Customer Reviews

Finders Keepers [VHS]

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a terrific screwball comedy that barrels along like a non-stop runaway train - which happens to be the setting throughout much of the movie. Michael O'Keefe inadvertently gets involved in a robbery when he himself is trying to escape from the feminine clutches of a roller derby team he owns; the money from the robbery is hidden in a coffin that's being transported across country by train. One complication leads to another, too many to describe here. But what makes the movie so much better than many of its type is that all the crazy parts (and there are many) fit perfectly together. There's some poking fun at Hollywood, Richard Nixon, small-town politics, etc., but it's not at all heavy-handed. It's a well done, well thought out and executed light comedy. Perhaps the best character in the movie is David Wayne as the oldest train conductor in the world. Hilarious!

This movie should be on a "must have" list for anyone who loves movies like Hollywood Knights, Blazing Saddles (or most of Mel Brooks stuff), etc.

While it is very dated it has great perfomances by Beverly D'Angello and Jim Carey.

What crazy goings-on!

Although it's not one I'd buy for myself, my neighbor remembered this movie as one of his favorites, but he wasn't able to find it in any video store. I went to Amazon, easily located a copy, and surprised him with it for his birthday. He was tickled pink!

Finders Keepers is a madcap comedy that involves close to anything and everything. Include that it's one of Jim Carrey's earlier works, as well as Lou Gossett, Jr. near the high point of his career, it's difficult to see why this film is so hard to find. Michael O'Keefe (from The Great Santini), is a young con-artist, evading a Roller Derby team that he mis-managed. His evasion lands him in the bathtub of the local sheriff's wife, and eventually to a train station, wearing an Army uniform (it's the early '70s). Fate should have it that nothing else could go wrong, but he's soon going to run in to a talkative train conductor, an FBI agent, a thief disguised as a limo driver (Ed Lauter), an actress on the verge of a breakdown (Beverly D'Angelo from Nat'l Lampoon's Vacation), and a coffin filled with stolen money, that everyone thinks is a deceased veteran. Add in a corrupt mayor (Brian Dennehy), his nephew (Carrey), and one of the dumbest characters I have ever seen in a movie, a teenage baton twirler named Isadore, played by Barbara Kermode. She so dumb, that she makes the Dumb & Dumber guys look like Einstein. Hats off to Richard Lester for this fantastic comedy. It's too bad there aren't more movies like this around.