Give Yourself A Gift And Don't Watch This
Dull, self-obsessed people voice their self-obsession in this movie version of Albert Innaurato's Off-Broadway hit. The cast, including Madeline Kahn, and Rita Moreno try to make up for their inherent slovenliness by loudness.
If you were to make a burlesque of what people imagine to be an Off-Broadway play, you couldn't do better than this, with its annoying ethnic portrayals, and Alan Rosenberg's uncertainty about his sexual identity, as he announces to his girlfriend, Sarah Holcomb, that he's gay. When I write "you couldn't do better", in many ways I mean you couldn't do worse, as Miss Kahn swans around in the world's largest beehive hairdo.
These are just the sort of characters and situations that Neil Simon could and did make interesting and funny. I suspect that the people involved in this movie thought they were doing that, but they didn't.
If you were to make a burlesque of what people imagine to be an Off-Broadway play, you couldn't do better than this, with its annoying ethnic portrayals, and Alan Rosenberg's uncertainty about his sexual identity, as he announces to his girlfriend, Sarah Holcomb, that he's gay. When I write "you couldn't do better", in many ways I mean you couldn't do worse, as Miss Kahn swans around in the world's largest beehive hairdo.
These are just the sort of characters and situations that Neil Simon could and did make interesting and funny. I suspect that the people involved in this movie thought they were doing that, but they didn't.
- boblipton
- Feb 23, 2023