Third Annual Mustache Movie Marathon: Week 3

It’s been another week and that means another few movies have been watched as a part of the third annual Mustache Movie Marathon.  I realized through the first two weeks that I was watching movies featuring mustaches, but I hadn’t yet gone into the regulars of the Mustache Movie Marathons.  Some of the movies in this third week took on some of those usual suspects.  You’ll see what I mean as I go through the movies I watched in the third week of November.  Let’s get this started then.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

This is the second Sam Rockwell movie that I’ve included in the third annual Mustache Movie Marathon, although this one is not included because of Sam Rockwell.  Okay, maybe it is.  I like Sam Rockwell, so I watched the movie.  But he’s not the person with the mustache in this movie.  The person with the mustache is George Clooney.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is about game show extraordinaire Chuck Barris.  It’s kind of a biopic about him, but who really knows how much of the stuff in the movie is real?  It involves the creation of his game shows The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show, as well as his secret life as a government assassin.  It’s got some stylish directing from first time director George Clooney, and shows the promise that his future films would capitalize on.

Although Sam Rockwell is the star, there are still some solid performances throughout the film from the supporting actors.  One of these actors is director George Clooney who sports a classy lip warmer.  Why do I say classy?  He’s George Clooney.  Nobody can be classy like Clooney.  The mustache matches that charm and suaveness.

Killers

This is where my regulars come in.  Killers features Tom Selleck in a supporting role, but it’s Tom Selleck all the same.  You cannot have a marathon of mustache movies without including Selleck.

Killers isn’t about Tom Selleck.  It’s about Ashton Kutcher playing a former government assassin (I guess there’s a little bit of a theme between these first two films) who falls in love with Katherine Heigl.  After three years away from the job, a bunch of killers come after Kutcher’s character and try to retire him.  It’s not a great film.  In fact, I think it’s downright bad because of poor direction.  The action scenes do not fit with the rest of the film.  They feel more handheld and shaky than anything else in the film, and the shaky isn’t used for close-up point of view action.  The shaky is used for wider shots, simply because shaking the camera during action is popular.

Tom Selleck plays Heigl’s father, a pilot with a mustache.  Pretty much anything he’s in, he could be categorized as a guy with a job and a mustache.  What makes it special in Killers is the joke at the end of the movie, which involved Ashton Kutcher attempting to grow the same mustache.  The two women of the family comment that they married their fathers, solidifying that Kutcher and Selleck are destined to be the same.  It’s a joke about a mustache.  Perfect.

The Cannonball Run

Burt Reynolds is always a regular of the Mustache Movie Marathons, and so is Hal Needham apparently.  Every year, I’ve chosen a Reynolds movie that was directed by Hal Needham.  The two do make a good pair.  This year I got a bonus in choosing a film with the both of them.  I also got Dom DeLuise in the package deal.  Like Reynolds, he has a pretty good mustache going in the movie.

The Cannonball Run is about a cross-country race and the people involved in the race.  It mostly follows Reynolds’ and DeLuise’s characters, but there is a big cast of humorous characters.  What separates this movie from things like It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Rat Race, and Death Race 2000 is the self-referential jokes.  The movie has in-jokes to many of the actors and their careers.  It’s like a 1980s version of This is the End.

Like I said, I watched this movie for Burt Reynolds and got Dom with him.  The two of them should have named their ambulance the mustache mobile because their mustaches are that glorious.  How can you ever go wrong with the Burt Reynolds ‘stache.  That’s right, you can’t.  And Dom DeLuise dressed as a superhero with the mask stopping right above his mustache?  Perfect.  This movie is a cavalcade of mustaches.

Suburban Commando

The fourth and final mustache movie of the week was the one that brought Hulk Hogan back into the Mustache Marathons.  He has been a staple of the Mustache Marathon since the first year, when I included Mr. Nanny.  My history of including his films had me worried this year, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Suburban Commando is about an alien man who gets stranded on Earth and must hide among the suburbs in order to avoid bounty hunters.  He moves in with a family, the patriarch of which is trying to get himself a raise at work.  Through being together, the alien learns that he can care about people, and the father learns that he doesn’t need to be stranded in a dead end job.  This movie was a nice reprieve from the other Hulk Hogan movies that I had seen.  The jokes landed, the supporting cast was good, and it didn’t get on my nerves like the other movies.  If I had seen this one first, I would probably look forward to Hulk Hogan movies.

The reason I always include Hulk Hogan in the Mustache Marathons is his handlebar mustache.  When you think of Hulk Hogan, you first think of wrestling, and then you think of his facial hair.  I don’t have any real investment in his movie career, but the mustache is something to look at.  If you haven’t watched it in action in a movie, I highly recommend seeking out one Hulk Hogan movie just to witness it.  It’ll be worth it for sure.

That’s it for this week’s Mustache Movie Marathon summary.  The next summary will be at the end of the month, covering the last nine days of the marathon.  I’ll try and get my other two regulars into the marathon: Charlie Chaplin and Sam Elliott.  It wouldn’t feel right without them in the marathon.  I’ll see you back here in just over a week for the final portion of the third annual Mustache Movie Marathon.