Word: friends
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Maxi turns for aid to a worldly real estate developer named Donald Trump, played by Donald Trump. The megamogul had a small, key speaking part in a scene that was filmed last week in -- where else? -- his own Trump Tower. Sighed Bertinelli: "He's so handsome." Trump, an old friend of Krantz's, was her choice for the part, and she too was pleased: "He got the role letter perfect." Trump's accordion-pleated glass building on Fifth Avenue, the locale of the fictional Maxi's apartment, also had excellent lines...
This tiny terror with the big raucous talent has earned his stardom, and he is savoring it. "You can't do the 'poor guy' number with Danny," says his friend, Writer-Director James L. Brooks. "Instead of getting mad at the hurt he's experienced -- which takes the fun out of success when it comes -- Danny decided instead that it's a gas things have worked out so well." It was Brooks who helped cast DeVito as Louie DePalma, the pernicious troll of the Sunshine Cab Co. on TV's Taxi (1978-83). Expectorating slurs, dancing...
George (Hoskins), recently released from jail where he was taking the rap for his boss, takes a job as a driver for Simone, a "tall, thin, black tart," (Cathy Tyson) who drags him into her personal tragedy, a desperate search for her friend Cathy, a 15-year-old prostitute and heroin addict...
...order to show us the other, niceguy side of Hoskins' character, we meet his daughter who grows to love him through a series of secret meetings, and his best friend, a jovial mechanic with eccentric marketing ideas and a penchant for stories of the underworld. George tells his friend stories of his own life, pretending that he has invented them. These relationships are completely gratuitous to the film's plotline, and heighten your sneaky feeling that Mona Lisa is little more than a star-vehicle for Hoskins...
During the movie, you grow to view George as a tragic figure, doomed never to succeed and always to suffer. But at the end, he walks away from what should be breaking his heart, and finds happiness under a greasy truck, side by side with his friend the fat mechanic. He's too adaptable, too accepting of his fate to live up to the Lear-esque expectations he creates. But expectations aside, Hoskins' performance is so human, so natural, so believable, that it makes this otherwise unspectacular film very much worth seeing...