Word: arkins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...scientists finally persuade Simon, played flawlessly by the unflappable Alan Arkin, that he's an extraterrestrial who has come to save the world. But they turn him into a monster, whose ego expands exponentially, and who eventually acquires his own television station--Simon, the fourth network--commanding people to terminate their fondness for disco, Muzak in elevators, and other socially irritating habits...
Nonetheless, flashes of brilliance coupled with wonderful individual performances set Simon apart from run-of-the-mill, hack comedies. Arkin is totally insane in this movie, and well he should be. His unabashed portrayal of this bizarre "visitor from the stars" captures plenty of subtlety. His funniest scene in the movie--when he extricates himself from a sensory deprivation tank he's been kept in for almost 200 years--is so good you want to rerun it many times so it'll settle in your memory. His brain loses 500 million years of evolution in the process...
Brickman is fortunate to have the talented Arkin and his cohorts in this movie. Austin Pendleton as the playful, Machiavellian Becker, and Fred Gwynne '51 as an oafish Pentagon general are particularly effective in their roles, and Madeleine Kahn, though not blessed with a very demanding part, provides some of the funnier moments at the Center. They are all able to keep their jokes alive, and Arkin's evolution from minuscule plankton to neurotic 20th-century man should be recorded as one of the funnier scenes in contemporary movie-making. But one scene doesn't make a whole movie...
This is particularly so once Arkin's character gains access to the media and starts laying down the law to a civilization he believes decadent. His rhetoric is garbled biblical, but his program is eminently practical. He recommends a constitutional amendment banning Muzak and fines for people who talk about needing their own space. He also thinks it would be nice if politicians, when pontificating on TV, were forced to wear party hats so that viewers could keep their remarks in perspective. The message is simple: Ye shall know a civilization by its common customs, and if these...
...cannot help admiring Brickman's comic discipline, his refusal to make heavyhanded attacks. He is a car om-shot artist, deft and softspoken, and an actor's director as well. Arkin comes closer than ever before to breaking through the reserve that sometimes straitjackets his unquestionable comic technique. Judy Graubart is winning as his realistic girlfriend. The guys at the lab- Austin Pendleton, William Finley, Wallace Shawn, Max Wright and Jayant-manage to satirize every imaginable form of intellectual hubris. Their cause is a worthy one, and so is their director's debut...