Word: ullman
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...York City heat wave as Joseph Santangelo (Vincent D'Onofrio), a butcher, wins his wife in a pinochle game with her father. The father bets his daughter's hand; Joseph bets a cold blast of air from his meat locker. After a small protest, Catherine Falconetti (Tracey Ullman, the overblown British comedienne) marries him, becomes pregnant, and falls victim to her haggard mother-in-law's Old World superstitions. Her first miscarried child seems to possess a chicken's wings. Why? Because she walked into the butcher's shop while Joseph slaughtered a turkey, of course. We know that something...
This is, of course, all very subtle, and one has difficulty overlooking Tracey Ullman's coarse performance as an Italian-American butcher's wife. Aside from the fact that she looks like a man in a bad wig, she struggles to conceal her cockney accent and is inexpressive at best. Lili Taylor as Teresa tries too hard to convey a lowly monastic plainness, ending up as flat as Ullman. Judith Malina plays the matriarch Carmela as charmingly as an unfed pit-bull...
Towards the end of the movie, the National Enquirer-esque tone escalates, starting with the scene in which Ullman gives birth to a chicken. Teresa's first sexual experience makes the screen go blue and bubble as if underwater; Jesus shows up sporting a British accent, and instead of multiplying loaves of bread and fish, coats the room in red-and-white checkered shirts; and in the end, stigmata scars appear on Teresa's palms. All of this, and Joseph's sausage starts curing heart disease and cancer...
...begin with, it has a star-studded cast of Cary Elwes, Richard Lewis, Roger Rees, Amy Yasbeck, and Tracey Ullman. If you have no idea who these people are, just remember that Richard Lewis and Tracey Ullman had their TV shows canceled, and you'll have a good idea as to the quality of the cast...
...Finally, I ran out of excuses." With Fox TV in its third profitable year, Diller could leave with a keen sense of accomplishment. "I was there when Fox was a minute-and-a-half from going under," says producer James Brooks, who brought the network respect with The Tracey Ullman Show and then killer clout with The Simpsons. "But Barry brought it off. It wasn't an act, it wasn't manipulation. It was sheer force of will...