Word: flick
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Before long, the impeccably well-mannered and well-dressed young doctor had made his grisly mark. Whenever cattle cars filled with detainees rolled into the camp, Mengele was there to greet the new arrivals. With a nonchalant flick of his hand, he consigned some to labor duty, some to the gas chambers. Those who survived often ended up as human guinea pigs in the doctor's special lab, where he performed a variety of ghoulish experiments in genetics...
...name of Donald E. Westlake gets us all together to give us the story line. For openers, we ain't in the Mohonk Mountain House no more; we're in something called the Hotel Kuckkuckuhr, in Switzerland, and it's 1938. Then Westlake shows us this black-and-white flick that's more black than white, which is to say I'm talking poor quality, of some dumpity guy, a real lard bucket, being bothered at the dinner table. The guy's name is Kurt Krauss and he's a critic and a producer that everybody hates. We watch about...
...hesitation among male executives of Orion Pictures who had never heard of her. A year later she would have been too famous and too expensive for a nonsinging role in a low-budget comedy. Any film cast then would have been the usual rock-star exploitation flick, with songs, writhing dancers, guitarists with their shirts off and too much tricky camera work...
Rather than alternating between sexual allusions and sexual illusions in the style of the generic teen flick. Reiner uses the cross country trip scenario as a chance to wink, gently but snidely, at the void that is Middle American culture In smaller but still delightful doses. Reiner offers the same subtle satire that made This is Spinal Tap! the best comedy of last year...
...nice suburban couple with their laughing gas-like smiles who sing showtunes as they drive down the highway in their sky-blue station wagons? It sounds like stereotyping, as might befit a director first made famous as Archie Bunker's "Meathead" son-in-law, but this flick is simply too much fun to criticize the Styrofoam characters with any relish. Those who appear in the credits with titles like "Girl in Photo." "Frat Guy," "Pick-up Driver," or "Bus Station Bum" are not characters: they are nothing more than props for Reiner's comedic mind, no realer than...