Word: simonizes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...daft, inspired, yet miraculously unhammy star turn. Short doesn't merely show off his versatility (how about that German accent, folks!); he creates a string of finely crafted caricatures. Truth be told, the Neil Simon-Cy Coleman-Carolyn Leigh musical hasn't aged all that well. Based on Patrick Dennis' satiric memoir of a fictional grande dame of the stage and screen, it's too sketchy and weightless, with a rather severe dramatic flaw: the central character (played by the full-voiced, full-figured Faith Prince) is constantly upstaged by her multi-role-playing co-star...
...show has some funny, scattershot gag writing reminiscent of Caesar's Your Show of Shows, on which Simon once worked ("But, Mother..." "Don't 'But, Mother' me." "But, Father..."). Director-choreographer Rob Marshall moves the pieces briskly in everything from the perky Rich Kids Rag number to a chain-gang soft shoe. Most of all, there's Short, who gives the kind of knockout Broadway performance that delights us even more because it's delivered by an interloper from Hollywood...
...there is some variation on the general musical theme. The beginning of "Big Star" sounds oddly like Paul Simon, and parts of "Everything Is Cool" are vaguely death-metalish. But for the most part, Reel Big Fish stick to kinds of rhythms and melodies generally associated with ska, and they perform well in their chosen style...
...Simon (Kenneth Branagh) is a man in a rumpled corduroy jacket with his nose pressed eagerly against the double-glazed windows of fame. A failed novelist, he writes celebrity profiles for magazines and subsists emotionally on such crusts--a bit of gossip, a moment of false intimacy--as the famous discard as they pass...
...Robin Simon (Judy Davis) is Lee's estranged wife, a former teacher of Chaucer and a quivering mass of neuroses, willing to try anything--religious retreats, plastic surgery--to get her postdivorce life back together...