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Rhinestone \u00a0<\/strong>(1984) \u00a0 \u00a020th<\/sup>\u00a0Century Fox\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 111 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, mild violence, crude humor)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bob Clark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Phil Alden Robinson and Sylvester Stallone\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dolly Parton and Larry Weiss\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Timothy Galfas\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 21, 1984 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Dolly Parton, Richard Farnsworth, Ron Leibman, Tim Thomerson, Stephen Apostle Pec, Penny Santon, Ritch Brinkley, Jerry Potter, Phil Rubinstein, Russell Buchanan, Jesse Welles, Tony Munafo, Don Hanmer.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $21.4 million (US)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The very notion of Italian Stallion Sylvester Stallone as a country musician alone makes\u00a0Rhinestone<\/strong>\u00a0an instant guilty pleasure. I know, the popular opinion is that the 1984 musical comedy, directed by Bob Clark (Porky\u2019s I & II), is one of the worst movies of all time. The critics savaged it upon its release. It tanked at the box office. Here in my neck of the woods, it took about a month for\u00a0Rhinestone<\/strong>\u00a0to hit second-run $1 movie houses. I saw it with my dad at the old Lansdowne Theater on a hot July weeknight. I didn\u2019t think it was all that bad. Actually, I found it quite funny. Stallone co-stars with singer Dolly Parton (The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas) in this countrified version of Pygmalion. She has two weeks to turn him into a country singer as per a bet she makes with a sleazy nightclub owner. It\u2019s supposedly based on Glen Campbell\u2019s 1975 hit song \u201cRhinestone Cowboy\u201d, but I don\u2019t see the resemblance.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Jake Farris (Parton) wants out of her contract with Freddie Ugo (Leibman, Zorro, The Gay Blade), the smarmy, lecherous owner of the Rhinestone. She feels he\u2019s holding her back from achieving true success as a country singer. She\u2019s also tired of his non-stop advances. She bets him that she can take any normal person off the street (of his choosing) and turn him into a passable country singer in two weeks time. If she wins, he\u2019ll tear up the contract. If not, she has to stay with him for five additional years. She also has to sleep with him. Never let it be said that Nick Martinelli (Stallone), a loud New York City taxi driver, doesn\u2019t know how to make an entrance. He has an accident in front of the club and messes up his cab pretty badly. Naturally, this is who Freddie selects. Looks like Jake has her work cut out for her. After talking him into it, Jake takes Nick back home to Tennessee to begin the process of transforming him into a country singer just good enough to make it through one song at the club.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The small town of Leipers Fork seems like another planet to Nick. The ways of a true cowboy are as alien to him as birth control to the Waltons. Not to mention he hates country music, describing it as \u201cworse than liver\u201d. But he has a stake in the bet too; he gets his own taxi if he succeeds. Things are rocky at first with Nick and Jake hurling insults at each other. He calls her a \u201creject from Hee Haw\u201d; she calls him a \u201cdamn bum\u201d. Based on that, you know the two will fall for each other by the time he takes the stage at the club. In their corner is Jake\u2019s bluegrass musician dad Noah (Farnsworth, The Straight Story). After seeing Nick make his first singing attempt, he says, \u201cSon, that\u2019s scary.\u201d Adversity rears its ugly head in Tennessee in the form of Barnett Kale (Thomerson, The Wrong Guys), Jake\u2019s former fiancee and singing partner. He turns out to be a redneck jerk, but who couldn\u2019t see that coming.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Much of\u00a0Rhinestone<\/strong>\u00a0is funny, but the highlight has to be Stallone singing a ditty called \u201cDrinkenstein\u201d, a salute to Budweiser beer. Could this be a product plug? And the outfit he has on, good grief! It looks like Daniel Boone threw up raccoon tails on a cowboy suit designed for Frankenstein\u2019s monster. That thing is hideous! The big question, however, is can Stallone actually sing? That\u2019s a great big NO! It sounds exactly how you think it would sound if Rocky Balboa broke into song midway through a training montage. That\u2019s what makes it so damn funny.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0I really like Stallone\u2019s comic performance in\u00a0Rhinestone<\/strong>. A lot of people don\u2019t think he\u2019s funny; based on duds like Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, I can see why. Now I\u2019m not saying the guy is a gifted comic actor in the tradition of Buster Keaton. A great deal of it comes off as clumsy and labored, but it\u2019s not bad. Parton is a very likable performer and does a great job in\u00a0Rhinestone<\/strong>. She gets to sing a few songs which is always cool. The film opens with \u201cTennessee Homesick Blues\u201d playing over images of NYC. Great song, great contrast. Leibman also delivers a broad performance as the obnoxious horndog so deserving of his character\u2019s initials. He\u2019s like something out of an adult cartoon. Farnsworth brings a lot of down-home likability to his character.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The humor in\u00a0Rhinestone<\/strong>\u00a0is broad, silly and corny. Early on, Nick invites Jake back to his place (an apartment over the family funeral parlor) to see \u201chis giant organ\u201d (of course he means a musical instrument). Later, Barnett says \u201cThanks for the clap.\u201d after only one person applauds his performance in a local bar. Scenes like this typically elicit collective groans from audiences, but I tend to find stupid jokes like this funny. A lot of people didn\u2019t buy Stallone and Parton as a couple, but odd pairings like this crack me up. The chemistry between them feels a little forced, but what the hell, it\u2019s a silly summertime comedy. The music is pretty great, especially with purposely bad songs like \u201cSweet Loving Friends\u201d and \u201cStay Out of My Bedroom\u201d (both duets). The late Clark directed a lot of crap in his career (e.g. Loose Cannons, Baby Geniuses), but I think\u00a0Rhinestone<\/strong>\u00a0is one of his better efforts (of course, I also liked Turk 182). It\u2019s an awesome \u201cso bad it\u2019s great\u201d movie. A must-see for all bad movie lovers!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n FUNNY NOTE:\u00a0Rhinestone<\/strong>\u00a0played its brief first-run engagement at the Bryn Mawr, a twinplex that usually showed more prestigious films. The following weekend, Cannonball Run II opened in the other house. Who made up the schedule that summer?<\/p>\r\n Rhinestone \u00a0(1984) \u00a0 \u00a020th\u00a0Century Fox\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 111 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, mild violence, crude humor)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bob Clark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Phil Alden Robinson and Sylvester Stallone\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dolly Parton and Larry Weiss\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Timothy Galfas\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 21, 1984 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Dolly Parton, Richard Farnsworth, Ron Leibman, Tim Thomerson, Stephen Apostle Pec, Penny […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","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\/2024\/06\/Rhinestone-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\/56","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=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":618,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Rhinestone-POSTER.jpg?resize=620%2C930&ssl=1\")
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