{"id":1354,"date":"2024-07-27T11:05:20","date_gmt":"2024-07-27T11:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1354"},"modified":"2024-10-14T12:42:58","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T16:42:58","slug":"blame-it-on-the-bellboy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/07\/27\/blame-it-on-the-bellboy\/","title":{"rendered":"Blame It on the Bellboy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Blame It on the Bellboy <\/strong>(1992)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hollywood Pictures\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 78 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (sexual conversation and humor, language, violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Mark Herman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Mark Herman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Trevor Jones\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Andrew Dunn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 6, 1992 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dudley Moore, Bryan Brown, Richard Griffiths, Andreas Katsulas, Patsy Kensit, Alison Steadman, Penelope Wilton, Bronson Pinchot, Jim Carter, Alex Norton, Alex Grillo.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $3.1M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: NO STARS!!!<\/p>\n

\u00a0I say the blame for Blame It on the Bellboy<\/strong> sits squarely on the shoulders of the makers starting with writer-director Mark Herman (Brassed Off) and right on down to the guy that swept up at the end of each day\u2019s shoot. The incompetent bellboy played by Bronson Pinchot (Beverly Hills Cop) is the least culpable for this woefully unfunny comedy about a colossal mix-up at a fancy Venice hotel involving three guests with similar sounding names. They say the hardest kind of movie to sit through is a comedy that isn\u2019t funny. Blame It on the Bellboy<\/strong> proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt. It\u2019s only 78 minutes long yet it feels like it lasts an eternity.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Three guests show up at Hotel Gabrielli on different types of business. Maurice Horton (Griffiths, The Naked Gun 2 \u00bd) is there for monkey business. He\u2019s there to meet a woman, Patricia (Wilton, Shaun of the Dead), he found through a dating service called Medi-Date. Melvyn Orton (Moore, Arthur) is there on business-business. He\u2019s there to check out a villa for his boss who plans to purchase it. Never mind that it\u2019s completely worthless. Finally, Mike Lorton (Brown, F\/X) is there on illegal business. He\u2019s a hitman sent to rub out a mafioso named Mr. Scarpa (Katsulas, The Fugitive). They each inform the bellboy, who struggles with English as it pertains to the letter H, that they\u2019re expecting important messages. Naturally, he gets them mixed up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Maurice is sent to meet with real estate agent Caroline (Kensit, Lethal Weapon 2) about the villa. He thinks she\u2019s his date and makes sexual advances towards her. She thinks he\u2019s the buyer and tries to convince him to pay cash as it will increase her commission. Melvyn calls on Mr. Scarpa thinking he\u2019s the one selling the villa. Scarpa detains and tortures him thinking he\u2019s the hitman sent to kill him. Mike follows Patricia around thinking she\u2019s his mark. He fails in his attempts to kill her, partly because he\u2019s thinking about leaving his chosen profession. Patricia notices him and thinks he\u2019s interested in her. She engages him in conversation much to his bafflement. \u00a0Such a wacky situation!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Blame It on the Bellboy<\/strong> is as funny as a funeral. No, I take that back. I\u2019ve gotten more laughs out of eulogies than I did this sorry excuse for a comedy. NONE of it is the least bit funny. This is NOT an exaggeration. This movie has zero laughs. It strains to be funny. It begs you to laugh at it. It tries hard, WAY too hard, to recreate the feel of a slapstick 1960s comedy set in some foreign locale but to no avail. I doubt it would have been funny to 60s audiences. It certainly wasn\u2019t funny to 90s audiences. And, unlike some movies, it hasn\u2019t improved with age. It\u2019s still a piece of crap.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It should be a crime to waste as much talent as Blame It on the Bellboy<\/strong> does. The talented cast doesn\u2019t so much perform as they do embarrass themselves. It\u2019s not really their fault though, not entirely. They can only work with what they\u2019ve been given and they\u2019re not given much to work with here. The screenplay is half-cooked at best. The characters are placed in situations that could have easily been resolved had somebody stopped and asked questions like \u201cWho are you?\u201d or \u201cWhat\u2019s going on here?\u201d. This never happens. Why? Because movies like Blame It on the Bellboy<\/strong> depend on the characters acting like idiots and not asking the right questions. If they did, the movie would be over in ten minutes and we could all go home.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Blame It on the Bellboy<\/strong> is very poorly made. In fact, it\u2019s one of the most poorly made movies from a major studio that I\u2019ve ever seen. It has a grim pallor hanging over it. The city of Venice should be bright and beautiful; after all, it is regarded as one of the most romantic cities in the world with its canals and old structures. The movie fails even in this simple respect. It\u2019s also lazy. There\u2019s no energy, comedic or otherwise. The characters scramble and dash about but it feels like they\u2019re running in place. Other times, they stand around waiting for something funny to happen. Kind of like the audience, no?<\/p>\n

\u00a0I didn\u2019t even smile during Blame It on the Bellboy<\/strong>. I gritted my teeth and rubbed my temple but I\u2019m sure that isn\u2019t the reaction the makers want. At the very least, Bronson Pinchot\u2019s character should have provided a few chuckles. After all, he has played characters with unidentifiable accents before- e.g. Serge in Beverly Hills Cop, Balki in the sitcom Perfect Strangers. Here it\u2019s not funny, it\u2019s annoying. In fact, the whole movie is annoying. It\u2019s a total and absolute failure on every level. It\u2019s as bad as It\u2019s Pat: The Movie and Corky Romano. It\u2019s like a very, VERY bad Blake Edwards comedy. It\u2019s not a movie, it\u2019s a felony offense.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blame It on the Bellboy (1992)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hollywood Pictures\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 78 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (sexual conversation and humor, language, violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Mark Herman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Mark Herman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Trevor Jones\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Andrew Dunn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 6, 1992 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dudley Moore, Bryan Brown, Richard Griffiths, Andreas Katsulas, Patsy Kensit, Alison Steadman, Penelope Wilton, Bronson Pinchot, Jim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Blame-It-on-the-Bellboy-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\/1354","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=1354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1944,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354\/revisions\/1944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}