By Richard Winters
My Rating: 3 out of 10
4-Word Review: Behind-the-scenes discord.
An eclectic group of actors put on a play that they take on tour. The play is a sort of door slamming British farce that is full of innuendos and misunderstandings and the film captures them during one particular scene of that play. It follows them as they rehearse that scene and then perform it live to an audience. It also shows the behind the scenes discord that develops between the cast and how this affects the performance of the scene, which culminates in a completely disastrous showing in Cleveland.
This should have been a really fun movie. It’s certainly an originally structured idea and it is slickly handled. It brings back the days of screwball comedy where things were funny just for the sake of being funny. Everything is contained and nothing is out of place or crude. In some ways it’s a refreshing change of pace.
The cast is certainly game and perfect for this type of comedy. Christopher Reeve and John Ritter come off best. Reeve seems to be playing his Clark Kent character only to a higher degree. Ritter does his Jack Tripper routine not only with the physical side, but also the nuance. His character tries very hard to be politically correct and it is amusing watching him never able to get to the point.
The film offers some light satire into the whole stage production process. Everything from the fragile temperaments of the actors to the high strung director is examined. It also takes some good shots at the plays themselves and how these stage comedies always seem to have such a high reliance on extreme coincidences.
There are some good laughs, but after a while it becomes a bit too much and exhausting to watch. The jokes and gags come so fast that if you blink you will miss some. There is also too much reliance on the frantic side of comedy, which eventually starts to lose its cuteness. The characters are placid and so are the situations. There is also the redundancy factor of having to see the same scene done over and over.
The end result is meticulously choreographed tripe and as silly as the play it seems to be mocking. It also has a glaring factual error. Michael Caine, the play’s director, talks about all the cities they have been too. He mentions Cairo, Missouri as one. There is a Cairo in Illinois but none in Missouri.
My Rating: 3 out of 10
Released: March 20, 1992
Runtime: 1Hour 41Minutes
Rated PG-13
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Studio: Touchstone Pictures
Available: VHS, DVD
Scopophilia 