Word: midler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...seasoned TIME interviewer of celebrities as diverse as Meryl Streep, Bette Midler and Robert Redford, Dutka remarked on the visible solidity of the Newmans' relationship. Says she: "Humor is evidently its mainstay. Her dry, self-deprecating wit complements his broader, almost raunchy jokes. There's an obvious bond of respect and affection between them...
...crime committed by seasoned character actors who find themselves cast in movies crafted to set off the talents of stars who may be big shots in some other medium, but don't know the tricks of the movie trade. In this instance, the victim is Bette Midler, getting by as usual on brass, bounce and breastworks. The perpetrator is Rip Torn, a snake-eyed sneak who has been lifting the hubcaps off other people's scenes for years, but here moves up to capital crime. He may be the last actor left who can get a laugh...
...mean streak is as big as all outdoors, and his joy and canniness in exhibiting it reduce Midler, who is not exactly a recessive performer, to a quivering mass of ingratiation. If she and Ken Wahl, who plays her lover, had embraced Torn's wigged-out wickedness of spirit, they might have helped turn the film into the black comedy it sometimes seems to want to become. Still, the script keeps waffling off into farce, romance and just plain improbability; anything spineless to please. And the often estimable Don Siegel brings little conviction, comic or otherwise, to the picture...
...help break the bad luck streak Howard is inflicting on him, Willy enlists the help of Howard's girl, Benita (Bette Midler). Together, they plot against Howard. Willy because he will lose his job it Howard wins big one more time, and Benita because she's tired of Howard's drunken abuse and of life in they aluminum trailer outside Reno...
Harnessed to what is not a terribly fresh scenario to begin with, the preposterous premise of the "jinx" certainly can't pull a reasonably adult audience through a full-length feature film. Unfortunately, the redoubtable presence of Bette Midler can't either. She doesn't get a chance to act seriously, as she did in The Rose; for can she turn the whole thing into a high-camp parody, as in her wonderful stage shows. The material is simply too bland to get hold of, Even Midler's trademarks, the peroxide hair and fluorescent clothes, don't glitter as they...