Big Trouble

Year 2001 Trademarks:

• Postponed due to cataclysmic event that has come to define the 21st century
• Dennis Farina

Ten years ago 19 angry men gave America its worst Tuesday ever, even by Tuesday standards. Since countless talented writers have shared their personal biographies of the events of 9/11, most of whom have practice writing about topics more important than the influence of Alicia Silverstone, I will keep my own memories of that Tuesday brief. But you can’t talk about Big Trouble without talking about the rise of global terror, which is something you really can’t say about many Tim Allen films.

What sticks out in my brain are the little changes. The images of the collapsing towers and what such images meant were too mind-bogglingly huge for a high schooler to instantly comprehend. What brought the enormity of the disaster into relief for me, living just north of New York City, were the small disruptions to daily routine, and back then this daily routine consisted entirely of channel surfing and going to the movies.

Before 9/11, breaking news only disrupted the networks, not cable. No matter what was happening in the world, I knew I could always pick up the remote and escape to the higher altitudes of basic cable. But on 9/11, even the most nihilistic channels halted their regular programming and turned their airtime to affiliate coverage of the horror in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. And since these channels were a (too big) part of my life, the unprecedented grounding of all US flights shook me less than MTV’s sudden disappearance. The party was over, specifically the MTV Beach House: Summer in the Keys party.

I don’t mean to trivialize the attacks. On the contrary, the disruption of film and TV are only important as eerie aftershocks of the true catastrophe that caused them, like signs of struggle at a crime scene or a really nasty hangover. It’s a small part of a big day, a footnote. But even footnotes serve a purpose, just ask an English professor.

Big Trouble is a goofball crime film starring Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Heavy D and every That Guy in Hollywood, and it’s al Queda’s least-important victim. The movie was scheduled to come out on September 21, 2001, which would have made it the second major motion picture released following the terrorist attacks. (The first, in case you were interested, was The Glass House, which came out on schedule on 9/14). Then planes were hijacked and Big Trouble’s plane hijacking finale became the worst-timed ending since Twin Peaks. Disney postponed the film’s release, and somewhere in Tora Bora a fundamentalist who really didn’t like Home Improvement laughed at a job well done.

When it finally came out in April 2002, Big Trouble was a box office disappointment and received mixed reviews. I found Big Trouble charming,but was not surprised by its lukewarm reception. The movie, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, was a noble attempt to revive the ensemble farce, a long-dormant type of comedy that produced a string of successful, silly films in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World created the formula in ‘63, filling a dozen wacky roles with movie stars and witty To Tell The Truth panelists, and placing them in lots of scenes involving hot air balloons. Mad World was a hit and remains one of the most successful films of all time, despite premiering the week of the the Kennedy assassination.

Other ensemble farces followed, including Cannonball Run, Spielberg’s 1941, Caddyshack and Clue. In the ’90s they began a hibernation, taken over by heartfelt domestic comedies like Father of the Bride or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, out-and-out parody like Hot Shots! Christopher Guest kind-of filled the void with his wide troupe of mockumentarians, but his movies were always more witty than outrageous. The ensemble farce had become corny and immature, living on only in the hearts of The Simpsons writers, who ended a season-5 episode with a screwball chase scene honoring the sub-genre. In 2001, after There’s Something About Mary proved there was a shit-ton of money to be made in lowbrow laughs, two ensemble farces were produced: Rat Race, which came out in 2001, and Big Trouble, which very much did not.

It’s really only the climax of Big Trouble, in which Tom Sizemore’s character sneaks a gun and a nuke through a comatose airport security checkpoint, that got the movie shelved for a year. When I watched this scene, it all honestly seemed pretty harmless to me. A little edgy, perhaps, but acceptable given a year of waiting, and not without purpose. Plus the hijacker in Big Trouble is an idiotic crook whose motive is money, not a homicidal fundamentalist who’s motive is an imaginary brothel in the sky, and the good guys win in the end with zero casualties. So I was surprised to read fresh hostility from critics reviewing the movie. Even Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times was perturbed by the airport scene:

Reviewers found it at best misguided satire, at worst deliberately offensive. I think Big Trouble’s pithy attitude toward airline danger took on a new meaning after its delay, a meaning that was defiant and, in a way, reassuring. Airports in the post-9/11 world are fascinating places: at once both terrifying and mind-numbingly dull. Depending on your state-of-mind, Delta is either your last stop before certain doom or just a boring formality. Big Trouble took these two interpretations and threw them together in a scene that’s as nerve-wracking as it is unabashedly silly. As if to highlight his message, Sonnenfeld cast as the hijacker’s hostage Zooey Deschanel, the reigning queen of bored exasperation, the ultimate airline passenger.

Once America realized the world was not going to end, we remembered there were still 99-dollar trips to Orlando to buy and weddings to dutifully attend, and only one way to get there fast and cheap. So we threw our hands up and packed our bags. Airports had always been unpleasant places, if global terror was going to make it a bit more unpleasant, so be it. Today, the guy with the cell phone clip scarfing down a Cinnabon as he boards a flight to Santa Fe is an American warrior, defying jihadists with a quiet bravery. I salute you, sir.