THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN is a film directed by Jonathan Lynn, from a script by Marty Kaplan. It stars Eddie Murphy, James Garner, Joe Don Baker, Lane Smith, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Grant Shaud, Kevin McCarthy. Rated R, for language and mild sex scenes.
THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN is Eddie Murphy's most likable film is a long time. Working for Disney's Hollywood Pictures, he brings a freshness and sense of having fun to this film that have been missing from his most recent Paramount vehicles, BOOMERANG and HARLEM NIGHTS. Neither does he have a mean-spirited, violent action film this time out, making it altogether easier to watch. The script was written by Marty Kaplan, a Disney executive who once wrote speeches for Walter Mondale and who has some first-hand experience with Washington, D.C., and its less endearing folkways. Kaplan also edited the "Harvard Lampoon" and has some pretty good academic credentials (Harvard, Cambridge, Stanford). The end result is an argument for the idea that a good script is still important.
The story, as you may know, concerns a small-time con man who uses "name recognition" to get a seat in the U. S. House of Representative. Murphy qua con man is probably as good an idea for letting Murphy be Murphy as turning Robin Williams loose as the genie in ALADDIN. He gets to do almost all his shticks -- Jewish, ghetto Black, WASP, Black without Soul (in the words of B. B. King in John Landis' AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON), females of various sort -- without doing his fag-bashing Effeminate Black (he limits his homophobia to one line: "You're not going to pull any of that homo shit, are you?"). Murphy proved his genius by selecting this script, then rest is more or less on autopilot.
He also lets himself be backed up by a lot of talent. Lane Smith as the venal Chairman of a particularly venal Congressional committee almost dominates the film; one reviewer pointed to Smith's performance here as a comic variation on his role as Richard Nixon in the TV miniseries, "Final Days." Kevin McCarthy, as the insider superlawyer, has a great scene instructing the freshman Congressman on the facts on PACs and foundations and fundraisers. James Garner puts in a cameo at the beginning of the film. Grant Shaud, who plays the neurotic director on TV's "Murphy Brown," lights up the scenes he's in. Victoria Rowell is convincing as the public-interest lobbyist who helps open the new Congressman's eyes to the slime around him. Sheryl Lee Ralph was funny, charming, and outrageous as Miss Loretta; we've previously seen her as Robert DeNiro's mistress in the production of the same name. Joe Don Baker plays a major lobbyist with suitable disregard for the niceties. And Sarah Carson is the beautiful, frosty staffer who has a unique way of serving with satisfaction.
It's not a perfect movie -- the transformation is more magical than motivated -- but it offers some engaging fun as Murphy's character wakes up to the corruption around him. It's a movie that wants to take the same moral ground as MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, but only achieves the lesser moments of Capraesque preachiness. (Frank Capra III is listed in the credits, for what that's worth -- irony if nothing else.) It has energy and good intentions, and while the humor is not of the laugh-out-loud variety, it is entertaining. And it is less cynical, more optimistic than the trailer had led me to believe, and that is a relief.
I can recommend THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN to you at matinee prices.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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