Word: freude
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...affections either. He is master of the splendidly abrupt transition: "In December 1971 I threw out all my city shirts, hoarded since 1926." Or: "Today Graham ate a whole banana." Or, with drastic irony: "Someone is sure to mention sex." Perhaps predictably Hough has it in for Sigmund Freud because he feels that the good doctor unwittingly damaged the possibilities of romance and encouraged the adoption of "the obscene, as if by way of penitence, as the natural way of speech...
...appears quite prominently-gamely played by Nicol Williamson-but the spirit of the master sleuth is nowhere to be found. Instead of pursuing his customary invigorating adventures, Holmes becomes enmeshed in a slack, sorry matter involving anti-Semites, a pasha, an abducted actress, a train race and Dr. Sigmund Freud...
...dosage is the pun in the title - and railing crazily against his nemesis, Professor Moriarty (Laurence Olivier). Dr. Watson (Robert Duvall) tricks his friend into following Moriarty's trail to Vienna. There they find not the archvillain, but the only man who can possibly save Holmes: Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin). All this uses up time that might have been better spent drumming up suspense or demonstrating some elementary deduction. When Holmes finally beats his habit and flies off on a new adventure, the entire case is beyond hope...
...this case, Williamson's Holmes is too wired, even for someone giving up coke, and Duvall's Watson resembles a vaudeville Englishman, all jowls and bluster. This excess is echoed in the accents of Arkin, Vanessa Redgrave (who plays the abducted actress) and Georgia Brown (Frau Freud), who sound as if they are revving up to address a bund rally. Joel Grey also appears, but so briefly that he accents nothing. The ace in this poorly shuffled deck is, no surprise, Olivier. He has not often done comedy on screen, but his extravagantly funny Moriarty is a creation...
Perhaps both candidates sense that the post-Watergate times do not cry out for levity. Yet Carter and Ford are history-minded men, keenly aware that comedy is as much a part of the political process as the polling booth. And if, as Freud observed, laughter is a release from tension, campaign '76 may provide more merriment than a thousand less ambitious situation comedies. "Nobody feels he has any control, and the only way people participate in governments is by laughing at the candidates," theorizes Hal Goodman, one-half of Johnny Carson's writing team. Adds Larry Klein...