Comedy films of 1990

[Moj]

I need to watch Repossessed again. ZAZ done by people who aren't ZAZ, so it's not top drawer or anything, but it's Leslie Nielsen with Linda Blair and Ned Beatty doing Exorcist, and encompassing grifting televangelists, the fitness boom, and a very stiff Ted Kennedy joke.

Haven't seen it since the VHS era so for all I know it's an absolute bunch of shit, but it's from before the genre's last gasp with Spy Hard (1994) so it might hold up alright.

[notjosh]

MY BLUE HEAVEN (1990)
dir. Herbert Ross
wrt. Nora Ephron
trmpt: Malcolm McNab

This is most famous now for being a sort of Bizarro World version of Goodfellas, coming out one month before. It's written by Nora Ephron, who was married to Nicholas Pileggi, author of the book on which Goodfellas is based and presumably the model for Joe Fox's Godfather obsession in You've Got Mail. According to Henry Hill (gangster cunt), it was in part based on phone conversations he had with her:

There was a funny sideline to my work with Nick. At night, I'd get half-gassed and call Nick in New York just to bullshit. It was like therapy for me. Sometimes Nick's wife, Nora, would answer the phone and tell me, "Hey, Nick is sleeping. What's the matter, Henry? This is Aunt Nora." Meanwhile, she was picking my brain for a script she was writing. I had no idea. She was on the other end taking notes. She was a piece of work... In 1990, the same year my movie Goodfellas came out, she had a little movie released called My Blue Heaven, starring Steve Martin, about a New Yorker in Witness Protection out west — just like I had been in Omaha. When I saw it I flipped because she used some of the stuff I had told her on the phone for her movie scenes. She took a combination of me and Michael Franceze, another rat she had read about in the papers. I never got a penny for it, but Nick had been so generous with me that I just let it slide. Had it been anyone else's wife...

You lot probably love Goodfellas, like every other cunt I've ever met, but I've always thought it's a cunt movie for cunts made by a bloke who is probably not a cunt but seemingly can't stop making movies about them (apart from Hugo, which is delightful and his best film by about a million miles, don't @ me.) So all of the above holds zero interest for me, but other people seem to care so there you go.

As a big Nora Ephron fan I was looking forward to this as it's one of only a couple of her films I hadn't seen. Turns out it's just fine.

Steve Martin plays a New York mobster put into witness protection in a beige suburb with Rick Moranis the agent assigned to keep an eye on him. He plays it extremely broad - full New Yoik accent - and it's sort of goofy and likeable, but never stops feeling like a performance. Ricky Moranis, by contrast, is extremely subdued and doesn't get much of a chance to shine.

There's not really a plot, just a basic set up and then a lot of episodic happenings (separated by onscreen chapter titles). Steve Martin's flashy mobster is completely incapable of living a quiet suburban life so can't help getting mixed up in oddball schemes and acting like billy big bollocks at every opportunity, causing a headache for Rick Moranis, who keeps having to bail him out. In doing so he comes up against Assistant DA Joan Cusack, who is typically good and finds quite a decent middle-ground between Martin's zaniness and Moranis' understatement.

That's about it really. Moranis has to protect Martin so he can testify in the third act, which gives it the lightest of stakes, but there's no real jeopardy at all, and only a very perfunctory threat of reprisal. There's a bit of a character arc where Martin starts to settle down and Moranis gets a bit flashier and more confident, but it's quite lightly sketched. Mostly the characters sort of potter about without any real sense of drive.

It's directed by Herbert Ross who previously directed Martin in Pennies from Heaven, and there are a couple of dance numbers which have a similar fourth-wall breaking feel to them, but mostly it feels a bit undercooked. And I can't say I detected any of the sparkling dialogue or fun observations that characterises the best of Ephron's work.

I didn't hate it or think it was for cunts or anything, it just sort of exists.

Verdict:
My Beige Purgatory

[notjosh]

The Adventures Of Ford Fairlane (1990) - Hated by the critics when originally released I liked this a certain amount, and though I'm not a fan of his stand up Dice Clay is surprisingly charismatic. Lauren Holly and Maddie Corman provide a lot of funny moments in a film which makes good use of its supporting cast, and Robert Englund's kinky English character and

Spoiler alert

Wayne Newton

[close]

make for decent villains. Fairlane is a little exhausting at times and his various catchphrases / verbal quirks sometimes feel a bit much, but this is smarter and weirder than I thought it be, and for a fair amount of the film I was thinking it wasn't as sexist as I'd presumed it'd also be and then there's a pointless scene where Ford hangs out with a whole bunch of sorority girls, and yeesh, either the cameraman or the director needs to be arrested. There's something else that I can't quite put my finger on that stops me raving about it, but overall this was surprisingly entertaining. 7.3/10

I'm not sure I'll watch this one again, as I found it so odd when I saw it before, even as someone who is fascinated by Andrew Dice Clay's stand up (The Day the Laughted Died is a genuinely brilliant anti-comedy album). The "Rock n' Roll Detective" character feels like some kind of 70s TV throwback, and there are so many weird quirks (doesn't he have a pet koala?) that I don't think any of it really hung together for me.

Glad you enjoyed Problem Child!

[Gulftastic]

Ford Fairlane definitely got a cinema release. At that time  when it was the Rugby League off season and before my best mate met the love of his life we used to drive to the Leeds Showcase multiplex every Sunday. We'd pay the lunchtime matinee price, watch a film, then nip into a second one for free.

I remember us both thinking Ford Fairlane was almost the worst film we saw during that two or three year period. It was narrowly beaten for the honour by Judge Reinhold vehicle 'Over Her Dead Body'.

[Memorex MP3]

House Party is a very charming hangout movie that struck gold by having a party scene where they seemingly just stuffed a house with great dancers

It then makes it impossible to recommend due to a needless crazily homophobic rap at the end

[notjosh]

Judge Reinhold vehicle 'Over Her Dead Body'.

Don't even want to know.

[Small Man Big Horse]

MY BLUE HEAVEN (1990)
dir. Herbert Ross
wrt. Nora Ephron
trmpt: Malcolm McNab

This is most famous now for being a sort of Bizarro World version of Goodfellas, coming out one month before. It's written by Nora Ephron, who was married to Nicholas Pileggi, author of the book on which Goodfellas is based and presumably the model for Joe Fox's Godfather obsession in You've Got Mail. According to Henry Hill (gangster cunt), it was in part based on phone conversations he had with her:

You lot probably love Goodfellas, like every other cunt I've ever met, but I've always thought it's a cunt movie for cunts made by a bloke who is probably not a cunt but seemingly can't stop making movies about them (apart from Hugo, which is delightful and his best film by about a million miles, don't @ me.) So all of the above holds zero interest for me, but other people seem to care so there you go.

Fuck, I had no idea that Ephron and Pileggi were married, or that Ephron had been in contact with Hill, that's a crazy old story. And on the Goodfellas front I loved it as a teenager, but haven't watched it since then, and as I agree with you completely on the Scorsese front would imagine I'd feel the same way now. And this gives me a chance to complain about the lack of Hugo's success again, as it's so frustrating it wasn't a hit, and that Scorsese didn't go off and make films which weren't about gangsters / awful men in general.

I'm not sure I'll watch this one again, as I found it so odd when I saw it before, even as someone who is fascinated by Andrew Dice Clay's stand up (The Day the Laughted Died is a genuinely brilliant anti-comedy album). The "Rock n' Roll Detective" character feels like some kind of 70s TV throwback, and there are so many weird quirks (doesn't he have a pet koala?) that I don't think any of it really hung together for me.

There is a pet Koala, yeah, and it's a really shitty puppet in one scene which is bleakly crude. You're not wrong that the whole film is a bizarre mess, parts of it just don't fit together (Robert Englund's kinky bad guy especially feels like he's wandered in from a different movie), though oddly I liked it more for being such a mishmash / car crash of ideas and styles.