Hard Four

A wonderfully wacky comedy with veteran actors. Ross Benjamin and Samuel Gold and Charles Dennis turning in solid performances with hilarious cameos by Ed Asner, Bryan Cranston, Ed Begley Jr, Dabney Coleman and Kim Delgado. Hijinks and hilarity give this small film a big bang for it's comedic buck. Old time gambler Golden Hands Seagal suffers a heart attack while rolling a tilted "Hard four" on the craps table in Vegas and the Casino does not want to pay out the money he would have made if the dice were flat on the table. This sets off a bizarre chain of events where his grandson has 24 hours to get him buried. Throw in some zany friends, old flames, love triangles, an escaped convict and you have mayhem at it's best.

Charles Dennis is an extraordinary filmmaker/novelist/journalist/actor/playwright, who has created a hilarious homage to the screwball comedies of a bygone era. He does so with a cast of luminaries that make it a "must see" film. Ed Asner is glorious. Ed Begley is brilliant. His side- splitting use of Yiddish-isms are not to be missed. The film is shot with humor and inventiveness. All sorts of surprising things happen. This is the kind of film to be enjoyed with friends looking for a good time. I highly recommend this film. Charles Dennis is a filmmaker to be watched. Can't wait for his next effort!

The film starts out with Ed Asner's character (Gold Hands Segal) at the craps table. after a dispute with a di leaning on it's side, Gold Hands suffers a fatal heart attack right then and there. After being notified, grandson Spenser Ragusa and his buddy Freddy must find a way to get from LA to Vegas, and then because of Jewish tradition, get the grandfather's body back east within 24 hours for a proper funeral. What seems like a simple task ends up being a whacky misadventure with one problem after another. I must say I was very pleasantly surprised with this film. It is pretty funny considering some of the acting but makes up for it and then some with cameos by Ed Asner, Bryan Cranston, Ed Begley and my favorite Dabney Coleman! Even Jon Getz (from Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead) makes an appearance. The plot line is good though a little far fetched (but seeing as how it's a slapstick i get why they did it that way). The pretty girls in it are not at all bad to look at and i was in stitches with W.P. Kulakundis' character. funny stuff!

If you take works for what they are, you will be rarely disappointed. This light comedy is not different. Take it as it is and you might enjoy it. Although I could watch it as it came when I bought it, I asked a friend to add Spanish subtitles and waited for a while (it took him longer than usual because he did it on his spare time at a TV station where he does precisely that), because I wanted to understand and fully enjoy it. Fortunately I did. It is amusing, at times a bit on the gross side, but I suppose that was intended (no wonder with the plot and characters involved). In brief the story deals with a California young man whose Jewish grandpa dies in Las Vegas, when he is about to win a large sum of money. The guy has to fly there and bring the body home in record time for a proper funeral, but his best friend messes everything up when he tries to help. The plot involves wives, twins, a hotel manager, a convict, a a football hero, an ex-cheerleader, a kid, a café owner with a gun, a security guard, and many more characters. Ross Benjamin leads the cast as Stephen Ragusa, the grandson's best friend. He is a funny performer, who rounds up his character with his weird looks (in a sort of "Now I'm handsome, now I'm not" way). Samuel Gould acts as his complement, keeping Stephen's crazy ideas in perspective. And then there are these great performers who also contribute to the general zaniness: Charles Dennis (also writer and director), Charlene Blaine, Edward Asner, Mitzi McCall, Salli Saffioti, Rachelle Carson, Ian Abercrombie, Richard Horvitz and Kim Delgado, plus my all-time favorite Paula Prentiss in a funny brief scene. On the negative side, sometimes director Dennis allows sentimentality to intrude both aurally (with a sad piano – from a score by Larry Brown that most of the time is excellent) and visually (with silly flashbacks of old grandpa when he was alive), but it soon recovers. In a couple of scenes, Ross Benjamin seems to slow the action the way he delivers his lines, as when he tries to convince Erica (Blaine) to take him from L.A. to Las Vegas, along with his best friend Freddy (Gould), but in the end the scenes work effectively. I believe this motion picture was done with no other pretension than making a comedy that would make the viewer have a good time. I don't know the rest, but I did, and recommend it.

I am not sure I understand if this movie was supposed to be funny or not so funny. The script has a confusing relationship with marijuana and alcohol; people don't seem to be actually intoxicated, yet intoxicants-- minus intoxicant humor-- is central to the plot. I won't necessarily fault the acting; the dialog itself constructs this quandary.

Because the humor is so inconsistent throughout the film, in the styles of slapstick and then vague topical humor, one is left confused as to the expectations and intent of this film. I say watch a real National Lampoon Vacation movie for a road trip film, or watch Dazed and Confused for stoner humor. If there's a film that combines the two, it's not to be found in Hard Four, whose dependence on stereotypes and awkward interactions among men and women leaves little to be desired for the modern man or woman.