Word: arkins
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...recalls the joyous anarchy of the Road pictures; at its worst, it looks like overexposed outtakes from Gilligan's Island. Luckily, the weak sections never run on too long. Every time The In-Laws starts to stumble into oblivion, Peter Falk cocks his head, stares the manic Alan Arkin in the eye, and launches into an earnest if bizarre discourse about the travails of being a CIA agent. "The trick [of my job] is not to get killed," confides Falk, sotto voce. "That's the key to the benefit program...
...Russians are Coming. This film will no longer seem as cathartically satirical as it did when first released in the mid-sixties, when an atmosphere of Cold-War hysteria still hung low, if somewhat less thick than in the 50's, over most of middle-America. But Alan Arkin's comic franticness in this tale about a small New England coastal village thrown into a frenzy when a Russian ship docks in its harbor and the Reds start mixing with the town-folk should still be good for some belly-laughs...
...Devereaux and Freud's probing into the secret of Holme's personality to determine the subconscious source of his addiction give us mystery on top of mystery. It is a powerful proposition for a film. Add to it a star-studded cast that includes Laurence Olivier, Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Arkin, Nicol Williamson and Joel Grey, to name a few, and how can you lose...
Some fine performances compensate for the tedium of The Seven Percent Solution. Laurence Olivier is wonderful in his brief appearance as Moriarty. In the very pettiness of his personality there are the seeds for the drug-crazed Holmes's perception of him as a titanic power of evil. Alan Arkin portrays a surprisingly endearing and benign Sigmund Freud with none of the brooding, neurotic quality one might expect. Arkin's Freud is all kindliness and sanity. Vanessa Redgrave is an appropriately haunting and romantic Lola Devereaux and Nicol Williamson makes a fine Sherlock Holmes, the civilized British gentleman with...
...deductions self-evident. Ross is usually adept with actors too, but in this case, Williamson's Holmes is too wired, even for someone giving up coke, and Duvall's Watson resembles a vaudeville Englishman, all jowls and bluster. This excess is echoed in the accents of Arkin, Vanessa Redgrave (who plays the abducted actress) and Georgia Brown (Frau Freud), who sound as if they are revving up to address a bund rally. Joel Grey also appears, but so briefly that he accents nothing. The ace in this poorly shuffled deck is, no surprise, Olivier. He has not often...