Le proprio

Joe Pesci is usually a great actor. He was outstanding in Goodfellas and My Cousin Vinny, and was funny in both Home Alone movies and in Gone Fishin'. However, this movie is probably one of his pitfalls. This movie definitely had its potential for being funny. It's plot was pretty original. A superintendent forced by law to live in his run down tenement house. That's original! However, I don't know why, but it just wasn't very funny. It could've been because Pesci didn't play a spoiled adult who still takes advice from his misguided, overbearing, often wrong father. The acting may not have been too good. I don't know. It just wasn't funny. There were a few cute parts (like when Pesci dances to the M.C. Hammer music), but nothing special. Sorry, Joe, but you've had funnier movies.

Although not Joe Pesci's best film, it had enough funny moments in it for me to watch it again. Joe Pesci was at his crazy comic best. Vincent Gardenia's expressions and comedic timing helped make this an enjoyable film. Mr. Gardenia's last film. Too bad, he & Pesci would have been a good team in other future projects.

For real. Have a little sense of humor about this one. Obviously it does not contain realistic elements and the acting of some of the characters didn't give their brightest performances but it's more a show than a movie. I classify movies as films that are to be taken seriously precluding to aspects like acting, filming, dialogue, original comedy, killer special effects..etc whatever it may be because the people affiliated with the making are striving to find a way to discover the next best flick. I classify shows as films that are made strictly just to entertain us. The Super is a comedy and it made me laugh hysterically just watching Pesci's physical acting. The dad was hilarious. A lot of people say he did terrible. Why? He was an arrogant slumlord and a big old asshole that had mercy for not a soul. Reminds me of my Uncle Jimmy from Boston. His angry bantering and selfish statements were so funny and in my mind authentic. The main actress? Eh whatever were watchin Pesci just to belly laugh.

So don't pay attention the shitty elements that most critics cap on but just sit down, hit the bong, and see if you don't pee in your pants laughing at the awesome talents of Joe Pesci. GIMME THE RENT!

Vincent Gardenia (inhis last screen role) is a slumlord who taught his son, Joe Pesci their tenants are animals: collect rents and put nothing into the buildings. But the City has caught up to them, and it's one of the buildings in Pesci's name, so he is the one sentenced to occupy an apartment there and to bring it up to code. And so we meet his tenants, and they are just as much stereotyped jerks as he is. In the face of this, he has no incentive to do anything but squat in misery when Gardenia tries to put the fix in.

Of course we know going in that Pesci will have a change of heart by the end, and it has to arise from somewhere: there's the welfare lawyer Madelyn Smith Osborne, whom Pesci propositions every time they speak, and 13-year-old Kenny Blank, who lives with his father and hustles in a sweet-faced manner, and gives the most endearing performance in the movie. In the meantime, Pesci is stuck with the unenviable task oif taking a thoroughly unlikeable character, having him kicked repeatedly for the audience's amusement, and still have the audience on his side as he finally reforms. Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton had managed this in a few of their features in the 1920s, but it's a tough thing to manage,, especially given that for the first time in his career, Pesci is the lead..

I don;t think this movie succeeds in its ambitions, but there are certainly enough good moments to keep the audience entertained.

Early 90's rendition of Hal Ashby's 1970 film "The Landlord," which is given the comic...or attempted comic treatment by Pesci as a snobby slumlord who moves in to his slum and sees the light; the error of his rich boy ways. Badly written and unbeliveable pretty much all the way through. One of Gardenia's final films.