Word: droll
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...Women's National Press Club gathered in Washington to hear the U.S. Senate's seven freshman members recite political japeries. The frosh were all droll, but the smash of the show was a sleeper: Virginia's deadpan Democrat William Spong Jr., 46, who told the girls about some upcoming legislation. Well, drawled Spong, one of his first acts will be to end the piracy of U.S. music by Hong Kong publishers who don't pay royalties. So he's going to consult Hawaii's Senator Fong and Louisiana's Senator Long, and then...
...exact ear for the boisterous and outrageous language that the Boston Irish use and his caricatures of prominent Bostonians, especially the one of a certain currently popular Lady Politician, "a great grotesque woman with a huge marshmallow face and a tiny bright red mouth," are subtle and droll...
Little Old Lady. Much of the increase is due to the droll cards the company calls "Hi Brows," which, along with other studio-type cards, now account for 11% of its business. Other cards are designed for the customer President Irving Stone describes as "that sweet little old lady who remembers everybody." Hi Brows are for younger people who want something a little spicier than sugar. Indeed, Hi Brows sometimes hang over the brink of bad taste. "For your birthday," reads one, "just a refreshing wish . . . may your cesspool never clog." For graduation, American Greetings has a suitable Hi Brow...
...thriller. Unfortunately, Penelope is not a thriller. The studio releases hopefully describe it as a comedy, and in a picture of this quality the point is hardly worth arguing. The script, based on Howard Fast's pseudonymous potboiler about a light-fingered socialite, soon degenerates into a droll call of ancient wheezes that add up to a 97-minute heh. The actors (Natalie Wood, Dick Shawn, Ian Bannen, Peter Falk, Lila Kedrova) try hard to laugh it up, but most of the time they look the way the audience feels: like geese stuffed with chestnuts...
...chins in gym suits and a matronly stripper dismantling her corsetry on an overhead swing. Also visible behind the potted palms and spiral staircases is Director Peter Glenville, impersonating Playwright Feydeau. Glenville as Feydeau wears a wise, conspiratorial expression, presumably to suggest that middle-class morality can be terribly droll. But Glenville as Glenville hasn't the faintest idea of how to get the fun on film...