Oscar (1991) Touchstone/Comedy RT: 109 minutes Rated PG (suggestive material, threats of violence, some comic gunplay, mild language) Director: John Landis Screenplay: Michael Barrie and Jim Mulholland Music: Elmer Bernstein Cinematography: Mac Ahlberg Release date: April 26, 1991 (US) Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Peter Riegert, Chazz Palminteri, Joey Travolta, Paul Greco, Richard Foronjy, Yvonne DeCarlo, Don Ameche, Richard Romanus, Arleen Sorkin, Eddie Bracken, Tony Munafo, Robert Lesser, Art LaFleur, Kurtwood Smith, Vincent Spano, Joycelyn O’Brien, Marisa Tomei, Martin Ferrero, Harry Shearer, William Atherton, Mark Metcalf, Ken Howard, Sam Chew Jr., Elizabeth Barondes, Ornella Muti, Tim Curry, Kai Wulff, Linda Gray, Jim Mulholland, Kirk Douglas. Box Office: $23.5M (US)
Rating: ***
A comedy starring Sylvester Stallone that’s actually funny on purpose? Who’d have thought it possible? He’s not exactly known for his comedic gifts. Yet Oscar, a frenetic 30s gangster farce directed by John Landis (Animal House, The Blues Brothers), is a very funny movie.
The trick with a movie like Oscar is to keep things moving along at a fast pace and Landis does exactly that. It’s really more like a screwball comedy, a popular genre with Depression-era audiences. I thoroughly expected to hate Oscar when I attended a pre-release screening for it in April ’91. If we learned one thing from 1984’s Rhinestone, it’s that Stallone and comedy don’t mix. Nobody wants to pay good money to see the comedy stylings of Rocky Balboa/John Rambo.
After a shaky start, it starts to pick up with all the misunderstandings, mix-ups and running around commonly associated with the genre. I hated to admit it at the time, but I really enjoyed Oscar. Is it perfect movie? No. Does all of it work? No. Is it funny enough that it’s worthwhile? Yes! I guess the main question is whether Stallone pulls it off or not. Sort of, yes. I’m not saying that he should leave the action genre behind, but he doesn’t do too bad a job in Oscar. Many of his reaction shots are funny as he fights a losing battle trying to keep his cool. It’s not easy when you’re surrounded by idiots and other assorted crazies. What I think went right with this attempt is Landis knowing how to make the best use of Stallone’s limited comedic abilities. It results in one of the most surprisingly funny movies that I’ve ever seen.
Set in 1931, the wackiness begins with a promise made by gangster Angelo “Snaps” Provolone (Stallone) to his elderly father (Douglas, Tough Guys) on his deathbed. He promises the dying man that he will go straight and intends to honor it. A few weeks later, he’s scheduled to meet with a group of bankers and join their board of trustees in exchange for a substantial donation to the bank. Needless to say, the morning doesn’t go smoothly. It all starts when his young accountant Anthony (Spano, Indian Summer) asks for his daughter’s hand in marriage AND admits to stealing a large sum of money from him that he intends to give to his betrothed. That leads to all sorts of confusion with his real daughter Lisa (Tomei, My Cousin Vinny) and Theresa (Barondes), the young woman pretending to be his daughter. Lisa falsely claims to be pregnant so her father will permit her to marry the man she loves. That would be Oscar, the former chauffeur who joined the Army to see the world. Long story short, she claims to have fallen in love with Dr. Poole (Curry, The Rocky Horror Picture Show), Snaps’ elocution coach.
Meanwhile, a determined police lieutenant (Smith, RoboCop) watches Snaps from across the street, convinced that he will be meeting with Chicago mobsters that day. That’s what rival mobster Vendetti (Romanus, Protocol) thinks too thanks to stool pigeon Five-Spot Charlie (Bracken, National Lampoon’s Vacation). He plans a hit on Snaps later that day. There’s a lot of confusion involving three identical black suitcases and a couple of Italian-speaking tailors (Ferrero and Shearer) that Anthony believes are hired killers. Throw in a bunch of addle-brained associates that insist on referring to Snaps as “boss” even though he repeatedly orders them not to because he’s trying to go straight and you have the recipe for a wild and crazy farce.
I don’t want to give too much of Oscar away, so I won’t dwell on the zany storyline. Instead, I turn my attention to the style of humor. I love the verbal humor in this movie. By that, I mean that I love how the characters’ dialogue appears lifted right out of a 30s movie. At one point, an exasperated Snaps shouts “Aw, mush!” when a couple of guys do something stupid. The most authentic sounding one is Riegert (Animal House) who plays right-hand man Aldo. He actually says, at one point, “Why I oughta” as if he was going to hit the person to whom he was speaking.
Like I said, Stallone does a decent job as the central character, but he has a lot of help from a more-than-capable cast. Tomei, in one of her first major roles, whines and cries as the spoiled daughter looking to get out from under the thumb of her overprotective father. Curry is brilliant as always. He’s absolutely perfect as the proper elocution teacher with a gift for identifying obscure dialects. One of his best bits is when he informs dimwitted Connie (Palminteri, A Bronx Tale) of his “dangling participle”. You can guess what he thinks the professor means. It’s always great to see screen vets like Douglas, De Carlo (The Munsters) and Ameche (Cocoon) show up in a movie even if their roles are relatively small.
Timing is everything in a farce and Landis nails it! The only problem with Oscar is the same one that many comedies have, not all of it works. With comedy, it’s always a case of hit-or-miss and Oscar just happens to hit more than it misses. One thing that does work is the all-star cast. With a large cast, there’s always the danger of the actors tripping over each other while mugging for the camera. That’s not an issue in Oscar as the actors work in almost-perfect conjunction with each other. In many cases, they complement one another.
Oscar may stumble a little bit here and there, but it’s still a solid three-star comedy. If you’ve been avoiding this because of Stallone, forget about that. The movie works partly because he’s an unlikely choice for a madcap farce. Some call it miscasting, I call it a stroke of genius in this case. Bottom line, the movie works better than it should. I say, check it out, ya palookas!
