Word: slapstick
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Hoffmann is best seen as the progression of a soul. There is the comic slapstick of Act I, in which the eponymous poet falls in love with Olympia, a mechanical doll. Next there is the sobering disappointment of Act II, in which the hero falls in love with a faithless Venetian courtesan. Finally, there is the tragic catharsis of Act III, in which Hoffmann's sincere love for the simple, shy singer Antonia is destroyed by the vicious machinations of the evil Dr. Miracle. Each affair should appear to be more intense than the last...
...peopled the row with an assortment of all-too-familiar oddballs. There's Doc (Nick Nolte), a handsome, lazy scientist: "the seer," a dotty wise-man-of-the-sea type: and Mac and his boys, a bumbling gang of filthy but lovable squatters that Ward milks for all the slapstick...
...Neill has been blessed with a strong complement of actors and singers in the lead roles, but only two have a crucial element that earns them special praise. Tom Uskali as the Pirate King rivals Groucho in his mastery of greasepaint-mustache manipulation but never descends to slapstick. Uskali's perpetual air of bemusement gives lines like "our revenge will be swift and terrible" a wonderful screwball appeal...
...events leading to the release of the sub were a mixture of high drama and low slapstick. For six days, Commander Pyotr Gushin refused to leave his stranded vessel to talk to the Swedes. Not until Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko allowed Gushin to cooperate did the commander relent. The skipper and his navigation officer emerged, asked for and were allowed permission to shower, and then settled down to claim during a seven-hour interrogation that they had hit the reef because their compass had failed...
...expect to see So Fine offered in Eng 12b next semester, though; classical elements do not necessarily make a classic comedy, and So Fine is far from great humor. Too often the slapstick scenes flop for simple lack of originality. Clumsy gunmen run into nuns carrying food; when a tryst is interrupted by the return of the jealous husband, the young lover hides (you guessed it) under the bed; and the final chase scene takes place on-and off-stage during a performance of Verdi's Otello. To be fair, Bergman usually knows how cliched his situations...