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Outrageous! Only Woody Allen at his best could outdo some of the one-liners in Richard Benner's brilliant comedy about a female impersonator's rise to stardom and the whacked-out woman behind his success. Craig Russell's unabashedly gay hairdresser has graced us with a character we will not soon forget, completely stealing the show in the movie's plot and the movie itself. His series of famed singers and actresses belting out "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" will bring down any house, so carefully honed are his Channings and Ellas. Co-star Hollis McLaren...
...Richard Benner's Outrageous! does have a way of standing out from this year's usual film fare, but the protagonists' quirky personalities are only part of the story. Odd-couple films are nothing new to American audiences, and--if one can hazard any generalizations about such movies--they tend to have a built-in pitfall. Few directors can resist the temptation to dwell on the most obvious differences between the two principals and milk every embarassed chuckle and nervous giggle out of the gag. This is acceptable for the first 15 minutes or so, but the jokes wear mercilessly...
Outrageous! is, to a larger extent than most of today's movies, an actor's film. No question that Craig Russell owes a great deal to the razor-sharp script; his hairdressing, female-impersonating Robin Turner would be little more than a walking parody without Benner's quick-fire comebacks and one-liners. But an actor can only be judged on what he does with the raw material given him, and Russell never stumbles. He may share the top billing with Hollis McLaren's Crazy Liza, but there's little doubt whose film Outrageous...
Directed and Written by Richard Benner...
Academic freedom means that an individual can hold both an academic position and heterodox political opinions. On Friday, the only ones "hypocritically perverting" that "worthwhile ideal" were the editors of the Harvard Crimson. --Steven A. Benner...