Word: comical
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...conductor-buddy who is currently between marriages. Emilia drowns her sorrows in a sleazy Manhattan bar one afternoon before a matinee, affecting a Russian accent while two good ol' boys from out of town try to pick her up. Her inebriation leads directly into an all-too-contrived comic device wherein Browne totters about the stage during the performance while mentor Bancroft winces in the wings...
...Poppa?, for example, was pervaded by a manic hysteria, and peopled by feverish buffoons whose monomaniacal intensities constantly collided, resulting in sprawling calamities that were often exhaustingly funny. George Segal's wild-eyed sexual/homicidal obsessions (frustrated at every turn by his incessantly doddering mother, Ruth Gordon) produced scenes of comic genius, and in a lesser film, like The Comic, such moments successfully diverted attention from Reiner's maudlin tendencies in his quieter scenes. But in Oh God! the maudlin preponderates; Reiner chooses, for reasons of his own, to be "laid back," ignoring his real comic strengths...
...masterpiece in parody. Wilder, with his eyes bulging from his head in a passionate glare, impersonates a Valentinoesque Spanish dancer clinging to a sultry female partner. The couple's exaggerated motions, sexy facial expressions, and intensely serious gestures are indeed funny. The scene shows Wilder in his best comic form, and in that brief moment, the movie almost lives up to the expectations created by its title. But the remainder of the film never fulfills its promise. This sequence is, for both Wilder and the audience, merely a dream. As Wilder snaps out of his fantasy and back...
...wrapped up in their own films, does not realize when he carries a good thing too far. For example, he hardly passes up an opportunity to clown, and as a result, he often comes off as a buffoon. Most of the puns and cheap sight gags are of dubious comic value, and the fragile thread of humor which supports them eventually breaks when it is stretched to a ridiculous length. In one scene, the train Wilder is on jolts, and Wilder's sleeping wife is thrown to the seat opposite her and a male passenger takes her place. Wilder...
...three lads were, of course, one and the same. If it is still not clear exactly why Brian O'Nolan had the impulse and gall to divide himself into three parts, something else unquestionably is: the unholy trinity of Brian/Flann/Myles added up to one of the most gifted comic writers of this century...