BEFORE: Helped out at a screening at a midtown ad agency today, we had lunch brought in from a local BBQ place we've used before, they're famous for their sweet potatoes, which were absolutely delicious. And what's the secret ingredient? Bananas!
Hmm, what aspects of Woody Allen's personal life do I feel comfortable talking about? He was born in 1935 in Brooklyn as Allan Konigsberg, as a boy he enjoyed magic tricks and playing clarinet, and he broke into show biz at age 15 by writing jokes. Was suspended from NYU, speaks French, and is a vegetarian. Was married to Louise Lasser, his co-star last night and tonight, but they had already divorced by the time "Bananas" was released. We'll stop there for now.
THE PLOT: When a bumbling New Yorker is dumped by his activist girlfriend, he travels to a tiny Latin American nation and becomes involved in its latest rebellion.
AFTER: Once again Allen plays a bumbling idiot (Fielding Mellish) who sort of fails upward - and again it's tied to romance. A failed relationship with a leftist woman inspires him to take the trip they had planned, to a small country where he ends up joining a band of revolutionaries.
There were parts of this film that felt very slapsticky - silly music often plays to remind us this is a comedy, and there are numerous sight gags, like Woody pulling a pin from a grenade and then throwing the pin. That gave this an almost cartoony feel at times. A famous quote from Woody Allen stated that he only knew of 6 true comic geniuses in film history: Chaplin, Keaton, Groucho & Harpo Marx, Peter Sellers, and W.C. Fields.
More situational humor tonight - by placing an American everyman in charge of a South American country, this is sort of a nod to Abbott & Costello ending up in the French Foreign Legion, or the Marx Brothers running the fictional country of Fredonia. And this probably inspired later films like that recent one with Sacha Baron Cohen that no channel seems to want to air. "The Dictator"? Was that the title?
When Fielding returns to the U.S., he's meant to resemble Fidel Castro, but with an incredibly fake beard - and yet nobody notices it or points it out. This seems like another nod to things like Groucho Marx's greasepaint moustache. What was up with that, anyway?
This seemed very similar in structure to "Take the Money and Run", only the documentary format was replaced with spoofs of "Wide World of Sports" that brackets the film - with first a government coup and then a couple's honeymoon being treated like sporting events. Which are sort of original ideas, but also feel like they were used in place of actual narrative beginning and ending.
Also starring Louise Lasser, Carlos Montalban, with cameos from Howard Cosell, Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "The Expendables"), Conrad Bain, Charlotte Rae.
RATING: 5 out of 10 tuna sandwiches (on whole wheat)
No comments:
Post a Comment