Il tempo dei cani pazzi

Despite the disparaging comments by other reviewers here, and the savaging this film received by mainstream critics, I've got stand by my original assessment of the piece which I made in 1996 on its release. This is a taut, sardonically funny, very well done flick, and I think it's detractor's may be missing the point a bit by pointing out that it plays like a rough draft. Were not many of the so called `Rat Pack' movies nothing more than hastily thrown together vehicles for whatever `Packer' happened to be starring? Of course it's rough around the edges! Of course it never seems to be getting its own joke! Unfortunately the joke ends up being on the film itself because it does its job too well. It looks at the genre from the coatroom, behind a row of smoke-scented overcoats. If it looks and feels like the reels were left on a smoky card table for a few weeks before being run - then it's doing its job. It's that very patina that gives Mad Dog Time it's credentials as a well done and mutli-faceted darkly funny movie that belongs not so much with it's erstwhile Rat Pack brethren as has been suggested so often, but rather with The Player and other movies whose joy, in part, is the fact that the players are so clearly having a ball making the thing. Goldblum and Dreyfuss stand out from an altogether superb cast. Goldblum for his ability to keep the audience guessing as to whether or not he really feels as confident as his character acts throughout and Dreyfuss for proving that nobody in the business can look both smugly amused and supremely confused at the same time as well as he. That's all I have to say. Now I think I'll hop home, pack my bags and leave town.

I will agree that this movie is a lot of fun to watch,uncut that is, and I will go further and say that it was probably a hoot to be a part of the making of it as well. Lets face it some of these guys are not around anymore and this might have been one of their last laughs together. I for one found it exciting to have one last look at Henry Silva, Richard Pryor and Christopher Jones. Those last two by the way were in one of their first movies together as well, Wild In The Streets. Michael J. Pollard will always be seen in something. Kyle MacLachlan was probably in it just for the kicks. His performance seemed a bit over the top even for him. All in all I would have loved to have been an extra on this one but at least I got to see it.

I'm quite convinced that everyone who gave this a good review watched a completely different movie than I did. With odd filming choices, bad acting, stilted dialogue and a slow plot that is so thin it barely deserves to even be called a plot, this was just a hot (or rather lukewarm) smoky mess from start to finish, dead on arrival much like many of the main players in this movie, and a one note symphony of stand off after stand off conducted sitting down for some reason (would it then be called a sit off?).

I'm going to level with you, I bought this because I have a crush on Jeff Goldblum, (hey, he has some pretty eyelashes in this movie, though his lines are limited), but even with an all star cast, it'd take a whole lot of polishing for this movie to shine. Though I will admit Gabriel Byrne's character Ben has some moments of intrigue, it can't save the whole show, and besides, most of the best scenes are already seen in the preview and so it's all downhill from there.

I mean it's certainly nowhere near the worst movie I've ever seen, it has its few small huff a tiny bit of air from your nose marginally funny moments, but it's cutting it awfully close. That lucky son of a gun who gets shot in the the first few minutes of the movie and didn't have to sit through the rest of it though, one could envy him.

... his version of "My Way" is hysterical (especially after I read somewhere that he truly thought - before he heard himself later - that it was Paul Anka that was out of tune and not himself!) and he gets all the best lines. That said, I thought Jeff Goldblum was also excellent - more understated than the rest of the characters which was a good foil for them.

The film is just simply great fun. It's not a classic, clever masterpiece of its time, but it is immensely enjoyable and well worth seeing at least once.

I love this movie. It's wacky, funny, violent, surreal, played out in a madman's head, and definitely not your usual comedy.

If you don't find the film amusing then I guess it's just not for your tastes, so this is a tough one to write a review for.

For reference, some other comedies I love are The Big Lebowski, The Princess Bride, and Zoolander (that one only got me the second time around). There are others, but my taste is definitely for the unusual, and I am willing to accept that most people just don't tend to like that kind of thing. I make no apologies for having an unusual sense of humour - at least I have one.

The scenes and characters of this particular movie are well put together, the verbal humour is hilarious, the situations are intriguing, the acting is very good (as you would expect of the cast), though the acting demands made of the cast by the script are not particularly high. The overall package makes for fun, funny, watchable yet violent entertainment.