Dick Van Dyke turns 100 on Saturday, an event so eagerly anticipated that for him not to do so would seem cosmically wrong. It may be generationally vain of me to imagine that the beauties of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “Mary Poppins” are known and loved by those after their time, but as they remain available to watch and are still shared by parents with their children, it seems likely.
Although Van Dyke’s professional schedule isn’t what it was — a canceled public appearance in June made headlines, sending waves of concern throughout the nation — he has remained visible over the last decade in interviews and social media posts, often dancing or exercising, and the odd acting job. In 2023, he appeared on “The Masked Singer” as “The Gnome” and guested for a four-episode run on “Days of Our Lives” as a man with amnesia. (It won him — another — Emmy.) He marked his 99th birthday by appearing in a Coldplay video, shot at his Malibu home, dancing to “All My Love” as Chris Martin sings at the piano. (They went on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” together.) His latest book, “100 Rules for Living to 100: An Optimist’s Guide to a Happy Life,” came out last month, following “My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business” (2011) and “Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging” (2015).
Friday brings a PBS special, “Starring Dick Van Dyke,” appearing as part of the “American Masters” series — and who would deny that he has earned that title? (An unconnected film, “Dick Van Dyke 100th Celebration,” will play exclusively at Regent Theaters on Saturday and Sunday.) Directed by John Scheinfeld (“Reinventing Elvis: The ’68 Comeback,” “The U.S. vs. John Lennon”), it’s a celebration of a man and an artist easy to celebrate, a bringer of joy whose signature song — from “Bye Bye, Birdie, “ which made him a Broadway star and led to his becoming a movie star and a TV star — is “Put On a Happy Face.” Though the actor’s alcoholism is addressed here, in a long excerpt from a 1974 Dick Cavett interview — he’s been sober since 1972 — dark times are generally elided. The end of his first marriage, to Margie Willett, the mother of his four children, is expressed only by the words “drifting apart” and digitally erasing her from a family photo; it should be said here that Van Dyke has no official connection to this film and is not newly interviewed here.
Gathered together among the performance clips that are the main reason to watch the film are testimonies from famous friends and fans, which amount to: Van Dyke was a delight to know, to work with, or to watch. We hear from Carol Burnett, seen with him in pre-fame clips from “The Garry Moore Show” and together again in his own 1976 variety show “Van Dyke and Company” (brilliantly improvising an unplanned slow-motion fight between a couple of oldsters). Julie Andrews, his “Mary Poppins” co-star, does not think that Van Dyke’s controversial Cockney accent is all that bad, “and he was so rivetingly entertaining, funny and sweet, one really didn’t get bothered by it.”
Dick Van Dyke in a publicity still for Disney’s musical film “Mary Poppins.”
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(Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
Steve Martin awards him “a likability factor of 10,” and Martin Short (seated inevitably next to Martin) recalls scribbling “DVD” in a script meaning “do Dick Van Dyke.” Ted Danson, another long-limbed actor, on whose sitcom “Becker” Van Dyke guested in a run of episodes as his father in “a serious turn,” says that “he did all the human things but in such an elegant way.” Jim Carrey — himself noted for a certain Van Dyke-like rubberiness — thinks the star’s famous trip over an ottoman in the opening credits of his sitcom, is “not a pratfall, it’s a metaphor; if you tumble, you got to pop right up and laugh at yourself, because you’re ridiculous — we’re all ridiculous — and life is an obstacle course of unforeseen ottomans.”
Conan O’Brien compares him to Gumby and dances with him on his TBS talk show. Larry Mathews, who played son Ritchie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” pronounces him “chill.” We also get Pat Boone, on whose late ‘50s variety show Van Dyke appeared; Karen Dotrice, who played little Jane Banks in “Poppins”; NPR media analyst Eric Deggans, providing context; and Victoria Rowell, from Van Dyke’s 1993 mystery series, “Diagnosis: Murder,” which ran three seasons longer than “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and may, in some circles, be what he’s best known for.
And there are, of course, archival interviews with the late Carl Reiner, who created “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and calls its star “the single most talented man that’s ever been in situation comedy,” and co-star Mary Tyler Moore, whose sexual chemistry with Van Dyke, as Rob and Laurie Petrie, was something new for television in 1961 and rarely equaled since. (They were perhaps the only sitcom couple who danced and sang together.) That series, which ran until 1966, when Reiner and company, not wanting to get stale, pulled it from the air, was the perfect frame for the star’s gifts, an unusually lifelike workplace/family comedy that made room for Van Dyke’s silent-movie physical comedy and reactions.
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Purely as a film, “Starring Dick Van Dyke” does suffer some from the challenge of tracking a 100-year life and a career that runs back more than eight decades; it’s something of an unwieldy hodgepodge whose flow, like many such documentaries, depends on who agrees to talk, what they have to say, what photos and films are available (and affordable) and, of course, what interests the filmmakers. Disappointingly, there are no clips from the 1971 sitcom “The New Dick Van Dyke Show,” which Van Dyke dismisses here but I quite liked, and surprisingly, no mention of the 2004 reunion, “The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited,” written by Reiner and featuring all the surviving cast members. (I also have some issues with the kooky framing graphics.)
But there’s so much to see (and hear), going back to a snippet of the future star on local radio in Danville, Ill., where he started working as a teenager, and footage of him in the Merry Mutes, the lip-syncing double act that started his nightclub career in the late 1940s; various unsuccessful stints as a morning show anchor (with Walter Cronkite), a cartoon show host and a game show host; and performing “Put on a Happy Face” alongside Broadway castmate Susan Watson.
Appropriately, the most time is dedicated to “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “Mary Poppins” (along with “Mary Poppins Returns,” in which Van Dyke, as the aged son of the aged banker he surreptitiously played in the first film, danced on a desk — at 93. The production and rehearsal photos are delightful — and a gift to Moore and Andrews fans as well — with everyone looking young and beautiful. He paints himself as “lazy” and “lucky,” not driven (except to earn a living for his family), “not an actor.” But the world decided for itself.
Apart from the 1968 “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” a sort of “Poppins” redux that has a considerable consistency of its own, and the Reiner penned-and-directed “The Comic,” a 1969 drama about a silent film comedian reckoning with the talkies, his post “Poppins” theatrical films are relegated to a single description and a collage — not even a montage — of posters. More attention is paid to “The Morning After,” a 1974 TV movie in which Van Dyke played an alcoholic businessman; it was around then that he went public with his own drinking problem.
Toward the end, the documentary sometimes has the air of a promotional piece, with accounts of charities Van Dyke supports. But two hours of Van Dyke performances cannot help but be entertaining. All you need to do is set up the clips and get out of the way. A man desperately searching for a handkerchief while trying to stifle a sneeze, the world’s oldest magician making a comeback — these hilarious bits require no context.
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Inevitably, it is also a story of time, given a century of photos and films marking every stage of life. His long arms, his long legs and his overall all length are not what they used to be. But the long (which is not to say sad) face is as recognizable and expressive as it ever was.
The Timothée Chalamet movie that’s arriving on Christmas Day is “a 150-minute-long heart attack of a film,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. In “a career-best turn” that’s “a feverish go-for-broke tour de force,” Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, an aspiring table tennis champ in 1950s New York City who’s ready to lie, cheat, and steal for the chance to become the best in the world. This first film from director Josh Safdie since 2019’s Uncut Gems turns out to be a character study that “doubles as a cracked American success story,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. Marty is a scrawny kid with a pathetic mustache, but he’s also a fast-talking grifter with supreme self-confidence, and his game earns him a trip to London and the world championship tournament before a humbling stokes his hunger for a comeback.
Surrounding Chalamet is “a supporting cast you’d swear was assembled via Mad Libs,” because it features Fran Drescher, Penn Jillette, Tyler the Creator, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, and—as a faded movie star Marty sweet-talks into an affair—Gwyneth Paltrow, “reminding you how good she was before Goop became her full-time gig.” To me, it’s the story beneath the story that makes Safdie’s “nerve-jangling, utterly exhilarating” movie one of the best of the year, said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. “It’s about a Jewish kid who knows just what kind of antisemitism and finely stratified racial dynamics he’s up against in postwar America, and who is using every means at his disposal to smack back.”
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‘Is This Thing On?’
Directed by Bradley Cooper (R)
★★★
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“There are far worse things that a gifted filmmaker could offer an audience these days than a feel-good divorce comedy,” said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. But it’s still slightly disappointing that screen star Bradley Cooper has followed up A Star Is Born and Maestro with this minor work, due Dec. 19, about a father of two who starts doing stand-up in New York City to cope with the likely end of his marriage. With Will Arnett and Laura Dern as its co-stars, Is This Thing On? is “an observant, bittersweet, and highly watchable movie,” but it’s also so eager to hide the agonies of divorce that it “can feel like it’s cutting corners.”
The 124-minute film “doesn’t really get going until hour two,” said Ryan Lattanzio in IndieWire. Until then, it’s “lethargic and listless,” slowed by long takes “that drag on and on.” Fortunately, Arnett and Dern have real chemistry that kicks in when Dern’s Tess accidentally catches Arnett’s Alex performing his bit about their sidelined marriage and sees him with new eyes. Good as Arnett is, “it’s Dern who’s the revelation as a woman who truly doesn’t know what she wants and is figuring it out in real time,” said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com. Cooper, playing a reprobate friend of Alex’s, gives himself the script’s biggest laughs. More importantly, he proves again to be a director with “a real flair for domestic drama.”
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“Saturday Night Live” hosts typically make their mark on the show, either by boosting the sketches they’re in with charm and good timing or making a lesser kind of mark by awkwardly revealing why they aren’t right for live sketch comedy.
So what are we supposed to make of British actor Josh O’Connor, who hosted “SNL” for the first time and left almost no impression at all?
O’Connor, known for playing Prince Charles in “The Crown” and for performances in “Challengers” and the new Netflix movie “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” seemed game enough, but throughout most of the show he had little opportunity to do much more than blend into sketches centered around characters he was not playing.
He played supporting parts including the Tin Man in a revamped “Wizard of Oz” sketch involving the male characters deciding they actually want a “big old thang” instead of their original wishes, a fellow student in a sketch about a 12-year-old college prodigy (Bowen Yang), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in a Christmas characters piece that was a take on Variety’s “Actors on Actors,” and an awkward brunch attendee.
Only in a few sketches, including a “Dating Game” parody featuring Ashley Padilla as a rowdy 84-year-old contestant; a hospital sketch in which he played a bad intern; and one in which O’Connor and Ben Sherman played sensitive male strippers at a bachelorette party did he have lead roles. And they weren’t particularly memorable characters or portrayals. Only when he kissed fellow cast members at the end of sketches (Yang and Sherman) did things seem to liven up.
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In fact, it felt more like a spotlight episode for Yang — who played the Wizard; the fast-talking, high-attitude Doctor Please in the hospital sketch; and the 12-year-old college student — and for musical guest Lily Allen. Allen’s scathing performances of “Sleepwalking” and “Madeline” from her new breakup-with-David Harbour album were high drama. The latter song featured a big surprise: Actor Dakota Johnson spoke from behind a scrim as the titular character and then appeared next to Allen when the song ended. Another Allen song, “West End Girl,” was the subject of an entire brunch sketch in which cast members sang about their feelings to the tune of the music. Allen showed up as herself but filling in as a waitress at their table.
It’s hard to say if the material just misfired for O’Connor or if he’s just an awkward fit for “SNL,” but unfortunately what stood out in the episode had little to do with him.
In addition to the sketches, this “SNL” episode included a Christmas-themed “Brad and His Dad” animated short.
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Ready for another President Trump-centered cold open? Sorry, you got one anyway. James Austin Johnson once again aced his impression of Trump with a stream-of-consciousness ramble for reporters aboard Air Force One that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (Ashley Padilla) attributed to exhaustion. “I took an Ambien and an Adderall, let’s see which one wins,” said Trump before inappropriately fixating on Leavitt’s lips and denying that affordability is a problem. “Economy is very strong,” he said, “from the billionaires all the way down to the poor millionaires.” Trump addressed attacks on Venezuelan ships, saying, “We’re doing pirate now, argh,” and promising that attacks would move from the sea to the air, leading to a visual joke of Santa Claus and his reindeer on radar being shot out of the sky.
O’Connor’s monologue focused on two things those unfamiliar with his acting should know about him: that he has a reputation as a “soft boy,” someone who embroiders, scrapbooks and gardens like an “average 65-year-old woman.” The other is that he resembles chef Linguini from the Pixar film “Ratatouille,” and though a rumor that he wanted to play the character in a live-action version was unfounded, he would very much like to play that character. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I would kill as Linguini.”
Best sketch of the night: You ate how many nuggets this year?
Even though it’s already well-trod meme material (including an almost identical comic strip’s premise), “SNL” was still able to squeeze some juice from Spotify’s Wrapped, a year-in-review feature that returned for another round earlier in the week. Uber Eats has a year-in-review, too, and you absolutely don’t want your significant other to see what fast food you’ve ordered and whether you’re in the top 1% of nugget eaters. If your Uber Eats age is “52 and Fat,” it may not be knowledge you wish to have. The mock commercial does a great job balancing the shame we feel about the awful foods we eat with the amount of data we could learn about those habits, if only anyone ever wanted to see that.
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Also good: These kind male strippers give the best empathy hugs
A bachelorette party at a cozy cabin is interrupted by two hired male strippers, Augie and Remington (Sherman and O’Connor), who ask for consent before entering and are soon removing their cardigans to reveal another layer of cardigan. The men dance to an emo version of “Pony” before revealing that one of them has a Zohran (Mamdani) tattoo on his stomach. They give lap dances, but one of them gets overstimulated and cries. “I was just thinking about the Supreme Court,” he moans. Not the most original sketch idea, but the specific details of the characters and Padilla’s smitten reactions as the bachelorette saved the sketch from overstaying its welcome.
‘Weekend Update’ winner: Superheroes, Santa and your boss all want you to behave
Jane Wickline did a nice job with a surprisingly violent original song about stopping the biggest threat facing the world: not AI, but the grown-up child actors from “Stranger Things.” But it was Marcello Hernández who got big laughs recounting what Christmas is like for his Cuban family. It includes dealing with new boyfriends of family members pretending to be who they aren’t. “You don’t like the food, Kyle, you like having sex with my cousin!” Hernández wandered a bit, straying to talk about “Home Alone” and uncles who give unsolicited sex advice, but the heart of the segment was impressions of his father calling to encourage his son as different characters including Santa Claus, Spider-Man and his boss, Lorne Michaels.
Joe Carnahan was a sagacious choice to co-write and direct the engrossing and visceral survival thriller “Not Without Hope,” given Carnahan’s track record of delivering gripping and gritty actioners, including early, stylish crime thrillers such as “Narc” (2002) and “Smokin’ Aces” (2006), and the absolutely badass and bonkers Liam Neeson v Giant Wolves epic “The Grey” (2011).
Based on the non-fiction book of the same name, “Not Without Hope” plunges us into the stormy waters of the Gulf of Mexico for the majority of the film, and delivers a breathtaking and harrowing dramatic re-creation of the 2009 accident that left four friends, including two NFL players, clinging to their single-engine boat and fighting for their lives. The survival-at-sea story here is a familiar one, told in films such as “White Squall,” “The Perfect Storm,” and “Adrift,” and the screenplay by Carnahan and E. Nicholas Mariani leans into well-worn tropes and, at times, features cliché-ridden dialogue. Still, this is a well-paced and powerful work, thanks to the strong performances by the ensemble cast, some well-placed moments of character introspection, and the documentary-style, water-level camerawork by Juanmi Azpiroz.
Zachary Levi (the TV series “Chuck,” the “Shazam!” movies) is best known for comedy and light action roles. Still, he delivers solid, straightforward, and effective dramatic work as Nick Schuyler, a personal trainer who helps his friends Marquis Cooper (Quentin Plair) and Corey Smith (Terrence Terrell), two journeyman NFL players, get ready for another season. When their pal Will Bleakley (Marshall Cook) shows up at a barbecue and announces he has just been laid off from his financial firm, he’s invited to join the trio the next morning on a day-trip fishing trip from Clearwater, FL., into the Gulf of Mexico. (The casting is a bit curious, as the four lead actors are 10-20 years older than the ages of the real-life individuals they’re playing — but all four are in great shape, and we believe them as big, strong, physically and emotionally tough guys.)
We can see the longtime bond between these four in the early going, though we don’t learn much about their respective stories before the fishing trip. Kudos Carnahan and the studio for delivering a film that earns its R rating, primarily for language and intense action; the main characters are jocks and former jocks, and they speak with the casual, profanity-laced banter favored by many an athlete. (Will, describing the sandwiches he’s made for the group: “I got 20 f*cking PB&Js, and 20 f*cking turkey and cheese.”) There’s no sugarcoating the way these guys talk—and the horrors they wind up facing on the seas.
The boat is about 70 miles off the coast of Clearwater when the anchor gets stuck, and the plan to thrust the boat forward to dislodge it backfires, resulting in the vessel capsizing and the men being thrown overboard. Making matters worse, their cell phones were all sealed away in a plastic bag in the cabin, and a ferocious storm was approaching. With title cards ticking off the timeline (“13 Hours Lost at Sea,” “20 Hours Lost at Sea,” “42 Hours Lost at Sea”), we toggle back and forth between the men frantically trying to turn over the boat, keep warm, signal faraway ships, battling hunger and thirst, and the dramas unfolding on land. Floriana Lima as Nick’s fiancée, Paula, and Jessica Blackmore as Coop’s wife, Rebekah, do fine work in the obligatory Wait-by-the-Phone roles.
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It’s terrific to see JoBeth Williams still lighting up the screen some 40 years after her “Big Chill” and “Poltergeist” days, delivering powerful work as Nick’s mother, Marcia, who refuses to believe her son is gone even as the odds of survival dwindle with each passing hour. Josh Duhamel also excels in the role of the real-life Captain Timothy Close, who oversaw the rescue efforts from U.S. Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg. At one point, Close delivers a bone-chilling monologue about what happens when hypothermia sets in—“hallucinations, dementia, rage…eventually, it breaks your mind in half”—a point driven home when we see what’s happening to those men at sea. It’s savage and brutal, and heartbreaking.
Given this was such a highly publicized story that took place a decade and a half ago, it’s no spoiler to sadly note there was only one survivor of the accident, with the other three men lost to the sea. Each death is treated with unblinking honesty and with dignity, as when the natural sounds fade at one point, and we hear just the mournful score. With Malta standing in for the Gulf of Mexico and the actors giving everything they have while spending most of the movie in the water and soaked to the bone, “Not Without Hope” is a respectful and impactful dramatic interpretation that feels true to the real-life events.
