Word: dom
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...premise that a handsome man in his early thirties would be panting to go to bed with an 84-year-old woman, the movie proceeds logically enough. Before the happy pair can crawl between the satin sheets, they encounter (in no particular order) Tony Curtis, Ringo Starr, George Hamilton, Dom DeLuise, George Raft, Alice Cooper, Walter Pidgeon, Mr. Universe, Mr. U.S.A., Mr. America, Mr. California, Mr. Pennsylvania, and a man (Ed Beheler) who looks so much like Jimmy Carter that even Miss Lillian might set him down for a bowl of grits...
...Belson (Smile, TV's Dick Van Dyke Show), this is especially depressing. Belson wastes energy on repetitive slapstick bits that show the hero's bungled suicide attempts; The End's second half bogs down describing an unfunny friendship between Sonny and a clownish schizo (a mugging Dom DeLuise) whom he meets at a nuthouse. The film's characters and intentions are blurred and trivialized. What should have been a scabrous black comedy in the manner of Carl Reiner's Where's Poppa? devolves into a pointless, centrifugal cartoon...
...Rodeo shop had sales of $ 15 million last year and attracts as many as 2,000 people a day. They buy "necessities" as varied as $89 loafers and $200,000 diamond-and-pearl necklaces, and they exercise their eccentricities. One man arrives regularly in a white Rolls-Royce, carrying Dom Pérignon in a paper bag, sits down to drink with the help and customers, then drives away, usually without buying anything. Another buys Gucci presents for friends from an attache case stuffed with hundred-dollar bills; he also likes to drink champagne out of new Gucci loafers, then wear...
THESE FLAWS, HOWEVER, are minor in comparison to the gross mistake of casting Dom DeLuise as Adolph Zitz, the head of Paramount's rival studio. DeLuise, whose only attributes are obesity, overacting and the ability to strangle on cue, wields his demeanor like a sledgehammer and leaves viewers so unsettled that it takes them a while to remember what the rest of the movie is about. Once he appears on the screen with his insipid lackeys and his hapless barber-valet, it is hard for the nicer elements of the plot to reassert themselves...
...addition to Wilder, the other principal stooges are Dom DeLuise and Carol Kane. Since they both copy the star's own hysterical acting style, they fade quickly into the chaotic background. Wilder's performance is just a broader version of the routine he invented a decade ago in The Producers. His one big scene with Richard Pryor in the otherwise feckless Silver Streak is funnier than all 90 minutes of his mugging here...