ROXANNE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Funny, intelligent updating of CYRANO DE BERGERAC has something to say about the nature of beauty without ever failing to entertain. Unfortunately, Martin's script cops out at the end, denying the audience the power of the end of CYRANO.
Steve Martin's new film has the best plot of anything he has done to date. But the credit, of course, does not go entirely to Martin's screenplay. In fact, ROXANNE is an updating of one of the great plays of French theater, CYRANO DE BERGERAC. It is a good enough play that Martin could have coasted through his version and still have had a marvelous film. Instead, he broadens the humor and makes Cyrano de Bergerac--renamed C. D. Bales--perfectly at home as the ever-perfect chief of the world's most incompetent fire department.
Bales has an old problem and a new problem. His old problem is that he has an absurd-looking four-inch-long nose. That problem he pretty much under control. That is because he is unmatched as both a wit and a fighter. Nobody makes fun of that nose for very long. His other problem is that he loves the new-in-town astronomer Roxanne (played by Daryl Hannah). Unfortunately, Roxanne wants Bales only for a friend. She really has eyes only for Christopher, a handsome but vapid new recruit to the fire department.
Christopher is low-brow and crude, but is physically attracted to Roxanne. Knowing he is too clumsy to woo her by himself, he asks for help from Bales. Bales coaches Christopher to say the things that Bales wishes he could tell her himself. To be able to say to Roxanne everything that he feels, Bales is willing to let Christopher reap the advantages.
ROXANNE represents one more step for Martin away from his off-the-wall origins and into making comedy of some lasting value. Updating CYRANO DE BERGERAC was a clever idea and is one that works. One complaint, however-- when ROMEO AND JULIET was updated for WEST SIDE STORY it was the *whole story* that was updated. They did not soften the ending. Martin insults his audience by denying them the powerful and tragic end to the story. Probably at the beginning he was planning to include it because he made Bales a firefighter rather than, say, a stockbroker. But at some point he changed his mind, apparently to make the film more commercial. The film remains a light throwaway summer comedy instead of a powerful adaptation of Rostand that the final scene of CYRANO could have made it. Rate it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. Good, but watch the Jose Ferrer version of the original if it comes up on PBS.
POST SCRIPT: It may be of some interest that Cyrano de Bergerac really existed. He was at once one of the greatest swordsmen and one of the greatest wits in France. He did have a nose of prodigious size, about which he was extremely sensitive. He is also credited as being the first major science fiction novelist. His VOYAGE TO THE MOON was the first real science fiction novel to use its concepts not for allegory, but for sense of wonder. He thought of, on his own, several means of getting humans to the moon, most of which were absurd by modern standards, but the one he invented for his book (and which nobody is recorded as having thought of before) was to use rockets. Science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz devotes the first chapter of his EXPLORERS OF THE INFINITE to Cyrano de Bergerac.
Mark R. Leeper
ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper
mtgzz!leeper@rutgers.rutgers.edu
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews