America

My review was written in October 1986 after a Greenwich Village screening.

"America" is an unfunny social satire from filmmaker Robert Downey. It's a hard-to-watch misfire representing a severe decline from the creator of "Putney Swope" and "Greaser's Palace" some 15 years ago.

Though produced in 1982 and on the shelf till now, picture seems a decade or more older than that, in its counterculture sensibility, washed-out color and grainy photography.

Zack Norman toplines as a reporter for the 9 o'clock news for New York cable channel 92, an amateur operation which features a black anchorman (Howard Thomashefsky) who shouts as if his microphone wasn't close enough.

Episodic mishmash has Norman deciding to wear a plaid skirt (a la wrestling's Rowdy Roddy Piper) while interviewing people on the street and on the air, because his wife (Tammy Grimes) found the incriminating apparel in his suitcase. Inexplicably, Norman becomes a big hit in this new guise; later the station becomes a huge success after Grimes and the weatherman (Michael J. Pollard) fiddle with the equipment and accidentally beam its signal off the moon, broadcasting briefly all over the world (film's original shooting title was "Moonbeam").

Various running gags and subplots include a tiresome routine about a big lottery winner (Monroe Arnold) who decides to have a homosexual marriage with a millionaire investment adviser (Michael Bahr) and then buys Channel 92.

Closest the film gets to actual laughs is a ridiculous homage to Martin Scorsese in the final reel: standup comic Richard Belzer portrays a looney taxi driver who accosts Norman and literally dreive his cab onto the set in order to do his comedy routine on the cable news show. He becomes a hit and a regular on the news, which is literally turned into a circus.

Acting is quite loose, with Norman, once funny in the semi-improvisational atmosphere of Henry Jaglom's "Sitting Ducks", merely grim in the lead role. Name talent such as Grimes and Pollard gives embarrassing performances, especially with poor lighting and makeup proving quite unflattering. Most technical credits are a shambles.

This film is pretty good, in fact it has a lot of the characteristics that are in all of Downey's best work: the weird dialogue, the almost rhythmic way in which certain characters repeat phrases throughout the film, not so much a real plot as an assemblage of vignettes involving eccentric characters, and just the way a joke's punch line can leave one as much bewildered as amused, like coming in after the joke has already started...you don't get what the punch line refers to but it sounds funny in an absurd way. My favorite character was the main anchor man, played by Earl Thomashefsky, with the over the top hair piece, who still lives with his mother, always needs $10 for reasons never divulged, and yells as he reads the news. Michael J. Pollard as a womanizer is a hoot as well. Plus, Zack Norman really does pull off wearing a skirt and still looking manly and ready for "Action News". What drags this film down is the music which is straight up trite, especially the theme song. The score almost ruins certain scenes, silence would have been preferable. Plus Richard Belzer's comedy routine after he drives through the studio's brick wall during the news cast is not very funny, and it takes up way too much time, killing the rhythm mentioned earlier. Nevertheless, the film is not nearly as bad as many reviews would have you think. Downey's worst effort is still more enjoyable than a lot of other people's best films and it may not be PUTNEY SWOPE or even MOMENT TO MOMENT but AMERICA is very much worth checking out.

Rarely, does a film combine so many poor actors, such a lame story, stilted script writing and unappealing characters.

The good thing about this movie is the 2 minute cameo appearance by Corinne Wahl describing how much she enjoys riding on motorcycles. Very sexy scene. This segment appears about 5 minutes into the movie. After that, eject the tape from your VCR and throw it into the fire.

As the third to comment on this movie, I'm am wavering between the two extremes of good and bad. This is a comedy that has an offbeat rhythm like 'Choose Me', but attempts to be outrageous without point like a spoof comedy (but more like 'Kentucky Fried Movie' than say, 'The Naked Gun'). So, you really have to be ready for such an odd, and almost illogical narrative and a seriously strange mix of characters who seem to exist in detachment from one another. But, this kind of humor seems to become so overdone to a point that it becomes, for me, not only ridiculous, but to the point that it just ends of being a terrible movie.

This is the story of Channel 92's rise to fame, thanks primarily to a scheme hatched by investing parents which leads to a misunderstanding between a wife and husband, which in turn leads to a turnaround in the news department and a failure of all other networks. The situation is far to weird and too varied to explain, really except that a wife, finding a woman's skirt in his briefcase, assumes that he is a repressed homosexual, and says he must prove his innocence by trying on the skirt. This somehow gives confidence to the new 'Action News' reporter and all of a sudden, every weirdo in New York has some problem for the guy to solve. And that's only half of it.

A very strange comedy indeed, but for those who like obscure, and outrageous, almost nonsensical humor, might give it a try.