Leonard Part 6 (1987)

Renaissances come and go, every so often, and give people the chance to rediscover something that was at one time the most popular work of art ever to grace a pair of human eyes.

Artwork has renaissances. So do clothes, architecture, shoe styles, hairstyles, ideals of beauty, styles of film-making and, for the purposes of this review, so have celebrities.

Remember my review of My Bloody Valentine, where I spoke about Hollywood's penchant for taking up some star, genre or type of film-making for awhile after it went through a hot-and-heavy period of saturation then was left forgotten and abandoned like Jack Wild after "H.R. Pufnstuf"?

This also happened to Bill Cosby. He was a hot comic commodity in the start. Then he became a hot action star with TV's "I Spy". Then he became a hot kid's programming genius with "The Fat Albert Show". Then he became a hot commercial spokesman for Coca-Cola and Jell-O. Then he became a TV genius again with "The Cosby Show". Everyone just took him for granted after awhile.

Now you may have noticed that I haven't spoken much about his cinematic successes. To be perfectly honest, his movies weren't as big as his smaller-scale TV triumphs. Outside of A Piece of the Action, Let's Do It Again, Uptown Saturday Night, California Suite and Mother Juggs and Speed, Cos' films have been small-scale dramatic affairs. And though contemplative and soulful, movies like Man and Boy, To All My Friends On Shore and Hickey and Boggs weren't exactly barn-burners in terms of success. In fact, 1981's The Devil and Max Devlin was his last theatrical film before our subject for today.

Speaking of which, no discussion of the worst movies ever made - past, present or future - can omit the creme de la creme, the absolute most pitiful thing committed by a name celebrity (though John Travolta's Battlefield: Earth comes close to it).

As a matter of fact, the only positive thing that can be said for this movie s that they didn't try to make it a drama.

In 1987, Columbia Pictures offered an ungodly amount of money to Bill and forced him into the ultimate no-win situation: make a bad movie with an unfunny script and no way to leave the project contractually.

Knowing that with all his residual profits from reruns and food product endorsements he needed that extra money more than ever, Cos agreed to Columbia's terms and brought to your unwitting neighborhood cinema Leonard Part 6.

There are so many problems with this movie that if I were to tell you every single thing wrong I'd be writing all day. So here are the main things.

The most glaring problem is the script.The story is by Cos himself but the screenplay was filled out by writer Jonathan Reynolds who wrote and co-wrote some funny movies (Switching Channels, Micki + Maude, The Distinguished Gentleman) before disappearing from the face of the Earth in 1992. That talent is not here, as it brings us a story of the evil criminal mastermind Medusa (Gloria Foster), who uses her ugly hairstyle and brainwashing powers to command small, otherwise docile animals to kill people. This forces Leonard's old boss Synderbum (Joe Don Baker) to call Leonard Parker (Cosby), a retired secret government agent, out of retirement as a restaurateur to save the world from this moderately threatening danger. But Leonard must also focus his energies on winning back the love of his ex-wife (Pat Colbert) and deal with a sharp tongued valet (Tom Courtenay). Oh, and did I mention Leonard was also a virtuoso ballet dancer? That comes into play, too.

Something else wrong is the script, as busy as it is, still manages to be boring, poorly-conceived, badly-worded, awkward and looks just plain wrong in execution. You'd have to think that the last thing a film-maker would want is to be at odds with the script he is using. That, however, is just what is happening here. Even something as funny as riding on an ostrich isn't funny here. THAT takes effort to make ostrich-riding unfunny.

The next big problem is the direction. Oddly enough, Cos was not behind the camera here, probably because he was too busy working on the concept for "A Different World" or something. Here the camera is handed to Pauil Weiland. And for a man who would go on to not only lens such legitimately funny series episodes of "Mr. Bean", Weiland seems to have no concept of pacing, humor, logic, subtlety or basic pleasant-to-look-at content.

Moving right along to the next big problem, the cast here is WAY too good for a story as stupid as this one. Starting with Cosby, who we know for a fact can be funny as we have seen him do it week after week, and here just acts stunned and dull. Then there's the matter of the casting of Courtenay, who you may remember better from 1983's The Dresser, and no wonder; he was funny and charming and won an Oscar, too. See what happens when you win awards?. Even Joe Don Baker's appearance will make you yearn for the good-old days of Walking Tall and Mitchell, much less his Joysticks and Wacko days. If for nothing else, Baker is there onscreen only to remind Cos that there are worse career moves to make. Even Moses Gunn, Grace Zabriske and Jane Fonda pop in, if only to make the viewer point and say, "hey weren't they in that better movie, such-and-such?" And they'd be right - anything is better than this.

However, the absolute biggest, most harrowing and grating problem with Leonard Part 6 is in its comedy. There is none. Not a laugh, not a snicker, not a chuckle, not a stifled grunt that can be mistaken for laughter. There certainly are chances for comedy: an attack with missiles and bombs by Leonard on the bad guy's main gate that lasts roughly 16 hours, an assassination attempt in his restaurant with gun play that even John Woo could do nothing with, a ruined dinner that Leonard's ex-wife ceremoniously dumps all over him and the idea of a variety of killer animals (ostriches, bunnies and lobsters which are held at bay by sticks of butter), that kind of lost its steam since that killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

One other bad thing is the product placement herein. Of course you know that Bill is going to try and work in one (or more) plugs for Coke here. But herein we have a scene where his daughter is going to marry a man much older than Cos' own character himself, and in sitting down and taking to them, Cos opens up a bottle of Coke and simply holds it up prominently in view (the name on the bottle in plain view) as the camera stays on him. If this is supposed to be a parody of product placement in movies in general, I don't get it. And if it's Cos' own jab at the film and the studio itself, I still don't get it. But that's okay; at least he made Coca-Cola and its subsidiaries happy. Yay.

I'm going to say that this movie cost at least $20 million to produce, film and distribute once all was said and done. In light of the fact that it grossed a little over $4 million overall, I'd say that even an endorsement from Ponderosa Steak House (I swear to God - I even remember seeing the promotions for it in a local Ponderosa back in the day) did nothing to help Columbia, Cos and company do anything but get word out about what kind of film this was.

Cosby certainly did his part: realizing what a bad movie this turned out to be, he went on every talk show there was, including several morning news shows, talking the movie DOWN instead of UP, warning viewers not to see it (which apparently worked, judging from the last paragraph). He even went as far as to have special awards made when he found he won three of the coveted Razzie awards that year (Worst Picture, Worst Actor, and Worst Screenplay) so he could accept them. Hey, might as well get SOME recognition for his trouble.

How bad is Leonard Part 6? SO bad that Cos bought up all the television rights to insure that it would never be shown in its entirety on TV. THAT bad.

In the end, in spite of not serving as a filmic renaissance for Cos, Leonard did no permanent damage to his career; "The Cosby Show" ran several years, he got other lucrative TV deals, authored countless books and even created another successful cartoon show ("Little Bill"). Of course, there's always Ghost Dad to consider; that is, if you're into double migraines.

Of course, Bill Cosby most likely looks back on Leonard Part 6 as a man who was shoved down into the maw of a starving shark then yanked back at the last possible minute.

I saw the film, I can relate.

Oh, one more thing I should mention: the cinematography here was done by none other than Jan de Bont, who redeemed himself a year later doing the same for Die Hard, then went on to direct Speed and Twister.

I could have made a parallel from working on a bomb to filming explosions and big disasters, but I shant. I think I've proven my point.