{"id":8890,"date":"2024-11-25T14:59:15","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T19:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8890"},"modified":"2024-11-25T14:59:15","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T19:59:15","slug":"a-fine-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/25\/a-fine-mess\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fine Mess"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A Fine Mess<\/strong> (1986)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, suggestive material, comic violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Blake Edwards\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Blake Edwards\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Henry Mancini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Harry Stradling Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 8, 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $6M (US)<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0The key to enjoying the slapstick farce A Fine Mess<\/strong> is to understand who directed it. That would be Blake Edwards, but there is a distinction that needs to be drawn. It\u2019s NOT the Blake Edwards who made The Pink Panther, 10, S.O.B. and Victor Victoria. It\u2019s the Blake Edwards who made Micki + Maude, Sunset, Skin Deep and all those rotten Pink Panther sequels. It\u2019s not one of his shining moments, cinematically speaking.<\/p>\n

\u00a0HOWEVER, the blame isn\u2019t entirely his. Most of the fault lies with the studio for doing what they always do, interfering. Blake\u2019s original vision of A Fine Mess<\/strong> was an improvised comedy much like his earlier film The Party. When it didn\u2019t go over with test audiences, the studio reworked it into a more conventional scripted comedy that retained only a few of the director\u2019s original ideas. Blake was so angry, he disowned the final product and urged the public to avoid it which they largely did.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The truth is the title A Fine Mess<\/strong> couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s the plot in a nutshell.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The inspiration for A Fine Mess<\/strong> 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\u2019s 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\u2019re told to carry it to the rec room on the second floor. That\u2019s where A Fine Mess<\/strong> 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?<\/p>\n

\u00a0That\u2019s 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<\/strong> is L&H, it\u2019s 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\u2019t have one-tenth the chemistry of Martin & Lewis. They\u2019re both good actors and they have funny scenes, but it\u2019s not that inspired a match-up. BTW, both of them get love interests. Dennis hooks up with auction house employee Ellen (director\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Messy as it is, I actually like A Fine Mess<\/strong>. I\u2019m not going to try to convince you it\u2019s some kind of unsung classic or comedy gem. It\u2019s 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\u2019s case) slaps from pissed-off women whose names he can\u2019t remember. There are car chases aplenty that always seem to end with a crash. It doesn\u2019t make a whole lot of sense, but it\u2019s fun to watch. I didn\u2019t see A Fine Mess<\/strong> 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\u2019s the kind of movie meant to be seen on cold Sunday nights in winter when all is bleak with the world. It\u2019s a decent little diversion, nothing more.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Fine Mess (1986)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, suggestive material, comic violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Blake Edwards\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Blake Edwards\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Henry Mancini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Harry Stradling Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 8, 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ted Danson, Howie Mandel, Richard Mulligan, Stuart Margolin, Maria Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Edwards, Paul Sorvino, Rick Ducommun, Vic Polizos, James […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9113,"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-8890","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\/11\/A-Fine-Mess-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\/8890","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=8890"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9115,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8890\/revisions\/9115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}