I just now noticed that I’m haven’t been properly capitalizing the title of Sundays With Stephen in my blog posts. Huh.

I guess with a blog it’s less formal, so that’s all right. A lot of my titles are more like sentences anyway.

Oh, right, the movie. This week we have Christine, a movie about a demonic car, directed by John Carpenter.

Christine takes place in… 1978, I believe. Late-70s at any rate… and for a change of pace, not in Maine! In fact, Maine never even comes up, as this movie takes place in California.

As the movie opens we meet a hapless nerd named Arnie and his best friend the good-natured jock Dennis. Arnie is your classic movie nerd, with coke bottle glasses in big black plastic frames, an overbearing family and that special sort of movie nerd clumsiness where bad things happen around you to humorous effect. The movie establishes that Arnie is taking shop class this year to learn about cars, though he’s later established as a great mechanic without the school training so I’m not sure why he bothers. His family is giving him a hard time taking shop class, because… well, it’s not really clear. It might interfere with his other school work? We’re never told what Arnie’s goals in life are, but his parents have him on some college prep death march, so I guess we’re supposed to hate them for it. I dunno.

On the first day, Arnie and Dennis fall for the new girl in school, who is supposed to be the most beautiful thing on Earth. Eh. I don’t see it, but it could be the big hair. She’s an important character but really her purpose is to exist. She fills a plot point like putty fills a hole in the wall.

Arnie and Dennis discover a rusted out classic car on their way back from school the first day, and Arnie falls in love with it, blowing his savings on a quick purchase from the designated menacing redneck of the film, a guy named Lebay. Lebay is the sort of creepy that makes sensible people stick to the main roads when driving cross-country, and he unloads the car on poor Arnie. Only… it’s a demon car! *cue dramatic music* Duh-duh-duh!

There are some spoilers ahead. Skip to the second long string of periods if you want to see the spoiler-free conclusion:
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In short order, Arnie fixes up the wreck, gets possessed, gets the girl, Dennis is sidelined for a few months by a serious football injury so he’s not really aware of what’s happening to his friend, and Christine, the car (named by its previous owner) gets up to no good. After a vandalism, Christine, or Arnie in Christine, it’s not clear always clear, goes on a killing spree. She also tries to kill his girlfriend, and crushes another guy to death for no particular reason. She’s just mean.

Eventually this leads to a showdown between Dennis, what’s-her-forgettable-face, and Christine/Arnie, with Dennis using a large backhoe to teach that wacky car lesson. I won’t spoil the ending, except to say that it’s too cute by half and leaves the road open for a sequel.

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Yeah.

I don’t know what to make about this movie, and I don’t really have much to say. It’s not awful. It doesn’t ruin a good story like Cujo (my roommate’s read Christine, and it seems like it was really one of the lesser King works). It’s pretty to look at, and the remastered DVD is lush and colorful. Carpenter’s direction avoids showy and stupid tricks. Carpenter did the music too, and even though it’s Casio-tastic, it kind of works.

It’s just that nothing about this movie stands out, in a good way or a bad one, and by the end it’s just sort of over. Christine is a bit like those bags of cotton candy you sometimes see in the grocery store. They’re not especially good, they’re not actually bad, but once you’re done eating one, the experience and the food have completely disappeared.

There is one really nice bit in Christine that I do care about, and that’s the sequence where the demon car fixes itself after being smashed up by the local gang of nerd-hating hoodlums. It’s just your standard playing-the-film in reverse gag, but it’s still awesome to watch all that metal being un-deformed, stretching and flexing under whatever they did to destroy it in the first place.

In relation to the other King films we’ve watched so far, Christine harkens back to Carrie, I suppose. It’s a film, and a book for that matter, about the supernatural visiting death and vengeance on largely-deserving high school jerks, getting out of hand, and having to be destroyed. No nuclear family with a small male child to put in jeopardy here, no sir.

The whole thing is OK. You won’t hate it or love it, and it kills some time. There are worse things for a movie.

Next Week: Cults in America’s Heartland. We have Children of the Corn!
Last Week: Christopher Walken is creepier before 9 am than most guys-wearing-nothing-but-a-trenchcoat manage in a full day. The Dead Zone!