STICKY FINGERS (director/writer: Catlin Adams; screenwriter: Melanie Mayron; cinematographer: Gary Thieltges; editor: Robert Reitano; cast: Helen Slater (Hattie), Melanie Mayron (Lolly), Eileen Brennan (Landlord, Stella), Loretta Devine (Diane), Christopher Guest (Sam), Carol Kane (Kitty ), Stephen McHattie (Eddie), Danitra Vance (Evanston), Gwen Welles (Marcie), 1988)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
This girls' sitcom film is strictly fluff, with a few comical moments succeeding in a long line of misfires. The girls try so hard to be funny by making faces and doing slapstick, that it is a shame that the storytelling ability of the director is so poor, that it undermines the comedy. It is imitative of a dumb boys' film, with the same way of irritating you. The setting is NYC (I might add a phony looking Manhattan ambiance) and the scene is the singles one for two hard luck buskers, one playing a classical violin and the other a cello in Central Park to make their rent money. They are struggling showgirls, sharing the same apartment, and hoping for their big break, to cut a record or get a part in a musical.
Their overwhelming problem comes when Hattie (Slater), the bleached blonde violin player buys some weed from her drug pusher, ex-attorney Diane (Devine), even though she's broke. When Diane gets an emergency call that her boyfriend has been hit, she is able to talk the ditsy Lolly (Mayron) to hold onto her green bag without asking what's in the bag and quickly splits. Inside the bag is $900,000 smackers, which throws the girls into a frenzy of feeble comic antics, unworthy of Laurel and Hardy on a bad hair day.
To provide some NYC character atmosphere, we have the girls' landlord (Brennan) demanding rent from the girls in a strident NYC accent. The landlord broke her leg, so her hick sister Kitty (Kane) stays with her, and flirts with the parking attendant from across the street, Eddie (McHattie). Kane does a 'My Friend Irma' bit, competing with the girls who live on the 5th floor of the walk-up, to see if she's as big a numbskull as they are.
Naturally, the money becomes too much of a temptation for the pair, as they get sticky fingers over it. To add to their problems they get burgled, but it is their musical instruments and electrical equipment that gets taken and not the money. So the girls go on a shopping binge, bet in a casino, buy new musical instruments, pay their back rent, and have used up over $200,000 buying gaudy earrings, flimsy dresses, tons of shoes, and who should call them, but the one they never want to hear from again, Diane, wanting her green bag.
When that exchange takes place in the lady's room of a theater they are appearing at, the trouble begins, as Diane has been followed by some pretty bad hombres, who will do anything to get their money back, and they don't care who is holding the bag. The police have also followed her and will arrest her on the spot. That leaves the bad guys with no choice but to go after the two buskers with the green bag.
The funniest one in the film, was Lolly's somewhat-boyfriend Sam (Guest). He plays her off like he was a fiddler in a flea circus, as he is still with ex-girlfriend Marcie, and is never around when she needs him. When he is spotted with his arm around Marcie, he tells her the stupidest lie imaginable and when confronted with why he can't even show up to Lolly's seders to meet her mother, he replies, "Don't you talk seder to me, because seder is kugel and kugel is poop." Whatever that means, it was the funniest moment in a film that couldn't get to Central Park if it was standing on it.
REVIEWED ON 6/8/2000 GRADE: C-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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