By Richard Winters
My Rating: 5 out of 10
4-Word Review: Talent agent becomes beard.
Danny Rose (Woody Allen) is a hapless talent agent who represents clients who are down-and-out, but seeking a comeback. Lou (Nick Apollo Forte) is a singer who uses Danny as his agent. Since he has some potential and might even get hired by a big star, in this case Milton Berle who plans on tabbing him as his opening act, Danny will do anything to keep Lou happy especially since Danny’s other clients tend to drop him once they become famous, which Danny doesn’t want to happen again. In order to appease him Lou has Danny acting as a ‘beard’, or a person who pretends to being a boyfriend to someone he really isn’t. In this case it’s to Tina (Mia Farrow) a woman whose been dating a gangster. Danny acts as her boyfriend to draw attention away from Lou, but her ex-gangster lover becomes jealous and thinking Danny to be the real boyfriend sends out a hit on him forcing both he and Tina to go on-the-run.
While this film did well with the critics I felt it was pretty much a letdown. What annoyed me most was the washed-up, aging comedians sitting around a cafe table and essentially telling the story, which gets done in flashback. I felt these comedians, who say nothing that is funny, or even slightly amusing, served no real purpose except for maybe padding the runtime, which was short already, and the scenario could’ve easily played-out without constantly cutting-back to these guys to add in their useless side commentary. This also cements Allen’s transition from being hip and edgy. which he was considered as during the 70’s, to out-of-touch with day’s youth and young adults by the 80’s as no one in this movie appears to be under 40.
It’s confusing too what time period this is all supposed to be taking place in. Supposedly the cutaways to the comedians is present day though with it being shot in black-and-white it hardly seems like it, and then the scenes with Danny are apparently things that happened in the 60’s. This though gets completely botched not only because of the cars they drive, which are of an 80’s variety, but there’s also a scene where Lou and Danny are walking on a sidewalk and go past a theater marque advertising Halloween III, which was a film that was released in 1982.
On the plus side I enjoyed Mia’s performance of a hot-headed, highly oppionated Italian especially with the dark glasses and bouffant hair-do, which could’ve been done up even more. She’s known as being such a serious actress, who’s marvelous in drama, but to see her able to handle the comedy and even become the centerpiece is a real treat. Woody and her make for a quirky couple, she’s actually taller than him when they stand side-by-side, and she really gets in some good digs on him. Though with that said I actually wished that Nick had played the role of Danny as his amateurish acting made his doopy character funnier and the scenes between him and yappy Mia could’ve been a real riot.
There are a few laugh-out-loud moments, though it certainly takes it sweet time getting there. Watching Woody and Mia attempt to escape the killer by running through a field of tall grass I liked as too the scene where they are chased into a warehouse filled with parade floats and the hydrogen that escapes from them, due to the shooting bullets, causing their voices to become extremely high-pitched. The rest of the humor though relied heavily on Italian-American stereotypes that have been done hundreds of times before and isn’t original. I was also surprised that it has walk-on cameos by Howard Cossell and Milton Berle, who even appears in drag during the Thanksgiving Day parade, but are given no lines of dialogue.
My Rating: 5 out of 10
Released: January 27, 1984
Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes
Rated PG
Director: Woody Allen
Studio: Orion Pictures
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Freevee, Tubi, YouTube
Scopophilia 