Movie Review: Noises Off... (1992)

A comedy about everything that can wrong in the world of theatre, Noises Off... competently adapts the stage show despite lacking the inherently essential on-the-edge energy.

In New York, theatre writer and director Lloyd Fellowes (Michael Caine) is worried about the Broadway opening of his latest farce Nothing On. In flashbacks, he recalls the show's origins. Months earlier, the final rehearsal before opening night in Des Moines, Iowa, reveals an utter lack of readiness, but the show somehow succeeds, leading to a national tour. 

Nothing On revolves around two amorous couples (John Ritter and Nicollette Sheridan; Christopher Reeve and Marilu Henner) making their way surreptitiously to a vacation house where housekeeper Dotty (Carol Burnett) believes she is alone and is just trying to watch television and eat a sardine dinner. A bumbling burglar (Denholm Elliott) adds to the hilarity. 

At a Florida performance, romantic rivalries among the cast members play out backstage as the play is performed. Later in Cleveland, a show goes completely off the rails due to jealousies and apathy. Nevertheless, the play makes it to Broadway, where Lloyd awaits the audience reaction.

An adaptation of the Michael Frayn play written for the screen by Marty Kaplan and directed by Peter Bogdanovich, Noises Off... is a valiant attempt to translate a quintessential stage experience to film. The play is about the stage and for the stage, celebrating real-time tension where every mishap is live, on full view, and has to be navigated on the spot. 

Film is a much more forgiving medium. Multiple camera angles, editing, and the separation between audience and performers rob the essence out of this material. Bogdanovich compensates with madcap pacing, breathless movement, attention to every detail, and smooth transitions to maximize the farce intentions, but sacrifices basics like character evolutions and depth. The lack of immediacy also adds tedium to the repetition, since the same material is viewed three times, albeit from backstage for the middle, and funniest, act. 

The ensemble cast members generally do well, matching over-acting dopiness with on-stage persona theatricality for maximum laughs. John Ritter's character is incapable of making any coherent points but insists on trying; Christopher Reeve is insecure and knows it; Denholm Elliott is magnetically attracted to alcohol; and Nicollette Sheridan aces the prototypical dumb blonde and spends most of the movie in her lingerie. 

Carol Burnett is comfortable as the crotchety housekeeper Dotty, but her obsession with sardines gets tired well before the final curtain. Marilu Henner makes less of an impression while Julie Hagerty and Mark Linn-Baker round out the cast. Overseeing them all is Michael Caine, and his role is just too easy as the exasperated writer and director attempting to herd his talent-challenged cast and crew. 

Reeve developing a nose bleed at the slightest sign of conflict and Sheridan losing her contact lens at the most inopportune moments are effective go-to comic landings. Noises Off... misses the thrill of the stage, but still finds flashes of wackiness.



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Movie Review: Somewhere In Time (1980)

A romantic drama and fantasy, Somewhere In Time aims for old fashioned passion but bungles both the pacing and the central romance.

In 1972, budding playwright Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) has a surreal encounter with an old woman, who thrusts a pocket watch into his hands and whispers "come back to me".

In 1980, Collier checks into the Grand Hotel to try and overcome a case of writer's block. He is mesmerized by a displayed photo of theatrical actress Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), who was a rising star of the stage in the early 1900s. He visits Elise's former housekeeper Laura Roberts (Teresa Wright), and learns Elise's career was managed by the Svengali-like William Robinson (Christopher Plummer), and she performed at the Grand for one night in 1912.

Hopelessly in love with a picture, Collier uses a hypnosis technique and transports himself back to 1912 and the day of the performance. Despite Robinson's interference, he meets Elise and they fall in love, but sustaining a romance across time will prove a challenge.

Richard Matheson adapts his own book Bid Time Return into a screenplay, but unfortunately, and in the hands of director Jeannot Szwarc, Somewhere In Time is both languid and lacking. 

With a hackneyed time-travel-through-hypnosis premise providing a rickety foundation, the only hope for salvation resides in igniting the flame of romance between the attractive couple of Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. But somehow Szwarc contrives to keep them apart for more than an hour, the groundwork to transport Richard from the present to the past and then into the arms of Elise ballooning into a laborious odyssey with numerous irrelevant side quests.

And once the lovers are near each other, Christopher Plummer's blocking becomes the most prominent theme, again robbing the movie of any momentum. Which may be all to camouflage Matheson's inability to transform Elise from a mythical image into a real person. Jane Seymour is barely provided the opportunity to say any meaningful lines, her mere visage supposed to suffice as an object of entrancement.

The period settings and costumes are charming, the Grand Hotel exudes vintage class, and Reeve brings a welcome vulnerability mixed with nothing-to-lose determination. But with Rachmaninoff's 18th variation of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini endlessly occupying the soundtrack, Somewhere In Time is a dull loop.



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Movie Review: Deathtrap (1982)

A mystery thriller, Deathtrap is firmly stagebound but still offers enough cerebral tricks and turns to pique interest.

Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine) is a famous Broadway playwright known for his clever murder mysteries, but he is losing his touch and suffering through a series of flops. At his impressive converted windmill home in the Hamptons, where one wall is adorned with antique weaponry souvenirs from his plays, he is consoled by his highly-strung wife Myra (Dyan Cannon), who suffers from anxiety but is independently wealthy.

Sidney receives an exceptionally promising draft script for a play called Deathtrap written by Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeve), who previously attended one of Bruhl's writing seminars. Sidney starts musing about inviting Clifford over, killing him and claiming the script as his own, horrifying Myra. Clifford does show up, hoping to get writing tips and advice to improve the script, and Myra gets increasingly frantic, not sure if her husband will go through with his devious plan.

That's as far as should be revealed about the plot, which then goes on a mazy run of surprises with varying levels of quality and success. An adaptation of Ira Levin's hit play, Deathtrap is directed by Sidney Lumet and written for the screen by Jay Presson Allen. The source material is perfect for a stage setting, inspired by intimate Agatha Christie murder mysteries and twisty thrillers like Sleuth. Lumet respects the film's origins, and mostly concentrates on capturing the play on film, with good work from the three cast members to enhance key close-ups.

The first half is by far the stronger part of the film. Lumet expertly establishes Sidney's character and the relationship with Myra, setting the stage for many possibilities to come, and the foul play opportunities are only enhanced when the cocky Clifford shows up. Despite many added convolutions the second half wilts, with next-door neighbour and psychic Helga Ten Dorp (Irene Worth) an unfortunate mismatch within the story's structure, and the film never regains a firm footing.

The performances are not unexpectedly theatrical, with slightly exaggerated mannerisms and louder than necessary dialogue delivery. Sufficient quality resides in the cast to pick up raised eyebrows, conspiratorial minds, and devious plots-in-the-making. Ten years after participating in the similar shenanigans of Sleuth, Caine provides the solemn desperation of a once-celebrated man now being discarded as a has-been by the chattering class. Reeve contributes freewheeling relative youth, and Cannon adds some on-point humour with a shriek-filled performance.

Deathtrap may not be exceptionally clever, but it is sufficiently amusing.

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Movie Review: Switching Channels (1988)

A lame remake of The Front Page and His Girl Friday, Switching Channels is dull, uninspired, and singularly lacking in wit and chemistry.

Christy Colleran (Kathleen Turner) is the star anchor at the Chicago-based Satellite News Network, where her ex-husband John "Sully" Sullivan (Burt Reynolds) is the station director. When an overworked Christy finally reaches the point of exhaustion, she is packed off on a forced vacation, where she meets and falls in love with smooth businessman Blaine Bingham (Christopher Reeve). Christy returns to Chicago on a high, announcing that she is quitting the news business and marrying Blaine.

Sully does not want to lose his star on-air talent, and he still harbours hopes of winning back Christy. He proceeds to conjure up every possible obstacle to place in the way of Blaine, while tempting Christy back to her career by getting her to interview Ike Roscoe (Henry Gibson), a death-row inmate about to be executed for killing a drug-dealing cop, in the hopes that the exposure will force the Governor to issue a pardon. Meanwhile, Attorney General  Roy Ridnitz (Ned Beatty) is himself running for Governor, and wants to make sure that Roscoe fries to further his own tough-on-crime credentials.

The fourth big screen version of the Broadway comedy The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Switching Channels is as unnecessary as it is awful. With pedestrian direction by Ted Kotcheff and a juvenile Jonathan Reynolds script, the film attempts to modernize the premise to the world of television, but has a dreadful time trying to find laughs, and fails miserably at every opportunity.

Burt Reynolds' performance is simply annoying, while Kathleen Turner is off the mark, seemingly over-acting in desperation to appear either witty or ditzy, but instead coming across as fatally bland. Reynolds and Turner together never threaten to display any sign of a spark, and indeed are reported to have clashed throughout filming. Christopher Reeve suffers the most, his Blaine Bingham a phantom personality, stood up as an easy cardboard target for Sully's darts.

The film ends with that time-trampled old favourite from the films of yesteryear, herds of men running in groups in and out of rooms and across hallways, lowest common denominator comedy that pre-teens may find funny, but really just serving as an embarrassing confirmation that some comic elements are best left in their own era.

Switching Channels clumsily fumbles with the dials, but only manages to find aggravating static.

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