Good Times
I’m watching a real curiosity: “Good Times.” No, not the mid-70s sitcom with Jimmie Walker, but a 1967 movie starring Sonny and Cher. I thought I’d blogged about it before, but a keyword search for “Sonny” turned up nothing, and I don’t seem to be shy about repeating myself anyway. (I first tried a keyword search for “Cher,” but that turned up posts about everything from Phil Vischer to the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.)
The plot of the movie (and “plot” is overstating it a bit) is that Sonny and Cher, playing themselves, are having angst over whether or not to appear in a movie. Sonny has gotten them into an ill-advised contract with Mordicus, a vaguely-malevolent movie producer played by George Sanders. They’ve either got to come up with their own idea for a movie or they will be forced to appear in a hack script, which they hate, by one of Mordicus’ associates. The movie is mostly a series of tongue-in-cheek fantasy sequences as Sonny and / or Cher imagine different movie genres in which they might appear — western, private eye, Tarzan, et cetera. Most of the sequences are built around musical numbers.
As a movie, it’s sort of cheesy, but considered as a series of music videos, it’s a great period piece. The songs are terrific. It was the directoral debut for William Friedkin, who went on to more serious work in “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist.”
[imdb]0061720[/imdb]
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