Word: script
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...movie is about a beautiful, clever woman who rises from the ashes of postwar Germany to prosperity in business. Maria's whole life is a series of opportunistic and mercenary schemes; as the script puts it, she even needs "a contract to enjoy life." En route to the top, she uses sex and love as bargaining chips to manipulate her husband, family and employers. Inevitably, she pays the price of total dehumanization...
...best thing about Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson's choppy, overstated and confusing script is its interplay of satire and serious drama. They balance the two perfectly, switching, for instance, from a frenzied scuffle between courtroom guards and one of Kirkland's clients, to a bitter confrontation in the courthouse hall with a disdainful and cruel judge...
...hugely talented actor who can trigger hysteria with any of a dozen subtle expressions or inflections. Predictably, he does not seem all that happy with his role in this show--he ends up like Olivier in any of his recent roles, desperately mugging and overacting to compensate for the script--and maybe a little resentful, a little angry with himself for getting involved in all this. Actually, it's a lot like watching Olivier host Saturday Night Live. Worse, Borowitz and his court set to cutting scenes for length (still leaving a two hour leviathan, without intermission) they...
...course, Time After Time milks to the utmost Wells' reaction to the marvels of modern technology--planes, cars, and see-through jeans. But the well-constructed script doesn't overdo his future shock: after several funny incidents, Meyer shifts into the love story. From there, tension builds up again, as the Ripper resumes his old slice-and-dice tricks, but the laughs periodically resurface as Wells does battle with telephones and electric toothbrushes...
...finally gets to play the harlot Xaviera instead of hard to get. She slides down stairs and moseys off stage convincingly enough, but the Texas Tally Wackers--the "orchestra"--drown out her songs. She's still a pretty classy old whore, and does her best to compensate for a script crammed full of non-sequiturs. The storyline slips readily from bathos to pathos and back again...