Screenhead

Okay, this is one I’m REALLY looking forward to talking about.  Not necessarily because I liked the movie or anything like that, but because of the historical footnote it represents.  Released JUST TODAY as part of Lions Gate’s The Lost Collection, Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home will sound unsettlingly familiar for a host of reasons, but you’ll have to remember that it came first.

The plot, like I said, sounds familiar enough—a high-spirited young man, Morgan Stewart (played by Two and a Half Men’s Jon Cryer), gets kicked out of prep school once again—the tenth time in seven years.  But he’s got a purpose this time: his dad’s senatorial bid is in jeopardy, and he’s decided to play the family card.  But after not seeing their son for so long, Morgan’s family isn’t exactly ready for his brand of good-natured tomfoolery.  Like I said, sounds familiar.  Movies like Charlie Bartlett and even Malibu’s Most Wanted would use similar plotlines, but those wouldn’t come for years, pushing DECADES after the fact, which is interesting enough in its own right.

But there’s something else that makes Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home a particularly rare piece—its director.  This is one of the extremely rare, dozen or so, movies to be directed by Mr. Alan Smithee.  For those of you not familiar, Alan Smithee is the officially sanctioned pseudonym of the Director’s Guild of America for  directors who wish to officially disavow their work.  In order to be approved for a Smithee, the director in question must prove to a panel of the DGA that he (or she, depending) could not exercise full creative control over the work.

Though in this case, I’m not sure why the original director was so eager to disavow this project, because this movie is just shockingly awesome.  I spent large portions of this movie laughing myself stupid.  When I watched Morgan cut a hole in his door with a chainsaw autographed by Tobe Hooper, that was about it for me.  This movie was just entirely too awesome.  Yes, it’s very eighties-movie in its formulaic, happy-ending, bubblegum-pop teen romance sort of setup, but it’s no less satisfying for the predictability.

I find myself wondering, considering how well this turned out, how it would’ve turned out had the original director not gone the Smithee route and instead got the creative control he’d wanted originally.  I’m an old subscriber to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy, so I wonder.  Would it have improved even farther?  Would it have been, amazingly, MORE fun?  Or would it have been brought down by attempts to make it deeper, or more lit’ry?

There’s not much sense in playing what might have been, especially with a movie that already turned out so solidly well.  While it’s interesting to think about, the fact remains that there’s a perfectly good, perfectly solid title waiting off in the wings for us to enjoy.  So go out and grab a copy of Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home, because when you bring him to YOUR home, you’ll have plenty of laughs and good times to come.

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