1980 Week: Fatso

          Throughout the ’80s, Mel Brooks enjoyed a thriving side career as the head of Brooksfilms, which produced The Elephant Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982), and The Fly (1986). Not every Brooksfilms release clicked, but it was a good run. Among the lesser Brooksfilms offerings was this well-meaning dramedy, the sole feature film written and directed by Brooks’ second wife, actress Anne Bancroft. (The two were married from 1964 to her death in 2005.) Starring occasional Brooks collaborator Dom DeLuise, the picture concerns exactly what the title suggests: a man struggling with his weight. The comedy aspect stems from scenes of indulgence, with the title character and his overweight friends gorging themselves in ridiculous ways, and the dramatic aspect stems from the title character’s efforts to surmount the self-loathing that stifles his ability to make better choices. In its best moments, the picture shares some qualities with the classic character study Marty (1955), another tale of a pudgy New Yorker struggling to believe that he deserves romantic affection. What’s more, Fatso is utterly sincere, regarding its troubled protagonist with empathy instead of judgment, and DeLuise plays the role for pathos rather than cheap laughs.

          The bad news is that Bancroft lacks nuance and skill, no surprise given that she’d only directed one short film prior to this project. For instance, it’s overly convenient that Dominick (DeLuise) happens upon the lovely Lydia (Candice Azzara), who overlooks his girth—and the health risks accompanying obesity—because her late father was also heavy. Bancroft’s storytelling comes dangerously close to “I’m okay, you’re okay” platitudes, as if accepting oneself is a reasonable compromise for sustaining unhealthy behavior patterns. It doesn’t help that Fatso largely comprises scenes of people screaming at each other. Bancroft appears as Dominick’s overbearing sister, and her scenes with DeLuise are highly abrasive. So, too, are vignettes with Dominick’s support group, the “Chubby Checkers,” whom Bancroft portrays as repressed maniacs forever on the verge of gluttonous meltdowns. (Though the movie doesn’t judge Dominick, it seems to blithely malign fat people in general.) As a narrative, the picture sorta-kinda works, and DeLuise plays sad scenes effectively. But as a piece of filmmaking, this is highly amateurish stuff.

Fatso: FUNKY

1980 Week: Smokey and the Bandit II

          Discussing the frothy action/comedy hit The Cannonball Run (1981), a snide critic once said that the picture seemed like an incidental byproduct of an enjoyable party, as if playing characters and telling a story was a secondary consideration for those involved. To a certain degree, the same observation could be made of all the lowbrow movies that stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham made with his buddy, leading man Burt Reynolds. The duo’s first effort, Smokey and the Bandit (1977), is a goofy romp made somewhat tolerable by lighthearted performances and spectacular car jumps. Their second and best movie together, Hooper (1978), comes dangerously close to having a heart, since it’s a loving homage to stuntman. But then comes the slippery slope comprising Smokey and the Bandit II, The Cannonball Run (1981), Stroker Ace (1983), and Cannonball Run II (1984). Each is dumber and lazier than the preceding. The problem, of course, is that Needham never really left his identity as a stuntman behind, so he offers little except the ability to stage automotive disasters and fistfights. Smokey and the Bandit II, for example, so enervated that the plot is virtually the same as the original picture’s narrative.

          While trucker Cledus “Snowman” Snow (Jerry Reed) and his escort driver, Bo “Bandit” Darville (Reynolds), haul illegal cargo through the Deep South, redneck Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) follows them “in hot pursuit.” Meanwhile, Carrie (Sally Field) once again leaves Justice’s idiot son at the altar in order to join her once-and-future lover, Bandit, on the road. The “twists” this time are as follows: the cargo is an elephant, a wacky Italian doctor (Dom DeLuise) tags along to care for the elephant, and Justice enlists his two brothers (both played by Gleason) for aid in the final showdown. Smokey and the Bandit II comprises 100 mindless minutes of car crashes, country-music performances, drinking scenes, redneck clichés, slapstick, and (thanks to Gleason) unbearable overacting. It’s hard to know whether Field and Reynolds returned for the party or the paycheck, or simply out of loyalty to Needham, but even describing their participation as half-hearted would require exaggerating. The elephant probably gives the picture’s best performance. Incredibly, Smokey and the Bandit II made enough money to warrant a third installment, the execrable Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983), which was produced without Needham’s participation, and in which Reynolds makes only a brief cameo appearance. A decade later, Needham somewhat pathetically resurrected the franchise with a quartet of TV movies (all originally aired in 1994) featuring Brian Bloom as “Bandit.”

Smokey and the Bandit II: LAME

Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971)

          Dismissed by critics during its original release and not subsequently elevated to any special status, the lugubriously titled Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? is nonetheless an interesting piece of work bursting with offbeat characterizations and unique dialogue. This is a rare example of a movie that has considerable virtues even though it doesn’t “work” in any conventional sense. It helps a lot, of course, that Harry Kellerman reflects a peculiar historical moment by portraying the anguish of a celebrity who seeks a reason to live after finding the goals he pursued all his life (fame, money, respect, women) to be insufficient. While it’s true that the early ’70s were lousy with “I gotta be me” character studies, the best of these movies turn a mirror on a period when the line separating egotism and introspection blurred.

          Written by Herb Gardner, best known for his plays I’m Not Rappaport and A Thousand Clowns, the picture depicts the last day in the life of Georgie Soloway (Dustin Hoffman), a pop songwriter living in a palatial New York penthouse. Delusional after several days without sleep, Georgie fantasizes about killing himself and experiences surreal visions that mix imagination and reality. At various times, he interacts with his aging father, Leonard (David Galef); his long-suffering accountant, Irwin (Dom DeLuise); his confrontational psychotherapist, Dr. Moses (Jack Warden); and troubled actress Allison Densmore (Barbara Harris), whom Georgie meets while she auditions for a show Georgie has cowritten. Adding to the otherworldly quality of Georgie’s experiences is the fact that he owns a small plane and spends many hours cruising the skies above New York City—in one of Gardner’s effective but unsubtle literary flourishes, Georgie literally has his head in the clouds.

          Many of the stylistic affectations in Harry Kellerman were commonplace at the time of the film’s release, including jump cuts that instantly shift Georgie from one location to another, and the way Dr. Moses magically appears in various situations wearing costumes suiting the situations (e.g., a ski instructor’s uniform, etc.). Furthermore, like so many “I gotta be me” stories, Harry Kellerman faces an uphill battle generating sympathy for a lead character who has everything but wants more. What makes the piece consistently interesting, however—besides the brisk pace and the way director Ulu Grosbard’s dark visual style unifies disparate scenes—is the humanity of the acting and the writing.

          Hoffman, who had a reputation at the time for being phenomenally self-involved, inhabits the character comfortably, and the boyish charm he brought to The Graduate (1967) shines through especially well during scenes when Georgie sings silly ditties. (The movie’s tunes were penned by poet/songwriter Shel Silverstein.) As for Harris, she’s heartbreaking, giving arguably the best performance of her career as a neurotic with a poetic streak. In fact, Harris netted an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, the sole major honor bestowed on the film.

          Fitting a movie written by a playwright, Harry Kellerman truly shines in long dialogue passages, even though Gardner and Grosbard contrive several intricate scenes that rely upon surprising visual juxtapositions. Beyond the occasional zippy one-liner (“Her head belongs in a Cracker Jack box, and her ass in the Louvre”), Gardner fills the script with melancholy pensées. “I’m auditioning every day,” Harris’ character says sadly. “I wake up every morning, and the world says, ‘Thank you, Miss Densmore, that’ll be all for now.’” Gardner also does a fine job of illustrating the distance that exists in most relationships, making the way his leading characters strive for connection seem like a heroic act, albeit—thanks to the movie’s fatalistic worldview—a doomed one.

Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?: GROOVY

The Twelve Chairs (1970)

          Having secured his small-screen reputation by co-creating two beloved franchises (Get Smart and The 2000-Year-Old Man), comedy auteur Mel Brooks made a bold move into features by writing and directing The Producers (1968). Despite a fractious production process and a disappointing run at the box office, the picture netted Brooks an Academy Award, for Best Original Screenplay. Yet instead of following up The Producers with another original work, which would have seemed like the logical move, Brooks made The Twelve Chairs, a new adaptation of an oft-filed Russian novel that was originally published in 1926. The movie engendered some goodwill, but it didn’t play to Brooks’ strengths of frenetic pacing and goofy slapstick. Quite to the contrary, The Twelve Chairs is melancholy, and much of the picture is devoted to dramatic storytelling as opposed to comedy. Mel Brooks is many things, but a tragedian is not one of them. Furthermore, because the picture is generally played “straight,” the occasional lowbrow moments—think actors mugging for the camera and/or wild physical-comedy scenes—feel out of place. Partially as a result of this tonal dissonance, The Twelve Chairs is the dullest of Brooks’ features, even though it’s also the most thematically ambitious.

          The story is very simple. In the Soviet Union a decade after the communist revolution, former aristocrat Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody) learns that his mother hid the family’s jewelry stash inside one chair that’s part of a set of twelve. Dazzled by notions of reclaiming his lost wealth, the greedy Vorobyaninov begins to search for the chairs. He’s aided in his quest by a dashing con man, Bender (Frank Langella), but these two must compete with a corrupt priest, Father Fyodor (Dom DeLuise), who hears about the jewels and tries to beat Vorobyaninov to them. Also thrown into the mix is Vorobyaninov’s former manservant, amiable idiot Tikon (Brooks). Virtually every character in The Twelve Chairs is repulsive, and, unfortunately, the leads are the least appealing in the batch: Vorobyaninov is a hot-tempered elitist willing to steamroller over anyone in his way, and Bender is a silver-tongued swindler.
          Moody’s angry, charmless performance doesn’t help matters, and neither does Langella’s overly theatrical suaveness. (This was one of the stage-trained actor’s first films.) As for supporting players Brooks and DeLuise, who perform in the broad manner one normally associates with Brooks’ work, they’re funny, after a fashion, but they’re out of sync with the rest of the picture. Similarly, Brooks’ periodic attempts to juice the movie’s comedy by resorting to the old-time camera gimmick of sped-up action seem desperate. So while it’s true that The Twelve Chairs is the closest thing in Brooks’ directorial filmography to a serious story, there’s a reason he found success with outrageous comedy—he’s a master of screen comedy, and merely a dilettante in the realm of thoughtful cinema. Therefore, if curiosity about Brooks’ oeuvre compels you to check out The Twelve Chairs, follow the advice of the song Brooks wrote for the film: “Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst.”

The Twelve Chairs: FUNKY

Norwood (1970)

          After achieving success on the pop charts, velvet-voiced Arkansas native Glen Campbell displayed a comfortable onscreen presence in the John Wayne movie True Grit (1969), so it was inevitable that some enterprising producer would test Campbell’s viability as a leading man. (Hey, it worked for Elvis, so why not?) In Norwood, Campbell plays upbeat war veteran Norwood Pratt, a good ol’ boy from Texas who bums around the country with his acoustic guitar, crooning innocuous tunes and spewing redneck patois (“Think I’ll mosey on over to the roller rink, see if I can’t pick up a little heifer lookin’ for a ride home”).

          Upon returning from Vietnam to his tiny hometown of Ralph, Texas, Norwood works in a garage and endures sitcom-style quarrels with his sister (Leigh French) and her idiot husband (Dom DeLuise). Eager for escape, Norwood agrees to help a slick used-car salesman (Pat Hingle) transport cars to New York City. He also agrees to transport a sexy would-be performer (Carol Lynley), leading to arguments in which she calls him “peckerwood” and he calls her a “damn squirrel-headed dingbat.” Yeah, it’s like that.

          Eventually, Norwood discovers the cars he’s moving are stolen, so he dumps the vehicles and heads to New York anyway, where he gets laid with a spunky hippie (Tisha Sterling). Sated, he hops on a bus for the long trip back home. Along the way, he forms a bizarre surrogate family with Rita (Kim Darby), a redneck runaway bride; Edmund (Billy Curtis), a little person raised in the carny world; and a chicken. Yes, a chicken.

          To call Norwood inconsequential would be to overstate its value, but some scenes are so random they command attention, like the bit of costar Joe Namath tossing around a football with the dwarf in the backyard of a Southern estate. (Despite his prominence on the poster, former gridiron star Namath has a tiny role.) As for Campbell, he strikes a clean-cut figure with his helmet of shiny hair and his lantern-jawed good looks, but he’s more of a personality than an actor, so assessing his performance is pointless.

          Incredibly, this slight movie was adapted from a novel by True Grit author Charles Portis, though the vapid storyline of Norwood exists a universe apart from the unforgettable narrative of True Grit. Norwood is also notable, if that’s the right word, as one of the gentlest Vietnam-vet stories ever, since the easygoing Norwood seems as if he just came back from a country club instead of surviving a tour in Southeast Asia.

Norwood: FUNKY

The Cheap Detective (1978)

          Yet another of the myriad film-noir spoofs that proliferated during the ’70s, The Cheap Detective is surprisingly underwhelming given its all-star cast and brand-name writer. Neil Simon, opting for broad farce instead of his usual domestic dramedy, weaves together storylines and stylistic tropes from assorted ’40s detective movies, mostly those starring Humphrey Bogart. Peter Falk stars as Lou Peckinpaugh, a San Francisco private eye who gets embroiled in a plot that’s a little bit Casablanca, a little bit Maltese Falcon, and a little bit of everything else. His partner gets killed, villains search for a cache of super-sized diamonds, and Lou juggles romantic intrigue with several dizzy dames. The movie’s gags are so silly that characters have names like Betty DeBoop, Jasper Blubber, and Jezebel Dezire.

          Based on this movie and Neil Simon’s other noir spoof from the same era starring Peter Falk, 1976’s Murder by Death, one gets the impression that Simon was trying to outdo Mel Brooks at the anything-goes approach to lampooning movie genres, but Simon simply couldn’t match the inspired lunacy that made Brooks’ spoofs so delirious. By trying to keep dialogue crisp and plotting rational, Simon’s attempt at this style falls somewhere between the extremes of proper storytelling and wild abandon. Thus, The Cheap Detective is fluffy without being truly irreverent and goofy without being truly insane—it’s like a second-rate Carol Burnett Show sketch, needlessly extended to feature length. What’s more, the movie is hurt by flat direction, as TV-trained helmer Robert Moore lacks the ability to generate exciting visuals.

          Yet another problem is the all-over-the-map acting. The most enjoyable performances, by Falk and supporting players Eileen Brennan, Stockard Channing, Madeline Kahn, and Fernando Lamas, wink at the audience without tipping into Borscht Belt excess. The most tiresome turns, by players including Ann-Margret, James Coco, Dom DeLuise, and Marsha Mason, fall into exactly that trap. (Though it must be said that Sid Caesar kills during one of the movie’s dumbest scenes, thanks to his legendary comic timing.) Some actors, however, seem completely adrift: Louise Fletcher, John Houseman, and Nicol Williamson strive to find consistent tonalities for their work, apparently receiving little guidance from Moore or the slapdash script. With this much talent involved, The Cheap Detective has a few bright spots, but the total package is quite blah.

The Cheap Detective: FUNKY

The End (1978)

          As written by TV veteran Jerry Belson and directed by Burt Reynolds, who also stars in the picture, The End is a nervy endeavor digging for jokes in the unlikely milieus of insanity, suicide, and terminal disease. The End is also among Reynolds’ most worthwhile ’70s movies, because instead of the car chases and redneck raunchiness that dominated much of his output during the era, The End features character-driven black comedy. At the beginning of the movie, Sonny Lawson (Reynolds) enjoys middle-class success and endures middle-class tribulations: His infidelities scuttled his marriage to Jessica (Joanne Woodward); he’s struggling to maintain a bond with his adolescent daughter, Julie (Kristy McNichol); and he’s confused about his relationship with a free-spirited young woman, Mary Ellen (Sally Field). So, when Sonny gets diagnosed with a terminal disease, he decides to kill himself rather than suffer a lingering demise.

          Belson’s droll script examines the various ways different people respond to Sonny’s decision; the script also features gentle moments with characters Sonny doesn’t bring into his confidence, like his amiably bickering parents (played by Myrna Loy and Pat O’Brien). Then, after Sonny botches his first suicide attempt, he gets thrown into an asylum and befriends a homicidal wacko, Marlon (Dom DeLuise), who becomes obsessed with helping Sonny shuffle off this mortal coil. Making a big creative jump forward from his directorial debut, the Southern-fried action flick Gator (1976), Reynolds shows a flair for light comedy, building elegant pacing and helping actors find easy rapport.

          He also does some of his very best comedic acting, pouring on the self-deprecating charm as a stud-turned-wimp who weeps when he gets his diagnosis and cringes at the idea of pain. His enjoyable turn is complemented by several deft supporting performances: comedy pros Norman Fell, Carl Reiner, and David Steinberg are sharp in small roles; Robby Benson has an entertaining cameo as an inexperienced priest; Field (Reynolds’ offscreen paramour at the time) does her patented cute-and-sexy routine; Loy and O’Brien are a hoot; and Woodward effectively softens her usual suburban-harridan persona. DeLuise is hilarious in his first few scenes, but then overcompensates once his character slips into repetitive behavior. Plus, the movie itself loses energy as it nears the climax. However, Reynolds’ last big scene, an anguished negotiation with God played mostly as a voice-over monologue, concludes the movie in high style.

The End: GROOVY

Sextette (1978)

          If there’s one scene that epitomizes the spellbinding strangeness of Sextette, a big-budget musical comedy that’s both tone-deaf and completely unfunny, it’s an extended romantic duet between the heroine and the younger man she just married. The leading lady is none other than Mae West, the notorious actress/writer who first achieved fame in the 1920s for scandalous stage shows. The bridegroom is played by Englishman Timothy Dalton, a decade before his brief run as 007. At the time, West was 84 and Dalton was 32, yet the scene features the actors sharing vocal chores (and they are chores, since neither can sing) on a lifeless, quasi-disco version of the Captain and Tennille hit “Love Will Keep Us Together.”

          Dalton’s a slim young man wearing an elegant tux, and West is an overweight senior hidden behind gallons of makeup, acres of Edith Head-designed sequined costuming, and a haze filter thick enough to trigger a smog alert. At the most ludicrous moment of this sequence, Dalton sings the laughably re-written lyric, “Young and beautiful, your looks will never be gone.” The camera then cuts to a close-up (shot from about 20 feet away) of West writhing seductively, her looks very much gone.

          And that’s pretty much the tone of this whole excruciating picture, which features an old-fashioned lark of a plot about legions of men lusting after West’s character, Marlo Manners. Marlo is a Hollywood movie star who just married her sixth husband, Great Britain’s Lord Barrington (Dalton). Their honeymoon is being celebrated by the public and documented by the media as a major event, but before the duo can (shudder) consummate their union, Marlo’s agent (Dom DeLuise) says the U.S. government wants Marlo to seduce a foreign leader (Tony Curtis) into cooperating with an international peace initiative. Meanwhile, Marlo’s fifth husband, gangster Vance Norton (George Hamilton), has resurfaced despite everyone believing him dead, and he’s intent on reclaiming Marlo’s hand.

          Also thrown into the mix are a fey fashion designer (played by The Who drummer Keith Moon), an imperious Russian film director (played by Beatles drummer Ringo Starr), real-life broadcasters Rona Barrett and Regis Philbin (as themselves), and cameo players Walter Pidgeon and George Raft. Oh, and shock-rocker Alice Cooper shows up at the end, without his trademark ghoul make-up, to (quite effectively) croon a number as a singing waiter.

          This whole mess is based upon the last play West wrote, also called Sextette, and because the play opened in 1961, questions of “why” are unavoidable. Why was a film adaptation deemed necessary almost 20 years after the play opened? Why was a West comeback deemed necessary, more than 30 years after her last starring role in a movie? And why the hell didn’t anyone realize how wrong all of this was? Answers to these puzzlers are lost to the ages, so we’re merely left with a cinematic curio. Sextette is filled with images that would be innocuous in other circumstances but are mind-warpingly bizarre given West’s advanced age: a roomful of bodybuilders flexing their muscles to curry West’s favor; a roomful of diplomats (including a stand-in for then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter) singing and dancing as West holds them in her thrall; West cooing sexual puns as she lounges in bed and drives men like Curtis, Dalton, and Hamilton to erotic distraction.

          West’s performance is abysmal, since she tries to mimic the sass of bygone days without acknowledging the passage of time; the poor woman looks close to toppling when she tries to shimmy in tight dresses. About the only good thing one can say about Sextette is that even though much of the dialogue recycles past favorites (“Why don’t you come up and see me sometime,” and so on), West had not completely lost her flair for penning ribald one-liners, like this zinger: “I’m the girl who works for Paramount all day, and Fox all night.”

Sextette: FREAKY

Hot Stuff (1979)

          Rotund comedian Dom DeLuise could be hilarious in the right situations, whether he was cutting up with buddy Burt Reynolds on The Tonight Show or mugging in outrageous Mel Brooks movies. In the wrong situations, however, he was prone to cartoonish behavior like double-takes and pratfalls. In that context, it’s interesting to watch Hot Stuff, the only theatrical feature DeLuise directed, because, in theory, his performance in the picture offers a pure demonstration of his idea of comedy; no one guided DeLuise except DeLuise himself. Therefore, it’s a bummer to report that he delivers pretty much the same broad clowning here that he did elsewhere. It turns out DeLuise was simply one of those amiable performers best appreciated in small doses.

          As for the movie itself Hot Stuff is very silly and not nearly as funny as it might have been. The script, co-written by veteran crime scribe Donald E. Westlake, has a fun idea: Four Miami cops set up a fencing operation to trap thieves. DeLuise plays Ernie, a nervous detective just shy of retirement, and country singer-turned-actor Jerry Reed plays Doug, his good-ol’-boy partner. Suzanne Pleshette plays Louise, a cop from another precinct who joins forces with the boys (and becomes Doug’s love interest). Together with a fourth cop (Luis Avalos), they rig a borrowed storefront with video equipment and lure unsuspecting criminals by paying top dollar for stolen loot. (The great Ossie Davis is wasted in a trite supporting role as their long-suffering commander.)

          Yet, instead of the fraught predicaments one might expect from a story about police officers working undercover, Hot Stuff feels like a variety show, with the cops holding court in the storefront while a string of low-rent comedians enter and exit the scene, giving mini-performances as oddball crooks. At one point, towering funnyman Pat McCormick literally walks into the storefront and drops a string of lame one-liners, stopping just short of telling the police to tip their waitresses and try the veal. The episodic nature of the picture is ameliorated somewhat by a couple of chase scene/shootouts and by a subplot about the Mafia mistaking the cops for competitors.

          A few of the bits are clever, like the finale in which the cops stage a spectacular mass arrest (which rings true with stories from the annals of real-life sting operations). However, the movie spends way too much time on Gong Show­-grade comedians, to say nothing of inanity like a pie fight. Hot Stuff is watchable, but it’s not for discerning viewers. (Available through Columbia Screen Classics via WarnerArchive.com)

Hot Stuff: FUNKY

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975) & The World’s Greatest Lover (1977)

          The comedy world suffered a blow when Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder stopped collaborating in the mid-’70s, because Brooks never found a better leading man, and Wilder never found a better director. A good example of how badly these men needed each other is The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother. A farcical mystery written and directed by Wilder, the movie features several members of Brooks’ stock company (Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Wilder), and it looks great (thanks to cinematographer Gerry Fisher). Better still, the basic idea of famed sleuth Holmes using an idiot sibling as a decoy is clever and fun. (The movie’s title is meant ironically.) Unfortunately, the gags run the gamut from insultingly stupid to numbingly stupid: Feldman and Wilder dancing at a formal ball with their rear ends exposed; Feldman, Kahn, and Wilder doing a cringe-inducing dance number called “The Kangaroo Hop” (twice); Wilder and British comedy stalwart Roy Kinnear fighting with an oversized glove and an oversized shoe for weapons. It’s all so painful that when cameo player Albert Finney shows up to ask a rhetorical question—“Is this rotten, or wonderfully brave?”—the answer is clear. Only the consummate skill of the players makes Smarter Brother borderline tolerable.
          Wilder went the auteur route again for The World’s Greatest Lover, which is shockingly awful. A period piece about a talent search for a silent-movie heartthrob in the mode of Rudolph Valentino, Lover is filled with moronic slapstick (like an endless gag involving an overflowing bathtub), and Wilder’s performance is atrocious. He spends nearly every scene screaming and bulging his eyes, so he looks like he’s receiving electroshock therapy instead of acting. Playing his wife, Carol Kane tries to ground a few scenes with her offbeat sweetness, but she was obviously instructed to match Wilder’s manic energy to the best of her ability, so she ends up mugging and screaming as well. Supporting Wilder once again, DeLuise goes way over the top in his costarring turn as a psychotic studio executive, and his preposterous hairstyle is just about the only amusing thing in this unbearable movie. Great poster, though!

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother: LAME

The World’s Greatest Lover: SQUARE

Silent Movie (1976)

          After discovering his gift for spoofing movie genres with Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, both of which were released in 1974, Mel Brooks lost his way with Silent Movie. By many reports, Brooks’ considerable ego was to blame for the precipitous drop in the quality of his pictures, because he burned an important bridge by alienating actor-writer Gene Wilder, who starred in both 1974 hits, after taking too much credit for Young Frankenstein. So even though Brooks enjoyed long relationships with talented collaborators, including actors like Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman, as well as behind-the-scenes talents like composer John Morris, it was clear that on a Mel Brooks picture, only the name above the title really mattered. Therefore, in Silent Movie, it’s all about Mel, and not in a good way. Brooks cast himself in the leading role, and his legendary comic gifts aren’t enough to compensate for his shortcomings as an actor. He plays for the cheap seats with every reaction shot, bludgeons the delivery of jokes with bug-eyed obviousness, and can’t muster the varied nuances that Wilder brought to his performances in Brooks films.

          It doesn’t help, of course, that Silent Movie adheres to the gimmick implied by its title: Like an old one-reeler from the Mack Sennett era, the picture uses title cards in place of dialogue, which gives it a stop-and-start rhythm that soon grows wearying. The storyline is amusing-ish, with a film director (Brooks) trying to produce a brand-new silent movie in the modern era, and Silent Movie features cameos by big names who relish making idiots of themselves: Anne Bancroft, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Paul Newman, Burt Reynolds. (In a clever touch, French mine Marcel Marceau delivers the movie’s only line of spoken dialogue.) Brooks has fun executing exuberant physical comedy in the silent-era style with the assistance of core players DeLuise, Feldman, Sid Caesar, Ron Carey, Harold Gould, and Bernadette Peters, but the film’s slapstick is so endlessly insipid that the fervent efforts of the cast are mostly wasted. It’s hard to actively dislike Silent Movie since it’s trying so hard to be entertaining, but it’s hard to get excited about it, either.

Silent Movie: LAME