Word: garishness
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Lenka Peterson (Henny) succeeds in seeming 83 years old, which, under the garish light of a hospital room, is a feat. She's a forceful character, who makes her son's childlike infatuation with her fairly credible. Henny falters where the script does. She's got too many lines and knows it, so she gropes for a way to enrich her persona. The result is a character who's too self-consciously spunky, reminiscent, at times, of Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies. And when it comes time for that last dramatic soliloquoy, her part collapses altogether...
Rather than pretend that this material makes any naturalistic sense, Director Mark Rydell (Cinderella Liberty) shrewdly goes for broke. The Rose has the same visual excess and garish romanticism as the oldtime Technicolor backstage sagas. When Rose gets into a yelling match with her manager (a somewhat forlorn Alan Bates) or plays in bed with her pickup of a lover (a frisky, sexy Frederic Forrest), the closeups are steamy and relentless. When Rose lands by helicopter at her nighttime stadium concerts, it looks like the arrival of the mother ship in Close Encounters (both films were shot by Vilmos Zsigmond...
...elaborate ruse to fool their child into thinking that their dead marriage is a happy one. Ross not only characterizes Jamie's father (Terry Kiser) as a desperately hip playboy, she must also give him a bachelor pad so overdone that even Hugh Hefner would find it garish. Jamie's mom (Roberta Maxwell), meanwhile, is required to go into a burlesque rage at the mere mention of her ex-husband's name. Ross shows far more respect for the kids, who are so truthfully drawn that they seem to have wandered in from another movie. Still, credible...
...WRAP UP the plot, the two in-laws fly in a private jet manned by two jabbering Chinese to a Caribbean banana republic, and the jokes become considerably more childish. Richard Libertini plays the pacifist dictator whose battalions chant verses by Millay and whose art collection is filled with garish nudes. He does keep the audience laughing, but it's all very strained-as if everyone involved in the movie had tired of it and decided to take the easy way out. The ending hits the same flat note, as Falk and Arkin are-surprise-saved, and Falk's integrity...
Frady, son of a Southern Baptist preacher and author of a shrewdly vivid biography of George Wallace, approaches Graham with a complicated and sympathetic understanding. He also lavishes upon Billy an extravagantly garish prose style, a hot-wired Southern lushness of phrase and fluorescence of effect that would be insufferable were it not so accurate, so funny and, sometimes, so moving...