Word: oafishly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...them as human Muppets. Dynel Andy and soft, squeezable Mr. Carlson tried to keep their charges in order. But Venus Flytrap and Johnny Fever, the disc jockeys, were too weird, and Les Nessman too straight, and Bailey too nice-a little like you, Mary-and Herb Tarlek too wonderfully oafish to realize he'd never make the big score. And the lovely Jennifer...
...rationalize the action of teen offenders for an audience of their peers. They Live by Night (1949), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), even Bonnie and Clyde (1967) were updated romantic tragedies-Romeo and Juliet in comic-book form. Moral judgments abounded: parents were drips, teachers pedantic fools, the police oafish brutes. It was you and me against the whole stinking world...
Steve Martin has a face straight out of a 1930s B movie: smooth, smiling, with regular features and a subtly oafish flair to thejawline. Jessica Harper is frail, frazzled, wide-eyed and sad-mouthed in the '30s tradition of soiled ingenues. Bernadette Peters looks like the offspring of a Kewpie Doll and a Munchkin. Christopher Walken's face is a gigolo's death mask: the character lines have been ironed out, leaving only the dry-ice eyes and the knowing pout. As icons, these four performers would seem perfect for the bittersweet revisionism of this musical drama...
...ripoff, and a pallid one at that. It proceeds at a pace that must seem stately to tots reared on TV cartoons and the current batch of Saturday matinee-type features. It rarely ascends into exhilaration or slumps into camp. The direction of some actors is pedestrian, if not oafish. But as a lavish vehicle for the talents of Effects Wizard Ray Harryhausen, Clash offers delights to the eye and spirit of every moviegoing adult who has wanted to revisit the dreams of his youth...
...easy enough to say that the growing sophistication about women's role in society doomed Angels to a fate it richly deserved. More basic is the fact that no TV show can run indefinitely. After more than 100 weekly variations on the same small idea, even the most oafish viewer manages to lunge toward the knobs and turn to something else. Anything...