On a different day, I think I might have rather liked Joe Dante's Matinée, a sweet little comedy set in Florida during the Cuban missile crisis. It's nicely shot, nicely acted and tells its fundamentally endearing story with understated narrative flair. It felt to me like an intensely personal piece, too - a quick check reveals that during the period when the movie takes place, Dante would have been approximately the same age as the film's main protagonist who, coincidentally, is obsessed with creature features and monster comics.
As I say, on a different day...
Yesterday, however, I cricked my neck, and neck pain always brings out the asshole in me. What should have been cute, therefore, seemed saccharine, and John Goodman's avuncular performance as a B-movie producer came across as way too cuddly and nowhere near sleazy enough.
There's not a lot I feel sure about saying about Matinée, though, because - and I'm guessing here - it belongs to a cinematic idiom of which I have no experience. I suspect it shares DNA with the likes of Explorers, The Goonies and, most recently, Super-8, where (apparently) a group of cutely cinematic boys and the odd token female have excitingly PG-rated adventures and everything resolves at the end in a warm golden sunset of pure nostalgia. It's all good clean fun for small boys and sad middle-aged men, but I just don't get the romance of it and I suspect I never will.
Matinée spends way too long establishing time, place and mood, and by the time we finally get a sniff of Dante's trademark mischief, it all feels too little, too late. I'd been hoping for some proper anarchy, but when, midway through, the cat fell asleep on my notebook it was all I could do not to follow his excellent example.
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