OUT COLD
A film review by Jeff Meyer
Copyright 1988 Jeff Meyer
See at the Seattle Film Festival: OUT COLD (USA, 1988) Director: Malcolm Mowbray Screenwriters: George Malko, Leonard Glasser Cast: Teri Garr, John Lithgow, Randy Quaid, Bruce McGill
World Premiere
This was the closing night show at the festival; we were supposed to have gotten Coppola and Lucas's TUCKER, but they apparently pulled out at the last minute. I wish I could tell you that OUT COLD was a fine substitute, but if this film is never screened anywhere else, it will be better for everyone's career.
BLOOD SIMPLE has a lot to answer for. There must be at least five films about with Film Noir subjects (friend kills friend so that he can get at friend's wife, etc.) that have been played for laughs over the last few years. OUT COLD is the latest, and one of the least funny. It opens in the butcher shop of Ernie and Dave, two Vietnam war buddies who started up a deli when they got out of the army. Ernie (McGill) is a womanizing asshole who picks on his conniving wife, Sunny (Garr), and leaves all the work to his meek, pleasant partner Dave (Lithgow). Garr wants a divorce, so she hires inept private detective Lester Atlas (Quaid) to track down Ernie's girlfriends; one night, after Dave and Ernie have had a fight, Sunny wanders in, finds Ernie waking up in the meat locker from a punch in the jaw from Dave (who has left in a huff), decides that it would be to her advantage to shut the door to said locker in Ernie's face, and does so. Dave gets there the next morning to find Ernie frozen in the locker, and assumes he did it. Sunny would love to have it end that way; however, Lester Atlas followed Ernie last night, and mistook Sunny (in a wig) for Ernie's lover.
From there we go onto a long track as Sunny attempts to manipulate Atlas into thinking that Ernie has left to go hunting, and Dave to get rid of the body. It's kind of like a poor "I Love Lucy" episode with black humor and a cast of unappealing actors. Garr is never funny, just bitchy, as is McGill (but at least he's dead through the majority of the film). Quaid plays a detective so stupid that he makes Inspector Clouseau look like Columbo; the dumb act (and his slob habits) are brainless slapstick, and very dull. Dave is the only character who's likable in the whole film, but he's such a colorless guy that you really don't care about him. Which makes for a pretty barren movie, gang.
I don't know when this is coming out, but stay away from it when it does. A comedy without one redeeming feature to it. Thumbs down.
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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