Do You Know Where You're Going to...

Those of you clowns who crave movie comedies might want to read this. Because the funniest movie playing in a cinema last weekend had absolutely nothing to do with Judd Apatow or Seth Rogan or Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell or even Steve Carrell.

Nope, the flick was over thirty years old and playing at Hollywood's famed Egyptian Theater as part of their "So Bad It's Good" film festival. And the film certainly met the criterion. It was bad. And it was so good. Hilarious indeed.

Ladies and germs, I give you "Mahogany." Starring that musical great Diana Ross. And that acting disaster Diana Ross.

This is a film that was produced and released in all seriousness by Paramount Pictures, which is still in business despite it all. Perhaps, coming off Miss Ross' Oscar-nominated performance as the drug-infused Billie Holiday in "Lady Sings the Blues," the studio thought that another Diana drama would be cinematic nirvana. In a perfect storm of misguided creative choices, they concocted "Mahogany" and the resulting laughter is all ours.

At the Egyptian, the screening last Saturday sucked in a bunch of folks (mostly gay men, natch) to revel in this swill. Not since pigs and mud have two things gone together so well. From the very first frame, the giddiness was electric. As soon as "Mahogany" started, you were treated to the first notes of the song that made the movie famous.

"Do you know where you're going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you...do you know?"

I hope you like that ditty, because it plays constantly throughout the movie. Essentially, "Mahogany" is a two hour music video. Because when the bad dialogue and hideous acting needs a break, Diana sticks her head out of an Italian taxicab window, surveys the ruins, and sings...

"Do you know where you're going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you...do you know?

I have a theory that, if this song was played on a loudspeaker all over America, membership to the National Rifle Association would soar. Every once in a while, the mind numbing lyrics stop to advance what little plot there is. Diana plays Tracy, some would-be Chicago dress designer, who's been dating a community organizer played by Billy Dee Williams. I couldn't miss how, in 1975, the filmmakers so successfully imagined Barack Obama and ACORN with the only difference being that Billy Dee's ears are smaller. Eventually, for reasons only known by the screenwriter, Tracy is discovered by this impotent fashion photographer, played by Anthony Perkins, who clearly has reached back into his Norman Bates bag of acting tics. It is Perkins who renames Tracy "Mahogany" partly because of her skin color but mostly because of Miss Ross' wooden acting talents.

Perkins whisks her away to Rome so that she can look at the Coliseum and the Trevi fountain and...

"Do you know where you're going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you? Do you know...?"

Eventually, Mahogany becomes a well known fashion model and a complete bitch to boot. She barks at everybody and I start to wonder if some of the backstage footage of Miss Ross ripping her personal assistant a new one might have made it onto the reels. Along the way, she has sex with Billy Dee, tries to have sex with Perkins, and avoids having sex with well known French actor Jean Pierre Aumont, who clearly got fucked anyway by accepting the role in this sewer back-up.

Diana Ross allegedly designed the same clothes that her character Tracy/Mahogany designs and all two or three of them should be ashamed. Every day must be Halloween at the Ross household. She sports one hairdo that is basically a funnel cake covered with rainbow sprinkles. High fashions and very low results. I began to think that the luckiest people in the world were former Supremes Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard, who got ditched by this screwball years before.

At key points in the story, Diana is forced to act and this is not pretty. She grits her teeth like a horse, pulls her hair out, and flails her nostrils. This is an acting choice that I don't believe gets the complete endorsement of Uta Hagen or the Actor's Studio. When Miss Ross does all those things at once, she suddenly becomes another character in another movie. Sort of like "Buckwheat Goes to Rome."

After one of these amazing acting stretches that just might have caused a hiatal hernia, Tracy/Mahogany/Diana thinks about what just happened and, of course, the music swells one more time.

"Do you know where you're going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you? Do you know...?"

Finally, even Diana gets tired of thinking and/or singing. She heads home to Billy Dee and a life as Michelle Obama. Journey complete, we get to see closing credits and all the names on the production side so that we can specify which folks that should be served with a class action suit. But, whereas this was an unlaughable disaster thirty four years ago, "Mahogany" works quite well with a movie audience in 2009. Starved for any way to laugh in these troubled times, the movie's sheer horror is nothing but our giggly diversion. Because Hollywood today, in making its weekly bad films, can't even get ineptitude right. When I see some shit made by Adam Sandler or Sandra Bullock, I feel like I have wasted money and time.

With "Mahogany" last weekend, every minute and dollar was well spent. I have not laughed that hard in years. And, from the looks of the folks around me, I was not alone. And I had no idea that was how delicious my Saturday night was going to be. Because, after all...

"Do you know where you're going to? Do you like the things the life is showing you? Do you know...?"

Dinner last night: Bacon wrapped filet with spinach and mushrooms.