Word: put-upon
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...mobsters here are plodding, put-upon businessmen, and their wives are as bored and possessive as if they lived in Stepford. They are refugees from New York City's orphan boroughs who have disguised themselves as middle-class Long Islanders. And they have brought their gruff camaraderie, their accents and their animosities with them. This is not Jay Gatsby's West Egg (he was a gangster too, but he dressed better); this is New Yawk transplanted, with a lawn and a sauna. For these tough guys, upward mobility carries a hefty price tag: the pretense of a solid marriage...
Under Howard Deutch's languid direction, Candy performs the slow burn of a put-upon Mr. Middle America, and Aykroyd perfects his impression (first exhibited in the 1981 film Neighbors) of Richard Nixon as a used-car salesman. It would be nice if these acute comics had achieved the intimate hostility of cousins who rasp on each other's nerves. But Hughes cannot be bothered here with surprise or subtlety, so his antagonists have the fatigued familiarity of sitcom characters toward the end of a long run. Next time, Hughes might consider a longer gestation period for his script...
...temporarily" until the condo deal was closed. When Lucy and Pablo Sanchez returned home from vacation last Christmas, they found their small living room crammed with his boxes and a second welcome mat next to their own on the front porch. Lucy Sanchez immediately did what any loving but put-upon parent would do: "I had a migraine," she says...
...simple, yet intriguing plot line is richly embellished with everything from irate terrorists to a put-upon canine named Einstein. As usual, the Spielberg humor is fast-paced and upbeat, whirling us into the crazy fantasy world with little effort and certainly no resistance...
...most put-upon worker of all at the anniversary bash may be the U.N.'s chief of protocol, Aly Teymour. Most of his time is spent not hobnobbing at elegant dinners but stuck in traffic on the way to Kennedy Airport to welcome visiting statesmen who jet in at all hours of the day and night. Last week the tall, cultivated Egyptian greeted 120 foreign ministers, but that was merely a warm-up. Still to come are 92 heads of state. Or is it 93? The total changes daily...