TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS
A film review by Beth Griese
Copyright 1990 Beth Griese
CAPSULE REVIEW: Charles Grodin plays a keyed-up yuppie who loses his datebook on the way to an important weekend meeting. The book is found by James Belushi, who uses it to take on Grodin's identity. Belushi has escaped temporarily from jail to go watch the Cubs in the World Series. Improbable movie with a lot of cheap jokes, but a few funny ones, too. RATING: +1 1/2 Film opens August 17.
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS, a film by Hollywood Pictures starring James Belushi and Charles Grodin, explores what it thinks is the nightmare of every overworked yuppie: losing one's Filofax.
For anyone else (like me) who doesn't know what a Filofax is, it's one of those little notebooks that organizes your life into schedules, phone number lists, credit card holders, and calendars.
Grodin plays overachiever ad exec Spencer Barnes, who loses his datebook on the way to a weekend meeting in Malibu with a big client. The book is found by Jimmy Dworski (Belushi), a convict who escaped from jail for the weekend to go watch the World Series. Jimmy uses the Filofax to pick up where Spencer left off, enjoying the rich life in Malibu before the game while Spencer searches frantically to find out who has taken his identity away from him.
And the movie does nothing but get more improbable from there. It's no accident that the screenwriters decided to put the Cubs in the World Series, when the Cubs haven't won a series since 1908.
The movie goes for every cheap joke it can find, and it finds no lack of opportunities. To its credit, it does hit with some good gags. It would be hard to miss every time with Charles Grodin and James Belushi on the screen.
The movie takes the safe, numbingly predictable path and lets the comic talent of its stars compensate for lack of tension, photography, and script. It follows the same plot lines that have been done as recently as in OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS (although this film does it better) and as long ago as in THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER.
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS trumpets the pitfalls of becoming obsessed with work and being unable to enjoy life. But while the film encourages Spencer as he learns to leave his Filofax behind, at the same time the movie is a commercial for Filofax.
Everyone in this movie owns and admires the Filofax. The camera takes long, loving looks at how organized the datebook can be and how useful it should be. We even get to shop the variety of colors and styles the datebook is available in.
Filofax does have a great racket going. Their trademark is officially associated with the film, so they get all the exposure in the movie (certainly no one has any datebooks that aren't Filofax) plus their name is plastered in every review and promotion the movie gets.
As I said, the movie does hit with some funny lines. If you're in the mood to turn off your brain for a couple of hours, spending a matinee show in TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS wouldn't be a bad idea. But if you can't turn off those nagging doubts and do get turned off by easy jokes, your time is better spent elsewhere. Rating: +1 1/2 out of -4 to +4.
-=- Beth Griese --Columbus, OH
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