Word: joes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This delightfully bizarre comedy about life death and love opens as the central character, Joe Pendleton (Beatty), a star quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams, looks as though he is about to suffer a tragic death in a tunnel collision between his bicycle and a truck. A novice heavenly escort, (played by Buck Henry) removes Joe's soul from his body just before the smash-up in order to spare Joe the pain. Of course, the escort does not realize that Joe, being an excellent athlete with quick reflexes, would have avoided the crash and lived for another 50 years...
...Joe Farnsworth finds himself quite ill at ease in his new surroundings. He can't get used to the pretensions assumed by the late Farnsworth and forgoes formality as he athietically dashes about the mansion delivering brisk "hiyas" and "how-ya-doin's" to a staff of bewildered servants. Especially amusing is the scene in which Joe exhorts his board of directors to act like a winning football team and give in to consumer demands, forsaking short-term profits for an ultimate "victory...
...TRICKY ASPECT of the film is that Joe appears to the audience and his heavenly guardians as his former self, but as Farnsworth (whom we never actually see) to ever body else. This gimmick naturally provides several humorous encounters. The best of these is the scene in which Joe tries to convince his old coach that he is really Pendleton and not Farnsworth, and to let him play in the Super Bowl...
...romance between Joe and an ecologically activist English schoolteacher (Christie) may be the most touching part of the film. Initially a fervent enemy of the ruthlessly capitalist Farnsworth, the girl soon sees the genuine warmth and goodness of Joe beneath the Farnsworth exterior, and, of course, they fall in love...
...promise of his career as seen in his earlier, more substantial roles, in films like Splendour in the Grass, Bonnie and Clyde, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Parallax View appears undeveloped in his more recent roles as George, the heartily-sexed hairdresser in Shampoo and as Joe Pendleton in this film...