Word: arkins
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Enter Laughing. Carl Reiner's autobiographical novel about a stage-struck Jewish boy's first taste of ham was one of the delights of Broadway in 1963, thanks to Joseph Stein's knowing dramatization and to a winning performance by Alan Arkin as the fumbling hero. Now Reiner has directed a film version that sticks closely to the words of the play but destroys much of its sly insight into the dawning of awareness in darkest Bronx...
...Marie, MacLaine and her lover (Alan Arkin) scrawl "merde" on the walls of a flophouse hotel, dress up as bride and groom, and prepare to end their hopeless affair in a double suicide. She suggests pills, but Arkin refuses to play her end game. "I never took a pill in my life," he declares. "I always use suppositories." When she balks at death by suppository, he produces a pistol. She objects, they argue, and in tears she excuses herself to go to the w.c. Suddenly disillusioned with death-and with Marie-Arkin prepares to run for his life...
...MacLaine's. Despite heavy help from the makeup and wardrobe departments, she seldom departs from her customary screen self, and all seven women suffer from an unflatter ing family resemblance. Most of the blame, however, must fall on De Sica, who has wasted such talented actors as Arkin, Sellers, Michael Caine, Philippe Noiret and Vittorio Gassman in a ponderously directed, flaccid work. Better than anyone else, he should know that a tour de farce is like a striptease: there is no point in the performance if the material does not come off in style...
...Henry Livings, is incongruous, unpredictable and farcical. So is Dustin Hoffman's performance as a British "nit." So is Alan Arkin's direction. So is life...
...directorial debut, Actor Alan Arkin (Luv, The Russians Are Coming) snake-dances the cast through this gorgeous farce and produces sight gags to match the early silent two-reelers. The players are perfect, and Dustin Hoffman is pluperfect. Apart from turning Harold Pinter upside down and dispelling all the potential menace in laughter, Playwright Livings achieves one added distinction: he has done an anatomy of modern mass man. As the stereotype has it, this is the man who will be reduced to electronic button pushing and social homogeneity, tutored to spend his leisure time with Shakespeare and symphonies. Brose shows...