Word: caan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Cinderella Liberty, playing this weekend at the Harvard Square Theatre, is a weakkneed romantical sketch about a sailor who falls in love in Seattle. Both the movie and its star, professional heartthrob James Caan, have all the depth and charm of a puddle. The only reason for going to see such a harmless piece of pudding is that its co-feature, The Heartbreak Kid, is passably good entertainment. This Elaine May-directed ditty takes a funny but not-too-tender look at a poor schmuck who falls in love, after a fashion, with a shallow American beauty, played to perfection...
...tries very hard to turn behavior like child desertion into the stuff of melancholy whimsy. All during this gruesome exercise there are some sharp supporting performances, notably by Allyn Ann McLerie as a snippy social worker and Allan Arbus and David Proval as a couple of Navymen. James Caan and Kirk Calloway, as the sailor and the kid, are very good too - so much better than the material, in fact, that you almost wonder why they bothered...
...recognize, then you are flying." She will have a chance to "fly" again. Following the Revson contract, she immediately got two movie offers. She has already accepted-and begun shooting-one of them: Paramount's The Gambler, in which she is directed by Karel Reisz. James Caan costars...
There is a fairly promising plot notion here, a little like one of Thomas Pynchon's wonderland allegories. A motley but not unlikable crew of misfits chases around rural California in quest of a greenback grail: $312,000 in cash embezzled from a talent agency years earlier. James Caan, Sally Kellerman, Peter Boyle and Louise Lasser barrel over the back roads towing an Airstream Land Yacht, pursued by two absurdly sinister motor homes painted deadly black and piloted by unseen, relentless drivers...
...Director Zieff does not make the fantasy of the script quite abstract enough, nor his odd, self-consciously cute characters quite believable enough. Whimsy and reality, neither fully realized, cancel each other out. Caan, a perennially baffled ex-con, basically plays straight man to Boyle as a bunko artist-bandleader and Lasser as the band leader's addled spouse, both of whom are amiably funny throughout. Keller man, a souped-up Bonnie Parker, pushes much too hard, perhaps in reaction to ZiefFs almost laboriously studied direction, which favors lingering takes and long pauses...