With the Cecil B. DeMiller tribute coming at the Golden Globes and her 50th birthday hitting this coming Monday, we're celebrating the one and only Jodie Foster.
Jodie Foster is one of only a tiny handful of full fledged child stars to become even more legendary as an adult movie star. She remains the modern era's gold standard for making the transition but who could've predicted it in 1972 when she made her first feature Napoleon & Samantha. She's not really the star (that'd be Johnny Whitaker as Napoleon) but the film had the foresight to open with her face and that distinctive voice.
She gets the movie's very first shot and line.
Ouch, I bumped my knee!
Auspicious beginnings!
a totally docile animal actor. Johnny & Jodie climb all over this big cat, pull its tail, shove their hands in its mouthNapoleon, tells her to shush with a "who cares about your stupid knee?" Turns out moviegoers around the globe would -- the stupid knee and all the rest of her, too!
Napoleon and Samantha is a really weird watch in 2012. Just about the only recognizable thing about it is its Disney Fixation with orphanhood (that fixation is still with us) but everything is truly foreign, dated or bizarre: a retiring circus performer Napoleon meets in the woods; a lion who only drinks milk and that barely anybody seems freaked out about when they meet; Michael Douglas as a kind-hearted hippie goat farmer with a political science degree (don't ask); a chase scene with Douglas stunt double in a Bad Grandma Michael Douglas wig and porn-ready music scoring; an escaped mental patient in the woods (!); It's a weird weird movie disguised as an innocuous family one.
But the time capsule treats of seeing an intermittently bored baby Jodie trying to remember her lines (this is not her finest hour) and watching Michael Douglas all twenty-something young and hippie sexy...
... not to mention the unintentionally hilarious visual juxtaposition of Jodie's butch gait in little girl dresses with Michael Douglas hippie fey exuberance, made it oh so worthwhile! I meant to just grab an image but I couldn't turn the damn thing off.