Sci-fi cult classic of 1974 / THU 4-13-23 / Romantic music genre originating in the Dominican Republic / Dutch astronomer with an eponymous cloud / Onetime auto replaced by the Chevrolet Aveo / Trendy and overconfident slangily

Constructor: Robin Yu

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging? Hard then Easyish? Somewhere in there...

THEME: TOO LITTLE TOO LATE (65A: Not enough, and without the urgency, to make a difference ... or a literal hint to 18-, 30-, 38- and 48-Across) — familiar phrases that begin with "TOO," where the word "TOO" is "little" (i.e. crammed into one box) and appears "late" in the answer (i.e. at the end instead of the beginning):

Theme answers:

• CLOSE FOR COMFORT (TOO) (18A: Dangerously near)
• HOT TO HANDLE (TOO) (30A: Like a controversial political issue, maybe)
• COOL FOR SCHOOL (TOO) (38A: Trendy and overconfident, slangily)
• "LEGIT TO QUIT (TOO)" (48A: Triple-platinum 1991 Hammer album)

The "TOO"s:

• ARTOO-DETOO (14D: Film character whose lines were all bleeped out?)
• TOOTIN' (43D: "Yer darn ___!")
• TOOLBOX (53D: Place for a screwdriver)

Word of the Day: "DARK STAR" (7D: Sci-fi cult classic of 1974) —

Dark Star is a 1974 American science fiction comedy film directed and produced by John Carpenter and co-written with Dan O'Bannon. It follows the crew of the deteriorating starship Dark Star, twenty years into their mission to destroy unstable planets that might threaten future colonization of other planets.

Beginning as a University of Southern California student film produced from 1970 to 1972, it was gradually expanded to feature-length until it appeared at Filmex in 1974, and subsequently received a limited theatrical release in 1975. Its final budget is estimated at $60,000. While initially unsuccessful with audiences, it was relatively well received by critics, and continued to be shown in theaters as late as 1980. The home video revolution of the early 1980s helped the movie achieve "cult classic" status; O'Bannon collaborated with home video distributor VCI in the production of releases on VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, and eventually Blu-ray.

Dark Star was Carpenter's feature directorial debut; he also scored the film. It was the feature debut for O'Bannon, who also served as editor, production designer, and visual effects supervisor, and appeared as Sergeant Pinback. (wikipedia)

• • •

I went from howling "how am I supposed to know that!?" at BACHATA to howling, louder, "how is anyone but me supposed to know that!?" at "DARK STAR." LOL, how many of you have seen or even heard of "DARK STAR"? I actually watched it recently, but the only reason I even knew it existed was because it was one of the first movies featured on Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary's podcast "Video Archives," which started just last summer, and which I listen to semi-religiously. I just want you to know that at the same moment I was thrilled to see that movie in the grid, I was thinking of alllll of you who would be going "what ... the ... hell is that???," and I sympathized. Hopefully, the crosses were helpful enough to get you through. As they were for me and BACHATA (27D: Romantic music genre originating in the Dominican Republic), though man was I sweating that last letter (i.e. which for me was the first letter, the "B," which seemed like it could've been annnnnything, until SNOB became undeniable). But I've gotten ahead of myself a little here (this is what happens when you finish up with a one-two punch like BACHATA / "DARK STAR"). Let's back up and take a look at the theme, which is the highlight of every Thursday, the day when themeness is typically at its most complicated and flashy. Actually, let me talk about how I stumbled into the theme, which involved a bizarre path through the grid that had me getting the revealer first. After fumbling around a bit up top I took the TAO wormhole (i.e. followed the cross-reference in the clue 31D: "The way," per 48-Down) down to LAO-TSE, who I knew was going to be the answer at 48-Down (even if I wasn't entirely sure which spelling I was going to be dealing with; sometimes you see -TZU, I think...). Once I got down there in the SW, it was like a different puzzle—the whole corner went in super-easily, which gave me the front end of that last themer, which was actually the revealer. So this was me, very early in the solve:

Sometimes, on Thursdays, it can be extremely helpful to attack the revealer first (assuming the puzzle has one), and today was Definitely one of those days. I have no idea what it must've been like to descend the grid  from top to bottom, trying to make sense of the themers. Maybe it was easy—the answers themselves are pretty straightforward. There's just that little hitch in how you enter them in the grid. I don't know how much not knowing the gimmick would've made those answers hard. But I can tell you that having the revealer in place gave me an 'aha' real quick. I had the front end of "Too Legit to Quit," and knew the album title very well, so I could see the "TOO" was just ... missing. I figured maybe TOO LITTLE ... was telling me that "TOO" was so little it ... disappeared? And that was the lovely little revelation in this one. "TOO" wasn't gone, it was just "little" and "late." I had tried to make sense of the whole MALIK / ALMOND area and was getting nowhere when I realized "oh! TOO goes in that last square after "LEGIT TO QUIT," so it's ... (TOO)LBOX!" (53D: Place for a screwdriver). And then it was off to the races. I could put "TOO" at the end of every themer, then mentally supply it at the beginning of every themer to figure out what the answer was. Cake walk, all the way back to the top of the grid for the little AR(TOO)-DE(TOO) rebus double whammy.

So, by total accident, I ended up getting the revealer first, and that made all the difference. Gave me a nice push, and then Hammer gave a nice big "aha!," and then things sped up, moving toward the big BACHATA / "DARK STAR" finale. Super-strangely, the last square I entered was the square in the far NW corner, i.e. the square that's so often the first to go in (today, the "P" in "PAC-Man"). Because of my accidental path, I loved how this one unfolded, and the core gimmick is exactly the kind of bonkers that I enjoy. You've got a word that's both moving and shrinking, and a revealer phrase that expresses all of it perfectly. Plus, the grid is spicy enough to hold your interest between the thematic bits. I may be the first person ever to call the GEO METRO "spicy," but damn if I don't love the way that stupid bygone car name looks in the grid (3D: Ontetime auto replaced by the Chevrolet Aveo). Overall, a very nice Thursday puzzle.

[For some reason, while the Hammer *song* was stylized as "2 Legit 2 Quit," the album title had "Too" and "To" written out normally (as the puzzle has it)]

Trouble spots included, most notably, COMFITS, which ... honestly, I don't really know what that is (25D: Candied fruits and nuts). I think of COMFIT as a kind of jelly? Sauce? Like "duck COMFIT," is that something? Oh shoot, that's CONFIT. Anyway, yikes and yikes, COMFITS ... don't see that word very often. Needed every cross. MONOXIDES also meant nothing to me (71A: Some compound gases), though that one was somewhat easier to infer (eventually). Had to wait on the second vowel in MALIK because I thought maybe MALYK (there's a "Y" in "Zayn" so why not one in "Malyk"?) (58D: Singer Zayn). The only parts I didn't really like were -PEDE (a terrible standalone suffix) and RETAPE, which isn't the worst answer I've ever seen, but it's not a good answer, and you should not put tricksy "?" clues on your clearly not-good answers, because now I just have to spend more time struggling with your not-good answers, which only serves to highlight their not-goodness (13D: Take over?). Plus "take" just feels too close (!) to "tape" here for the "joke" to be any good. Otherwise, loved this one, thumbs-up, would solve again. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

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