Heartbeeps, Cinderella, Taps, Taxi Zum Klo, 1981
Best movies of the 1981 holiday season – Reds, My Dinner With Andre, Ragtime, Neighbors
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3 thoughts on “Heartbeeps, Cinderella, Taps, Taxi Zum Klo, 1981”
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You can tell they had a deep affection for John Belushi because Neighbors is awful. God rest his soul but if he were still alive he’d tell you the same thing. It’s a complete waste of a comedy genius in his final performance.
Neighbors is not an awful movie and the fact that it was a success with all on and off set problems that it had from Belushi and Aykroyd trying to get John G. Advilsen replaced during the shoot, Belushi’s personal demons returning and eventually leading up to his eventual passing and screenwriter Larry Gelbert not wanting his work to be altered in any way made it almost impossible for Belushi and Aykroyd to make the material better than what was originally written. A shame that this was Belushi’s last movie and he took all the negative reviews from Continental Divide (alot of them unwarranted because it is a sweet movie) way too hard because he had still been with us, would’ve had a great career as a dramatic actor and should’ve taken it that way despite that. Sadly, he went out the way he wanted and we will never know what might have been.
Yeah I read Bob Woodward’s book on Belushi and his behavior on the set was shameful. He was right about Avildson’s decisions but it’s still no excuse. He wasted several days of shooting because he was too high to even walk or talk properly. If he had kept a level head and not gotten bombed maybe he would have been taken seriously by the director and the producers. That’s how you get your way, you have to be diplomatic. Regardless, the finished product is still pretty worthless. There are no laughs to be found in the movie. It’s an eerie waste of time. As far as being a success everyone at the studio knew how bad it was so they implemented a plan to release it simultaneously in more theaters than they would normally book. That way more people would see it in the opening week before bad word of mouth killed the picture which is exactly what happened. It barely turned a profit. Don’t pay attention to Wikipedia budgets, it’s roughly half of what they actually spend when you figure in advertising, distribution and other expenses. As for the critical response, it got killed by the critics outside of Chicago.