Don't Drink the Water

I have been recommending this movie to friends for ages, not knowing that they had no possible way of actually seeing it since for some reason it never came out on video. The earlier version (with Jackie Gleason leading the cast) is a poor substitute. It has some of the same jokes, but none of the wit. It also does not have the SOUNDTRACK which in the 1994 made-for-TV-version was a sublime showcase for some very hot Bulgarian tunes. (I am a folk dancer, so I know my Bulgarian music!) The Gleason version gets air time ten-twelve times a year on cable and regular TV, but the 1994 version does not. It may have been made for TV, but seemingly it never comes back to the TV. I know because I have been reading the TV guide every week for a year now looking for this movie(!)

Don't drink the water is a rarely recognized masterpiece by Woody Allen. Filled with unforgettable characters and a fabulous script, this film is a must see for any comedy loving person. In my opinion, the best characters were Mr and Mrs Hollander. Michael J. Fox also delivers with wit and charm. There is a tricky priest, a paranoid American chef with a gun, an overly oppsessive housewife who is constently waxing the floors of the diplomatic relations building,a crazy walter-hating chef who cannot make an American meal,a diplomat who got hit over the head and now believes that he is the wright brothers, and an Axel loving young woman who believes in fortune-tellers. This movie has everything.

This little known TV movie is really a bit of nostalgia for those Woody Allen fans who yearn for the good old days, and a 1970s Woody type performance. Like a train pulling out of the station, "Don't drink the Water" gets funnier as it goes along. The casting is good, with Dom DeLuise a standout as a magician, without any tricks that work. Woody is in top form, playing a character much like he did in "Take the Money and Run", or "Bananas". My only fault is the unsteady camera which at times is enough to cause dizzy spells, and the claustrophobic feel of the movie, since really this is a filmed play. What you get is a 1994 version of a 1970s Woody Allen performance. Expect lots of one liners, some of which don't always work, but plenty are hilarious, and that's all that matters. - MERK

More faithful in tone and probably in detail to Woody Allen's successful 1966 Broadway farce (589 performances from 17 Nov. 66 to 20 April 68 at the Morosco, Barrymore and Belasco Theatres) than the successful but now badly dated 11 Nov. 1969 film, this made for TV movie suffers from a rather unrelenting craziness of pacing that worked better on stage than in the intimacy of the small screen.

Woody Allen's nebishy lines fall naturally from his own lips, but lacking the distance or the simply larger body Stanley Prager had to work with when directing Lou Jacobi as the naive Newark caterer who is accused of spying while innocently taking vacation pictures while on vacation in an unidentified Eastern European country on Broadway - or Howard Morris had when directing Jackie Gleason in the coarsened role in the 1969 film - Allen comes across less sympathetic and more blindly hysterical.

Nevertheless, Michael J. Fox (who had already been BACK TO THE FUTURE in his successful trilogy but was still a couple years from his last successful sitcom, SPIN CITY) as the disaster prone son of the ambassador who grants the family asylum balances the hysterical performance of the author nicely, as do TV favorites Julie Kavner (TRACEY ULLMAN and THE SIMPSONS) as Allen's wife and Mayim Bialik (BLOSSOM and THE BIG BANG THEORY) as his daughter and Fox's inevitable love interest.

Since the Cold War was essentially over by the time this picture was made, it remained a nostalgic picture of an earlier era told in farce form with comfortable narration from the late great announcer Ed Herlihy to remind us of the context (Americans believed innocent tourists were picked up on the slightest pretext to "trade" for captured Soviet spies after a few well publicized "spy trades").

Written at a time before the Middle East blew up, the visit of an unidentified emir and his harem (that the US wants to cater to for good relations - OIL hadn't seriously entered the picture yet) is played, along with an Orthodox priest who's been in asylum in an apartment on an upper floor of the embassy for six years and counting (an idea which horrifies the Allen character who can't bear the elevated menu at the embassy and can't understand why they can't send out for Chinese) as minor plot contrivances.

If this sort of old fashioned humor isn't your cup of tea, DON'T DRINK THE WATER may not go down too easily, but as an honest souvenir of Cold War humor and the transition period between Woody Allen's stand-up beginnings and his later serious films, it's well worth a look for any serious student of film or Allen. If you can take the stage farce pacing, it will even provide a fair share of honest laughs - more than the '69 film in any case.

"Isolated in the Embassy" situations have been grist for the comedy mills for years - although it's been a while since we've had a new one. Billy Wilder's 1961 ONE TWO THREE (based on a Ferenc Molnar play, "Egy, kettö, három") where a hard charging Jimmy Cagney tried to deal with the love and marriage of a runaway daughter of an Atlanta Coca Cola executive for a passionate East German worker while Berlin was still divided, or Art Buchwald's sadly unfilmed 1970 play SHEEP ON THE RUNWAY which satirized the havoc a right wing columnist like Joseph Alsop could cause in a front line embassy were probably better structured and hold up better than the early Allen play, but they all came from essentially the same well. All worth a look for nostalgia and more.

This 1994 TV movie released to video in late 2000 tells an inane tale of a Jewish American family that, while vacationing in Russia, is mistaken for a ring of spies during the height of the cold war in the 1960's. This is the story of their exploits as they are holed up in the American Embassy waiting for their chance to return to the U.S.

The story was written and directed by Woody Allen, who is one of the most accomplished auteurs in the history of film. It is clear that Allen purposely dumbed this screenplay down for TV. Instead of his trademark cerebral humor that cuts like a scalpel, he uses a machine gun approach, hitting the viewer with a fusillade of lowbrow jokes and slapstick gags. The humor ranges from insipid silliness to standard sitcom fare with occasional intellectual ironies thrown in for his devoted fans. Though most of it is infantile, the sheer volume of material (literally five to ten jokes and gags a minute) insures that something will tickle you every couple of minutes.

The cast is rich with accomplished comedic talent. Michael J. Fox plays the son of an ambassador who is a hapless diplomat in training. His frenetic and tortured style of comedy is perfect for this role. Dom DeLuise adds his wacky brand of humor as a priest who has been in hiding in the embassy for six years and is trying to learn to be an amateur magician. For him, the extra inhabitants of the embassy represent a captive audience on whom he can inflict one botched magic trick after another. Julie Kavner brings her whiny New York accent and her wonderful sense of sarcastic timing to play off Woody Allen's inimitably overwrought caricature of himself. Kavner is a refreshing change for Allen. We are used to seeing him across from flaky wimps played by Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow. The use of the bluntly badgering Kavner added significant energy to his performance. The cast is rounded out by Mayim Bialik (TV's, Blossom) who was decent, but not great as the Jewish American Princess in captivity.

Overall, this was a good comedy that was significantly below Woody Allen's standard. There are plenty of funny lines, but it is a much too farcical. I rated it a 6/10. If you enjoy Woody Allen's normal introspective and intellectual humor, this might be a disappointment.