Struan (Bryan Brown) is the kind of man who never apologizes and never explains. He has a British wife who came out to Hong Kong, took one look around, and went back home forever, sending him a son as a memento. He has a Chinese mistress and a Chinese son (by an earlier mistress). Brock (John Stanton) has a son, too—a vicious torturer and killer. Both fathers hope their boys will grow up to inherit Hong Kong, and soon we are on the edge of our seats with suspense over who will prevaiclass="underline" Will it be the two noble heirs to a hero’s blood, or the snot nose sadist?
Life in early Hong Kong seems to have centered on protracted boudoir scenes, interrupted by beauty contests, formal balls, sword fights, and stormy weather, with the occasional odd bit of perfunctory diplomacy. By my estimate, twice as much time is spent on the fancy-dress contest as on the negotiations over the opium trade.
Of the women of Tai-Pan, it can be said that Joan Collins could have played each and every one of them at some point in her career. My favorite is Mary Sinclair (Katy Behean), who comes out to Hong Kong as a simple English lass and, through pluck and dedication, becomes a successful prostitute, inspiring the immortal line, “You’re not the Mary Sinclair I knew.” Then there is May-May (Joan Chen), Brown’s Chinese mistress, who will-will. Their most tender moment comes when she loses face with him and wants to commit suicide, and he helps her regain face by whipping her but not really hitting her very hard. You gotta love this guy.
The conflict in the movie centers on who will be the Tai-Pan, or British ruler, of Hong Kong. Brock buys up a lot of Struan’s promissory notes to force him into bankruptcy, but Struan is able to raise the money in the nick of time through a loan from the industrious Sinclair, who is the kind of girl Marlene Dietrich had in mind when she observed that you don’t get to be known as Shanghai Lil in one night.
Brock remains bitter over the years and vows that he will have his revenge, and that leads to the big sword fight during the hurricane. Then all is calm, and Struan observes that we are in the “eye of the hurricane.” This must be some hurricane, because the eye alone lasts longer than some of the movie’s whole decades, providing Struan with time to return home for the ending, which is romantic, glorious, tempest-tossed, tragic, and way overdue.
Teaching Mrs. Tingle
(Directed by Kevin Williamson; starring Helen Mirren, Marisa Coughlan; 1999)
Helen Mirren is a very good actress. All too good for Teaching Mrs. Tingle, where she creates a character so hateful and venomous that the same energy, more usefully directed, could have generated a great Lady Macbeth. She is correct to believe that comic characters are best when played straight. They depend on the situation to make them funny. There is nothing funny about the situation in Teaching Mrs. Tingle.
The movie resembles Election in its attempt to deal with the dog-eat-dog world of ambitious high-school students, where grade points can make an enormous difference. But it lacks that movie’s sly observations about human nature, and bludgeons the audience with broad, crude, creepy developments. Here is a movie that leaves us without anyone to like very much, and no one to care about. It was written and directed by Kevin Williamson, whose screenplays for the Scream pictures depend on comic slasher situations for their appeal; here, required to create more believable characters, he finds the wrong ones for this kind of story.
Katie Holmes stars as Leigh Ann Watson, an honor student only a few percentage points shy of becoming class valedictorian. Much depends on the grade she gets in history, a class that Mrs. Tingle (Mirren) rules with an iron fist and cruel sarcasm. She seems to take an almost erotic delight in humiliating her students in public, and singles out Leigh Ann for special ridicule, maybe just because she’s smart and pretty.
Also in the picture: Jo Lynn Jordan (Marisa Coughlan), Leigh Ann’s best friend; their classmate and friend, Luke Churner (Barry Watson), who combines the better qualities of slobs and oafs; and Trudie Tucker (Liz Stauber), who is Leigh Ann’s bitter rival for valedictorian. Oh, and there’s Michael McKean as the high school principal; Mrs. Tingle knows he’s in AA and threatens to blackmail him for secret drinking. And Coach Wenchell (Jeffrey Tambor), whose relationship with Mrs. Tingle is reflected in his nickname, Spanky (in this case it is best spelled Spankee).
Leigh Ann turns in a history project in the form of a journal that might have been kept by a Pilgrim woman; it’s leather-bound, with meticulous calligraphy and decorations, and would make the judges of the History Book Club weep with gratitude. Mrs. Tingle scornfully mocks it after only glancing at the front page. Later, she pounces on the three friends in the gym. Luke has stolen a copy of Mrs. Tingle’s final exam, and stuffs it into Leigh Ann’s backpack, where Mrs. Tingle finds it. Now Leigh Ann faces expulsion.
All of this serves as setup to the heart of the movie, which is spent with Mrs. Tingle tied to her bed while the three students desperately try to figure out what to do next. If this were a serious hostage or kidnapping movie, some of the resulting material might seem appropriate. Mirren approaches Mrs. Tingle like a prisoner of war in a serious film, playing mind games with her captors. There are scenes that are intended as farce (unexpected arrivals and phone calls), but they’re flat and lifeless. We have no sympathy for Mrs. Tingle, but at least she has life, while the three students are simply constructions—walking, talking containers for the plot.
Is it possible that some high school students hate their teachers so much that they’ll play along with Teaching Mrs. Tingle? I doubt it, because Mrs. Tingle isn’t hateful in an entertaining way. She belongs in one of those anguished South American movies about political prisoners and their captors facing ethical dilemmas. And the kids belong in Scream 3.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
(Directed by Michael Pressman; starring Paige Turco; 1991)
I bent over backward to be fair to the first movie about the Teenage Mutant Turtles. It was, I wrote, “probably the best possible Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie.” Now we have the sequel, subtitled The Secret of the Ooze. I may not get what I want, but I get what I deserve.
Once again, here are the four superhero turtles, their friends Keno and April, their enemy the Shredder, his buddies the Foot Gang, and the maddening Turtle theme music, which sounds like an berserk merry-go-round. There is also a mad scientist, necessary to explain additional details about how the turtles got that way.
Kids like the turtles. A recent national survey reported that 95 percent of grade-school teachers could trace aggressive, antisocial classroom behavior to the Ninja Turtles—high praise. As someone who was raised on Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and Wonder Woman, I think the kids are getting the short end of the stick. What kind of a superhero is an amphibian who lives in sewers, is led by a rat, eats cold pizza, and is the product of radioactive waste? Is this some kind of a cosmic joke on the kids, robbing them of their birthright, a sense of wonder? Or is it simply an emblem of our drab and dreary times?
One disturbing thing about the turtles is that they look essentially the same. All that differentiates them, in the Nintendo game that gave them birth, is their weapons. It’s as if the whole sum of a character’s personality is expressed by the way he does violence. The turtles are an example of the hazards of individuality. They hang out together, act together, fight together, and have a dim collective IQ that expresses itself in phrases like “Cowabunga, dude.”