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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Nathan Rabin
It seems perverse to make a musical about Gen Xers, the most cynical and sarcastic generation known to man, that’s wholly devoid of cynicism and sarcasm. Rent consequently feels like a Disneyland stage show about those nutty Gen Xers, with their bicuriosity and crazy drug addictions and shameless love of hoofing and crooning.
The Rocketeer taps into four fantasies shared by every strapping heterosexual American lad: flying, being a superhero, battling Nazis, and having sex with Bettie Page.
With its central three-way marriage, debauchery, polygamy, and unconventional stars, it was too damn weird and adult for family audiences, and too old-fashioned for stoners. Nevertheless, I can imagine that at least a few acid freaks stumbled out of the theater wondering if they’d merely hallucinated seeing a three-hour-long movie where Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin sang and danced and were married to the same woman yet seemed kind of into each other.
He’d even been the subject of legal threats from Disney, which is the ultimate badge of underground respectability. Disney complained that Howard T. Duck infringed on Donald Duck’s copyright. As part of the settlement, Howard was forced to wear pants.
