BEFORE: Sorry if my posts are coming late, I'm working every day until Friday, and some of these shifts are very long, it's thesis presentation time at the college, and that means each department books the theater to either show the students' films or their PowerPoint presentations, whichever. Yesterday was the BFA Film program, and the films were all shown in one block, from 2:30 pm to 8:00 pm, that meant I had to be there at noon to open up and help get the theater ready, and after there was a reception in the lobby, so I couldn't lock up until about 11:15 pm. There's not much time to recover, because I have to be there at 8 am tomorrow, for the thesis presentations from a different department.
Still, I watched a movie last night even though I got home after midnight - one of the great things about New York City is I can work until 11 pm or midnight and still get home on the subway, I'd be too tired to drive home after an 11-hour shift, but I'm never too tired to take the subway. A little Mountain Dew and some snack cakes (Funny Bones, or Yodels, whichever) and I'm likely to make it through a movie, provided it's short and doesn't suck.
James Belushi carries over from "Destiny Turns on the Radio".
THE PLOT: Phoebe and a fellow American in Rome find a dog with a $5,000 reward. They take a train to the owner in Monte Carlo, who ends up murdered. They run and become suspects, along with 3 other Americans from the train.
AFTER: Well, one out of two ain't bad, this movie is very short, only 94 minutes, but man, does it suck. There's just nothing funny about it, despite casting some very funny people, like Richard Lewis and John Candy and it being directed by another very funny person, Eugene Levy. What the hell went wrong here? How do you make a comedy mystery and forget to put both comedy and mystery in it? It's largely about dumb, loud Americans in Europe doing dumb, loud things like gambling in Monte Carlo and trying to return a lost dachshund to its very rich owner, but everything keeps going wrong for everybody, and not even in a funny way.
First problem, we watch these two non-dating loud dumb Americans try to bring this dog back to its home by train, only there's some dumb rule about a dog needing proof of vaccination papers, which I'm guessing the screenwriter just made up, the French (?) train conductors probably don't even care about this, they just needed one more thing to go wrong, in addition to the other things that are going wrong, and hey, you know what, if you string enough things that go wrong together maybe at some point the whole movie just goes wrong, that's what this kind of feels like. So they are kicked off the train and have to take a bus, and in the extra time it takes to get there, somebody murders the dog's owner, and they both run off because they think they'll get blamed for killing this woman. But the simple act of running away makes them LOOK guilty, why can't they understand this? An innocent person would call the police and report the murder, because they knew they didn't do it, so if they wanted to look innocent they should have done the right thing. But already in this paragraph I've shown that I thought about this more than the screenwriter did.
This is all based on an Italian comedy film from 1960 that was meant as a spoof of murder mysteries, or maybe a farce, I'm not exactly sure what the difference is. I think with a spoof you are making fun of a specific film or genre, but in a farce it's just exaggerated circumstances and ridiculous situations without imitating a particular piece of work. I guess maybe this could be both a spoof and a farce, is that right?
The train also has a married couple on it, and they're from New Jersey and going to Monte Carlo to gamble, because Mr. Schwary learned some "foolproof" system for beating roulette, which is also stupid because it's a random game of chance and there can't possibly be a system for beating it, not alternating between red and black, not picking the same number three times in a row, literally nothing works. Mr. Schwary is always arguing with Mrs. Schwary, which makes me hate them both because he's a narcissistic asshole and she stays with him, so she must be a submissive self-hating doormat. I can't like either of these characters as long as they keep acting like that. It this how Europeans see Americans, though? We're big, dumb, loud and hopelessly neurotic - actually they may be on to something here.
They also meet Augie Morosco on the train, he claims to be a reformed gambling addict, and also for some reason he buys the dog that the other two characters are trying to transport by train, only Phoebe really wants to deliver it to it's rightful owner, Madame van Dougan, and Augie won't sell it back. Jeez, who cares? Why can't they just bring the woman some other dachshund and pocket the reward, don't all of those dogs look alike? All they really need is the dog's ID bracelet.
Eventually all of the four tourists get arrested by the Monaco police, two because they were at the scene of the murder and the other two because somehow the dead woman's body ended up in their suitcase, which doesn't work comedically either because the body would be stiff with rigor mortis at some point and then you can't pack it into a suitcase, also the smell of decomp would be horrible, I think everyone in the train station would know if somebody tried to bring a suitcase with a dead person with them on the train. So nothing is funny AND nothing really makes sense here, that's a terrible combination.
It's a bit weird that Giancarlo Giannini plays a European police captain here, and he also played one the last time I saw him, in "Book Club: The Next Chapter". Is it me or does he always play police captains or secret agent bureau chiefs?
There's a lot of talent here, so why does it feel like somebody didn't know what to do with it? The situations of traveling on the train with a corpse, gambling to the point of losing control, even Morosco trying to use his wife as an alibi when he (and we) knows that his wife was with another man the night in question, there's just nothing FUNNY about any of this. And now that Richard Lewis has passed away, in addition to John Candy being dead, a lot of this is just sad now, but at least that's something, it was never going to be funny. (John Candy died two years after this film was released, and Richard Lewis passed away earlier THIS year.)
Dare I even ask how a dog that belongs to someone in Monte Carlo gets found in Rome? Was it dog-napped and brought there, or did it walk to Rome from Monaco? With such little legs, that would take longer than the lifespan of the dog...
Two terrible films in a row has a definite impact on me - I do like some of these actors, but this is such a waste of their talents. I need to watch something more positive, very quickly.
Also starring John Candy (last seen in "The Amazing Johnathan Documentary"), Cybill Shepherd (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Sean Young (last seen in "A Kiss Before Dying"), Richard Lewis (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Ornella Muti (last seen in 'To Rome with Love"), Giancarlo Giannini (last seen in "Book Club: The Next Chapter"), George Hamilton (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Roberto Sbaratto, Joss Ackland (last seen in "K-19: The Widowmaker"), Ann Way (last seen in "The Dresser" (1983)), Geoffrey Andrews, Caterina Boratto, Elsa Martinelli (last seen in 'The V.I.P.s"), Georges Carlo, Benedetto Fenna, Eugene Levy (last seen in "The Ladies Man").
RATING: 3 out of 10 fake passports
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