By Geno McGahee
I am beginning to think that I’m wasting my life by reviewing the live action films of Disney. I don’t know what possessed me to start this journey. I guess I blame Disney Plus and my tendency to scroll, but whatever the case, here we are and the latest title I sat through was the 1997 box office bomb, MR. MAGOO.
Immediately, there is a warning for those easily offended. Mr. Magoo is a cartoon character that had issues with vision and this was very common. It was a cheap way to make cartoon characters. Porky Pig stuttered, Elmer Fudd had a speech impediment and Sylvester the Cat had a lisp. Now my vision isn’t the best and is getting worse by the year, but Mr. Magoo and his antics did not offend me, but I don’t blame Disney for posting the warning. They don’t want a shitload of emails from people that are eager to be offended and bitch about it.
Mr. Magoo was short and bald too. I’m just throwing that out there. I have friends that are short and bald. I’ll need to ask them if they are offended and if they are, I will amend this review with an apology and may even start with a warning before you even begin reading it just to be careful.
Disney pounced on a lot of popular or somewhat known characters in the 1990s and made some live action stinkers. Granted, GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE 1 and 2 fucking ruled, but beyond that, we don’t have a lot of good stuff that I’ve seen so far. FLUBBER was shit. INSPECTOR GADGET 1 and especially 2 were not good. THE SHAGGY DOG blew too. I hoped with Leslie Nielsen that the film would be decent considering his comedic work in THE NAKED GUN and AIRPLANE, but some things cannot be saved.
Magoo (Nielsen) has bad vision. That’s the entire film. It was also the whole cartoon too, but at least the cartoon wasn’t feature length. After watching Magoo on screen for about five minutes in live action, I wanted to cry or go home, but then I realized I was home. Nielsen wasn’t the right actor for Magoo either. He didn’t mimic the voice. He didn’t replicate the character. He was basically just Leslie Nielsen and he wasn’t bald either.
There is a museum with a precious gem and Magoo is being honored as well. None of it made much sense. Much like the other live action Disney flicks of the time, there are bumbling villains. Bob (Nick Chinlund) and Luanne (Kelly Lynch) are planning to steal the gem and sell it for a lot of money at a bad guy auction. I have to give credit where it’s due. Lynch and especially Chinlund did well in their roles and were responsible for some of the very few laughs to be had.
Poor Jennifer Garner. She was stuck playing a foreign character with an accent of some sort and she tried her best. It was one of her first Hollywood opportunities and it was under the Disney banner. It’s like getting a job at a restaurant. At first, you’re cleaning the shitters. Once you establish yourself, you are telling people to clean the shitters. Well, MR. MAGOO was her shitters.
A forgettable character and I want to mention him before I forget was Waldo Magoo (Matt Keeslar), the nephew of Mr. Magoo. He has a thing for Stacey (Garner), but that’s about it for his character. I must say that this film doesn’t have much going for character development, pace or story. Don’t watch this if you want a comedy either. Watch THE NAKED GUN instead.
A waste of two talents in Stephen Tobolowsky, playing Agent Stupak, and Ernie Hudson, playing Agent Anders, was bothersome. How can Disney fuck up a film this bad. I’ll give Tobolowsky and Hudson some credit. They tried to make it work and they did work well off each other, but the material was so bad that they couldn’t make it work and I’m just going to say it now. Leslie Nielsen stunk up this film. I enjoy most of his other work. He can be extremely funny, but his work here was so far from funny.
Magoo and Luanne became a couple but she’s only in it for the gem. The two agents are also watching Magoo to see if they can recover the gem. We get a scene where Magoo is making a chicken dinner that goes on forever. He’s following a cooking show but his dog keeps changing the channel and he’s following whatever he hears, leading to him using a drill, sander and also doing exercises with the chicken. It was not funny. It was painfully unfunny.
MAGOO is a wretched film. I could go into the finale, the eggplant truck and more, but the film ruined me. I understand that people knew of MR. MAGOO, but it’s not a good title to make into a feature. I can understand INSPECTOR GADGET. You got shit you can do with that and the same with GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE, but I can’t imagine being the writer and having Mr. Magoo plopped on my lap and having to come up with a storyline that can expand on the limited cartoon.
The film failed for many reasons. One of the biggest was Nielsen. He was not Mr. Magoo at all. They should have gotten an actor that could do the voice and then they should have taken the writer of this screenplay and thrown him off a bridge and got another writer that remotely understands comedy.
Damn you Disney. Damn you. I hate you. Sadly, there are more worlds and live action Disney films to conquer/review. I’m not out of the woods yet.
