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 1987 PG / Comedy Drama Directed by: Starring: |
- Five ordinary people needed a miracle. Then one night, Faye Riley left the window open.
Summary Capsule
- Flying hubcaps perform odd jobs and battle corporate oppression.
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Sue's Rating: Holy Jumpin’ Breadboxes, Batman!
Sue's Review: Picture if you will, a vast expanse of urban dirt, with herds of bulldozers and backhoes patiently churning up the landscape in expectation of generous applications of concrete and girders. Imagine then, in the center of this grubby wasteland, the oasis of a dilapidated yet occupied restaurant/apartment building. Yup, smack dab in the middle of the building site to end all building sites, there’s one small oasis of a hold-out and nothing gets built until everything gets flattened. No, this isn't the opening sequence of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Come on in, meet the residents and watch out for that falling plaster.
As the movie begins, we discover that what envelopes of ready cash won't accomplish, it seems a baseball bat and applications of gang violence will. After a visit by the unfriendly neighborhood interior redecorating squad, Frank is on the razor edge of calling it quits and retreating to an elderly care facility in the Promised Land of New Jersey. Mason and Marisa have their own problems and Harry is hiding behind his drapes. What dear Faye makes of all the ongoing chaos is fairly unclear, except that she persists in addressing the leader of the baseball bullies (Carlos, a Hispanic gang banger type) as "Bobby" and eventually offers to cook him a ham.
Man, I love Faye.
And so as the sun sets and night falls on the wreckage of their miserable pathetic lives, the sad little story of "civilized" urban warfare would seem to end before it began.
Except that Faye left her window open and two flying saucers invaded the building.
Okay, they aren't so much your classic beefed up Independence Day spacegoing juggernauts as they are rather charming little airborne hubcaps, but let's not get too hung up on the semantics here. It's obvious to the attentive viewer right from the get-go that what we're dealing with are a boy and a girl hubcap. You can tell because he has glowing red headlights and a craggy yet handsome profile while she's all aerodynamic curves and big blue blinkers. They locate a nice electrical outlet in the kitchen, she plugs in for a recharge and out of gratitude the two of them repair all the Louisville Slugger fall-out in the building. Then they find a cozy little fixer upper for themselves on the roof and settle in for the long haul.
Faye discovers the new tenants immediately, happily refers to them as "the little guys" and toddles up to the roof every so often to toss them handfuls of nice metallic bread crumbs. Though for once she's absolutely on target, everyone else in the vicinity thinks it's time for a little medication adjustment. Well hey, it probably is anyway.
Eventually everyone gets clued in and after the initial (and understandable) freak out, they sort of adopt the little flying fixers. Of course, since it isn't just every day that undernourished spaceships come along and repair shattered jukeboxes, kicked out doors and smashed religious figurines, there's some major debate about just who the hubcaps came to rescue. Under the circumstances that’s sort of like comparing sucking chest wounds to see who deserves the last band-aid.
But though the spaceships prove that they can make cheeseburgers and procreate (every man's dream right there, isn't it?) there are still those bulldozers, the corporate villains and Bobby — I mean Carlos — and his band of merry men to deal with. Will the building be saved? Will Faye get to make her ham? Can interstellar hubcaps save the day? Well probably not, but you'd have to watch for yourself.
Batteries Not Included is a difficult movie to classify because it seems (much like Faye) to be a little out of touch with itself. Is it a drama? How can it be when you have little flying spaceship thingies bouncing off the walls and stealing toasters? Is it a comedy? How can it be when you see the callous victimization of a helpless elderly couple? What the heck is this? I don't know!
What I do know is that Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn turned this film into something much better than by rights it should have been. Married in real life for fifty-two years until Tandy’s death, they shared both tremendous acting experience and undeniable chemistry with each other. Watching them co-star in this movie was sort of like finding a sprig of parsley and an after-dinner mint in a bag from a McDonald's drive-thru. Very nice, undeniably classy, but a little surreal. Tandy particularly delivers her lines with supreme poise and elegance, even when she's being flakier than the first ten seconds of a dandruff shampoo commercial.
Batteries Not Included is really sort of a neat little gem. I'm not entirely sure why it fell off the radar, but the fact that I couldn't find a single blessed screencap after a two hour trawl on the Net attests to the fact that it did. Rest assured though, it's still out there hovering patiently. Open a window and give it a whirl.
- The scene of the kitchen counter from the Fixers’ point of view only needed Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber to be complete.
- Runaway toaster!
- There’s a very cute nod to Star Wars duels when the little fixers are playing. One of them even has a Vader-ish helmet shape.
- Faye gets all the way into the grocery store before she notices that there is no grocery store. D’oh! Stupid bulldozers!
- Ain’t gonna be much Christmas decorating next year.
- Of all the conversational topics to use with Faye, could Carlos POSSIBLY have picked a worse one?
- Toilet bowls, dishwater, soup, paint... those Fixers must be incredibly water resistant.
- A crunchy cheeseburger would have really turned this film into a tragedy
- How little fixers learn to fly.
- Frank would probably have to sell the building anyway, just to pay the electric bill.
- Spaceship nookie.
Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits?
Dunno. The DVD died out right about then.
Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]
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The film was originally intended as an episode of Executive Producer Steven Spielberg’s fantasy anthology TV series Amazing Stories (1985-7) [Sue remembers this show!] but Spielberg considered the idea such a good one that it was developed into a feature-length film.
Groovy Quotes
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Harry: We bring dead things to life!
Pamela: This is the '80s, Mason! Nobody likes reality anymore!
Pamela: And to think I've been telling my friends it's so cool living with an artist. You never once asked to paint me nude!
Mr. Lacey: Why am I paying a demolition crew to sit around eating in a restaurant they're supposed to be knocking down?
Faye: Frank! It's the love boat to Cuba! Shuffle board and pineapples filled with rum! Know what they do? They put little paper umbrellas sticking out the top so that when it rains, it don't thin out the liquor!
Marisa: Someone was in my room!
Mason: Me too. I think we got elves.
Faye: I don’t smell no bacon on. Is this Sunday? Monday and Tuesday don’t smell at all because Cream of Wheat is instant. And it ain’t Thursday. I can smell Thursday all the way back to Wednesday when people put the garbage out.
Faye: Come here. Let mama give you a pucker!
Marisa: Could be giant rats?
Mason: Yeah, from Brooklyn. Heh.
Faye: What ever happened to General Eisenhower? You hardly read a word about him anymore.
Faye: Oh come on you kids! Put a little Fred Astaire into it!
Frank: I don’t know how you got here, or why you picked us, but we pledge allegiance to honor and protect you... in sickness and in health... and rain and sleet and the best of times and the worst of times and... so help us God.
Frank: They’re spaceships! You can tell just by lookin’ at ‘em
Marisa: Spaceships?
Frank: Sure. From a very small planet. [pause] Very small.
Marisa: Are you superstitious?
Mason: I’m getting there.
Frank: The quickest way to end a miracle is to ask it why it is. Or what it wants.
Faye: Who in his right mind stands in a puddle and sticks a fork in a wall socket?
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This review page was last updated on 5.2.05
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