From The New Yorker
Nicolas Cage is reason enough to see E. Max Frye's smartly constructed interracial-buddy comedy. Cage takes over the movie-snatches it clean away from the other principal performers, Samuel L. Jackson and Dabney Coleman, and the rest of the large and gifted cast. (In a few scenes, a beautiful and personable white German shepherd dog engages him in a fierce tug-of-war for the audience's attention, but Cage prevails.) The picture flirts with explosive subjects like race and class, but it has an oddly cozy, companionable tone. Frye, directing very cautiously and deliberately, doesn't do justice to his own script. About halfway through, a stubborn inconsequentiality sets in, and the movie loses urgency. At that point, the ingenious farce mechanics start to feel as if they were running on sheer inertia, because the satiric premise that set the whole thing in motion isn't driving it anymore. Also with Michael Lerner, Margaret Colin, Brad Dourif, Giancarlo Esposito, and (in a hilarious bit) Bob Balaban. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
Product Description
Academy AwardÂ(r) winner* Nicolas Cage (Face-Off) and OscarÂ(r) nominee** Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) star in this action-packed comedy about a small-time crook anda Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who bring new meaning to the term "dynamic duo!" Their wild andraucous adventures make Amos & Andrew the funniest, nuttiest, most hysterical comedy since Midnight Run! When a successful African-American author (Jackson) buys a house on an exclusive New England resort island, local law enforcement mistakes him for a thief and nearly kill him in a hilariously bungled attempt to "protect" the estate. But things go from loony to just plainwacky when the town's Police Chief (Dabney Coleman) attempts to cover up the embarrassing details of the event by planting a convicted criminal (Cage) in the house to take the rap! *1995: Actor, Leaving Las Vegas **1994: Supporting Actor, Pulp Fiction