Joe Dante is just about the only satirist worth a damn whose work is ultimately chooses optimism and affection over cynicism. Matinee initially separates his two impulses—its depiction of the farce of nuclear drills, of a world without dietary mania ("eat red meat three times a day!"), of the existential dread underpinning a young generation supposedly living in their country's golden age" is occasionally terrifying. Meanwhile, its attention to the B-movies of the atomic age, produced by benign, if still capitalistic, hucksters, is purely nostalgic.
Eventually, however, these threads converge, producing a stirring, giddy defense of even the cheapest shlock as potential termite art (or ant art, as the case may be), escapism that may be more socially relevant than…