Word: slapsticker
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...fact, Cynicism is not a bad morality for today's man. It has a slapstick quality to it that goes well with the silly po-mo late culture we seem to be stuck in. To be heard these days one needs to act broadly, and we cannot get by on staid neo-Victorianism alone, no matter what The Weekly Standard might tell you. We should revive Diogenes as a folk hero, especially at persnickety Harvard where everyone is so exquisitely sensitive. We can just imagine him thumbing his nose at everybody and his mother, chatting up house masters, and spreading...
...would expect, with Catherine Ingman's stage direction. A constant, careful and oftentimes outrageous choreography of cast members supplements the humor of the script. Sir William Schwenck Gilbert's wit is very much couched in wordplay and innuendo, and Ingman creates--in effeminate prancing, mock-stealthy stalking and slapstick combat--a physical counterpart to the clever turns of phrases. While such physical comedy can compromise itself with too much zeal or too little precision, this seldom happens. The actors seem to understand the appropriate bounds for their movements and the script is never upstaged...
...level of sexual complexity, as Judy baby's husband runs away from her to be with another man. (Of her husband's male friends who used to come visit, she sings bitterly that they were "envying me and flirting with him" instead of the other way round). In a slapstick touch, her husband returns near the end as Judy Bell (Evett), a transsexual telephone repairperson who is now attracted to other women. Nor is this the end of it all: Judy Jr. (Playten), daughter of Judy baby and Judy Bell, decides she's a lesbian, yet gets pregnant. The viewer...
...Jones is vindicated: we see that some 16 million years ago, the slapstick asteroid A slammed into planet B (Mars, the fourth rock from the sun), dislodging spud-size meteorite C, which spitballed through space and whammed into planet D (Earth). Betimes, the alien microspud wakes up in the Antarctic and assumes the shape of an outlandishly hot idea, E (LIFE ON MARS!!!!), which pinballs hectically through Earthling media, knocking vases off the mantelpiece, toppling assumptions, causing tabloid amazement and theological consternation...
...furious at Hollywood for mangling great novels and instead allow a movie version to stand on its own. This season's Austen fare, "Emma," adapted and directed by Douglas McGrath, borrows the book's social satire, but unwisely replaces its canny ironic bite with what in comparison resembles absurd slapstick. We can enjoy the product of this limited adaptation--funny, outrageously decorated--but it's anything but great Austen...