Word: escapist
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Oklahoma! is nothing if not escapist. The creaky book centers on true love be tween Curly, a bold man, and Laurey (Christine Andreas), a spirited maiden, aided by an earthy matchmaker, Aunt Eller (Mary Wickes). They make it real, even when the dialogue resembles subtitles from a silent movie. As in the silents, there is a villain, Jud, played by Martin Vidnovic, who brings to a thankless role a Freudian depth of characterization and a richly textured voice...
...book has apparently undergone some renovation, but purists of the Broadway class of '28 are the only ones who are likely to be troubled by that. If the word escapist were forgotten, Whoopee! would redefine it. The show is transparently mindless and totally exhilarating fun. Director Frank Corsaro has wisely pitched the tone of the entire evening between silent-movie comedy and balmy operantics. It is never camped. Like gentle satire, it is half in love with what it kids, but time−not the cast−does the kidding...
...Great Train Robbery is one of the most cynical "pure escapist" movies ever made. Crichton hasn't even bothered to conceal his disgust for his lifeless hackwork. He crams his screenplay with adventure-movie cliches, but he doesn't poke fun at them; he piles them on as if to show how much he can get away with. Movies like this aren't very entertaining if they're not stylish or suspenseful; Crichton's stupid, stilted dialogue precludes style; the Mission: Impossible predictability, sluggish editing, and surprising number of loose ends strangle suspense. Characters inexplicably appear and disappear--dragged...
...surprise hits of the year amply confirmed that escapist trend. Made for a mere pittance ($2.5 million), National Lampoon's Animal House, a high-velocity farce about fraternity life in the '60s, has made $102 million. Crude and silly, Animal House has an abundance of animal spirits, which is what audiences seem to want. Whatever the reason for its success, "Animal House is just the beginning, not the end," says Paramount Head Barry Diller. "That kind of Saturday Night Live consciousness, that visual entertainment, will become a" staple," Another zany sleeper was Up in Smoke, one long giggle...
...fever is hardly a new affliction. The most enervating, enduring and escapist of social institutions, the convention is as American as rubber chicken, as ubiquitous as revolving hotel-top restaurants, as old as the nation itself. Our more perfect union was forged at a convention (Philadelphia, 1787), divided against itself at another (Montgomery, Ala., 1861), reunited at a rather intimate one (Appomattox Courthouse, 1865) and renewed quadriennially. Long before Sinclair Lewis chronicled the fictional convention high jinks of George F. Babbitt, boobus Americanus and prototypical conventioneer, other observers dis covered our penchant for gatherings. "As soon as several Americans have...