Movie Review: Paper Moon (1973)

Genre: Depression-Era Dramedy

Director: Peter Bogdanovich

Starring: Ryan O'Neal, Tatum O'Neal, Madeline Kahn, John Hillerman

Running Time: 102 minutes

Synopsis: In mid-America of 1936, traveling con artist Moses "Moze" Pray (Ryan O'Neal) scours obituary notices to sell overpriced Bibles to recent widows. He attends the funeral of a barroom madame, and sensing an opportunity to make quick money, agrees to deliver her 9-year-old orphaned daughter Addie (Tatum O'Neal) to St. Joseph, Missouri. The enterprising Addie notices a family resemblance and plots to join Moze on his travels, helping increase his profits. They forge an effective petty crime combo, but their partnership is threatened by dancing girl Trixie (Madeline Kahn) then a bootlegger (John Hillerman).

What Works Well: This is a charming story of a father and daughter (?) bonding by getting themselves into ever deeper trouble. As a key twist, Addie is smarter than Moze, increasing his profitability and repeatedly yanking him out of trouble, including her elaborate ruse to torpedo Madeline Kahn's obnoxious Trixie. Bogdanovich coaxes a career highlight performance from Ryan O'Neal, and shepherds Tatum through a remarkably mature and affecting debut culminating in the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award at age ten. László Kovács' black and white cinematography captures the aura of an economically arrid time and place, while the soundtrack features big band tunes from the era.

What Does Not Work As Well: The tangle with the bootlegger and his sheriff brother (both played by John Hillerman) goes on for too long.

Conclusion: Paper Moon delights with likeable characters, stellar performances, and sleight-of-hand agility.



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Movie Review: Betsy's Wedding (1990)

A boisterous comedy, Betsy's Wedding finds laughs by refreshing the story of a father overwhelmed by his daughter's impending nuptials.

Eddie Hopper (Alan Alda) is a contractor based in Long Island, New York, and married to Lola (Madeline Kahn). Their daughter Betsy (Molly Ringwald), a budding fashion designer, announces plans to marry boyfriend Jake (Dylan Walsh), who comes from a wealthy family. Despite mounting debts, Eddie gets carried away and offers to pay for a lavish wedding event.

With money pressures mounting, Eddie turns to his brother-in-law Oscar (Joe Pesci), a sleazy developer and slum landlord, for help. Oscar is cheating on his wife Gloria (Catherine O'Hara), who in turn is surreptitiously profiting from Oscar's business dealings. Oscar connects Eddie with mobster turned investor Georgie (Burt Young). Soon enough, Georgie's nephew Stevie Dee (Anthony LaPaglia) starts an exceedingly gentlemanly romantic pursuit of Eddie's other daughter Connie (Ally Sheedy), a police officer.

Directed and written by Alda, Betsy's Wedding is inspired by Father Of The Bride, and almost as good. While Betsy is essentially reduced to an observer in her own movie, Alda embraces the surrounding madness. The film is all about the insanity that swirls around the main event, and Alda finds plenty of wacky characters and unexpected events to throw at the screen. And with a strong cast and no crass body fluid jokes to be found, this is a classier comedy that scrupulously avoids the lowest common denominator.

Oscar is the husband of Lola's sister, but still close enough to the family to gradually occupy the eye of the storm. With Joe Pesci in fine form, Oscar, whether intentionally or not, opens up the door to mobster mayhem as first Georgie and then Stevie Dee become central players in Eddie's life. Burt Young imports all shades of knock-off Godfather colours into the film, unsettling Eddie and eventually thrusting him into the twilight zone of mafia drive-by shootings.

Meanwhile Anthony LaPaglia steals the movie already stolen by Pesci. Alda deserves credit for clever writing that allows Stevie Dee to shine as a genuine gentleman despite his dubious roots and the gun in his jacket. He pursues his love in courteous style and persistently sets about melting the heart of the tough-as-nails Connie.

Elsewhere enough is going on to maintain admirable energy. Oscar thinks he is hiding an office affair with his assistant who invites herself to the wedding, while all along his wife Gloria is gaining her revenge through shark-like financial dealings. Meanwhile tensions mount between Betsy and Jake, her liberal upbringing and wild fashion sense disturbing the conservative sensibilities of his parents.

The film is just the right length at 94 minutes, and the editing is exceptionally sharp: every scene ends exactly when it should, and not a second later. Betsy's Wedding is not a smooth affair, but it's a memorably chaotic event.

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Movie Review: Blazing Saddles (1974)

A satirical western comedy, Blazing Saddles mixes the hits and misses in a wildly uneven effort.

It's the era of rail expansion in the wild west. When a railway construction crew encounters quicksand, the re-route suddenly makes the small town of Rock Ridge extremely valuable. Evil Attorney General Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) and his main hired gun Taggart (Slim Pickens) hatch up a plan to scare away Rock Ridge's residents. Lamarr convinces corrupt Governor William J. Le Petomane (Mel Brooks) to appoint black man Bart (Cleavon Little) as the town's new Sheriff.

The Rock Ridge residents, all called Johnson, are scandalized, but Bart teams up with semi-retired gunslinger the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder) and proves his worth by subduing the rampaging goon Mongo (Alex Karras). For his next attempt, Lamarr sends in alluring singer Lili von Shtupp (Madeline Kahn) to seduce Bart into submission.

Directed and co-written by Brooks (along with four other writers), Blazing Saddles does not even try to take itself seriously. With a non-plot consisting of contrived set-pieces and mostly juvenile antics leaning heavily on racial stereotypes, at least half the film's jokes are of the eye-rollingly bad variety. The performances are routinely over-the-top, and all the scenes featuring Korman, Pickens and specifically Brooks himself are played at the amateur pantomime level.

The better sequences feature Little and Wilder, who appear to be enjoying themselves and understand the difference between winking at the audience and screaming at them. The film's main running gag is the insanity of having a black man in charge of anything, and when it works it's thanks to Little, who brings a sense of detached cool with a glint of humour to the role.

The farting-around-the-campfire scene is perhaps the best remembered joke, and can probably take the blame and the credit for popularizing body function humour in countless low brow comedies. But the funniest thing in Blazing Saddles is the dense Mongo, a not-easy-to-stop horse-punching man-tank.

The film's ending strays far from movie conventions and into the realm of the intentionally ridiculous. It can be perceived as either ferociously hilarious or recklessly condescending.

Blazing Saddles fires wildly in all directions, causing a ruckus despite plenty of off-target shots.

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Movie Review: What's Up, Doc? (1972)

A modernized screwball comedy and romance, What's Up, Doc? features no plot to speak off but an excellent cast and plenty of loony situations.

Four similar plaid handbags converge at a San Francisco hotel. Dr. Howard Bannister (Ryan O'Neal) is an unassuming professor of musicology and his bag is filled with rocks. Bannister is attending a conference where he is nominated for a research prize, and is traveling with his domineering fiancée Eunice Burns (Madeline Kahn). Mr. Smith's bag hides top secret documents, and he is pursued by Mr. Jones. The third bag contains the jewelry of a hotel guest, and she is the target of theft. The fourth bag holds the personal items of Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand).

Highly educated but completely kooky, Judy sets her sights on Howard as a romantic conquest and elbows her way into his conference program, sidelining Eunice. Howard is befuddled by Judy's behaviour as he tries to make a good impression on award sponsor Frederick Larrabee (Austin Pendleton) and fend off the boorish other nominee Hugh Simon (Kenneth Mars). Meanwhile a series of hotel room break-ins result in all four bags falling into the wrong hands, and a madcap chase.

Co-written, directed and produced by Peter Bogdanovich, What's Up, Doc? does not even try to pretend that it is anything more than an adult playground for nutty comedy of the cartoonish kind. An homage of sorts to the screwball classics of the 1940s, Bogdanovich includes even less story and less romance than expected. What's Up, Doc? has the same depth as a Bugs Bunny short, but does feature an all-in cast and one terrific highlight.

The film demands the suspension of any attempt to follow an actual narrative. Bogdanovich burns many minutes with scene after scene of characters skulking in and out of hotel rooms, as the ubiquitous plaid handbags repeatedly change locations, hiding places and hands. None of the characters are defined beyond their presence at the hotel to engage in the prevailing shenanigans, with people like Mr. Smith, Mr. Jones and the jewel thieves receiving plenty of screen time but hardly any dialogue.

But the actors fully invest in the prevailing anarchy, turning the exercise into an amusing romp. Barbra Streisand is the engine that powers events well past normal, and she nails the combination of revved-up cool, Judy laser-focused on winning Howard's heart and seemingly unaware of the commotion in her wake. As the clueless midwest professor of obscure music theories, Ryan O'Neal finds a role that suits his rather blank persona, and he provides the empty canvas for Judy to paint on. And in her full-length big screen debut, Madeline Kahn is suitably irritating as Howard's too-desperate wannabe wife.

The film's climax is a prolonged chase through the streets of San Francisco that reaches hysterical levels of madness. Bogdanovich constructs a finely crafted sequence involving a delivery bike, multiple vehicles and a Chinese dragon racing up and down the city's ridiculously steep streets, with a highlight featuring one tall ladder, two workmen and a large pane of glass.

What's Up, Doc? may lack substance, but it doubles down on pandemonium.

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The Movies Of Madeline Kahn

All movies starring Madeline Kahn and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

What's Up, Doc? (1972)

Paper Moon (1973)

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Young Frankenstein (1974)

High Anxiety (1977)

Clue (1985)

Betsy's Wedding (1990)

Nixon (1995)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: High Anxiety (1977)

A parody of Alfred Hitchcock's signature films, High Anxiety stumbles and falls into low-brow comedy of the stupid kind.

The respected Dr. Richard Thorndyke (Mel Brooks) arrives in Los Angeles to take over as the head of the Psycho Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous. The previous head died under mysterious circumstances, and Richard soon encounters the weird characters who make up the hospital staff. Nurse Diesel (Cloris Leachman) hisses evil and looks like death warmed over, the oily Dr. Montague (Harvey Korman) is ambitious and incompetent, while Dr. Wentworth (Dick Van Patten) appears nervous enough to be a patient and is primed to be the next victim.

Thorndyke, who suffers from a fear of heights condition known as high anxiety, meets some of the patients and finds wealthy industrialist Arthur Brisbane (Charlie Callas) locked in his room, acting like a dog. On a trip to San Francisco to attend a conference, Thorndyke is approached by the icy blonde and breathless Victoria Brisbane (Madeline Kahn), Arthur's daughter, who wants to help her father. After a series of strange events, Thorndyke begins to suspect that the Institute is home to a nefarious conspiracy.

Directed, produced and co-written by Brooks, High Anxiety attempts to recreate the parody success of Young Frankenstein, this time by celebrating psychological suspense thrillers, but fails miserably. With a complete absence of ambiance, plot, or wit, Brooks defaults to lowest common denominator primitive humour, and the film collapses into a series of unrelated and entirely unsophisticated sketches.

Scenes that are meant to be funny depict a psychiatric patient acting like a dog; a murder committed by loud music; and secret sadomasochistic sessions at the institute. While the suspense genre relies on nuance, hints of danger and careful build-up, High Anxiety dispenses with anything resembling a deft touch and piles on the harsh juvenile antics, almost all of which fall flat, with many of the scenes unnecessarily extended in length to mask the absence of substance.

The references to Hitchcock are plenty, including the recreation of scenes and themes from North By Northwest, Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds, Dial M For Murder and Spellbound. The Psycho shower attack scene is telegraphed minutes in advance, but the execution is still clever. Perhaps the one good joke in the film riffs on The Birds, with the feathered critters finding a new way to take their revenge on humans. Otherwise Brooks and his team of three other writers are unable to weave anything resembling an actual story worth following, and High Anxiety defaults to a line-them-up-and knock-them-down series of obvious references to other films.

All the performances are ridiculously over the top, with Leachman particularly guilty of manic excess. High Anxiety attempts to salute the master of suspense, but delivers a heap of nonsense instead.

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Movie Review: Young Frankenstein (1974)

A comic parody of 1930s monster movies, Young Frankenstein combines biting satire with quality production values to deliver a constant stream of laughs. Director Mel Brooks and a perfect cast find the right balance between winking at the screen and losing themselves in faux theatrical melodrama to great comic effect.

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) is a professor of medicine in the United States, and eager to distance himself from the legacy of his grandfather, the infamous mad grave robber and re-animator of dead bodies. Frederick is engaged to Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn), but she won't as much as let him kiss her, lest her lipstick be smudged. When he receives word that he has inherited the long-abandoned family estate in Europe, Frederick travels to Transylvania, where he re-opens the family's spooky mansion on the hill.

Three assistants are ready to help him fulfil the family destiny: Inga (Teri Garr) seems to have no specific skills but plenty of curves; Igor (Marty Feldman) is a willing hunchback with beady eyes; and housekeeper Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman) mainly looks stern and terrifies the horses, but still harbours a crush on Frederick's long-dead grandfather. Warming up to the task, Frederick steals the body of an imposing criminal and reanimates him into a Monster (Peter Boyle), but Igor's botched brain robbery means that although the Monster is none too bright, he is sensitive and capable of exhibiting human emotions in response to sad music. When the lumbering Monster predictably breaks loose and terrifies the local community, Frederick has to find a way to control the damage, safeguard his legacy, and save the Monster's life.

Mel Brooks takes aim at the monster movie brand with his sharp style of wit, and hits the target dead centre. Plundering the fertile ground of creepy eastern European towns, grave digging, experimentation in reanimation, and unnecessarily thick accents, Young Frankenstein never misses a beat in resurrecting the legendary films of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

Despite all the farcical comedy and within its efficient 105 minutes of running time, Young Frankenstein still finds the time to raise a few interesting themes. Frederick's control over his destiny is a running thread through the movie. Initially firm that he wants nothing to do with the family history (to the point of insisting that his name is pronounced Frankensteen), Frederick is gradually and irresistibly drawn to the vision and mission of his ancestors. Society's treatment of those who are a bit different is another motif born with the Monster, with the innocent child showing no fear and the blindman displaying nothing but hospitality, while all the other townsfolk default to the torches-and-pitchforks stance.

Gene Wilder co-wrote the screenplay with Brooks, and plays Frederick with the smooth confidence of an actor finding the perfect groove. Marty Feldman's hunchback with the ever shifting hump is simply a riot, and is deservedly the most memorable character from the movie. But Peter Boyle delivers the best performance, a hideous Monster who talks only in loud grunts and yet has to display a range of emotions. Boyle's eyes and gestures are outstanding, and soon the Monster becomes a full-fledged person deserving of pity and coddling.

Gene Hackman has fun with a small but hilarious role as the lonely blindman attempting to kindly serve the Monster food and drink. In comparison, Kenneth Mars' performance as Inspector Kemp with one mechanical hand has not stood the test of time as well as the rest of the film.

A large part of Young Frankenstein's enduring success resides in the film's visuals, Brooks and cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld recreating in spooky black and white the prototypical mansion on the steep mountaintop surrounded by incessant lightning; the secret laboratory filled with meaningless yet noisy and sparking switches, dials and levers; and the village of simpletons living in perpetual fog and fear of the experiments carried out by generations of Frankensteins.

A comedy masterpiece, Young Frankenstein is monstrously fun.

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Movie Review: Clue (1985)

A madcap whodunit comedy, Clue has a large cast breathlessly running around a spooky mansion for 90 minutes. The film runs out of steam and ideas long before the convoluted plot ties itself into an unfathomable knot.

On a stormy night at an isolated mansion, the butler Wadsworth (Tim Curry), the maid Yvette (Colleen Camp) and the Cook (Kellye Nakahara) prepare dinner. Six strangers are invited, and they have been instructed to use colourful pseudonyms: Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan), Mrs. White (Madeline Kahn), Professor Plum (Christopher Lloyd), Mr. Green (Michael McKean), Colonel Mustard (Martin Mull) and Miss Scarlet (Lesley Ann Warren). The apparent dinner host also shows up: Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving) claims to be blackmailing all the guests. He is soon mysteriously killed, as is the Cook.

Wadsworth leads the guests on an investigative quest to search the mansion and unmask the killer, but a stream of apparently uninvited strangers keep on ringing the door bell and also getting themselves killed, including a lost Motorist, an off-duty Cop, and a Singing Telegram Girl. All the dinner party guests have motives, and it's up to Wadsworth to untangle everyone's movements and reveal the truth.

Based on the popular board game, Clue stumbles on a most cluttered plot, and disintegrates as the bodies pile up and the invited guests dart aimlessly from room to room. Director Jonathan Lynn, who co-wrote the script with the usually sharper John Landis, never finds neither the humour nor the focus necessary to build an engaging narrative. By the time Wadsworth runs through (literally) what happened (and there are three variations to the ending), the only thing that matters is that he gets it over with as quickly as possible to end the tedium.

Tim Curry does enliven the proceedings somewhat with his sheer energy and willingness to ham it up, but the rest of the decidedly theatrical cast members are quickly lost among the furniture and interrupted by the continuously ringing doorbell introducing yet another nondescript victim.

Sad to say, but Clue does not have a clue.

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