I only got the last part of this movie on television. I began to think about how these type of movies no longer are made. Movies nowadays have to showoff and prove something. I miss these silly type of movies. They are escapism. We don't have any escapism in film today.
shareNonsense. They make tons of escapism, it's just that styles have changed.
I just caught this tonight with my wife, who's a big Westlake fan, and we both thought it was pretty bad, for different reasons. She thought it was a bad adaptation of a good novel, and though I haven't read this particular Westlake, I know his style enough to be pretty confident that it's pretty much a butchery.
This movie is a typical example of people hearing the words "bank robbery comedy" and immediately all they can think of is Gilligan's Island-level slapstick. There was certainly no need to butcher a Westlake book, they could have simply written that sort of movie from scratch.
And since I mentioned changing styles, two things (besides the butchery) really annoyed me. All the females were bubble-headed idiots, and the only black guy was one step away from rolling his eyes and being scared of spooks and ghosties. Ugh.
But the music drove me up a wall. This score is one of those that figures the audience doesn't know when the funny stuff is happening so it underlines everything twice with a jumbo El Marko. It was about 10 years behind the times when it was released, and now, three decades later, it sounds like a relic from the stone age. There are several set-pieces that are supposed to be hilarious and go on far too long and have the most obnoxious "this is where you are laughing" music and they never had a prayer of a chance to be funny.
Painful.
I agree. I enjoyed this silly film a lot. And to the person who said your reply was "nonsense"...I guess one isn't allowed to have an opinion if it differs from theirs. They don't make these kinds of films anymore, which is a fact. Many try to make quirky films, which most fall flat. The '70s was one of the best decades of film, and this is a change from many of the violent gritty flicks from that era. No one expected George C. Scott to do comedy this well, and he did a fine job. Too bad more people can't just accept the film for what it is & just enjoy it.
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