Word: knockabout
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...movie works best when it labors least, when it allows its stars to sing their comic arias a cappella. Finally one wonders if it would not have been more fun to skip all the labored knockabout and let the talented pair join forces for a simple concert film...
...strengths and weaknesses, and those of the wide world too. She got her first training as a dancer (she won a scholarship in dance at the University of Michigan, but she stayed only 1 1/2 years). She became a fairly good rock drummer and guitarist during her knockabout years as a musician in New York City, then turned to rock singing because she realized she wasn't going anywhere in the dance world. She says that she might do another rock tour, if her manager Freddy DeMann "puts a gun to my head," but clearly it is almost time...
...logically, and without loss of the audience's sympathy, as a bigamist brought farcically to his knees when both his wives (Amy Irving and Ann Reinking) go into labor simultaneously and are assigned adjacent hospital rooms. As he nearly always does, Director Blake Edwards delivers the low, knockabout goods, and Moore is funny as he tries to attend both ladies and still keep his secret from them. But that secret is a nasty one, and all his good nature cannot wash it away. Nor can it allay the suspicion that his character, an otherwise sensible TV newsman, would never...
...Phil Donahue, a gregarious veteran of morning TV talk shows, was cautioned by Walter Mondale not to wag his finger at him, while the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who knows a thing about crowd playing too, advised the bullying Donahue to slow down his act. This was more of a knockabout debate than the League of Women Voters' solemn civic lessons. Never mind that it was more demeaning, it was better television, and the candidates do seek attention...
...cheerfully as a Jackson Pollock canvas. The only ornament is a poster of the slab boys' hero, the rebel without a cause, James Dean. Standing beneath it, a young man studiously paints a watch onto his wrist. He soon makes plain what the audience guesses: in this knockabout environment, even a watch is an unattainable badge of advancement...