash and life stash.

The look on the worker's face is precious, as she relates another of the growing Georgia Byrd stories to the staff about the mysterious "Rich Americain."

The movie breaks out a little more and defuses the Race Thing when her sister says she realizes she wants to be a Country Western singer. "There no such thing as a Black country Western singer!" Aside from the fact that even here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin we have Black Country Western singers, this frees the audience from having to pretend to ignore that the film has a African Descended protagonist.

Now, this is nothing for us as we've had to translate romantic comedies and find identification in Eurodescended actors and situations that weren't of our milieu. With the broadening of acting roles, and the straying from the anti-life, anti-fertility homosexual propensity for boyish body shapes, movies even when they're recycling old ideas ad infinitum are nevertheless being reinvigorated like "Last Holiday."

LL Cool J was along with Queen Latifah, one of the first Old Skool Rappers to break into the movie biz back in the 1980s, and has played characters from the expected gangbanger to policemen to pro football players to a toy factory CEO's straitlaced son. "Deep Blue Sea" was his entry as one of the Sci Fi Brothas, and on the list I'm compiling for a series on a genre that was once remarkable for the absence of the African Descended.

"Cool James" plays Shawn Williams, the meek hardware department salesman at Kragen's department store, one escalator ride down from Georgia Byrd's Housewares. They circle each other and can't give voice to their obvious mutual attraction. Can this almost relationship be saved in case it ever gets started?!

The movie is full of the sassy attitude that Owens is known for in films such as "Chicago", "Bringing Down The House." The zingers fly throughout, such as when a hotel clerk at the opulent Le Puppe ["Poop"] Czechoslovakian mountain resort chirpily greets her after a transatlantic flight after she had herself upgraded to a luxurious First Class cocoon after being squeezed in Coach:

"I'm hungover, jet lagged, and dyin.' Other than that I'm fine!"

Owens also has become somewhat of an icon for large women and for refusing to fall for the sit down be fat and be quiet attitude. In the movie she wears diaphanous gowns and plunging necklines, and all this adds to the mystery of the staff, who whisper that she's a rich, self-made American entrepreneur. That some people from her native Louisiana are also in the same hotel to make a big deal moves "Last Holiday" to sorta the mistaken identity sort of film, which makes it even better.

The film displays plenty of luxury and opulence, which is one of the things that people go to the movies for, the gritty and hardcore "Hostel" and "Munich" notwithstanding. Gold leaf ceilings that made me homesick -- or whatever its called-- for Italy's palaces, sumptuous food feasts, dresses, and cars received their due. Even the Dillard's department store that stood in for Kragen's looked good, from a chain that is a fixture nearer the Mason-Dixon Line. Its sorta like a Marshall Fields.

People in other nations and cultures often ignore the actors in American movies and look past to the things we take for granted. Like the kitchens in the two-storey homes of working class people stocked with food and cooking machines that usually only their wealthy could afford; smart-mouthed adolescents with a room of their own, and teenagers who drive one of the family's two or three cars! But I digress.

Giancarlo Esposito ("Malcolm X", "Conspiracy Theory") is Senator Clarence Dillings from Louisiana who is getting set for an arrangement with Kragen, played by Timothy Bottoms. Kragen is one of those philosophical CEOs who sells as many of his corporate self-help books as his housewares. He's also a class A-H and jerk, and you know when he meets the opinionated Georgia you just know they're going to bump heads bigtime. And since this is a Formula Film, so it is.

But the movie "Last Holiday" even manages to bump that up by not making it so ham-handed. The film balances many things just right, This ain't Shakespeare -- nowadays even Shakespeare isn't Shakespeare -- but its a good time at the movies. There are bigger films with bigger stars that can't make that claim, unfortunately.

I wasn't expecting much in the way of action but "Last Holiday" even managed to include some worthy scenes. During a ski boarding lesson she breaks loose from her instructor, and careens down a roped off area. The camerawork on those scenes were good (I was a cameraman and I look for these things)

The Class Consciousness isn't forced either. Instead, Working Class people are shown as worthy of respect in thankless jobs, while snobby social climbing Yuppies get their comeuppance in "Last Holiday." Georgia is shown in the posters as dressed in a cloth coat and sensible shoes, looking like a grandmother. she's looking up and away, dreaming. as we all do.

Jane Adams is the Co-Worker/Girlfriend in a role that often goes to a young Black woman. She's outspoken and bodacious, and hers is akin to the role that Jane Cusack had in "Working Girl" with star Melanie Griffith. Her Rochelle urges Cookwares co-worker Georgia to just go on down the escalator and ask Shawn out or something, jeez! If there's a sequel Adams should be in the film more.

Alicia Witt is the red haired actress that has had roles in "Mr. Holland's Opus" and others. You know, for a thin woman she's got it going on where it counts. She must have some Sistah in her family line or something. This is one of Witt's larger profile films, as the mistress companion to Kragen. Her interaction with the still-judgmental Georgia is where the film gets more into "Chick Flick" territory in a movie that is quite a few things to many people, which is probably why it is so widely popular.

"Last Holiday" is international and not just in the cast which includes Marit Choudhoury as Georgia's Doctor Gupta, and one of the more established stars in Gerard Depardieu as the expansive Chef Didier. Also appearing is the TV chef that says "BAM!!" and Motown legend and singer Smokey Robinson.

Michael Nouri is an international star from way back, and Iiked him when he played Dracula on TV and film, and the Pittsburgh steel factory owner and romancer of Chicagoan Jennifer Beals in "Flashdance." He doesn't have a lot to do here, though, as a businessman in town to make a deal with Kragen and Dillings.

"LH" even got into some heavier offshoots.

"She lives on the edge, and does whatever she wants when she wants, heedless of the cost or consequences . She is a true Existentialist... She is easily the most interesting person who has ever come to this hotel!"

That Georgia Byrd has endeared herself to the staff by treating them like human beings helped in their estimation of her. She was a Working Class person like them two days before she cashed out all her bonds, and retirement savings and jumped on a jumbo jet and came over to Czech Republic in the little time she had left.

"I'd like to be cremated. Georgia Byrd writes in her Last Will and Testament. "I've spent my whole life in a box. I don't want to be buried in one." The movie makes you think: if I received the news that I only had a short time left, what would I do? I'd go into a South American jungle.

They are dangerous places (Africa has relatively few real jungles compare to south America and its Amazon River basin). That's a dangerous place, and ordinarily it wouldn't be a destination choice. But circumstances change choices. What about you? Where'd you go? What would you do?

Looking into a mirror at the confident woman she's become she makes her true statement: "The next time we'll love more, laugh more, and not be so afraid. I wasted too much of my life being quiet!"

This like many movies in these idea-challenged days is a remake of a film originally starring Alec Guiness (younger moviegoers know him as the original Obi Wan Kenobi in "Star Wars"). I however remember the same sort of plotline in the Dabney Coleman movie "Short Time On Planet Earth," later shortened to "Short Time" much like "Electric Horseman" to just "Electric" starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford when he was just starting to make his Great Out West movies. But I digress.

Coleman was a policeman who had been diagnosed with a short term terminal disease. He had arranged for the financial arrangements to be very much in his favour.

One other thing: the wretched preview for "Last Holiday" is a Revealer, and is shown in sequence so its like a Cliff Notes® of the movie. I hate those! The worst preview of recent times was "The Italian Job." I never saw the 1960s Michael Caine original, and it spoiled it for me. I hope they do better for "The Brazilian Job" caper film follow up.

CAST OF "LAST HOLIDAY"

Georgia Byrd -- Dana Owens / Queen Latifah
Shawn Williams -- LL Cool James
Senator Dillings -- Giancarlo Esposito
Dr. Gupta -- Marit Chodhouri
Ms. Burns -- Alicia Witt
Rochelle -- Jane Adams
Kragen -- Timothy Bottoms
-- Michael Nouri
-- Matt Ross

"LAST HOLIDAY" is rated PG-13 for some brief sex talk by Georgia to a man's mistress to change her ways (and why her neck really hurts).

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