{"id":12006,"date":"2025-06-04T16:42:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T20:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=12006"},"modified":"2025-06-04T16:42:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T20:42:10","slug":"oscar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/06\/04\/oscar\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Oscar<\/strong> (1991)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Touchstone\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 109 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (suggestive material, threats of violence, some comic gunplay, mild language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John Landis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Michael Barrie and Jim Mulholland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Elmer Bernstein\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mac Ahlberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 26, 1991 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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\u2019Brien, 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $23.5M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0A comedy starring Sylvester Stallone that\u2019s actually funny on purpose? Who\u2019d have thought it possible? He\u2019s not exactly known for his comedic gifts. Yet Oscar<\/strong>, a frenetic 30s gangster farce directed by John Landis (Animal House, The Blues Brothers), is a very funny movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The trick with a movie like Oscar<\/strong> is to keep things moving along at a fast pace and Landis does exactly that. It\u2019s really more like a screwball comedy, a popular genre with Depression-era audiences. I thoroughly expected to hate Oscar<\/strong> when I attended a pre-release screening for it in April \u201991. If we learned one thing from 1984\u2019s Rhinestone, it\u2019s that Stallone and comedy don\u2019t mix. Nobody wants to pay good money to see the comedy stylings of Rocky Balboa\/John Rambo.<\/p>\n

\u00a0After 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<\/strong>. Is it perfect movie? No. Does all of it work? No. Is it funny enough that it\u2019s worthwhile? Yes! I guess the main question is whether Stallone pulls it off or not. Sort of, yes. I\u2019m not saying that he should leave the action genre behind, but he doesn\u2019t do too bad a job in Oscar<\/strong>. Many of his reaction shots are funny as he fights a losing battle trying to keep his cool. It\u2019s not easy when you\u2019re 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\u2019s limited comedic abilities. It results in one of the most surprisingly funny movies that I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Set in 1931, the wackiness begins with a promise made by gangster Angelo \u201cSnaps\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019t go smoothly. It all starts when his young accountant Anthony (Spano, Indian Summer) asks for his daughter\u2019s 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\u2019 elocution coach.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Meanwhile, a determined police lieutenant (Smith, RoboCop) watches Snaps from across the street, convinced that he will be meeting with Chicago mobsters that day. That\u2019s what rival mobster Vendetti (Romanus, Protocol) thinks too thanks to stool pigeon Five-Spot Charlie (Bracken, National Lampoon\u2019s Vacation). He plans a hit on Snaps later that day. There\u2019s 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 \u201cboss\u201d even though he repeatedly orders them not to because he\u2019s trying to go straight and you have the recipe for a wild and crazy farce.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I don\u2019t want to give too much of Oscar<\/strong> away, so I won\u2019t 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\u2019 dialogue appears lifted right out of a 30s movie. At one point, an exasperated Snaps shouts \u201cAw, mush!\u201d 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, \u201cWhy I oughta\u201d as if he was going to hit the person to whom he was speaking.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Like 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\u2019s 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 \u201cdangling participle\u201d. You can guess what he thinks the professor means. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Timing is everything in a farce and Landis nails it! The only problem with Oscar<\/strong> is the same one that many comedies have, not all of it works. With comedy, it\u2019s always a case of hit-or-miss and Oscar<\/strong> just happens to hit more than it misses. One thing that does work is the all-star cast. With a large cast, there\u2019s always the danger of the actors tripping over each other while mugging for the camera. That\u2019s not an issue in Oscar<\/strong> as the actors work in almost-perfect conjunction with each other. In many cases, they complement one another.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Oscar<\/strong> may stumble a little bit here and there, but it\u2019s still a solid three-star comedy. If you\u2019ve been avoiding this because of Stallone, forget about that. The movie works partly because he\u2019s 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!\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oscar (1991)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Touchstone\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 109 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (suggestive material, threats of violence, some comic gunplay, mild language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John Landis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Michael Barrie and Jim Mulholland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Elmer Bernstein\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mac Ahlberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 26, 1991 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Peter Riegert, Chazz Palminteri, Joey Travolta, Paul Greco, Richard Foronjy, Yvonne DeCarlo, Don […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Oscar-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12006"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12024,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12006\/revisions\/12024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}