Hijinks Ensue!

Here are a few brief impressions of movies that I have seen recently:

Little Miss Sunshine: I second (or perhaps third) the thumbs down of Gene Healy and James Wolcott. This movie was basically a sitcom pilot with a cliched wacky family. There is a foul grandpa, a faux-existentialist brother who wants to be an Airforce pilot. The whole family goes on a trip in their VW microbus so that the young girl can enter a beauty pagent. Hijinks ensue, as they say. It's a bad joke that it has been nominated for a best picture Academy Award, but I guess it's better than Titanic.

I was sort of dissapointed after finally seeing Breakfast at Tiffany's. It has such an inflated reputation and who can resist Audrey Hepburn? It reminds me a little of Billy Wilder's The Apartment, but Wilder's picture is far better. Truman Capote suppossedly said that it made him want to throw up. It's not that bad, but then I haven't read the book.

Bombshell, starring Jean Harlow, is a gem from the Turner Classic Movies vault. This MGM classic features Lee Tracy as a studio publicity man who constantly manufactures phony scandals around the studio's sex symbol, played by Harlow, to keep her name in the headlines. Hijinks ensue in this film as well but unlike Little Miss Sunshine, they are funny and they ring true. It's hard to believe that this film is not available on DVD.