GREEDY
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Michael J. Fox, Kirk Douglas, Nancy Travis, Olivia D'Abo, Phil Hartman, Ed Begley Jr., Jere Burns. Screenplay: Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. Director: Jonathan Lynn.
I prefer my comedy with an edge. THE WAR OF THE ROSES, RUTHLESS PEOPLE, and TV's "The Simpsons" show that sometimes nothing is funnier than human nature at its nastiest. It is also the case that few comedy conventions irritate me more than starting with an edge and progressively dulling it with warm-fuzziness. So here comes GREEDY, a promising enough comedy about avaricious relatives, but that fact that it was written by the popular team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (SPLASH, PARENTHOOD, CITY SLICKERS) should have clued me in that it wouldn't go for the jugular. There are fewer big laughs than in any of those films, as a largely uninteresting cast tries gamely to support a limp story.
GREEDY describes most members of the McTeague family, who want to get their hands on the millions of scrap metal king Joe McTeague (Kirk Douglas). Nephews Frank (Phil Hartman), Carl (Ed Begley Jr.) and Glen (Jere Burns) and their families are among those who make weekly trips to Uncle Joe's mansion, kissing up to the sickly old man and tearing each other down in an attempt to become his sole heir. There is a new obstacle on their latest visit: Molly (Olivia D'Abo), a nubile young pizza delivery girl who has become Uncle Joe's live-in "nurse." Desperate to avoid being aced out, the family locates favorite nephew Danny (Michael J. Fox), an earnest professional bowler who avoids the family and its in-fighting. They promise Danny a cut of the inheritance of he can get rid of Molly, a deal which initially disgusts Danny. However, he gradually gets sucked in to the greedy McTeague world, much to the consternation of girlfriend Robin (Nancy Travis).
When it did work, GREEDY let its nasty characters be their nastiest. The opening fifteen minutes, focusing on one of the McTeague family's Saturday gatherings, offered a lot of laughs as they took turns revealing embarrassing secrets about each other to Uncle Joe. Unfortunately, none of the laughs are as big as they could have been, and that's primarily because Ganz and Mandel don't provide their characters with distinct personalities, except for Siobhan Fallon's horrendously overboard drunk as Hartman's wife. They're all sort of interchangeably grasping, and Hartman, Begley and Burns don't have enough manic energy on their own. While several of the lines are funny, none of the characters is funny enough to give them a big push.
After that early scene, GREEDY loses almost all of the bite it might have had. Michael J. Fox does a fine job of setting up the insecurity which will make Danny vulnerable to the influence of his family, but he isn't given the chance to sink his teeth into his own greed. Either director Jonathan Lynn or Fox himself wouldn't completely allow Danny to get nasty. The result is that nothing he does seems particularly deserving of rebuke; when he tells his distraught girlfriend that he's just acting in Uncle Joe's best interest, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Similarly, Olivia D'Abo is supposed to play a corrupted innocent, but it's hard to recognize where she changes because her character is never defined from the outset. Apparently changing from a bikini to a macrame body suit is supposed to signal moral degredation. GREEDY wimps out when it should be emphasizing lust for money is damaging its characters.
A simpler and more relevant criticism of GREEDY is that it really doesn't do anything new. Greedy relatives and fights for an inheritance are film staples, and most previous attempts have handled the subject better. By its conclusion, GREEDY had become sort of a recycled WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, as Michael J. Fox has to decide what to do with his particular Everlasting Gobstopper. GREEDY does offer a few giggles, but they get buried under a fairly self-evident message and a slow, unoriginal story. GREEDY is like a bottle of acid diluted in far too much water: it's just not corrosive enough.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 greedy relatives: 4.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews