Ele Vai Ter um Bebê

....and is stretched out to feature length via an overabundance of terrible, scenerey-chewing performances and witless ethnic humor. Worth a look, I suppose, as Billy Crystal's first film; we all got to start somewhere (he looks like Steve Guttenberg here). * out of 4.

"Rabbit Test" is a film I saw at the cinema when I was 13 and I just rediscovered it in a video bargain outlet store. 25 years later I find the film still to be funny just not AS funny when I was 13. This movie is a 'comedy' and why the 'fat' jokes or religious jokes would offend anyone is beyond me. As bad as this movie seems to the people on this board who reviewed it, I wish we could return to the days when films didn't have to be so PC about their comedic tones. Just keep telling yourself, "THIS IS A COMEDY, THIS IS A COMEDY, TH......

It's difficult to precisely put into words the sheer awfulness of this film. An entirely new vocabulary will have to be invented to describe the complete absence of anything even remotely recognizable as 'humor' or even 'entertainment' in "Rabbit Test." So, as a small contribution to this future effort, I'd like to suggest this word:

"Hubiriffic" (adj.) A combination of 'hubristic' and 'terrific'; used to describe overly ambitious debacles like the film "Rabbit Test."

Joan Rivers and "Hollywood Squares" producer Jay Redack have severely over-reached their meager abilities to amuse in this 82-minute festival of wretchedness. Trying to put together an Airplane! style comedy with a moldy collection of gags, (Note to Joan: German doctors haven't been funny since Vaudeville) disinterred from their graves in the Catskills - that's is bad enough. But compounding this cinematic crime is River's directorial style, which can best be described as 'ugly', and a cast of once-and-future has-beens so eager to please they overplay even the weakest of throwaway gags.

Adrift in this Sargasso Sea of sap is a hapless Billy Crystal in his film debut role as the film's hapless protagonist Lionel. Watching Crystal in this pic is much like watching a blind person take a stroll in a minefield; eventually the cringe reflex becomes a semi-permanent condition as cheap joke after cheap joke blows up in his face.

I can only speculate about the sort of audience who might actually like Rabbit Test. Cabbages, mollusks and mildly retarded lizards are all likely candidates. But for self-aware, thinking humans - I'd enthusiastically recommend pouring bleach in your eyes before I'd recommend "Rabbit Test."

Similar to "Airplane," "Naked Gun," etc...jokes, jokes, jokes, no story. I hated all those films but if you like them this should be of interest because it pre-dated "Airplane" and really deserves the credit for the genre, not "Airplane." Main draw back is the pregnant man story (Arnold couldn't make it work either). TV comedy stars make this seem more like an R-rated Love Boat. Best part: The opening animation. Unfunniest part: Director Joan Rivers' cameo. Funniest part: That "Airplane" was not much better but made the creators of that film famous.

I remember rolling in the aisles with laughter from some of the subtle (and not-so-subtle) jokes in this film: Billy Crystal yelling out "Immigration!" in order to dismiss his ESL class after everything else fails; the young girl appearing from under the kitchen table and the clergyman simply saying "Bless you, my child.". The experience of watching it for the first time was also memorable, as I saw it with my sister while living in Mexico, and a lot of the jokes went over most of the audience's head. People kept giving us strange looks while we laughed at jokes that made no sense to them at the time. I hope to find this on DVD sometime; it would make a great addition to anyone who loves film parodies and screwball comedies.