A Fine Mess (1986) Columbia/Comedy RT: 90 minutes Rated PG (language, suggestive material, comic violence) Director: Blake Edwards Screenplay: Blake Edwards Music: Henry Mancini Cinematography: Harry Stradling Jr. Release date: August 8, 1986 (US) Cast: Ted Danson, Howie Mandel, Richard Mulligan, Stuart Margolin, Maria Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Edwards, Paul Sorvino, Rick Ducommun, Vic Polizos, James Cromwell, Dennis Franz, Brooke Alderson, Theodore Wilson, Keye Luke, Ed Herlihy, Tawny Moyer, Larry Storch, Darryl Henriques, Julianne Phillips. Box Office: $6M (US)
Rating: ***
The key to enjoying the slapstick farce A Fine Mess is to understand who directed it. That would be Blake Edwards, but there is a distinction that needs to be drawn. It’s NOT the Blake Edwards who made The Pink Panther, 10, S.O.B. and Victor Victoria. It’s the Blake Edwards who made Micki + Maude, Sunset, Skin Deep and all those rotten Pink Panther sequels. It’s not one of his shining moments, cinematically speaking.
HOWEVER, the blame isn’t entirely his. Most of the fault lies with the studio for doing what they always do, interfering. Blake’s original vision of A Fine Mess was an improvised comedy much like his earlier film The Party. When it didn’t go over with test audiences, the studio reworked it into a more conventional scripted comedy that retained only a few of the director’s original ideas. Blake was so angry, he disowned the final product and urged the public to avoid it which they largely did.
The truth is the title A Fine Mess couldn’t be closer to the truth. It IS a mess! The lack of a substantial plot is overshadowed by an avalanche of nonsensical ideas that typically lead to wild chases. It goes down like this. The movies centers on two not-too-bright characters, womanizing bit part actor Spence (Danson, Cheers) and nutty carhop Dennis (comedian Mandel), who get mixed up with the Mob after horning in on a scheme to fix a horse race by using a super-stimulant. They incur the wrath of two bumbling hoods, Turnip (Mulligan, Soap) and Binky (Margolin, The Rockford Files), who spend the whole movie chasing them. That’s the plot in a nutshell.
The inspiration for A Fine Mess is obviously the classic comedy of Laurel and Hardy, The Music Box in particular. In the 1932 short, the blundering duo is tasked with carrying a piano to the top of a very long flight of stairs. Of course, their attempts are comical failures. In Blake’s movie, Spence and Dennis come into possession of an antique player piano after inadvertently bidding on it at an auction. Luckily, they find a buyer almost immediately. Naturally, she expects them to deliver it. They bring it to her home where they’re told to carry it to the rec room on the second floor. That’s where A Fine Mess really goofs. Instead of playing up the situation for its comic worth, the film cuts right to the guys and the piano in the rec room, safe and in one piece. Did the bit get left on the cutting room floor? Was it filmed at all?
That’s not the only Laurel & Hardy-related problem. If you think about it, Danson and Mandel are NOT a L&H-type team. If anybody in A Fine Mess is L&H, it’s Mulligan (Laurel) and Margolin (Hardy). Look at how they mug as they try and fail at even the simplest of tasks. I kept expecting Margolin to reprimand Mulligan for getting them into another fine mess. As for Danson and Mandel, they resemble another classic comedy team, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Think about it, the smoothie and the stooge. The only difference is they don’t have one-tenth the chemistry of Martin & Lewis. They’re both good actors and they have funny scenes, but it’s not that inspired a match-up. BTW, both of them get love interests. Dennis hooks up with auction house employee Ellen (director’s daughter Jennifer Edwards) and Spence gets involved with Claudia (Alonso, Moscow of the Hudson), wife of mob boss Tony Pazzo (Sorvino, Goodfellas) and antique piano buyer.
Messy as it is, I actually like A Fine Mess. I’m not going to try to convince you it’s some kind of unsung classic or comedy gem. It’s NOT. It feels incomplete like there are scenes missing. The characters never behave in a logical manner; they mostly run or crawl around frantically trying to dodge bullets and (in Spence’s case) slaps from pissed-off women whose names he can’t remember. There are car chases aplenty that always seem to end with a crash. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it’s fun to watch. I didn’t see A Fine Mess at the movies. It played for only a week and I missed it. I rented it on video the following February and enjoyed it. Looking back, it’s the kind of movie meant to be seen on cold Sunday nights in winter when all is bleak with the world. It’s a decent little diversion, nothing more.
