Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Sunday, September 25, 2022

THE MAN IN THE HAT (2020)

Perhaps unaware that comedy is hard (and sophisticated physical comedy even harder), writer/directors John-Paul Davidson (mainly tv) & Stephen Warbeck (mainly composer) aim for needless whimsy . . . and miss.  (Nary a laugh, barely a smile in 95".)  Needing a Buster Keaton*, a Peter Sellers, a Rowan Atkinson to pull off this near dialogue-free picaresque, they make do with Ciarán Hinds, a fine character leading-man with the clobberingly big head of a Fernandel and, like that great film comedian, more reactor than generator.  So even after starting off with a steal from SOME LIKE IT HOT (innocent witness to a mob rub-out hits the road to save his life), the following series of mini-adventures, half comic/half magical-realism (runaway priest; outdoor production of MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM; being mistaken for a guest-speaker, a la THE 39 STEPS; etc.) lack the connective tissue needed to build audience involvement, especially needed when the gags don't land.  (And the makers seem to know it, adding a few repeating bits & recurring characters meant to get us over weak spots.)  Prettily photographed (by Kanamé Onoyama) and imaginatively scored by its co-director (note a well-known Song of the Auvergne), it’s a type of near-pantomime comedy more popular in Europe than Stateside.  (See grosses on Atkinson’s MR. BEAN for confirmation.)  This film unlikely to change that.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Made for the Canadian Tourist Board, Buster Keaton’s late two-reeler, THE RAILRODDER/’65, charting a solo trip across the continent on a mini-train, shows what HAT must have been going for.  That twenty-minute charmer usual shows with its even better one-hr ‘Making Of’ companion, BUSTER KEATON RIDES AGAIN.  (Watching the documentary first makes the gags in the short really POP.)

No comments: