Word: comic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...living off her talents. There are some brilliant moments in the film--Midler's return to the transvestite club she once haunted, Midler's gutsy rendition of "When a Man Loves a Woman"--but director Mark Rydell must be the most pessimistic man behind a camera. There is no comic relief, no reminder that, in the long run, good can prevail, no hint that justice is done. If you take away Rose's guts, you're left with an awfully familiar theme--only the good die young. So what else...
...precisely where the script is strong: situational comedy. The first act drags a bit, but both second and third build to those frenzied, crowded scenes into which Kaufman is always tossing one more character. Both Cantor and Sam Samuels as Wolfe, the family's agent, have a knack for comic timing, and Wilber drops off-hand insults like time-bombs. Jeffrey Horwitz and Mario Aieta, as the men in the actress's lives who are forever barred from understanding their calling, receive no help from the script, and achieve correspondingly little success...
Lawyers advise the class how to write a will, and each child does. A girl stipulates: "I leave my bed to my second cousin Millie." A boy's will: "My puppy to Tim. Fonz helmet to Tom." Out of who knows what urge one willmaker allots his comic books to his brother but specifies...
WHEN THE FILM refrains from digging up dead dirt on a dead woman and concentrates on creating the live persona of Rose, things improve. The entire sequence with Frederic Forrest as an AWOL Army sergeant is enchanting; Midler's gifts as both a comic and serious actress shine as she creates an original character rather than rehashing old rumors about Joplin...
...father, the Commendatore, and kills him. Then, while the Don busies himself mostly with trying to seduce the peasant girl Zerlina, Donna Anna joins forces with her fiancé Don Ottavio and another of the Don's conquests, Donna Elvira, to hound him through a series of comic entanglements, disguises and escapes. When a statue of the slain Commendatore comes to life and challenges the Don, he defiantly invites the statue to supper. Threatened with damnation, he remains unrepentant and true to his nature, thus taking on a perverse grandeur...