If ever there was a movie that demanded to be remade, this is the one. The script is a comedy classic, but the direction made it look more like an episode of Twin Peaks or the X-Files. The pacing is sluggish; the actors are dour. What was Alan Rudolph thinking, anyway?
The script, taken by itself, is hilarious, a meditation on art and the pretensions of the "lost generation" of Americans in Paris during the 1920s. It might have been the best American screwball comedy of the eighties -- at least in script form. Most of the time, when a movie goes as far awry as this one does, you think the studio simply assigned the wrong director. But since this was a personal project for Alan Rudolph, and he presumably shaped the script every step of the way, I'm at a loss to understand what went wrong.
I just imagine what this movie might have been, in the hands of, say, Woody Allen, as long as he wasn't doing his Ingmar Bergman thing. Had the characters delivered their lines at a snappy pace; had they kept their tongues in cheek and played their characters as the sly weasels they were supposed to be, well, then, what a romp it might have been. With a jaunty 20s-jazz score, this movie might have been a classic.
As it stands, it's a failure, and I can only hope that someday someone will resurrect the property and give it the production it deserves. But you know, that script is so good -- I still say the movie is worth watching.
The script, taken by itself, is hilarious, a meditation on art and the pretensions of the "lost generation" of Americans in Paris during the 1920s. It might have been the best American screwball comedy of the eighties -- at least in script form. Most of the time, when a movie goes as far awry as this one does, you think the studio simply assigned the wrong director. But since this was a personal project for Alan Rudolph, and he presumably shaped the script every step of the way, I'm at a loss to understand what went wrong.
I just imagine what this movie might have been, in the hands of, say, Woody Allen, as long as he wasn't doing his Ingmar Bergman thing. Had the characters delivered their lines at a snappy pace; had they kept their tongues in cheek and played their characters as the sly weasels they were supposed to be, well, then, what a romp it might have been. With a jaunty 20s-jazz score, this movie might have been a classic.
As it stands, it's a failure, and I can only hope that someday someone will resurrect the property and give it the production it deserves. But you know, that script is so good -- I still say the movie is worth watching.