Matinee (1993)

Name: Matinee (1993)
Duration: 1 h 39 min

1hr 39m

1hr 39m
3.7/5 (7.5K)
86%

The teenage son of a navy sailor newly stationed in Key West gets some excitement with his friends when a small-time film producer comes to town to premiere a… More Details »

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Trailer 1 (00:31)
Trailer 1 (01:53)

Movie Info & Cast

Director:

Joe Dante

Producer:

Michael Finnell

Writer:

Charles S. Haas, Jerico Stone

Runtime:

1hr 39m

Synopsis

The teenage son of a navy sailor newly stationed in Key West gets some excitement with his friends when a small-time film producer comes to town to premiere a kitschy horror film during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Cast

John Goodman
Cathy Moriarty
Simon Fenton
Omri Katz
Lisa Jakub
Kellie Martin
Jesse Lee Soffer
Lucinda Jenney
James Villemaire
Robert Picardo

Letterboxd User Reviews

3.7

RATINGS 90 FANS

3.7

Jul 18, 2020

“Takes a lot more to scare people these days. Too much competition.” I’ve watched a bunch of movies during the pandemic specifically because of their resonance to our current moment. I rewatched this one for the first time since I was a kid to get away from all that —…

551 Likes

Matt Singer

May 1, 2016

Matinee is an absolute gem! Easily my favorite movie about watching movies. If someone were to ask me why I love movies so much, I would just tell them to go watch Joe Dante's Matinee. Probably the most under-rated, under-valued, and criminally under-seen film in existence.…

434 Likes

Evan

Jun 27, 2014

Joe Dante's love letter to the power and joy found in cinema. There is one scene in particular that I keep thinking about today. After her husband has been sent off to potentially defend the United States (there's criticism of the military industrial complex in here, like…

342 Likes

Willow Maclay
Nov 22, 2015

"Castle’s theatrical exploitation methods—most famously employed with The Tingler—blurred where cinema ended and reality began. Dante makes this explicitly political, with Woolsey both exploiting and revealing the terrors of the atomic age. By the time a bomb explodes on…

280 Likes

Peter Labuza

Jul 27, 2023

I've known Joe Dante since the spring of 1974 when we met at Roger Corman's editing room. Matinee is to me his most personal picture. There are so many things in it- jokes, themes, homages, lines of dialogue, shots and stock shots and recreations of scenes out of the…

274 Likes

Allan Arkush

Mar 28, 2018

What a delightful movie, and the movie within the movie, Mant, just might be my favorite fake movie. The first time I ever watched Matinee was on cable in the mid 90’s—fiittingly enough it was on a family trip to Key West, Florida. Everyone went out but I pretended to be…

232 Likes

Ian West
Feb 11, 2022

At the end of the world, all we can ask for is to be surrounded by the ones we love. For Joe Dante, his “one” is the movies. B movies. “Matinee,” set at the height of global atomic annihilation paranoia, stars John Goodman as a schlock impresario, who brings his new…

219 Likes

theriverjordan

Nov 13, 2016

Movies will always be extremely important to me, but in a time of straight-up national crisis I suppose it is inevitable that they will feel less important. I'm a nervous, anxious person by nature, and it's bad voodoo when the national mood is able to match, and surpass, my…

176 Likes

Joe

Mar 6, 2016

That "shopping cart" movie-within-a-movie is the best comedy of '93.

174 Likes

Justin LaLiberty

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Queue Community Reviews

86%

Community 142

❤️ LOVE

32%

👍 LIKE

54%

😐 MEH

11%

👎 DISLIKE

Top Reviews

Steven Erick liked

Matinee

This movie is a very specific kind of time capsule - it’s the mid 90s, you’re flipping through channels looking for something to watch. You stumble on “Matinee” and you put the remote down. Iykyk

👀 1 1Y

JDelp87 loved

Matinee

This was a pleasant surprise. Serves as a coming of age tale and a parody of the B-movie schlock that we all know and love. John Goodman is great in this as an over the top movie producer in the height of the Cold War. Child actors do a terrific job in this as well.

5M

Becas is "meh" on

Matinee

Some funny moments and a cool concept but I didn’t care about the main plotline. Basically not enough Mants and not enough of the director/producer guy

9M
mason williams liked

Matinee

John Goodman is great in this, however, he is not in this enough. Also the score is weak. All and all this movie is kind of mediocre to be honest.

7M

James New loved

Matinee

A new one of my Joe Dante favourites. Wonderful premise done so very well. Very funny and pure Joe Dante style. John Goodman is always great

1Y

Brian loved

Matinee

Such a classic. Love this movie.

7M