FILM TITLE: SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA DIRECTOR: JONATHAN DEMME COUNTRY: USA 1987 CINEMATOGRAPHY: JOHN BAILEY CAST: Spalding Grey MUSIC BY: Laurie Andersen WRITTEN BY: Spalding Grey SUPER FEATURES: Crazy stuff.... would you believe it?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stage shows do not translate very well to film....
But then again, there are certain things you can not exactly put on film, or on the stage, for that matter.
Spalding Grey, all by his lonesome, has an attitude about the stories he tells us that are a t first weird, then get better, and then, they hook us into laughing. This whole thing is actually one man's view of his experiences in Vietnam, and the various incidents and accidents that happened, even when he was an actor on the set of the film THE KILLING FIELDS. And the adventures go from totally crazy, to being far out, to 'you got to be kidding me...' and then some.
For a one man show, this is excellent, it really doesn't get any better than this. It has an easy setting, and is augmented by some very good music by the artist Laurie Andersen, and well co-ordinated by the director to keep us as in tune as possible.
There are some incidents that aren't pleasant, but then, the description of the events comes off so surrealistic, that it is difficult to distinguish where the event stopped and the writer started with his literary license. And license, he does take. From the discussions of the beach Hiltons and the holidays with bullets a la carte to the prostitutes and their ways about the foreign men, who paid them better than any job might in a whole year, of course, if there were jobs... after all this was a war, and the jobs were non existent.
But amidst all this, there is at least one man scared out of his wits, and his comic demeanor manages to save the day on occasion. It is all somewhat of a distant memory of Spike Milligan's wonderful stories about his part in the fall of Hitler, and Hitler's part in Spike's downfall.
An evening of delightful entertainment awaits you if you get to see this oddity of a show. It isn't an action movie.... unless you have the imagination to be sooooo active. And for some of us, there are a few visual aids to help us figure out what he is talking about, which at times is a problem.
Extremely fast paced, it gives you no breaks at all. Worth seeing, as a reminder, that even if we make mistakes, we not only can learn from them, we can also laugh..... and cry.
4 of 5 GIBLOONS
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