Word: comic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Pajaczkowski, an otherwise competent actor, is badly miscast as Faustus. Visually wrong for the part--Faustus is a mature scholar, not a brawny youth--Pajaczkowski plays the doctor as a brash, young man who struts around the stage with a sustained smirk. While this approach works adequately in the comic sequences, Pajaczkowski lacks the dramatic range necessary to convey the full gamut of Faustus' tormented self-questioning. In addition, he experiences no minor difficulty reciting Marlowe's verse, placing his emphases seemingly at random--as though he knew some accents were needed, but neither he nor Morphos could figure...
...that denouement, LaZebnik has contrived a few good songs and some priceless comic sequences. Unfortunately, though, his creative abandon is undisciplined by a critical eye; and, as a result, the wheat of LeZebnik's on-the-mark parodies remains mixed with the chaff of puns and punch lines that fall pitifully flat...
While Doug Hughes, essentially repeating the straight role he played in Mintz, sings with a lovely tenor, the rest of the cast demonstrate convincingly that they were chosen on the basis of their comic rather than musical talents. Exhibiting a superb sense of timing, Debra Smigel delivers the best performance of the night as Dr. Olson, the pompous social scientist who is helpless without her Ph.D. Jackie Osherow has some fine moments as the fruit-crazed Goneril, and Sarah McCluskey as Adeline pronounces some less than stellar lines with a cute Marilyn Monroe pout...
...school janitor is a rapist), a multiprejudiced xenophobe, a cruelly playful child and, finally, a vulnerable woman. Keaton can expose all these creatures in a single whirling moment. She cannot save the show, but she has definitely announced her ability to stand independent of Allen as a delightful comic force to be reckoned with...
...films and other light, sophisticated romances, some of which starred Lombard herself. These qualities, once so readily found in American movies, have now vanished. A cloddish script slams at us single-entendre jokes about sex. Doltish direction hammers them home with the sweaty desperation of a bad nightclub comic whose act is dying. The stars were discovered on television. James Brolin, who plays the young doctor on Marcus Welby, gives a congealed imitation of Gable, not an interpretation. Jill Clayburgh, who was spotted on Hustling, a made-for-television movie, is driven into a frenzied impersonation not of Lom bard...