Downalator

“Your own true love has set his foot on the first step of the down-alator.” “The what?” “Opposite number of the escalator. The down-alator. It leads to the place where all bad critics go.” […] “I just don't want you on that down-alator, that's all.” “The what?” “Never mind.”

One of my children solved that one 25 years ago when he was little more than a toddler. As we were walking through a department store he told me he wanted to ride the “upalator,” but that the “downalator” was too scary for him. Wouldn’t it be simpler to call them the upalator and the downalator? The only exception might be the escalator in the Centrum, the big department store in Warsaw. If I remember correctly, that machine only went up. It had no “down” counterpart.

He was right: JCVD — which opens this weekend in New York City, and Nov. 14 in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Jose and Washington, D.C. — is the best movie Van Damme ever made (granted, not the highest encomium), and a cogent, probing, funny critique on celebrity in its downalator phase.

To the presidential politics of it: For the first time in months, the president looks like he's on the Uppalator, not the Downalator.

“He’s an enormous star who is on what I call the ‘down-alator’ of his career,” Wilson said. “He’s about to step off the same cliff Eddie Murphy stepped off about 10 years ago. Eddie Murphy has never come back, and Murphy is more talented.”