← Back to Reviews
in
JOE (John G. Avildsen, 1970)
What can you say about Joe after all these years? The main thing I can say about it is that it's a massive ball of contradictions, but in almost every way, the more positive one turns up for me. The film is, by turns, dated and prescient; racist and satirical; low-budget and high-inspiration; amateurish and well-made; shocking and thought-provoking; hokey and mind-blowing.
Norman Wexler's original script, which could be accused of appealing to the lowest common denominator, is also a textbook example of a screenplay which is confident enough to let itself build through all its twists and turns, milking almost every conceivable situation for what it's worth before moving on to the next one. Remember, this film was made at the height of the Viet Nam War and pre-Watergate, but it still features the classic "Would You Buy a Used Car From This Man?" poster of President Nixon. Which, to that, the right-wing, racist, titular character, played by the awesome, never-remotely-better Peter Boyle, spouts, "If you can't buy a used car from the President, who can you buy one from?"
The world which Joe painted (and still paints, for me) is not a black-and-white world, even though the use of racial and other epithets, nudity, extreme drug use and overall anti-social behavior would cause it to be unable to be remade nowadays in honest terms due to PC-constrictions. The film shows flower children to be drug-crazed thieves and both the rich and the poor older generation to be vigilante murderers who need to use violence to somehow get in touch with their kids. You could say that it's an exaggeration, but maybe not as much as you may like to believe. I feel that for most of its running time, Joe is a message movie crossed with a satire. It's only at the end, sort of like Dr. Strangelove, where you find that you can't laugh anymore because you've just destroyed your entire world; that is when its truth really hits you.
Joe is the character in the bottom right. R.I.P. Peter Boyle.
JOE (John G. Avildsen, 1970)
What can you say about Joe after all these years? The main thing I can say about it is that it's a massive ball of contradictions, but in almost every way, the more positive one turns up for me. The film is, by turns, dated and prescient; racist and satirical; low-budget and high-inspiration; amateurish and well-made; shocking and thought-provoking; hokey and mind-blowing.
Norman Wexler's original script, which could be accused of appealing to the lowest common denominator, is also a textbook example of a screenplay which is confident enough to let itself build through all its twists and turns, milking almost every conceivable situation for what it's worth before moving on to the next one. Remember, this film was made at the height of the Viet Nam War and pre-Watergate, but it still features the classic "Would You Buy a Used Car From This Man?" poster of President Nixon. Which, to that, the right-wing, racist, titular character, played by the awesome, never-remotely-better Peter Boyle, spouts, "If you can't buy a used car from the President, who can you buy one from?"
The world which Joe painted (and still paints, for me) is not a black-and-white world, even though the use of racial and other epithets, nudity, extreme drug use and overall anti-social behavior would cause it to be unable to be remade nowadays in honest terms due to PC-constrictions. The film shows flower children to be drug-crazed thieves and both the rich and the poor older generation to be vigilante murderers who need to use violence to somehow get in touch with their kids. You could say that it's an exaggeration, but maybe not as much as you may like to believe. I feel that for most of its running time, Joe is a message movie crossed with a satire. It's only at the end, sort of like Dr. Strangelove, where you find that you can't laugh anymore because you've just destroyed your entire world; that is when its truth really hits you.
Joe is the character in the bottom right. R.I.P. Peter Boyle.