PASSED AWAY
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: When the patriarch of a large Irish
family dies, the whole brood comes to the funeral to be wacky
together, to work out their personal problems, and to learn
to endure. PASSED AWAY is a warm pleasant comedy with no
great insight, but with an amiable eye for human behavior.
Not bad. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4).
One of the film industry's more common tactics is the warmedy-bait- and-switch. Well, that's what I call it anyway. The idea is that you take a comedy "with heart" (as they say in THE PLAYER) and promote it as if it were a wild screwball comedy. Warm human values just do not hack it at the box office. And with at least two cast members in common with last year's hilarious OSCAR, the advertising could well have been intended to give the impression that PASSED AWAY was cut from the same cloth. It wasn't, but it is quite a pleasant film on its own. In spirit, PASSED AWAY is much more like ONCE AROUND.
The basic plot is simple enough. Jack Warden plays Jack Scanlon, the patriarch of a large Irish family. His four children are grown and leading entangled lives of their own. As the film opens, Jack has just recovered from a heart attack and is helping his oldest son Johnny (played by Bob Hoskins) through a mid-life crisis. Then Jack dies suddenly and Johnny finds himself the new head of a rather eccentric household and at the same time is responsible for arranging for his father's wake and funeral. Johnny has a house full of family ranging from very human to just this side of totally wacky. And one more mourner shows up: Cassie Slocombe (played by Nancy Travis, who looks a lot like Julia Roberts). Jack always had a wandering eye and often other parts wandered as well. Johnny himself is attracted to Cassie and suddenly Johnny knows what he wants to do with his mid-life crisis.
Charlie Peters, previously a screenwriter with such dubious credits as PATERNITY and THREE MEN AND A LITTLE LADY, this time directs his own screenplay and gets a killer cast, including Hoskins, Warden, Blair Brown, William Petersen, Tim Curry, Peter Riegert, and Maureen Stapleton. All he really needed for this film about the dignity of being a regular person in America was a score by Georges Delerue. Richard Gibbs's music just does not quite hit the right spot. I give PASSED AWAY a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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