20 Aug 2015

At The Movies: Trainwreck, The Man From Uncle, Women He's Undressed

From At The Movies, 7:30 pm on 20 August 2015

Women He s Undressed

Simon Morris reviews Trainwreck, written by and starring woman of the moment, Amy Schumer… and the movie version of the old TV series The Man From Uncle. He also looks at Women He's Undressed, a documentary about Orry-Kelly who designed the costumes for over 250 Hollywood movies - including the Oscar-winning Some Like It Hot.

The big picture with Simon Morris

When the publicity department starts talking about selling movies, they want to know for whom the films are being made. The key phrase is “target market” – but nobody wants that target to be too small. It’s a mass-audience business after all, not an archery competition. Unlike Robin Hood, the purpose isn’t to split an arrow in the dead centre of the target. No, it’s more like a paintball game. By all means hit the bull’s-eye if you can, but make sure the whole target gets splattered as well. That’s why big blockbusters aim beyond the Comic-Con fanboys by broadening the appeal with more generally accepted stars - Robert Downey Junior, Gwynneth Paltrow, Robert Redford and Michael Caine.

Smart film-makers throw all sorts of extra elements into the mix – pop songs for the kids, theatrical Dames and Knights for the oldies, cars ands guns for the boys, romance for the girls - while still keeping their eye on the target. The trick is not to muddy the waters.

This week, producer/director Guy Ritchie remembers his favourite TV show when he was a kid – a long-forgotten American James Bond spoof called The Man From UNCLE. Ritchie doesn’t think it needed more than amping up the action a bit. But who remembers The Man From UNCLE these days?  

That’s an even bigger problem for a little documentary about Hollywood’s Golden Age. Director Gillian Armstrong realised that genius costume-designer Orry-Kelly is hardly a household name, so she plays the patriotism card. To be fair to modern Australian audiences, they’re not just unfamiliar with Orry-Kelly. They’re probably also unlikely to have heard of Bette Davis, Cary Grant, or even local boy Errol Flynn.

The trickiest balancing act is gender. In the past, a film aimed exclusively at male audiences assumed compliant girlfriends would come along too. But I suspect that’s changing. So the latest James Bond and Star Trek movies make sure there are good, strong women characters in there too. Now there’s a new wave of women-targeted films – Sex and the City, 50 Shades of Grey, Spy and this week Trainwreck. The question is, how much to pander to a secondary market of husbands and boyfriends, without losing that Girl Power edge?

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