Customer Reviews

The Pickle

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THE PICKLE (1993) stars Danny Aiello as Harry Stone, a burnt-out, depressed movie director. After three major stinkbombs in a row, his current project, "The Pickle" is totally ridiculous and Harry knows it, yet as a professional he does his best to get into the spirit of the thing while filming ("More pickle juice!").

This insipid "movie within a movie" features a gigantic misshapen gherkin that transports kids to outer space, a planet where everyone dies by age 49, and Little Richard as the President of Cleveland with his liver-flavored jelly beans.

Directed (for real!) by Paul Mazursky. The excellent cast must've felt trapped in a nightmare while shooting, but they undoubtedly swallowed their pride (along with lots of pickle juice) to appear in this cucumber. Included are:

Dyan Cannon, Shelley Winters, Barry Miller, Jerry Stiller, Chris Penn, Little Richard, Steven Tobolowsky (remember him as "Needlenose Ned the Head" in GROUNDHOG DAY?), Ally Sheedy, Spaulding Gray, Fyvush Finkel, the entire Mazursky family, plus in uncredited cameos: Donald Trump, Isabella Rossellini and Dudley Moore.

A roster THAT good yet a movie THIS bad! Can you believe it?

It's always good to watch performers like Danny Aiello, Shelley Winters, and Dyan Cannon in an imaginative enterprise...like this movie was supposed to be. Maybe "The Pickle" was to be Paul Mazursky's "Stardust Memories" [Woody Allen's highly personal and decidedly off-beat effort]. All three try to wring life out of an unfocused, one-note script, leaving the viewer with the uncomfortable feeling that the performances are merely drammatic exercises in an acting class.
The premise is interesting: Aiello, the serious director of "art" films can no longer make a buck doing 'em, so he is convinced that in order to keep the home fires burning he must...stretch a bit. Like make a all-out crowd-pleaser with all the trendy, commercial stuff you can think of, with a totally spaced out science fiction backdrop. So the burned out Director reaches into his own psyche for whatever feels right, whatever works. When he was a child he was rewarded with a nice juicy pickle. So a pickle takes on guargantuan proportions and seemingly human intelligence.
One depressing and pointless scene blends into the next.
While the premiere of the film takes place its' embarrassed Director attempts to take his life in a hotel room and Aiello's acting is strong, but again pretentiousness reduces the impact. Little Richard fans note that the Architect makes a second Mazursky appearance - the first being the '86 "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" with a production number of the 1956 recording of "Good Golly, Miss Molly".

Danny ("The Professional," "Jacob's Ladder") Aiello plays a once-respected director who whores himself out to do a big budget sci-fi action flick, hysterically rolling-out his anxieties, fears, and mid-life neuroses on the eve of the film's premiere. Shelly ("The Poseidon Adventure") Winters is Aiello's tough, no-nonsense mum, and the movie-in-a-movie is actually pretty cool, featuring Ally Sheedy, Griffin Dunne, and Little Richard as the president of an alien world, whose inhabitants eat only beef. "More pickle juice!"

this movie sucked big time, trust me my uncle was in this movie and it sucked