Director Rob Reiner has four films in the 1,001 list.Martin Scorsese has nine (a rough count) so maybe it’s safe to say that Reiner is half as good of a director as Scorsese.
I’ve never considered Reiner anything other than Meathead from “All in the Family.” Look at a list of his directed films, and it’s not bad at all.
In fact, I think the guy has quite a bit of value. I think he captures a certain amount of attitude from the Baby Boomers and, to a point, Generation X.
Is there a more quintessential relationship film than When Harry Met Sally? Did any film of its genre or time quite straddle the lines between the pessimism of the Boomers and Gen X along with the seed of hope and serendipity that both groups kinda still believed in down deep?
There’s Billy Crystal’s Harry. The typical asshole. Jaded and a straight shooter. He calls it like he sees it and he sees everything as being related to sex without the niceties and small things that make true relationships grow and prosper.
Then there’s Meg Ryan’s Sally. The optimist (a journalist, of course), who truly believes that people are deep and have different dimensions from the one-sided sex whores to the multi-dimensional thoughtful creatures seeking to perpetually evolve emotionally.
Consider Reiner’s other work. This Is Spinal Tap commenting on the metal scene of debauchery and a listless generation. Misery and the idea of celebrity and a fan’s perceived expectations. A Few Good Men and the military complex.
Two of his films kind of serve as bookends and both deal with death: Stand By Me and The Bucket List.
The latter is a silly, throwaway movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman (it’s no Pacino and DeNiro … but it’s still two of the best actors of the past 50 years), who are dying and seek to scratch off a list of things to do before they pass on. Stand By Me is the Stephen King story about four friends in the 1950s who travel to see a dead body. It’s part adventure, part macabre and part adolescent fixation on death – something they didn’t understand then and something that we assume Nicholson and Freeman still don’t understand in their 80s.
Despite all his films being relevant for a certain group of people, nothing’s captured the imagination of the American public (especially that of Generation X) than The Princess Bride. Ironically, it’s a story of true love where despite everything in the world going against our two lovers, nothing would get in their way, even death.
Still, there was a subtle message. One that was relatively popular at the time. It’s the same theme in The Neverending Story – that modern technology was ruining our youth. In The Neverending Story, children not reading anymore was basically destroying an entire imaginary world full of multi-faced races, uncooperative, lethargic giant turtles and rock eaters. And spawning tremendously large man-eating wolves as agents of change and despair.
In The Princess Bride, Peter Falk has to force feed his grandson (Kevin Arnold … or as he’s also known, Fred Savage) a book forcing him to turn off his video games. Despite the grumbling, Savage ends up loving the story. And, thus, Fantasia was saved.
My point is that Reiner doesn’t make awesome films that change the way we look at writing or acting. He’s not Scorsese or Godard. But he’s also not a tortured artist or someone unable to bring on a fight in a film. There’s not many guys that can be so light hearted as in The Princess
Bride and capture such a heavy burden in Stand By Me.
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