Word: robin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Robin M. Wasserman '00 said she was pleased with the variety of opinion on the panel...
...Alarmist starts as a modified Robin Hood where "the den" is a circa 1954 sushi restaurant, and the merry men have been compressed into several burglar alarm salespeople bent on income redistribution. Anyone familiar with Los Angeles will realize the timeliness of their "rob the rich" scam in which Heinrich Grigoris (Greg Tucci) boosts the sales of his alarms by staging robberies in the neighborhoods of potential clients. The twist in Grigoris' scheme is Tommy, the new salesman played with adorable, bumbling style by David Arquette. A natural at the hook, the Tommy's moral sensibilities are deeply troubled...
...obliterated by the new murder mystery plot that takes over in the second half. Whatever credibility the script had up to that point is undermined by the oddity of the shift, making the movie a Quentin Tarantino imitation gone awry; the macabre violence and odd moralistic overtones undercut Grigoris' Robin Hood resonance. After a dramatic moral battle in which Tommy and Griorgis are at each other's throats in a good 10 minutes of suspense, the moment of moralizing in cut in favor of Kentucky Fried Chicken, where they end up discussing murder over a 12-piece chicken bucket...
Most endearing in spite of his sleazy role is Stanley Tucci. Though the ending could read as a reproach to Grigoris, he ends up on top, reigned in if not transformed. Like Robin Hood, he has the miraculous ability to bend morality and its most loyal adherents without making either immoral. By the end, one is convinced of the justice of his scheme since even with his cheating, there remians genuine goodness in him. It is hard to sort out what was what and who was right, but in the end they're all endearing. If robbing the rich puts...
...also fair to say that Benigni--whose self-love, if not his comic skills, could charitably be described as Chaplinesque, or perhaps more accurately as Robin Williamsish--devotes much of his film to peacetime passages overestablishing Guido's childlike yet shrewd, cheeky yet romantic character as a wise innocent, an idealized Everyman. His pursuit of his principessa, who is engaged to a local Fascist leader (and is sweetly played by Benigni's wife Nicoletta Braschi), and his casually farcical assaults on decorum and authority are, if you have a taste for simpleton comedy, inoffensive...