Wholly Moses! (1980) Columbia/Comedy RT: 104 minutes Rated PG (some language, suggestive humor, comic violence) Director: Gary Weis Screenplay: Guy Thomas Music: Patrick Williams Cinematography: Frank Stanley Release date: June 13, 1980 (US) Cast: Dudley Moore, Laraine Newman, James Coco, Paul Sand, Jack Gilford, Dom DeLuise, John Houseman, Madeline Kahn, David L. Lander, Richard Pryor, John Ritter, Richard B. Shull, Tanya Boyd, William Watson, Sam Weisman, Jeffrey Jacquet, Charles Thomas Murphy, Hap Lawrence, David Murphy, Andrea Martin, Sandy Ward, Stan Ross, Ruth Manning, Rod McCary, Brion James, Larry Gelman, Walker Edmiston (voice). Box Office: $14.1M (US)
Rating: NO STARS!!!!
Who says only God can perform miracles? The makers of the Biblical spoof Wholly Moses accomplished a pretty major one. They gathered together a flock of talented comic actors and still managed to make a “comedy” without anything funny. It is utterly devoid of humor. I’m talking no laughs, giggles, chuckles or chortles whatsoever. It takes a special kind of talent to do that. Not that it’s anything to brag about. You’ll notice I put comedy in quotation marks. That’s on purpose. Wholly Moses is only a comedy in the academic sense. Theoretically, it’s supposed to be funny and should make you laugh. It fails miserably in this area. It fails on every other level too.
I wasn’t the least bit amused by Wholly Moses Instead, it made me feel depressed. It’s always sad to witness such an egregious waste of talent. There’s no shortage of comically talented actors here, but you’d never know it based solely on the basis of this colossal comic misfire. The cast includes top of the line funny folks like Dudley Moore, Laraine Newman, James Coco, Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Jack Gilford, John Ritter and Richard Pryor. Most of them are only in it for a few minutes which is long enough to see that the director has no idea what to do with them. Their performances are just as aimless as the script.
When I think of the late Dudley Moore, I prefer to remember him in good comedies like Foul Play, 10 and Arthur. I try not to think of bad ones like Wholly Moses. He’s done his share of lame movies, but this one is the absolute nadir of his career. Even worse, he plays two roles. He plays Harvey, a tourist on a bus tour of Israel who discovers an ancient scroll in a hidden cave. The scroll tells the story of Herschel (Moore’s other role), the man who would have been Moses if not for fate causing him to just miss being rescued from the Nile as a baby by the Pharaoh’s daughter. Instead, he winds up in the custody of a family of idol makers.
Herschel is what we now refer to as a loser. Nothing ever goes right for him. He thinks he’s destined for greatness when God commands him to go to Egypt and free his people from slavery. Or so he thinks. Moses always seems to be one step ahead of him. He gets all the credit while Herschel ends up in one mess after another. It pretty much goes on like that through the whole save for the moments when a guest star pops in for a glorified cameo.
The fellow behind this unholy fiasco is Gary Weis, a first-time feature filmmaker who previously made over 45 short films for SNL between 1975 and 1977, the most famous being the one showing people coming home to their families at Christmas set to Simon & Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound”. It was quite touching as I recall. It turns out he’s ill-suited for full-length films. Everything that could have gone wrong with Wholly Moses does go wrong, horribly wrong. Every gag misses the mark by a mile. Every joke lands with a resounding thud. Every attempt at irreverence fails badly. Every insufferable minute further proves Weis is going about it all wrong. It’s obvious he put too much stock in the concept. After the success of the previous year’s Life of Brian, he figured a parody of an Old Testament story couldn’t miss. He expands on the material by referencing other Biblical tales like Lot and his wife, David and Goliath and Jesus’ miracles. The problem, as I’ve repeatedly said, is that NONE of it is funny. Weis has no sense of comic timing or anything else related to comedy. It could have worked in more capable hands. Imagine what Mel Brooks could have done with the idea.
To be fair, it’s not all Weis’ fault. A badly written screenplay, courtesy of Guy Thomas, certainly doesn’t help. Wholly Moses is more premise than plot. Once Moore and fellow traveler Zoey (Newman, SNL) start reading the scroll, the movie comes to a complete stop (as opposed to idling as it does in its first ten minutes). From this point, we sit and watch Herschel get into fix after fix through sheer ineptitude, his own as well as the director’s and the writer’s and everybody else involved. We sit and wait for something funny to happen despite the early realization that this is an activity as futile as waiting for that guy Godot.
Okay, let’s talk about the guest stars and what they do. Basically, they do nothing but say a few lines. Mostly, they look like they’re waiting to be told what to do. Oh, you thought I meant what roles they play, didn’t you? Oh, all right, what the hell. Coco (Murder by Death) has the most significant role. He plays Herschel’s father who poses as a slave to keep an eye on him. DeLuise (The Cannonball Run) plays an old friend Herschel encounters while wandering through the desert. Kahn (Blazing Saddles) plays a traveling aphrodisiac dealer. Ritter is the devil. Pryor is the Pharaoh. In addition, David L. Lander (better known as Squiggy on Laverne & Shirley) shows up as a blind and crippled beggar who doesn’t want to be cured by Herschel (he’s faking it, DUH!). Paul Sand (Can’t Stop the Music) appears a few times as an archangel who unwillingly helps Herschel. Should I go on? I don’t really see the point since none of these talented people bring their A-game to the project. It’s more like their Z-game.
Oh my God and holy hell, Wholly Moses really bites the big one. I watched it in complete silence save for the occasional pained groan. I got more laughs out of the Old Testament sequence in History of the World: Part I, a bit that lasts a grand total of 70 seconds. There is absolutely nothing in Wholly Moses that makes it worth watching. It’s a horrible, terrible, lousy, wretched and dreadful movie. It looks cheap and feels like it goes on forever. It joins such bad “comedies” as First Family, Police Academy: Mission to Moscow and Corky Romano. 42 years later, I still can’t believe it got released at all, much less by a major studio. If you haven’t seen Wholly Moses yet, keep it that way! It’s not just the closest thing to hell on film; it IS hell, PURE HELL!
