Why so much hype?

Masterful Movie

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

It's funny how Brian Doyle-Murray's, Mary Kay Place's, and Dabney Coleman's characters all cease to exist in the final scenes of the movie. For crying out loud that's not that big of a house! Where'd they go? Did they get sucked up by the Twilight Zone and disappear? This contributes to the overall eerie and dark mood of the film that glorifies the cruel intentions of Max Fielding, the human toxic avenger! I'm assuming that they eventually got Mark the author down from the ceiling when they cleaned up the house. And Mary Kay Place and Brian Doyle-Murray hopefully recovered from the horrendous ruckus that Dorita (A Haitian woman with an ebonics accent) predicted before the dinner party began. But we don't know that because of Ken Shapiro's sloppy directing and writing as if he didn't give a crap about his characters. Not only that but when Max made Mark levitate during the whole dinner scene I was actually terrified! After all, if Shapiro is mean-spirited enough to cause an innocent ballet dancer's groin to explode, what is he going to do to the designated villain of the movie? What horrible thing is Max going to do to Mark? Something horrendous probably. Does Shapiro have an axe to grind and he's just taking it out on his characters? Strange. Strange. Strange! This movie left me with a bad feeling in my gut. Yuck!

"Modern Problems" was one of those movies that got a lot of play on HBO when I was a kid in the early 80s, and since I was a big Chevy Chase fan at the time, I watched it over and over again. Nearly 30 years later, the film had all but faded from my memory except for a few random bits so when it turned up on Fox Movie Channel over the weekend I decided to give it a shot.90 minutes later I'm sitting here thinking to myself "Wow, this was pretty bad wasn't it?", and I'm not sure if the film hadn't aged well, or if it simply wasn't a very good film to begin with. All I can say is that I remember enjoying it a heck of a lot more as an easier-to-impress 12 year old.Chase plays Max, a stressed out Air Traffic Controller who's got serious relationship problems. He's recently broken up with his live-in girlfriend, and his ex-wife (Mary Kay Place), whom he apparently has kept a friendly relationship with, is now "schtupping" (that's an exact quote) an old friend of his from high school (Brian Doyle-Murray, aka Bill's brother). As if that weren't enough, a chance meeting with a leaky Nuclear Waste truck on the highway one night splatters him with radioactive goo, and he wakes up the next morning with telekinetic powers.You'd think that this would be a license to do a totally go-for-broke slapstick comedy but oddly enough very little is made of Max's newfound abilities till the film is almost over. Chase isn't his usual wild-and-wacky self either, preferring to mope around mooning over his girlfriend (Patti D'Arbanville). Eventually the dysfunctional foursome (Chase, D'arbanville, Doyle-Murray, and Place) go off to Murray's beach house to spend the weekend, joined by one of Murray's clients, an insufferable self-help author played by Dabney Coleman. Coleman is the funniest thing in the film, as his constant jabs and insults finally poke Chase's character into a full on telekinetic meltdown that can only be stopped by a voodoo ritual (?) performed by Murray's Haitian housekeeper (Nell Carter)."Modern Problems" tries to be quirky and wacky but spends most of the film falling flat on its face. It's got a decent cast and an interesting premise, but its greatest sin is that it casts a gifted comic like Chase and then tells him to be morose and unfunny for much of the run time (till he finally explodes towards the end).There are a few good bits (Chase using his power to give a guy a massive nosebleed in the middle of a swanky restaurant is a highlight, as is the entire "voodoo" scene) but otherwise "Modern Problems" isn't very "modern" anymore. Easily skippable even for hardcore Chevy Chase fans.

Chevy Chase stars as Max Fiedler, a down on his luck air traffic controller who develops the power of telekinesis via nuclear waste. He uses said power to take vengeance on anyone that had wronged him. A mildly intriguing premise is undermined by loose, unfunny writing, horrid acting, and dated material. I couldn't even count the laughs I had on one hand. It's a chore to sit through with the only actor coming out relatively unscathed being Brian Doyle-Murray who is pretty damn good in ANYthing he does no matter how horrid the material (case in point) My Grade: D

This movie is not Chase's best but well worth watching for any of his fans. Some of the things he does with his powers make me laugh just thinking about them. Two highlights in particular are the restaurant scene and the ballet scene.Dabney Coleman plays almost the same type of character as in "Nine To Five" and Nell Carter plays a hilarious voodoo lady! If you could go back in time to 1981 and you wanted to go see a movie, and let's say Stripes and Neighbors were both sold out, I'd recommend Modern Problems.Do not take this movie seriously! It is not a Hollywood masterpiece but it has some very funny scenes.This is a satisfying movie to watch if you ever wanted revenge after being dumped.