Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/09/27/and-now-for-their-35th-anniversary-my-first-two-professional-movie-reviews/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=62523

First off, look at that dork. What’s going on with his hair? Why is he tugging on his ear? Did he really think round glasses were right for his face? Someone needs to go back to 1991 and give that young man a fashion intervention. This is a disaster.

Second, today is the 35th anniversary of my first movie reviews going on up in the Fresno Bee, the newspaper that hired me straight out of college to be their film critic. Why did they do that? Well, I would like to say that it was because my exceptional talent simply could not be denied, and maybe that was part of it, but the other part of it was, being right out of college and it being the middle of a recession, they could hire me for really really cheap.

That was fine by me! Unlike so many other of my compatriots in the Class of ’91, I had a job! And it was watching movies, which I was going to do anyway! Honestly, it was all good.

To celebrate this milestone of my career, I though it might be fun to post the first two reviews I wrote for the Bee. The first is for Deceived, a Goldie Hawn thriller that no one remembers now, including, I suspect, Goldie Hawn. The second is for The Fisher King, the Terry Gilliam film which would go on to get five Oscar nominations, including one for star Robin Williams, and one win, for Mercedes Ruehl. Looking back, I think these reviews hold up fine, although if I were 22-year-old me’s editor, I’d tell him to go a little lighter on the spoiler-y elements in his reviews. Other than that, they do the job, and I got to keep doing mine.

But don’t take my word for it. Here they are. Let me know what you think, 35 years on.

Don’t trust lukewarm ‘Deceived’ to deliver

By John Scalzi

The Fresno Bee

People sometimes say they don’t really know their spouses, but that’s more than a casual complaint for Adrienne Saunders (Goldie Hawn) in the lukewarm thriller “Deceived,” Hawn’s first picture since last summer.

Not that Adrienne thinks there’s anything wrong with her husband, Jack, (John Heard), at first. They spot each other across a crowded restaurant, where Adrienne is being stood up (and probably not for the first time) by a blind date.

The next day, Jack, who works for a New York art museum, wanders into Adrienne’s business, an art-restoration company, and chemistry takes over.

After a brief exhibition of the intellectual’s mating ritual (Chinese food, a foot rub and all-night conversation in the participants’ fields of expertise), we’re transported six years into the future and into a home life that’s so impossibly perfect we know something’s going to go wrong.

In Hollywood, the only reason to show a perfect family is to knock the foundation out from under it.

This is accomplished when Jack, who may or may not have ties to an art-counterfeiting scheme, takes out the car one winter day, and it promptly slides over an embankment.

Adrienne, who was beginning to suspect that her husband was up to more than he was letting on (he’d been spotted in New York hotels when he supposedly was at Boston art auctions), gets an additional shock when she finds out from the Social Security office that Jack Saunders has been dead 15 years. Whoever she thought “Jack,” her husband, was, he obviously wasn’t.

It’s at this point that the movie shifts from a domestic drama to a mystery. Later, once the pieces fall together, it transmutes once more, into a “Fatal Attraction”-type thriller. It’s a neat concept, almost three pictures in one. A Neapolitan ice cream of a film.

But “Deceived” doesn’t work very well, largely because the script and the direction aren’t up to the level of complexity they need to pull it off. In a genre like this, where plotting and direction are everything, it’s hard to overcome that handicap.

That’s a shame, because both Hawn and Heard work hard with what they’re given. Hawn in particular is better than she has been in any of her recent films. Perhaps this isn’t saying much, when you consider that her last attempt at acting (“Bird on a Wire”) consisted of squealing in fright, making O’s with her mouth, and being peeved when another woman looked at Mel Gibson’s buns.

Heard keeps up his end of the movie as well, suave and oily in that terribly sincere manner that always fools everyone until it is too late. I worry about Heard, who seems to be a nice guy, but who always manages to get the jerk roles (he was the obnoxious climber in “Big,” for example). Someone ought to give him a role where he could move around.

It’s not this one. Screenwriters Mary Agnes Donoghue and Derek Saunders have little success making their characters believable. Adrienne and Jack’s fawning stage goes on for the first 25 minutes of the movie, much too long. After the third scene depicting how happy the two are together, I wanted Jack dead, now, because I knew the movie would not limp out of first gear until that man croaked.

Once he’s out of the way, the rest of the script is a series of soft lobs to director Damian Harris, setting the plot devices in nice, obvious places so that Harris can spike them into the audience. Which he does with gay abandon, aided by a music score (by Thomas Newman) that screeches in suspense any time an actor makes a physical movement.

Harris’ lack of finesse works to the film’s advantage in the final battle scene, when he can forget the jigsaw puzzle and simply scare the crowd. It succeeds: Hawn, Heard and their disassembled apartment building all work together to create a good, healthy screamfest. But it’s predictable, and it leaves one whopper of a question (“Where is Goldie standing?”) that could have been solved with better lighting, but it’s not such a bad payoff.

At the bottom of Gilliam’s stuffed toy box, a jewel of a movie

By John Scalzi

The Fresno Bee

Director Terry Gilliam’s movies have always been like over-stuffed toy boxes. There are so many wonderful things to look at that the consideration of their purpose is secondary.

“Time Bandits,” “Brazil” and “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” were all visually ravishing confections, wildly inventive yet strangely short on plot details. So the frustration factor with a Gilliam film is high: You’d gladly give a little on the scenic details if only the story would gain in the trade.

“The Fisher King,” Gilliam’s splendid new effort, achieves that balance, muting the directors’ baroque visual edge and using that reclaimed, calm space to allow its characters depth. The result is synergistic: It is Gilliam’s best film.

The story (written by first-timer Richard LaGravenese) is the quest for the Holy Grail. This is an old stomping ground for Gilliam, who co-directed “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” This time, the Grail resides in New York City, and the heroes are decidedly not of the Round Table.

Jack (Jeff Bridges), a shock-radio deejay, who isn’t even vaguely chivalric. He’s obnoxious, self-centered and only begins to interact with humanity when his climate-controlled world is shattered by a listener who takes his advice and wipes out fern-covered eatery loaded with yuppies. Jack drops out and tunes out, living on the charity of Anne (Mercedes Ruehl), the tough owner of a video store.

One night Jack is nearly set on fire by a couple of hoods and is rescued by Parry (Robin Williams), an amazingly literate bum whose cherubic visions tell him to seek the Grail. His only problem is that he is pursued by the Red Knight, who only he can see (and which, in Gilliam’s world, looks like a punk Tin Man on a flaming red horse).

Both men see the other as the solution to their problems: Parry needs Jack to help him get the Grail, and Jack, who learns that Parry was in the fern bar when the shooting began, needs Parry to help him get back his soul. Jack decides to do this by helping Parry win the heart of Lydia (Amanda Plummer), a graceless, gawky wallflower that Parry adores from a distance. This leads to the best restaurant scene since “When Harry Met Sally,” a Chinese dinner that’s half meal, half hockey game. After this, Jack thinks he’s off the hook, but there’s still the Grail.

Particularly notable about this script is its believability. It is not fantasy for fantasy’s sake. Each dip into that world has root and branch in this more physical world. Every movement in one sphere has an effect on the other. LaGravenese’s care in meshing these two worlds give the movie a narrative flow; there’s nary a bump when the transitions are made.

The acting also is fine. Jeff Bridges, never the most demonstrative actor, lets his remove work for him as his character tries to wrest his gaze from inside and refocus it out into the world. Merecedes Ruehl and Amanda Plummer complement the men they’re paired with, Ruehl’s chin-leading emotionality cutting Bridges’ distance and Plummer’s clumsy suspicion blending with William’s earnest romanticism.

Not surprisingly, it is Williams who owns the film. There’s little doubt that the man who began as Mork from Ork is one of our better actors. Anyone who can strip himself naked in Central Park, rub his tush on the grass and deliver an affecting monologue deserves credit. This performance, an outrageous romp with moments of crushing subtlety, adds another brick in his foundation.

Best of all was Gilliam’s direction, which has unquestionably matured. Even reined in, Gilliam is a formidable talent. He may be one of the few directors who would conceive of turning Grand Central Station into a ballroom, as he does in this film. He is one of the still fewer who could actually pull it off, creating one of the most striking scenes in recent film.

But “The Fisher King” does not sacrifice its story for the visuals. It keeps them both intact.

It is a toy box with a purpose.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/09/27/and-now-for-their-35th-anniversary-my-first-two-professional-movie-reviews/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=62523