Word: joking
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When Neil Simon was fresh from his days as a TV writer, he thought comedy was one-liners. As he matured, Simon learned that the most enjoyable laughs come from character and situation. Of Lost in Yonkers he boasted -- correctly -- that its funniest scene has not one joke. Paul Rudnick, 36, the most gifted gagsmith of his generation, has yet to learn that lesson. He excels in Hollywood (Sister Act, Addams Family Values), where narrative is usually written by committee. On the stage, his first love, he has not moved beyond pastiche...
Lloyd Bridges also stars as Max, Dove's uncle. He actually says things like "the Old country" and no joke, "Arrrrr!" Most people think that Lloyd Bridges can only do comedys about airplanes. Most people are right...
...three explosions do not a movie make. The only level on which this film succeeds is pure comedy. The story is preposterous, the acting is laughable, and the joke...
...problem is this: What happens after the initial cheering stops? Boasting only 7,000 men, a handful of armored personnel carriers and a few patrol boats, the Haitian military is, according to a Pentagon analyst, "a joke" that is more likely to surrender early and create a political problem than fight a guerrilla war. But after defeating the army -- which a Pentagon official estimates would be "finished up by dawn" -- the situation gets messy fast. Military force can be an effective tool for toppling regimes, but as a means of rebuilding societies, it is a blunt instrument...
...government could only muster contradictory signals and empty gestures in response to the invasion panic. Jonassaint's state of emergency was roundly dismissed as a national joke when the military failed even to declare a curfew. Derision turned to surprise when, in a city where nothing works, pothole-repair crews and street cleaners suddenly made an appearance along several main streets in Port-au-Prince -- presumably to demonstrate, however peripherally, that the government is capable of doing something...