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Retro trip starring The Golden Girls TV show comes to Houston theaters

Can you identify these four Golden Girls by name?

Courtesy photo

A movie theater experience that's rife with '80s nostalgia is coming to town: The Golden Girls, the vintage TV series, is coming to the big screen.

"Forever Golden! A Celebration of the Golden Girls" will be a two-night experience featuring five episodes from the TV series, screening at movie theaters nationwide, including several theaters around Houston.

For those who've miraculously never seen a re-run of the show — which airs continuously on the Hallmark channel and is also available for streaming on Hulu — the series follows Miami homeowner Blanche Devereaux (Rue McClanahan), joined by Rose Nylund (Betty White) and Dorothy Zbornak (Bea Arthur), brought together by an ad for roommates posted by Blanche in a grocery store. The three are joined by Dorothy's feisty Sicilian mother, Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty).

It premiered in September 1985 and ran for seven seasons with 180 half-hour episodes.

The release says that this special event will feature some of the series' most memorable episodes, as follows:

"The Engagement" (Pilot aired - September 14, 1985) – The pilot centers on Blanche who has fallen in love, raising the possibility that her boarders will have to move out in the event of a marriage. Of course the wedding is called off when Blanche discovers that she has become involved with a bigamist and finds comfort and love from her dearest friends.

"The Flu" (aired Mar. 1, 1986) – A week before an awards ceremony, Blanche, Dorothy and Rose each come down with a nasty flu, which compounds their arguing over who will win a prestigious award.

"The Way We Met" (aired May 10, 1986) – One night after watching Psycho, the girls find it hard to sleep so they stay up and reminisce about how they all came to live with one another.

"Ladies of the Evening" (aired Oct. 4, 1986) – The house is fumigated and the girls move into a Miami Beach hotel. Previously, Blanche had won three tickets to see the opening of Burt Reynolds new movie and passes to the party held afterwards where they could meet him. However, on the evening of the opening, the hotel is raided and they mistaken as prostitutes. Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose are dragged off to jail.

"Grab That Dough" (aired Jan. 23, 1988) – Sophia manages to get tickets for the ladies to be contestants on their favorite game show, Grab That Dough. Enroute, the airline loses their luggage and they are forced to sleep in the lobby of the hotel that "lost" their room reservations. To top it off, their purses get stolen. Arriving on the set, Blanche and Dorothy team up with the Kaplan Brothers, returning champions, because Rose and Sophia are "dead weight." To their surprise, Rose and Sophia answer all the questions correctly.

"There’s a reason The Golden Girls was nominated and won so many comedy awards. It's just that funny," says Ray Nutt, Fathom Events CEO. "This celebration of the hilarious show is a treat for existing fans as well as a whole new generation to experience this classic sitcom."

Fathom is a distributor of content to movie theaters in North America owned by AMC Entertainment Inc., Cinemark Holdings, Inc., and Regal Cinemas, a subsidiary of the Cineworld Group. The company delivers a wide variety of programming and experiences to cinema audiences in all of the top U.S. markets and to more than 45 countries.

"Forever Golden! A Celebration of the Golden Girls" will play in movie theaters on Tuesday, September 14 and Tuesday, September 21 at 7 pm. Tickets are $16.24 and can be purchased online at www.FathomEvents.com or at participating theater box offices. A complete list of theater locations is available on the Fathom Events website (participating theaters are subject to change).

It'll appear at the following movie theaters on Tuesday, September 14:

Regal Greenway Grand Palace Stadium 24, 3839 Weslayan St.
Regal Houston Marq*E Stadium 23, 7600 Katy Freeway
Memorial City Mall, 310 Memorial City Mall
AMC First Colony 24, 3301 Town Center Boulevard S.
Cinemark 19 Katy, 1030 W. Grand Parkway N.
Star Cinema Grill - Richmond, 22125 FM 1093
Regal Grand Parkway 22, 7301 Grand Parkway
Cinemark Rosenberg 12, 3420 Vista Dr.
The Woodlands Mall, 1600 Lake Robbins Dr.
Cinemark Spring-Klein & XD, 21440 Kuykendahl Rd.
Regal Lone Star 19, 24720 State Highway 249

For a complete list of theater locations and screening locations for Tuesday, September 14 and 21, visit the Fathom Events website (participating theaters are subject to change).

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Movie Review

New comedy I Want Your Sex saddles an all-star cast with a dull story

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I Want Your Sex.

Writer/director Gregg Araki has been making provocative movies for nearly 40 years, releasing his debut — Three Bewildered People in the Night — in 1987. Most of them have had plotlines that revolved around sex in one way or another, and for his latest — his first film in 12 years — he’s putting it right there in the title, I Want Your Sex.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) is an aimless twenty-something who can’t even afford the rent for his apartment with best friend, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders). Thankfully, he finds a job at the gallery of artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), who is open with her sexuality both in her artwork and in her day-to-day life. That soon includes Elliot, whom she convinces to enter into a dominant-submissive relationship with her, with sessions taking place both at work and her home.

Elliot, who’s in a going-nowhere coupling with Minerva (Charli XCX), is more than willing to participate, both because it lets him feel something he doesn’t get normally and because Erika offers a perspective on sex that’s much different from people of his generation. But as he gets in deeper with her, he starts to lose a sense of himself, going down a path in which he finds himself talking to police detectives Zem (Johnny Knoxville) and Zola (Margaret Cho).

Araki does his level best to make I Want Your Sex into a broad comedy, and early on it seems as if he might succeed. The deadpan way that sexual objects appear in the film (a penis-shaped rug in Elliot and Apple’s apartment, a vagina artwork with chewed gum as the medium) make for amusing sight gags. He also makes Elliot the bewildered other in multiple twosomes, with Minerva being the funniest, as she’s way more interested in studying than his ham-fisted attempts at sex.

It’s clear that Araki wants the film to be a commentary on the generational differences about sex, but he fumbles his own idea. It starts with an on-the-nose conversation between Erika and Elliot, and continues with the various dalliances, which seem to be more about making Elliot look and feel ridiculous than giving true insight. Their encounters certainly open his mind about what sex can be, but their one-note nature makes them repetitive and frankly boring, odd considering the acts in which the two engage.

The uninspired storytelling makes the 90-minute film drag way more than it should. Araki includes a few other characters to try to vary the tone of the film, including gallery workers Zap (Mason Gooding) and Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), but their early promise yields little results. The framing device of Elliot’s interview with the detectives never works, especially because Araki completely neuters the personalities of Cho and Knoxville for seemingly no good reason.

The cast as a whole goes to waste. Hoffman is showing the promise of his late father (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and even though he’s appealing here, the material pulls him down. Wilde just made her own provocative movie about sex (The Invite), and this one pales in comparison despite her heightened performance. Wonders, Charli XCX, and Gooding are all young stars who deserve to be showcased much better than they are in this film.

A film called I Want Your Sex is announcing itself as daring and alluring, but this film contains almost none of those qualities. Instead, it’s a slog that only occasionally has something interesting to show or say, mostly relying on the power of its actors to hold viewers’ attention — and failing at even that.

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I Want Your Sex is now playing in select theaters.