It is no longer unbelievable that someday Sylvester
Stallone will be found on a television show, rolling his eyes and waving his hands
at the weekly tricks of a family of cute, disruptive kids. Janet Maslin said
in her review, “In "Oscar," Mr. Stallone displays an unexpected
gameness, even a flair, for the kind of broadly durable comedy that is the
television sitcom's specialty. It works a lot better than might have been
expected.” Stallone may not be a comedic actor, but he’s definitely a sport.
As Angelo “Snaps” Provolone, a Depression-era gangster
trying to change himself into a respectable businessman, Stallone dresses stylishly
and complains against “the music you kids listen to today – don’t think I haven’t
heard the lyrics to Minnie the Moocher!” He handles the arrivals and departures
of an insane variety of minor characters, all who show up at his door on the same
morning to introduce mistaken identities, identical luggage, and various other unstable
elements into his previously happy home.
The identical bags, which respectively have cash,
jewels, and the maid’s undergarments, are confused over and over again. Maslin
noted, “You don't have to be a student of screwball comedy to guess which one,
in a film as frenzied but fundamentally mild as this one, will be opened every
time somebody boasts about the valuables inside.”
John Landis’s dull but energetic direction recalls his
previous film “Trading Places,” only this time it is Stallone who somehow
trades places with himself. He changes from mobster to gentleman at the request
of his dying father, a cameo by the late Kirk Douglas, who stays alive long
enough to give his boy a hard slap and yell “Atsa so you don’t forget!” He
hires a very strange diction coach, played by Tim Curry (who makes himself
hilariously frightening), so that he can learn to use words like “expeditious”
in everyday conversation. He tries to be civil to his accountant (Vincent
Spano) even when he finds out that the accountant has been taking Snaps’ money
so that he can be rich enough to marry Snaps’ daughter (Marisa Tomei). He even
tries to be civil about Oscar, the very minor character whose romantic behavior
has helped to keep the movie going, and who appears briefly in one scene,
played by Jim Mulholland, who co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Barrie.
Maslin pointed out, “"Oscar" started out as
a French play by Claude Magnier, but it has lost all traces of Gallic farce and
has been sufficiently Americanized to include lines like "All of a sudden
he's the Duke of Ellington!" and exchanges like "I'm tellin' ya a
leopard don't change his stripes!" "You mean spots!" "I
mean Snaps." Even when the jokes aren't far above the knock-knock level
("Angelo please, not in front of the help!" "Trust me, he's no
help!") they are at least fast and furious, as befits the screwball tactic
of never giving the audience time to wonder about the plot.”
Both the casting and the scrip is too uneven. However,
it’s helpfully overfilled, so that a full variety of comic performers runs circles
around Stallone. The standouts include Harry Shearer and Martin Ferrero as two
tailors who are mistaken for hit men because their newspaper photo of a favorite
client shows him shot with holes in a “clam house slaying.” Spano as the enterprising
young accountant, Elizabeth Barondes as a sweet-looking young woman who has lied
her way to the center of the Provolone family, and Chazz Palminteri as the
familiar vague cover who can’t keep up with anything that has been occurring.
Maslin said, “Peter Riegert, as the second-in-command who
spends a lot of his time polishing Snaps's silver service, provides a touch of
class by behaving exactly as if he were William Demarest and this were a
Preston Sturges movie, which it most emphatically is not.” However, not for
lack of trying.
This is a funny movie. If you haven’t seen it, you
should. Especially if you’re a Stallone fan, this is not one to be missed. A
few years ago, I was trying to get together with my cousins to watch the Rocky
and Rambo franchise, my cousin was suggesting other Stallone films, and this is
one of the films they suggested. I saw it online on YouTube and I enjoyed it. Don’t
listen to the critics and others who bashed this film. See it for yourself and
judge it based on your own opinion.
Look out next week when I look at a classic film in “Marisa
Tomei Month.”
No comments:
Post a Comment