Word: midler
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...failure of Top Secret deflected the team from their path as ZAZ went on to direct Ruthless People, a film they did not write, and Abrahams went on to direct Big Business, starring Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler...
Last week began with the arraignment of Imelda Marcos, who left her Hawaiian retreat to plead not guilty to charges that she and her husband, the deposed Philippine President, embezzled $103 million from their nation's treasury. Mrs. Marcos could give Bette Midler tips on making an entrance. She swept into U.S. district court in nothing less bewitching than a floor-length turquoise gown, a silk-and-chiffon terno that is traditional Philippine wear. As she hoisted her presence up the courthouse steps, packs of demonstrators reared up to denounce her as the bloodsucker of the Philippine people. One woman...
...Jupiter Hollow, an Appalachian town whose furniture factory Moramax owns and plans to sell, the better to strip-mine the region. The two Roses (both played by Tomlin) are country girls at heart; they love down-home honesty, rubes named Roone and all you can eat. The two Sadies (Midler and Midler), true Manhattan ladies, swoon at the sight of stretch limos, Tiffany and anything in pants. The country Ratliffs come North to fight the city Sheltons, and all four stay at the Plaza Hotel. Doors slam and chaos reigns, beaux are vamped and revamped, ideals are compromised and identities...
...least at first. They want you to be seeing double before you've settled in your seat. Fanciers of '30s screwball comedy may chafe at this film's substitution of efficiency | for energy, of speed for style; they may yawn at an old mirror-image routine that Midler essays, which is lifted from Silent Comedian Max Linder and the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup. But Big Business was designed as a compact car, not a classic. Once Director Jim Abrahams (Airplane!) hot-wires the mechanism, the plot takes care of itself, and the movie pretty genially takes care of any audience...
...Moramax's corporate wimps with her voodoo snake whammy. Still, you may vainly search for signs of the quicksilver wit and emotional risk she radiates onstage. Someday Hollywood will harness her genius, in some movie with a different co-star. After all, who looks at anyone else when Bette Midler is around? It is a privilege merely to watch her walk her walks: the not-quite-ladylike mince, the executive sweep, the strumpet's strut. She lopes easily from City Sadie, the bitch goddess who spits out orders to her lab scientists ("Get tougher rats!"), to Country Sadie, struggling with...