Earlier this month, the inevitable happened, as the folks at Disney came out in public with their first R-rated feature film–the studio going the way of the wallet instead of Walt.
For those who may ask whether anything is sacred anymore–what next,
”Dumbo Does Dallas”?–there is reason for cheer. Disney has put together a new series of films, and judging from the opener and another I`ve seen, the result is delightful entertainment that is fun and sometimes poignant, without being sappy.
”The Disney Sunday Movie” kicks off at 6 p.m. on ABC-Ch. 7 with ”Help Wanted: Kids,” a comedy about a yuppie couple–appealingly played by real-life husband and wife Bill Hudson and Cindy Williams (the Shirley of ”Laverne & Shirley”)–who hire two children to fill in as their offspring.
Tom Burke, a Manhattan advertising hotshot, breaks the news to Lisa, his spouse/colleague, that he has to fire her, then shortly finds out he himself has gotten the sack. The seething Lisa–finding herself in the midst of
”instant poverty” and daytime hours filled with reruns of ”Gilligan`s Island”–becomes even more depressed when she learns that her husband has taken a new job as president of a children`s sportswear company that is headquartered way out in Arizona–Nirvana, Ariz.–where the best restaurant in town (because you don`t have to eat in your car) is the Chicken Shack.
There`s also another problem: The crusty owner of the company (John Dehner) hires only executives who have progeny. So when the couple come across a brother-sister tandem that specializes in hawking dinosaur eggs to tourists, they persuade them to sign on as their youngsters for $20 each, as well as a buyout of the entire egg inventory.
The kids (feistily-but-not-brattily played by Chad Allen and Hillary Wolf) are desert-smart orphans whose own parents have been killed in a car crash. When the newcomers find them, they are living in a trailer with their uncle, a truck driver and would-be musician (played by the wondrously named Ebbe Roe Smith) who, because he is on the road a lot, eventually agrees to farm out his niece and nephew on a lend-lease basis.
Obviously, the two are no shrinking cactus flowers. Taking a look at the Burkes` house with its pool and other accoutrements, the boy succinctly appraises their new situation: ”It`s a gold mine.” Sizing up the new clothes their ”parents” have bought them, he snaps, ”We look like we`re in `The Night of the Living Dead.` ” When they are not putting down the Burkes with anti-New York oneliners, they are engaged in everything from messing up the kitchen to hustling their contemporaries at blackjack. In school, they are known to their teachers as ”Bonnie and Clyde.”
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There are the expected complications, of course, as well as some dirty job-connected sabotage by the boss` son-in-law, and there is the predictable escalating, and then softening, of adult-juvenile relationships, but director David Greenwalt and scriptwriters Stephen Black and Henry Stern manage to temper it all with a nice cutting edge.
The Sunday night movies pick up the Disney television tradition established by the tremendously successful anthology series–which aired under such titles as ”Walt Disney Presents,” ”The Wonderful World of Disney” and ”Walt Disney”–that ended a 29-year run in the fall of 1983. (The creator himself died in `66.) Future movies will include ”The Girl Who Spelled Freedom,” the story of a Cambodian refugee who becomes an American spelling champion; ”The Deacon Street Deer,” about a boy who tries to save a wild animal he finds in the middle of the city; and ”Tiger Town,” which deals with a young boy helping an aging ballplayer revive his failing career.
IN BRIEF . . .
— Devotees of the old ”Kung Fu” series (1972-75) should get a boot out of ”Kung Fu: The Movie” (8 p.m. Saturday on CBS-Ch. 2), which again stars David Carradine as Caine, the Chinese-American orphan reared by Shaolin monks in the Temple of Hunan and taught the martial arts of self-defense.
This time out, Caine–wearing that familiar hat that looks like something out of a backpacking catalogue for the upwardly-mobile–is sentenced to hang for supposedly committing murder in an opium den, while he is simultaneously being pursued by a fiendish imperial Manchu lord (played by Mako) and his faithful servant (Brandon Lee, son of the late Bruce Lee).
My own favorite line is when Caine solemnly asks a comely widow, ”Was your husband a user of the poppy?”, but the Saturday-matinee script tosses in all kinds of epithets/threats (”I`m gonna send your yellow soul to hell”)
along with just-plain threats (”The head of your son will grace the point of a lance”).
The most visible marks of Caine, of course, are his philosophically fluffy, Charlie Chan-aphoristic pronouncements. ”Sometimes,” he intones at one point, ”even a murdered man has much to tell.” ”The most dangerous road of all,” he declares at another, ”is the one called revenge.” So true. It brings to mind what that hoary Oriental sage, Jackie Vernon, always used to say: ”Wet birds don`t fly at night.”
— Edgar Reitz`s critically praised ”Heimat,” an 8-part, 16-hour mini-series that chronicles the history of Germany from 1919 to 1982 through the lives of three fictional families living in a small village, will begin at 7 p.m. Sunday over the Bravo cable channel. The series, to be released later as a theatrical film, played on German television to a record audience of more than 12 million.