JS

Joel Schumacher, who just died, was not the type of director who won Oscars.  He made commercial movies that critics rarely treated as high art.  But occasionally, he turned out something interesting.

He actually started as a costume designer in the 70s, working with directors such as Woody Allen--now there's someone who wins Oscars--on Sleeper and Interiors.  Then he became a successful screenwriter, working on films with African-American themes, such as Sparkle, Car Wash and The Wiz.

Then, after a couple TV movies, he graduated to features with Lily Tomlin's The Incredible Shrinking Woman in 1981.  It did not please the critics, but I thought it wasn't bad.

He followed up with D.C. Cab and the quintessential brat pack movie St. Elmo's Fire.  Then he directed what is probably his best film, The Lost Boys.  It's about two brothers moving into a new town with their single mom.  The younger brother meets some friends who are vampire hunters while the older brother happens to meet a gang of teenage vampires. There are also subplots with the mom and their eccentric granddad. (I was going to say more but I'm trying to avoid spoilers.)

There's a lot to like about the film.  Schumacher manages a nice mix of horror and comedy, but also gives us a good feeling for what it's like to be young and living in a beach town.  The Lost Boys also has great visual style, and a good ending (that apparently they fought over behind the scenes).  It also had a horrible poster, playing up hunky Jason Patric, but making him look dorky.

Schumacher followed it up with Cousins, a remake of a French comedy, that once again I liked while the critics didn't.  Then Flatliners, a horror film with a great cast and a passable concept that didn't really work.  After that, Dying Young, a dreary film with the hottest new star in town, Julia Roberts--I remember some magazine predicting it would be the #1 hit of the summer, but that was before anyone saw it.

After that Schumacher made what might be his most critically acclaimed film, Falling Down, a drama about a middle-aged executive fed up with his life who walks across Los Angeles committing acts of mayhem. I found it intriguing, though I haven't seen it since it opened and wonder how it'd play today.  I'd like to see it again simply because I know the layout of Los Angeles so much better and would know where he is throughout the movie.

At this point, Schumacher started doing bigger and bigger films, though they were getting less and less interesting.  He did two John Grisham stories, The Client and A Time To Kill, which aren't bad, though it doesn't seem like he added much to them.  And he also did two Batman films, Batman Forever (Val Kilmer as Batman) and Batman & Robin (George Clooney as Batman).  The former is not highly regarded, while the latter is considered the low point of the Batman franchise.  Perhaps it is, but, aside from the design and a few performances, I don't think much of the Batman films up to that point anyway.

Most of the Schumacher films that followed aren't much.  Some people had hopes for 8MM, the follow-up script from the writer of Se7en, but it's awful.  So is Flawless, starring Robert De Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman, which seems to be the kind of film designed to win awards.  Then came the war film Tigerland, which sank without a trace. (Some critics liked it--I've never seen it.)

Schumacher made eight more features, most with decent budgets and good actors.  I wish I could say one or two stuck out, but all of them are undistinguished.  No matter.  He had an up and down career, but he made some decent stuff, often when no one was paying much attention.