I’m really on a tear with these random movies of the 80’s and 90’s that I never saw when they were real. I was always under the impression that “Domestic Disturbance” was a film starring Ray Liotta that I snuck into (R rated!) in high school and found alarmingly sexy, but it turns out that movie is called “Unlawful Entry” (RAPE PUN IN TITLE). It also turns out that I was wrong, and Ray Liotta is not at all sexy, not even in Goodfellas, a movie I am heartily sick of.
I am generally sick of Martin Scorcese, although Raging Bull is the best movie ever, and King of Comedy is also the best movie ever. A lot of my peers don’t seem to be aware of the K of C portion of Marty’s oeuvre and to those people I say: RUN, DO NOT WALK, to your nearest video dispensing corporation, and purchase the rights to view this film in your home in some way. Or illegally download it if you know how to do that, which I, tragically, do not.
Oh my god. What a picture show.
But anyway, “Domestic Disturbance.” This is a movie about John Travolta who is a really good divorced dad. He’s not one of those divorced dad who just kind of gently bails on his kid and forgets to go to all the soccer games and turns up late and tipsy at various PTA meetings. No, Travolta is a divorced dad with one thing and one thing only on his mind: SON. LOVE SON. MUST BE GREAT DAD. He is also a builder of beautiful novelty wooden boats. It turns out nobody wants beautiful novelty wooden boats anymore because plastic is so cheap. Don’t worry, John Travolta, I bet your boat-shop will somehow get burned down by the end of the movie!
It’s set up in the first scene that the son, Danny, is a liar and is not handling the divorce or his mom’s new boyfriend well at all. He’s run away a bunch of times, and has told a bunch of lies to the cop boss of this small town–shades of “Goonies!” remember when Chunk calls the cop and the cop is like “oh Charles remember when you said all those little monsters had been fed after midnight and were now trying to kill you” or whatever, Gremlins ref WITHIN already-80’s film, pretty genius, why aren’t we all watching Goonies right now??
Also perhaps more legitimately plagiaristically shades of this tremendous 1949 film I grew up watching called “THE WINDOW,” in which a little boy who also tells lies actually witnesses a real murder, and no one believes him because he’s truly the boy who cried wolf, and he spends the whole film in this quivering state of near-psychic-collapse from terror and horror that his parents won’t believe him and nobody will help him, basically every kid’s worst fucking nightmare. And he and his parents live in this emo sweltering 1940’s-era New York tenement housing where everyone’s fanning themselves out on the fire escapes, and the little boy is just getting more and more frantic trying to get a grownup to believe him, but instead of believing him and helping him, his own father takes him to the murderer’s apartment and makes him confess what he told and apologize right to the guy’s face. And the guy is like “that’s okay little man” but they exchange a glance that shows it is not at all okay. And then the dad tells the son this devastating speech about how he’s ashamed of him and he’s jealous of all the other guys at work who get to be proud of their boys. And the kid is just destroyed, and is sent to his room and LOCKED IN while his parents go out somewhere, and he’s trying to escape with all these ingenious Boy’s Life maneuvers like bending a coat hanger and using it to poke the key out of the lock on the other side and then using the hook of the coat hanger to pull the key under the door. But unbeknownst to him the murderer is waiting on the other side, and, like, helps him escape, just to toy with him in a cat-mouse type situation that doesn’t end until they’re locked in mortal combat in this totally terrifying empty pitch-black warehouse and the guy is like trying to stab the kid and the kid shimmies out onto this pole that’s like 400 feet off the concrete floor of the warehouse, and then, totally psychically and physically spent, he just clings and turns his face away from his fate, all sooty and pouring sweat and just totally emotionally devastated for all eternity by this terrible experience, until finally the cops show up for some reason and shoot the bad guy, and then there is this interesting scene where they spend a lot of time coaxing the little boy to then JUMP FROM HIS POLE into a weird canvas person-catcher the fire department is holding up hundreds of feet below him. And the boy is just like shaking his head in traumatized silence and the fireman on the megaphone is like “come on son, you can do it,” and just then the boy’s parents show up and see what’s happening and they like LEAP back into the shadows so the son WON’T SEE THEM and become agitated. And he jumps and they run and get him and he’s like unconscious with stress and they just kind of haul him off. And the film ends with the dad telling his son how excited he is to go into work in the morning and tell all the guys how proud he is of his son. And the son’s heart is like gonna burst with joy.
IT’S SUCH A GOOD MOVIE! I was obsessed with this movie in middle school and was always trying to get my friends to watch it at sleepovers, but they only wanted to watch “Roadhouse” and I just didn’t get why they didn’t get how awesome all these old movies from the 40’s were
So anyway, that’s basically the plot of “Domestic Disturbance,” except without all the good stuff and with a way less compelling child actor.
BUT! With Vince Vaughn playing a scary bad guy! When I rented the film I was under the impression that Vince Vaughn’s character was literally a psychotic serial killer, which made the early scenes of him just being nice and trying to win over his step-kid really creepy. But then you find out he’s just sort of an ex-con, like he was a racketeer in Chicago. Not a psychopath; not a murderer at all. Then you end up just feeling bad for him. So in those early scenes he was being genuine! Trying to win over his step kid because he genuinely loves the kid’s mom! Now it’s sort of melancholy and depressing, the way the kid stows away in his car and watches him murder Steve Buscemi and burn him up in the furnace at the brickworks he owns. Then 15 minutes later the cops show up and examine the brickworks and are like “if a body was burned in there, it would take a forensics team from Washington DC to know it!” like I guess the brickworks fire is just the most epically hot and instant fire in the galaxy, leaving not even teeth or bone shards behind, which, even a crematorium leaves that shit behind, right? See ya Steve Buscemi. They also question the kid right in front of Vince Vaughn, which I just really think wouldn’t happen in a modern police setting. “Ok son tell us what you told your dad about Vince Vaughn here murdering someone. He’s just gonna stare at you the whole time you’re talking, no biggie”
So nobody believes the kid, and even his beloved father John Travolta is like “Why do you keep lying son?” and meanwhile we the audience are just fully LOATHING the kid’s mom, because this movie has to make her perhaps literally the stupidest person on the earth in order for the plot to work. I am so sick of stupid moms in films. Also immediately-pregnant stupid moms in films. Like they are just walking uteruses with no brains, waiting for whichever man who wins the battle to explain to them how to feel about something. No wonder the kid wants to live with his dad in the cool boathouse.
I should pause to tell you that this film has easily the laziest set decoration I have ever seen. There is a shot of the mom and Vince Vaughn standing in their bedroom in which you can clearly see that the exact same head-shot of Vince Vaughn is in two different frames, one on the dresser and one on the nightstand. Leaving aside the fact that the mom is living with a guy who has framed pictures of his own face everywhere, wouldn’t it tip her off to his psychoses once she realized they were all THE SAME picture?? Anyway, who’s counting.
Then Vince Vaughn threatens the kid a bunch and the cop gets mad at the kid for wasting his damn time, then John Travolta decides to believe the kid and there’s a weird custody battle in court where the attorney is trying to bring up the fact that Vince Vaughn murdered Steve Buscemi even though he was never charged or anything, like, would that be good evidence to use on behalf of the kid? Doesn’t it just prove the kid has mental problems and should probably stay with his mother? Anyway whatever. So then John Travolta uses the primitive 90s internet to type Steve Buscemi’s name into a google precursor and of course the first hit is like “Here is convicted felon Steve Buscemi’s best friend and probable conspirator even though he was never charged, Vince Vaughn, please enjoy this exceptionally clear close-up shot of his face, and here is his real name, etc.” and then Travolta emails that link to the cop, and puts “ATTN: SERGEANT JONES!!!” in the subject line of the email (??) and then calls the police station and says “When Sergeant Jones comes in tomorrow tell him to CHECK HIS EMAIL!!!!!” ha ha ha ha
Then Vince Vaughn hits him with a shovel and burns down his boat-building store and then goes home and something something something the mom gets knocked out, conveniently becoming non-present for climactic fight battle between all the warring man factions in the film, including the son who ultimately murders Vaughn by ramming him into a box of electrical stuff and Vaughn gets electrocuted. Then son is psychically healed and they all follow mom in ambulance to hospital, where she will presumably miscarry the fetus of the baby Vince Vaughn put in her, “thus ending the last aspect of this film that was in any way interesting” said my old man. I would rather see a whole film about the repercussions of the mom raising dead Vince Vaughn’s spawn and what that would be like for the spawn’s half-brother, the kid who murdered the spawn’s actual father. WHAT A PICTURE SHOW THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN
Vince Vaughn is a great actor who I love and I had high hopes for watching him play a psychopath, but he’s not even a psychopath, like I said! He’s just a racketeer who gets in too deep. He’s not that creepy. And yes I have seen the “Psycho” remake where he plays Norman, but Norman too is not totally a psychotic character, even though he as a person is obviously psychotic. But Norman doesn’t realize he’s the one doing these horrible things, and he’s horrified by them, etc. I frankly don’t find Norman that creepy except possibly in the one scene with the stuffed birds where he’s talking to her about being a pretty girl.
Why not go watch “King of Comedy” or “The Window” right now? That’s what I’d do if I were you.