Man Trouble

MAN TROUBLE has some sort of bad pedigree. It's among Jack Nicholson's lowest rated movies and according to the IMDB trivia it went in theaters and left them after only three days which is quite surprising since Nicholson at the time was an A-list actor. So I had extremely low expectations for it but when I saw it last October I found myself kinda enjoying it for what it was. Not that I loved it but still I didn't hated like most of the other users here.

Classical singer Joan Spruance (Ellen Barkin) is divorced from the conductor and one day she finds her apartment ransacked and receives threatening phone calls by a maniac. The next day she calls guard dog trainer Harry Bliss (Nicholson) that gives her a German Shepherd and after a while Harry and Joan start to feel attracted to each other only to have Redmond Layls' (Harry Dean Stanton) lawyer offer Harry some money for retrieving a manuscript where Andy Ellerman wrote a biography of the boss. Later that night Joan is assaulted by the masked maniac tho she manages to escape. After some misunderstandings between Harry and Joan she'll be saved by Harry after Eddie Revere (who was the masked maniac all the time) wanted to dump her from a hill.

I agree with the other reviewers that in some points it was dumb but still there was a lot to like. The acting by all (Nicholson, Barkin, Stanton, Saul Rubinek and Raymond Cruz) was good and I loved the first minutes where the dog was introduced. Some of the situations made me also chuckle in some points so, based on this a movie can't be that bad.

Overall, one of the lesser movies of the stars probably because it was easy for the audience bash this movie instead of seeing it for what it is. If you manage to lower your expectations you'll end up getting a kick out of it.

Dreadful Jack Nicholson vehicle from 1992 that is just not very good at all. Nicholson stars as a guard-dog trainer who becomes involved with a woman who is being stalked (Ellen Barkin). This is supposed to be a comedy, but nothing is very funny. The stalking side-story is used to cover up dead spots in the film, but this fails to work. This creates a film that is not very funny and not very dramatic. It is a film that is just in limbo. Bob Rafelson, usually a great director, just does not have it here. The screenplay is awful and overall the film is awful. Only the greatest Jack Nicholson fans will get anything worthwhile out of "Man Trouble". 2 stars out of 5.

If it were not for great acting skillings by Ellen Barkin and Beverly D'Angelo, this film would never have been produced, they held up the leading male actor and the dog stole the show from everyone.

This had to be the worst film of 1992, no laughs for me at all.

I love Ellen Barkin, 'deed I do, but even she cannot make the romance with Jack Nicholson believable here. Even back in 1992, Nicholson was TOO OLD to play a romantic lead with a woman seventeen years his junior.

I was getting the creeps watching this in the fall of 2008, and suddenly I realized why. The pairing reminds me of John McCain and his trophy wife, Cindy. McCain: born 1936. Nicholson: born 1937. Cindy and Barkin: both born 1954.

It's obnoxious, the way Hollywood continues to indulge Nicholson (and, presumably, equally elderly male producers and writers) with this assumption that an audience can believe gorgeous young women will fall all over him. Oh, spare me. And start giving actresses Nicholson's own age parts like the plums HE gets, or at least, parts playing his love interest.

I like dogs, I like Ellen Barkin, and that's why I was able to endure the movie at all, though I was embarrassed for her being stuck with such a ludicrous part - and one which, in a movie meant to be funny, failed to take full advantage of her talent for comedy, especially her considerable physical comedy chops.

Also loved Lauren Tom as the Nicholson's wife! Again, the age difference is severe - Tom was born in 1961, making her fully 24 years younger than Nicholson and his character - but Tom's put-on accent (she was born in Chicago) and Nicholson's overall sleaziness suggest that she's a mail-order bride struggling to make the best of a groom who calls her "Iwo Jima." Tom, like Barkin, deserves better writing than this.

One star for Barkin, one star for Tom, and one star for the dog. Zero stars for the rest of it, particularly casting Nicholson and for the overly-complex plot lines.

I saw this movie on a second-class channel this Sunday, and I have to say that I liked it. It's just a romantic comedy, and if you keep that in mind, you will also like it. Of course, maybe Jack Nicholson is overcasted, but it proves how capable is he of doing any kind of character, in any kind of movie. It doesn't worth buying, but I think it worth the rental fee.