O Rei da Paquera

In NYC, Jack Jericho (Robert Downey Jr.) is an unabashed pick up artist. He spends his time chasing after every girl on the streets. Alonzo Scolara (Harvey Keitel) is gun wielding criminal. Flash Jensen (Dennis Hopper) owes him money and his daughter Randy (Molly Ringwald) has to pay. Jack has no long term relationships other than his grandmother and Randy is even more reluctant. She's a museum tour guide and he's a grade school teacher. He becomes obsessed with her.

This movie struggles to find the rom-com feel. These two actors are the most likable actors of that era. They have a nice back and forth banter. The scary criminal gambling story doesn't really fit. The tone is all over the place. The old fashion music doesn't fit either. I would really have loved RDJ and Molly Ringwald in a more straight forward rom-com. Jack is a rather horrible character. This seems to be written for older worn-out characters. James Toback is simply not the rom-com type.

Dreary romance-comedy about a womanizer (Downey Jr.) who finally meets his match in a museum tour guide. (Ringwald) Obvious vehicle for Ringwald, who is fine, but Downey Jr. is the one who is given the most screen time...hence the one who sinks the film.

One plot device that the movie turns on is absolutely unbelievable. I won't spoil it, but it stands out like a sore thumb. The opening twenty minutes or so are nicely done as the two leads get to know one another, sort of. After their lives are revealed to each other things get very dull and I can't get past the inanity of this plot point.

I thought Molly Ringwald was good in her role, what there was of it. The script is awful and that's a good deal of the problem, but there's no chemistry here, either.

Robert Downey Jr. is husky and young and wiry as a streetwise ladies' man who does more striking-out than scoring, but his attempts are colorful (you can sense he turns women on just by attempting); Molly Ringwald is a good screen-match for Downey playing sassy tour guide whose alcoholic father is in trouble with the mob. So far, so good--and early on director James Toback displays a sweet, screwball side that was never apparent in his works prior to this--but, unfortunately, the convoluted script gets all gummed-up by the second-half, and the leads go back and forth with each other so much that it all becomes fairly ridiculous. Some pre-release dubbing was obviously done to cover the saltier dialogue passages; it looks sloppy, but that's nothing compared to listening to Downey and Ringwald having sex (what was she in real-life, 17?). These two look good together but are far too young for this scenario, which is by turns cartoonishly sordid and melodramatically soapy. *1/2 from ****

What a lesson in film-making!

Let me report that among date movies, very few age well. This one has improved remarkably with age.

Part of the reason is the two main actors. Molly is her most striking here. She's absolutely at her peak in what she does, which is a sort of sassy, deliberately fostered innocent/wise cuteness. No one can do this today, and the attempts are depressing. Kate Hudson? We all die a little when she tries.

And then we have Downey. He's already heavy into drugs and he doesn't have the drugged discipline he had in "Chaplin." But he has an energy that is so appealing. Undisciplined, druggy energy would usually be just dispersed effort, but this is a date movie, something that depends on misregistration of self.

And look who surrounds them: Aiello doing his working class avuncular bit. Keitel being such a movie gangster they bleeped his every speech. And Dennis Hopper! That man who is a permanent token of intoxicated risktaking. Three solid marks in film characters, all portrayed by their inventors.

You can see that the filmmaker is a writer. The script is actually very good. Very good indeed for what it is and the assets that are available. The direction is so inadequate it hurts. But it hurts in exactly the right way. This is a film about stretching, about yearning without touching. Its all about inadequacy in love, a sort of reality-tinged inadequacy overlain on the romantic comedy template.

Because the camera is always in the wrong place, is always too tentative, is always unsure of itself, but still goes, still goes...

It puts us in the thing as one of these kids, clumsy, bold without cause.

I recommend this. I do. Its problems work for it.

Molly has faded as a presence now. But that's inevitable because of how we all exploited her youth. We shouldn't think that she is a flake, like say Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts. This very year she starred in one of the most intellectually ambitious movies of all time, Godards "King Lear." And more recently, she was in a Greenaway film. No stupid actor would do that.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.