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So, apparently, Jon Cryer was huge back in the eighties, because Lions Gate’s really recent The Lost Collection features him into TWO different movies.  You’ve already read about Cryer’s earlier escapades as a Senator’s spunky son in in Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home–now you can catch a whole different side of this surprisingly versatile actor in Hiding Out.

This time, Jon Cryer plays stockbroker Andrew Morenski, who’s inadvertently done some business in a bond deal with the mob, and it’s gone all wrong.  So wrong, in fact, that the Justice Department wants him to testify against the mob.  And that, in turn, means he’s marked for death.  He’s on the run, and winds up in his cousin’s high school.  Apparently, when Jon Cryer shaves his beard and dyes his hair slightly blond and gets a new coat, he’s easily mistaken for a high school junior, or possibly senior.  High school’s surprisingly good for Andrew Morenski–now posing as high schooler Max Hauser–he’s got a hot new girlfriend, he’s handing the history teachers their heads by knowing as much about history as they do (having lived through it) , he’s just been elected class president…it’s better than he could have imagined.  But the mob hasn’t forgotten about Andrew, now Max, and they’ve found him with a vengeance.

It’s shocking to see how well this turned out.  Maybe I just don’t watch this kind of thing that often, but I’m really very impressed by this.  Jon Cryer really does look like a seventeen year old kid when he shaves off his beard.  And maybe I’m feeling overly nostalgic but I remember roller skating rinks that look EXACTLY like the one that was in this movie.  This dates me horribly, but I remember it well.

There’s a lot of little moments that coalesce together to form a whole that proves both comical and surprisingly entertaining.  Jon Cryer virtually seizes the movie to make it largely his own, and everyone else, though thoroughly competent, seems to be just along for the ride as he steals virtually every scene in the movie.  Not that I’m complaining–Cryer is fantastic and making everyone else his supporting actor is hardly a bad idea–it’s just that it’s clear that that’s what they’re doing, and if you came here for anything more than Jon Cryer you’re likely to be disapppointed.

Perhaps the best part about Hiding Out is that they’ll actually pack more jokes and more interesting scenes into the last half hour, making the whole experience a steady ratcheting-up instead of blowing all its good jokes in the first half hour and leaving the rest of the movie to coast on its earliest successes.  They saved the best for last, and this is a surprise.  In fact, the ending is actually quite a surprising chunk of awesome, which is also a comparative rarity for filmmaking, especially in recent years, where no one seems to know how to end a movie anymore and instead just lets it roll to a gradual stop.

So basically, Hiding Out is a surprising sack of joy that will provide plenty of laughs and even a few thrills for extra fun.  You’re going to love this movie–I sure did.

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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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