SOUR GRAPES
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Columbia Pictures/ Castle Rock Entertainment Director: Larry David Writer: Larry David Cast: Steven Weber, Craig Bierko, Karen Sillas, Robyn Peterman, Matt Keeslar, Viola Harris, Orland Jones
It's a good thing that film critics have widely different opinions on what they see. Otherwise you'd have a severe downsizing in the industry--perhaps one national critic for the 275+ studios films introduced each year--and we wouldn't want to eliminate the enterprise, would we? Sometimes, though, it seems that reviewers see different works altogether. Time Out New York magazine critic Andrew Johnston calls "Sour Grapes" "very very funny," while Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times says that it's "a comedy about things that aren't funny." Whom to trust?
In this case the Johnston-Ebert schism can be resolved by splitting the difference. The movie is neither very very funny nor humorless. In a way, it's like "The Odd Couple II" in that you might find yourself rolling with laughter, then wondering how you could do that for such cornball material. Each movie has something the other lacks, however. "The Odd Couple II" has crackerjack actors as the two leads; their gags are timed perfectly. But the material is older than they are. "Sour Grapes" is deficient in pacing--sometimes the performers seem to stop to wait for a laugh or perhaps even to contemplate whether what they say really is as ludicrous as it's supposed to be. But the material is freshly crass. "Sour Grapes" is chock full of sick jokes, making light of heart attacks, accidental castration, aneurysms, racial pigeonholing, and especially of political correctness. The gags come at you thick and fast, delivered by two guys who are cousins, who are friends, but whose temperaments are far enough apart to create the central tension of the story.
Evan (Steve Weber) is a successful New York brain surgeon, considered one of the top men in the field. His cousin Richie (Craig Bierko) is a designer of sneakers. Evan is handsome and dates a WASP girl, Joan (Karen Sillas) while Richie's flamboyant and goes with a gum-chewing little bombshell, Millie (Jennifer Leigh Warren). When the two couples go to Atlantic City for a weekend of gambling, both lose heavily until Richie, down to his last quarter, bums Evan's last two coins to play the 75-cent slot machine. When Richie hits the jackpot (three grapes in a row), he wins the grand price of $436,000. Offering Evan a $1000 check he is astounded when Evan counters with a demand for half the money--"technically two-thirds"--because the winning grapes came through on Evan's money. After all, if you invest money in a stock that skyrockets, you're entitled to the gains, aren't you? Though a little time is spent splitting hairs--for example, were the two quarters a loan or an stake--"Sour Grapes" is not concerned with matters technical or with proceeding on unflawed logic. The movie is a burlesque on the nature of greed, a favorite topic of writers at least since Ben Jonson penned the classic tale of acquisitiveness, "Volpone," and how such cupidity can undo the best of friendships and lead to a loss of close relationships.
Some of the humor is on a level of vulgarity that might make Howard Stern wince. Because Evan and Richie have staked out rival claims to the money, both advance through the movie with anxiety leading to embarrassing circumstances. To relax, the double-jointed Richie is more than ever devoted to his hobby of performing oral sex on himself. For his part, Evan performs surgery on an infected testicle of a TV entertainer, Danny Pepper (Matt Keeslar), cuts out the wrong one, and leaves the poor man fully castrated with disastrous effects on his voice and thereby his successful career. (This running gag is perhaps the only one that doesn't work, not so much because it's crude, but because Keeslar is too outrageous to be believed or sympathized with and because it is overly extended.)
Viola Harris does a comic turn as Richie's Jewish mother, who dotes on this son who takes such good care of her--until, that is, the overindulged lad decides to have her killed for reasons which are clear as you watch the movie. The story finds use for a Runyonesque group of homeless people, one who acts in an embarrassing Stepin Fetchit mode, and in yet another putdown of political correctness hones in on an elderly couple who hesitate long and hard before telling a black cop that the criminal being sought is also African- American.
We can't fail to mention that Larry David, the writer-director, is co-creator of the fabulously successful Seinfeld series, a rich man indeed who left TV to make movies like this one. His straight-man, Steven Weber, looks strikingly like that TV series' title character. "Sour Grapes" may be strictly a strictly debut accomplishment, though a solid one at that, but wait until David really hits his stride and knocks out a series of triumphs in the years to come. Rated R. Running Time: 92 minutes. (C) 1998 Harvey Karten
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