Word: parador
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...might expect Moon Over Parador to be a cross between Down and Out in Beverly Hills and Kiss of the Spider Woman. Parador director Paul Mazursky and star Richard Dreyfuss worked together in Beverly Hills, while Parador's other stars, Raul Julia and Sonia Braga, appeared together in Spider Woman. Also, Parador, like Beverly Hills, means to be a comedy of social and cultural clashes, while using the political instability of a Latin American dictatorship as a backdrop, like Spider Woman...
...Parador operates on the no longer fanciful premise that an actor can impersonate a president for a long time, and that however much a buffoon he is, as long as he has charisma, the people will suffer him gladly. When the dictator of Parador dies, his right-hand man (Julia) forces Jack Noah (Dreyfuss), an American movie actor shooting on location in Parador, to assume the role of the dictator to prevent the citizens from finding...
There are other apparent influences, notably Woody Allen's Bananas and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel The Autumn of the Patriarch. But actually, Parador is not nearly as sophisticated as all this borrowing would suggest. It is simply a Hollywood comedy, albeit a rather clever and funny one. And that is sufficient...
...idea of an actor hoodwinking an entire country is not supposed to invite more than a superficial parallel with the Reagan administration, any more than Parador is supposed to resemble a real Latin American country. Parador is an American tourist's fantasyland, where everyone speaks English, where drinks are large, cheap and potent and where the annual Mardi Gras-like carnival is headlined by Sammy Davis...
...running gags in the film is that Parador is also a haven for Nazis waiting for their statutes of limitations to run out. The country is really run by the shadowy "14 Families"--German expatriates all. Julia's character is named Roberto Straussmann and is made to look Aryan via an eerie blond dye job. Parador's national anthem is to the tune of "O Tannenbaum" and is often accompanied by "Deutschland Uber Alles...