I enjoyed Dante’s body of work more than I expected. I very much didn’t love everything. His early period is undisciplined and only intermittently successful, and his later period is mired in compromises that undermined the overall efforts (though, again, I really did find a good bit to enjoy in Burying the Ex).
And yet, the 80s and early 90s were very good for him creatively. He latched onto Steven Spielberg after Spielberg got him the job on Gremlins, and he used that connection to great effect, bringing together his early collaborators like his regular DP John Hora with writers like Chip Proser and Charles S. Haas, showing that Dante’s greatest strength was a Roger Corman-like effort to get good talent around him to help him make movies.
In what is an unfairly common story, Dante’s best movie undid him through financial failure. Matinee is a wonderful film that audiences completely ignored at the time and have largely ignored in the decades since. That really needs to change because while it’s a hard to market film with a title that probably isn’t great for it, it’s a wonderful entertainment.
And that’s what Dante was obviously trying to accomplish from Hollywood Boulevard through Burying the Ex. He just wanted to entertain, to provide a brief respite from real-world concerns through the magic of cinema, using tricks of every kind to give audiences a bit of amusement in between their real lives. He was a big kid who loved his toys, and he got paid to play with them for decades. He may not have been the best filmmaker of the era, or the best that came from the Roger Corman machine, but he was a fun one.
So, here is my definitive ranking of Joe Dante’s work. I should note that I included some of his television work, most importantly The Second Civil War which did get a limited theatrical release in Europe (no longer made for TV!). I also included his Masters of Horror episodes simply because I did it with John Carpenter. I kind of regret doing it, though. They don’t really feel like Dante works, and they’re not very good.
Anyway, enjoy the ranking! And check out all the others! They’re definitive.
16. Masters of Horror: The Screwfly Solution
“It’s not “Pro-Life” bad, but it’s still pretty bad.”
15. Looney Tunes: Back in Action
“As a whole, it’s just kind of a drag.”
14. Masters of Horror: Homecoming
“But, at least those bits of comedy (including, I think, the final reveal about Murch’s brother which is so ridiculously stupid that I feel like it has to be played for laughs) exist, elevating the material ever so slightly from dreck to ironically silly dreck.”
13. The Hole
“It’s…fine. The script is not where it needs to be, but Dante brings a sense of style and fun to the proceedings that helps it along. The ending works decently, especially considering the sparseness of what came before it, and yet the mythos simply doesn’t make much sense (maybe it needed slightly more explanation), though it’s not debilitating to the horror.”
12. Piranha
“It has some moderate entertainment value, but it really is only moderate.”
“I mean, it’s not good, but it’s far better than it had any right to be. Plus, Dick Miller is kind of hilarious.”
10. Small Soldiers
“And the end result, despite fun moments, is a largely disconnected film without much of a point and only limited bits of amusement. It both feels like a movie with too many cooks as well as a return to Dante relying on collaborators who couldn’t work as well as what he had been using through the 80s and early 90s.”
9. The Howling
“If I could just watch the final half hour of The Howling, I’d be very happy, but getting through the tepid, ambling first hour is something of a chore.”
“Yeah, this has been poorly received, and I can kind of see why. It’s in between genres. It’s not as funny as something like Shaun of the Dead. It’s not scary at all. However, I found it amusing and the character work around the relationships pretty solid. It’s better than its reputation implies.”
7. The ‘Burbs
“It’s a light, frothy entertainment from Joe Dante, playing in the Universal backlot with a movie star and some of his regular cast (Dick Miller and Robert Picardo get one little scene as trashmen) while indulging in his influences.”
6. Gremlins
“Gremlins is a fun little 80s timepiece, Joe Dante’s first effort to prove himself on a decently large scale, evidence that Spielberg had an eye for young talent, and an entertaining technical achievement. It really could have used another draft to both cut out some early stuff that got left on the cutting room floor in the edit and to give Billy something more of a specific goal to achieve through the chaos. Either that, or just lean far more into the chaos. Maybe the sequel will choose one of those two directions.”
5. Explorers
“It’s not great. I’m not sure a further edit would have gotten to that level because the ending is so materially different and kind of weird, but it might have tightened it up while allowing some of the thirty minutes of deleted scenes some space to find in the finished product. Still, it’s nice to see the kind of appeal that Dante can bring to the genre, providing real wonder and even some interesting little ideas about connecting with new species through entertainment.”
“It’s really funny. It’s got real satirical bite. It’s omnidirectional in its scorn. It’s got that anarchic spirit that Dante brought most obviously in Gremlins 2. This is a small gem in Dante’s filmography, and I’m glad I didn’t skip it.”
“So, I see the sequel as a step up from the first with the increased embrace of the chaos and anarchy of the gremlins, using the increased budget to great effect, but ultimately it’s only paying lip service to the forms of narrative storytelling in ways that make the overall package less entertaining than it could have been. I essentially wanted this to be Joe Dante’s masterpiece, but it ends up being an entertaining but mild enhancement over the original.”
2. Innerspace
“It does solid character work with a great finale for one of the main characters. It has great special effects. It’s light and amusing consistently. Joe Dante had a real win here, and it’s just too bad that it wasn’t more of a success at the box office of the time.”
1. Matinee
“I’m completely sold. This is my favorite Joe Dante film.”
David Vining, Author 
I was aware that there was a director named Joe Dante, but never put together that he was behind many of these films. I probably pigeonholed him as a horror director because of Piranha and the Howling. I do like a few of his films, The Burbs and Innerspace are entertaining enough, but he is a fairly lightweight director, kind of Spielberg-lite.
LikeLike
He’s too anarchic for the Spielberg comparison, I think. Spielberg helped sand the edges off on a couple of films, but Spielberg only got that kind of anarchic edge when directing a script by Bobs Gale and Zemeckis (and John Milius), 1941.
I would also call him a minor voice of genre filmmaking of the 80s, though. I think he had it in him to collect the right elements around him to corral some great entertainments, but it rarely came together at that heightened level. He seems to be missing understanding of some major elements, namely structural, that he relied on others to provide.
I should also say that I got your email, read it, enjoyed it, and thank you for it! I just never got around to thanking you in an email, as would be proper, because I am an asshole.
LikeLike
Glad it was of some interest. Did make me want to go see Godzilla. A friend just saw it this week and also raved about it.
LikeLike
Reading these reviews, I think I know why I never really had much of an interest in Dante. It’s interesting, because we both like the same things, he just comes at it from a completely different direction.
As an EG, I enjoy “Attack of the Crab Monsters,” an early cheapie by Roger Corman. I like it because it’s intelligent and well constructed from a film-making viewpoint (even if the monsters don’t look so hot). It has an eerie strangeness throughout, and manages to overcome lapses in logic.
I like it because it’s smart, weird and uses its tiny resources well. I like it despite its cheapness. I’m sure Joe Dante probably likes it too, but he likes it because of its cheapness, shoddiness, and general let’s-get-this-stinker-into-theatres-quick air. I approach it as a story, he approaches it as a movie and I think that makes a huge difference.
Fun survey, BTW.
LikeLike
I’d bet serious money that you are 100% right about Dante’s opinion of Attack of the Crab Monsters. That really does just seem like the kind of thing he’d love for its cheapness.
Thanks for taking the journey with me! I had a pretty good time.
LikeLike