Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Bogdanovich is a gambler, September 3, 2001
It's telling that director Peter Bogdanovich made this film in between Mask in 1985 and Texasville in 1990, having endured a much publicised antipathy with Cher over Mask, and the loss of Dorothy Stratten just before They All Laughed was released in 1981. The latter was a return to the form of farce which he had peaked with What's Up Doc? In 1972. However as with the later Noises Off in 1985, Bogdanovich's sense of audience tolerance had gone off and while Noises Off and this film show his skill in staging antics, quick editing and frenetic performances, they also ultimately become exhausting experiences. This film has a weaker screenplay by M A Stewart and Max Dickens, whereby the narrative concerning a dead politician and a woman on trial set in Florida at Christmas, read as convoluted blather, with the narration presumably an afterthought in an attempt at clarity. Bogdanovich uses his familiar schtich with a clumsy leading man modelled on Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby via Ryan O'Neal in What's Up Doc?, multiple pursuers, bags, and crashing cars. Rob Lowe as Richard Dice is surprisably likeable as a man on jury duty in the trial of his school sweetheart, Cathleen Camp. Bogdanovich even gives Lowe a drag scene a la Bringing up Baby, and a geeky brother to have twin archetypes. But he doesn't highlight the deadpan humour we have seen Camp deliver elsewhere, prefering instead to present her as a Cybill Shepherd type sassy haughty beauty. Some of the supporting cast have a few redemptive eccentric moments, particularly Jessica James as Lowe's mother, but the loud Johnny Cash song Love is a gambler on the soundtrack clues us that Bogdanovich is trying too hard, or not enough.
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6 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Buckle up your safety belts, July 17, 2005
Just sit back in your deepest armchair and enjoy the chase, because this film is a chase from the very first image to the very last frame. Richard Dice is both the hunter and the huntee, the hunting and the hunted, the agent and the patient, the chaser and the chasee. There is no depth in all that but it is more or less funny and entertaining, though of course there is no surprise, so suspense, no doubt about the ending. The poor darling Richard casts his dice and as the Dice he is he rolls on the floor, under a couple of tables, into some moat, away from a pair of alligators, up a crane and down a ladder, after a criminal and ahead of a policeman. He never stops rolling and he never collects any grass, mud, sand, or anything else of any value, though he loses his billfold, one of his shoes, and he wrecks a fair number of cars. Enjoy the film and you will feel kind of relaxed. Life has no problems any more : everything is easygoing, smooth, cool, charming and trendy.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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