BORN YESTERDAY
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1993 Frank Maloney
BORN YESTERDAY is a film directed by Luis Mandoki, from a screenplay by Douglas McGrath and based on the play by Garson Kanin. It stars Melanie Griffith, Don Johnson, and John Goodman. Rated PG for sexual references.
BORN YESTERDAY was first filmed by George Cukor in 1950 and is based on a Broadway comedy by Garson Kanin. The 1950 version won Judy Holliday an Oscar for best actress and established her as one of the great stars of the 50s. This 1950 version is so great, so definitive, and so identified with Holliday that any performer who dares to take is either going to dazzle us with her chutzpah or confirm us in our prejudice against remakes of great films. After all, who would have the presumption to recapitulate Rick in CASABLANCA or Scarlett in GONE WITH THE WIND? As a matter of fact, sequels have been attempted to both these classics with the same effect as dropping a pebble in the ocean.
So, ladies and gentlemen, hats off to Melanie Griffith. She pulled it off. Her version of Billie evokes Holliday's without aping it and allows Griffith to make this famous character her own. Griffith could never deliver the amazing repertoire of shrill squeaks and noisy whines, but she has the nerve and the skill to confront the legend of Holliday directly in such recreated scenes as the gin-rummy game with her brutally rich paramour, a role played by Broderick Crawford in 1950 (and Paul Douglas on Broadway) and by John Goodman in 1993. One thing that Griffith -- and director Luis Mandoki -- do is to play down the dumb-blonde thang and quieting down some of the broader humor of the 1950 version. Griffith's Billie is uneducated but right from the beginning we -- and Don Johnson's political-reporter character -- see a hint of an insightful intelligence underneath those amazing earrings.
John Goodman is quite an improvement in fact over Crawford just as Johnson is better than William Holden. Goodman is vulgar, selfish, and violent but still he manages at times to make his monster character almost likable, or at least sympathetic (the gin-rummy game and the dancing sequence, for example); he throws this away near the end, but up until them we did a more complex, more dramatically interesting character than Crawford's junk-dealer turned ogre.
As for Don Johnson, let me say right here that he is a major cutie, a man who keeps getting more and more attractive. He is also a delightful actor, a fact I have been aware only since he and Griffith made PARADISE a year or two ago. Holden was never very credible as an idealist, given his tough, cynical persona as developed throughout the course of his career. Johnson convinces us more readily and brings a certain less-than-perfect complexity to his part, just as Goodman is for most of the movie less-than-monstrous.
This is an uplifting movie in which something magical and heroic happens, in which a lot of bubbles are exploded (National Public Radio comes in for some delightful knocks, for example), stereotypes are overcome, and people learn to do the right thing for themselves and for their world.
I recommend BORN YESTERDAY to you, even at full ticket price. And if you can, take a look at Judy Holliday's version. It is one of the great comedies of its era, just Melanie Griffith's version could very well turn out to be one of the great comedies of the current era.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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