In a first feature after much tv work, British writer (later director) Richard Curtis only hints at expertise to come in Rom-Coms like FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL/’94, NOTTING HILL/’99 and LOVE ACTUALLY /’03 . . . and is all the better for it. The later films far more expert, just not in a good way; manipulative & over-processed, Rom-Com Velveeta.* Not here, where the crumbly texture of Cheshire Cheddar still registers, distinct & artisanal. Suggested by Curtis’s days working as stooge/sidekick to Rowan Atkinson*, with Atkinson himself guying it up as an ogre-like stage comedian who mistreats on-stage assistant Jeff Goldblum as part of the act. And Goldblum is simply terrific as the depressed actor who breaks out of the doldrums after meeting-cute with sexy, slightly acidic nurse Emma Thomson. The film, rather off-handedly directed by Mel Smith, is loaded with big laughs and a proud British sense of the ridiculous, hitting peak insanity when Goldblum, a Frog Prince who doesn’t need a kiss, gets cast as the lead in a musical version of THE ELEPHANT MAN called, what else, ELEPHANT! (A hodgepodge of Sondheim’s SWEENEY TODD & Lloyd Webber’s PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, it’s a blissed out delight of tuneful horribleness. Sample lyric: ‘Somewhere – Up in Heaven – There’s an Angel with BIG EARS!’) The film’s wild humor and general bonhomie flummoxes many. But its fans are a hearty lot; happy, proud & gasping for breath between laughs.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Surely I’m not the only one who hoped that runaway kid at the end of LOVE ACTUALLY would get shot by an armed airport security guard.
DOUBLE-BILL: *The basic situation nodding to writer Ronald Harwood’s THE DRESSER/’83 and his backstage relationship with aging Shakespearean actor Sir Donald Wolfit.
No comments:
Post a Comment