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Review: ‘Matinee’ — Madcap Cuban Missile Crisis Comedy
Joe Dante’s 1993 film brilliantly pairs whimsy and nostalgia with panic and hysteria
Because of what appears to be a sense of camp and silliness inherent to his films, the work of Joe Dante as a director is frequently misunderstood or at the very least under-estimated. The director of Gremlins (and its sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch), The Howling, The ‘Burbs and Small Soldiers, Dante always has a penchant in the director’s chair for genre cinema, especially when it comes to toying with and subverting said genres. Gremlins is a Christmas film turned chaotic monster movie, Gremlins 2 proved more subversive and mocked Donald Trump long before it was cool to do so, Small Soldiers flipped the idea of Toy Story onto its head completely by turning living toys into deadly weapons and so on.
Released in 1993, when Dante was in his absolute prime (his more recent films leave a fair amount to be desired — for all of the goofy charm of 2014's Burying the Ex, for example, it is marred by its misogynistic leanings and its inability to overcome a feeling of cheapness), Matinee may be the most subversive of all of his films. It’s a very impressive film because of how well it defies easy classification — at the same time as being a charming, nostalgic coming of age film inspired by…
