Os Incendiários Estão Chegando

I saw this movie back in 1977 and thought is was a comedy classic. I still remember plotlines and laugh when I think about some of the dialogue and situations. Like Benny and his wife stopping at all the Howard Johnson's from NY to FL and her having to take pictures of them. When Benny collapses in the parking lot of the H.J. his wife yells at him, "Benny! Get Up! You're not going to ruin my vacation!' When they get to the hospital she thinks she is in their FL hotel resort. Benny on his deathbed and his wife calling the same caterer that catered her hysterectomy to do the funeral for a man who isn't even dead. The H.S. Basketball coach that "adopts" a grown black man because his wife wants a baby and she acts like she is caring for an infant. Alan Arkin buying the boy a purple Cadillac with Leopard skin upholstery. (How delightfully un-politically correct!) Or how about Benny plotting to get his shell-shocked Vet brother-in-law or brother, whatever, to burn down the store and then we find out that Russell cancelled the fire insurance policy to buy more clothes for the store. When Benny finds out that the store is no longer insured he miraculously comes to and rushes to try and stop Sherman and his wheelchair from burning the place down. Ah.so many memories! Good Times! Good Times!

Now I have to tell you that I thought that this movie was just a figment of my imagination, as no one I know except my date for the evening in 1977 has ever even heard of this movie. I was a 17 year old on a date with my soon to be (1 ½ later) husband. I found it funny. Hilarious in fact. I would love to buy the movie and see it again as a mature adult, to see if it is as funny now. But alas, I've never found this movie for sale. The movie itself starts with a strange scene with a noise in the dark. When the lights come up and you figure out what is going on, I remember laughing so hard. For me, that's the way the entire movie was. Slap shot comedy perhaps.

Unreleased at first in the cinema in Australia, this absolutley demented farce sat on the shelf until after Arkin's original THE IN LAWS came out and was a hit here. Then Fox decided to give it a run and it was lukewarm. Pity, as a raucous Jewish comedy is is a pretty good one and anyone into anarchy as comedy (Big Store, Duck Soup, Where's Poppa, etc) will enjoy the screaming antics of a very fractured extended family. I think it ended up on a double bill with maybe Mel Brooks' THE PRODUCERS or something like that which matched the mugging and screaming. At my holiday resort cinema in that period we would show it on student nights and get a good reaction. Kids and old Jews loved it though.

This is probably the most difficult movie for me to critique. The cast includes several of the greatest comedic talent of the twentieth century, and the material is to die for. In addition, I find the Jewish humor of both Arkins, both Reiners, Sid Caesar, Woody Allen, etc. to be some of the best available in cinema. I soooo wanted to love this movie!! Unfortunately, I cannot wholeheartedly recommend it, and beyond saying simply that it isn't as funny as it could have been, I would have some trouble explaining why. Leonard Maltin gave this a 1-star review, calling it "truly unbearable." And yet Keith Bailey, one of my personal favorite reviewers, stated on his website www.badmovieplanet.com that he absolutely laughed himself silly with this movie, calling it a "comic masterpiece." Other reviewers on this website are similarly at polar opposite opinions, and this made me insanely interested in seeing it for myself. Though it has mysteriously never been available on video or DVD, I did find a quality bootleg copy on ebay. As far as I'm concerned, neither of the two reviewers is correct - my appraisal is more of a middle ground between the two.

It seems to me that Robert Klane had a fantastic script, which pulled out all the stops, balancing almost six wacky subplots surrounding a dysfunctional Jewish family. The multiple-subplot structure of "Seinfeld" episodes most certainly takes its inspiration from this movie. Several individual lines are magnificent, the ideas are completely original, but the execution was inefficient. For one, the cinematography is some of the worst I have ever seen - the whole movie is too dark due to insufficient lighting. Second, the timing of most of the jokes is way off. The best example is a scene involving the simultaneous asthmatic attack of both Rob Reiner's character and his father. On paper, this could have been a wonderful bit of dual comic overacting, but the actors underplay it, as if they are embarrassed by the whole thing. And director Arkin makes the unwise decision to prolong the scene for what seems an eternity.

Similar sloppiness pervades the movie, and as such, I found the IDEAS of the movie downright hilarious, but I just couldn't laugh while I was watching it. This is one of those movies that seem a lot more entertaining in hindsight than while you were actually viewing it. That might be the reason why so many reviewers here have fond recollections after so many years. Mind you, I'm not saying it is a bad movie, and that you should steer clear of it as Maltin suggests. But what I am saying is that it has been overrated for two reasons: 1) It has basically disappeared from the public for 28 years, giving it a cult movie mystique, and 2) People have overly nostalgic memories after not having seen it for many years.

Because I love the type of comedy this movie aspired to be, I would like to make a recommendation. Instead of seeing this movie, I suggest Larry Cohen's 1981 horror spoof "Full Moon High," also starring Arking and his son Adam. That movie had similarly anarchic Jewish humor, but the difference is that that movie pulled everything off magnificently, and additionally its is much easier and cheaper to find on video. That film was, indeed, a comic masterpiece.

Like many of the previous reviewers, I only ever saw this movie once, and that was a long, long time ago (again like them). But even though I was only a teenager, where for me the world of the US East Coast Jews may as well have been on another planet, what gags I did understand (and I realized that there were many, many gags that I didn't!) were exceptionally funny. Leonard_M - loosen up a little. The movie IS funny.