Word: witless
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Alas, the context in which Russell sets these performances is obtuse to the point of caricature. Did Gaudier-Brzeska have a mistress? Then she must be a pneumatic and witless art groupie (Helen Mirren), daughter of a landed cavalry officer, who does her obligatory nude scene on the staircase of an immense, frigid Adam country house; she must also be a suffragette, which gives Russell much opportunity for lumpen-sexist travesty by having her do a song-and-hop number about votes for women in a nightclub and then, at Gaudier's demand, drop her knickers onstage. Around...
...more importantly, this film is cruel to its own characters, making cheap fun of them in order to make an impact on us. This is especially easy for Heat because its characters, by design, tend to be so unaware and witless. (Wasn't Candid Camera itself often cruel?) Reducing Sally to emotional trauma several times as a vehicle for parody is a good example of such pitilessness. The film's last scene, in which her attempt to kill the faithless Joey evokes only audience guffaws as the gun fails to shoot, adds insult to injury; this is the major emotional...
Napoleon, like Jesus Christ, has always had vile luck with directors. It is often assumed that Hollywood has a monopoly on witless historical reconstructions. Of course it does not. The latest film to prove it is Eagle in a Cage, an account of the Little Corporal's exile on St. Helena...
Beatty's nervous, sardonic energy gives $ some much needed momentum and at least a modicum of charm. As the hooker, Goldie Hawn displays her familiar Laugh-In mannerisms with witless bravado. She is suffering from a terminal case of the cutes...
This go-round, Van Dyke is cast as the host of a TV talk show in Phoenix, Ariz.; Hope Lange, after two seasons of sublimation in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, plays Mary Tyler Moore. In the witless premiere, Van Dyke was stuck with one joke, and one as grizzled as his new sideburns: the recidivism of reformed smokers. But the second episode-concerning the humiliation of a local-station headliner screen-testing for a network slot-portended a return to form by TV's consummate situation comedian and by the series' witty "creative consultant," Carl Reiner...