Word: slapstick
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...world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Ultimately, Ignatius is simply too grotesque and loony to be taken for a genius; the world he howls at seems less awful than he does. Pratfalls can pass be yond slapstick only if they echo, and most of the ones in this novel do not. They are terribly funny, though, and if a book's price is measured against the laughs it provokes, A Confederacy of Dunces is the bargain of the year. - Paul Gray
...violence and corrupts the concerned and the innocent. But Laszlo and Billy are so two-dimensional the message falls flat. Laszlo seems merely to have reached a new plateau of raving fanaticism and Billy becomes the standard Victim of Society. Worse still, this hideout scene quickly degenerates into unfunny slapstick shenanigans. In this film, political statements and rowdy humor go together like chocolate milk and pepperoni pizza...
Conversations in the banking community last week had the strange ring of corporate slapstick: "Who's on First? Which First?" In a stunning move the board of directors of the First National Bank of Chicago fired both its abrasive chairman, Robert Abboud, 50, and its obstinate deputy chairman, Harvey Kapnick, 54, after their short but stormy tenure together and sharp earnings slumps. On the same day, First Pennsylvania Bank announced that it was to receive a mammoth $1.5 billion loan package from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and 25 private banks, the largest rescue package ever put together...
...interested in being socially redeeming, and those who read books to gain warm feelings or philosophic nuggets will come away from this one empty-handed and probably angry. Berger has tucked away no meanings here, provided no key to get at the order hidden behind all the slapstick. He raises the possibility that Earl, not his tormentors, may be bananas, but anyone who takes this seriously will find everything twice as senseless as before. What Berger has produced is a tour de force, his most successfully sustained comic narrative since Little Big Man (1964). Like the best black humor...
...film's tone is confused and predictable: lame slapstick gags (including the inevitable food fight), sentimental bromides about love, and deadly serious (if inexplicit) sex scenes are thrown together without transitions. Even the heroines' slowly developing friendship is sketchily written; it seems to happen offscreen. While McNichol and O'Neal always command attention, the drama they create has less to do with Little Darlings than with the intriguing vicissitudes of show business careers...