Word: mensching
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...CENTER IS Gere's version of a schmuck making the transition to a mensch Unlike most of his previous performances, and especially his role in the laughable American Gigolo, Gere's Mayo has definition and direction. First, he seeks the pride the could never have achieved living above a cat house with his degenerate father. Second he learns about the price of integrity, avoiding false emotionalism in his early relationship with Paula. Third, he discovers that he can combine these with true friendship and generosity. In a subplot that could have become hokey, but somehow doesn't Mayo provides...
Another key aspect of mensch-hood is a certain degree of ambition: it's not enough merely to be a good guy. This is where An Officer and a Gentleman raises some legitimate ambiguities about the pursuit of military glory. Unfortunately, the film's creators do not take the time to explore them thoroughly...
...last two films, Continental Divide and Neighbors, Belushi played ordinary guys beset and attracted by extraordinary eccentrics. He might have been announcing that Animal John was also a mensch, but it is more likely he was simply expanding his range toward more traditional character parts. After a few years of shooting stardom, Belushi was inching to ward mid-life without another climax immediately in view. Now it has found him. In his early days with Lemmings, he had mocked celebrity burnout with the All-Star Dead Band - Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin. Less than a decade later...
...POOR MENSCH has been analyzed to death. His children by his first analyst, Dr. Chomsky, are now attending college. To cover expenses he has sold his table at Elaine's and moved into a kibbutz on 94th St. where the sabras have taken to wearing thick glasses and tweed sports jackets. He has confused life with his underwear, sex with lust, and death with a bag lady waving a machete at the fountain in Central Park...
...affair of Lady Amherst and Mensch holds the reader's chief interest and sympathy because it's the most coherent and human part of Letters; the other characters dance a contorted jig about it, A. B. Cook III and his descendant A. B. Cook VI send their unborn children endless genealogical accounts of the family's intrigues, centering around the War of 1812. Jerome Bonaparte Bray, part dictator, part human fly, part servant of a computer, plots a Second American Revolution. Todd Andrews--still alive, despite The Floating Opera's denouement--writes to his dead father contemplating a second suicide...