Word: slapstick
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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WHAT DOES GOLDIE Hawn, a high-school football team, an uptight ex-husband (with legal battle over custody of the kids), a bunch of slapstick locker room gags, and an adolescent version of the Chicago Bears' "Refrigerator" get you? Not much, really...
Real characters might be one thing. That none of the football players are distinguished by anything other than their huge, post-puberty pectoral muscles and the slapstick amusement they provide is a real disappointment...
...excessive even for comedy. Why did Cronin's wife shuffle so strangely, even if she was pregnant? And why did Catherine Harris, who was doing prudery quite well, have to march ten feet and deliver the same Victorian brush-off every time an advance was made to her? The slapstick trip-ups between Cronin and Hogan looked under-rehearsed. In fact, most of the movements in Act 2 looked unrehearsed...
...slapstick movements aren't the only inexplicable sight gags. The matter of a male (Alexander Roe) in the female role of Mrs. Mallarkey is more than just sexually dubious. It doesn't detract from the production, but it doesn't seem to add anything either. We've all seen this trick too many times at the Pudding to be amused merely by sexual ambiguity...
...that invade his car stereo. These gags play on the real perceptions of teenage life in a surreal way, like the better moments of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. But most of the gags are borrowed from the more common genre of teenage film. They are simple improbable cartoon slapstick like when Lane's brother builds a space shuttle, or when Lane's food walks away from him. This brand of humor is only remotely cute, and not at all funny...