NOISES OFF
A film review by Jon Alan Conrad
Copyright 1992 Jon Alan Conrad
Since there was considerable interest in this topic when we first heard that Michael Frayn's play "Noises Off" was going to be filmed, and the cast was posted several times, I thought readers might be interested in talking about the movie too, from a different perspective than might normally be found in rec.arts.movies. Anyway, I saw it Friday night.
"Noises Off" was one of the funniest plays in a long time; and the good news is that the movie has retained all the laughs. Though a screenwriter is credited, 99% of the movie is simply the play, virtually unaltered. This was a wise, if "uncinematic," decision on everyone's part. It means that most movie reviewers will not approve, not finding it enough of a "film experience." Indeed, it isn't a film experience particularly. But it's a faithful preservation of a riotously funny play, and I encourage anyone who liked it to go see the movie.
The alterations are of two main kinds. Since some of us know the play well, or have acted in it, I offer some detail:
1. The story is presented as a flashback by the director, on the final opening night. I understand the need for some such frame, to set the scene and take the place of the "fake theater program" we get to see in a live theater that tells us what's going on. However, the bits of narration and explanation are written on the corniest, most banal level you can imagine. Dash something off in five minutes, and you'll probably do about as well as the screenwriter did. Too bad, but remember that all this takes up less than five minutes, total, of the movie.
2. The locale and most of the characters have been Americanized. *not* the play-within-the-play "Nothing On," which is still a British sex farce. But everybody except the director (played by Michael Caine), the old drunk who plays the burglar (Denholm Elliott), and I *think* the dumb blonde who plays Vicki (Nicolette Sheridan, herself American but she has so few lines as herself I can't be sure she was playing English...reference is still made to her acting in London) are American actors assuming English accents when acting in this play. This produces some funny moments when they slip out of character -- Carol Burnett especially can be hilarious going from stage-Cockney to her own matter- of-fact tones. In general, the most obvious Britishisms have been edited out of their "offstage" talk: instead of "Old Age Pensioners" they say "senior citizens," instead of "pub" it's "bar," and so on. This is reasonable granted the original decision, and at times I think they might have gone further: everybody addressing everyone else as "love" all the time sounds a bit false.
Other than these choices, nearly every line of the play is intact. There is some evidence of making a few things more obvious for a mass movie audience, like Lloyd being off directing "Hamlet" (presumably better known to moviegoers than "Richard III"). That sort of thing. This seems to be a *very* low-rent pre-Broadway bus-and-truck tour. I mean, their startup city is Des Moines! (Has any tour ever started there?!?) The matinee that we see from backstage is in Miami Beach (that fits well enough), and the crowning debacle is in Cleveland. The narrative frame gives us fleeting glimpses of the actual end of the play "Nothing On," unhinted at in Frayn's play. I didn't mind this; it wasn't enough to spoil the premise, and the ridiculousness of it was fairly amusing.
What I *did* mind, very much, were the reaction shots gratuitously cut into the action, as if we dumb moviegoers wouldn't know what was funny without someone to cue us: In Act I, Lloyd smiles at some funny bits (most improbably, as he's not feeling at all happy); in Act II it's an incredulous security guard, and in Act III the theater audience. If I could get my hand on the print, I'd snip these right out and improve the film greatly!
Peter Bogdanovich has chosen to film the onstage action with a minimum of cutting away, to allow the actors to build up a stage rhythm in long "takes." This means a lot of panning and swooping camera motion, which I found well handled -- maybe it will seem excessive to others. The cast, given the American premise, does well. Caine is perfectly cast if slightly older than ideal, Denholm Elliott is who many of us thought of immediately for Selsdon in any case, Burnett has the right gallant-aging-trouper quality for Dotty, and John Ritter still does the best befuddled pratfalls in the business. Julie Hagerty and Mark Linn-Baker make the most of the harried stage managers, Sheridan embodies Vicki as well as one could ask, and Christopher Reeve, if not a natural for the dimbulb Freddy, makes the character work anyway. (By the way, his character's and Lloyd's last names have been swapped relative to the stage script; I have no idea why.) Marilu Henner seems wrong for the eternally sunny and friendly Belinda (what happened to Annie Potts, originally announced for the role?); she exudes sex-bomb instead. She doesn't mess things up much though. And if most of these have fairly awful stage-British accents, that can be taken as part of the fun.
It's not a great movie, I guess; it certainly doesn't "use the resources of the film medium" or any of the things film students are supposed to look for. But it allows me to enjoy again what I enjoyed onstage, so I have to say I liked it a lot; so did the (mostly young) audience I saw it with, and I intend to go again.
And that's why I suspect that this movie will be one to divide the theater lovers from the cinemaphiles. The latter will protest, quite correctly, that NOISES OFF doesn't use the film medium much at all -- it's really a filmed version of a play (and a play whose effect comes to a large extent from taking place on a stage, and nowhere else). The former will like it because it's not very different from seeing the play, and they want to see it again.
I'll be interested to see other reactions. I feel a bit bold sticking my neck out for something that most film scholars (including critics with any intellectual pretensions) will hate. But I had a great time at it, and I bet lots of other people will too.
Jon Alan Conrad
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