BULLETS OVER BROADWAY
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1994 Michael John Legeros
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Allen and Douglas McGrath
Cast Jim Broadbent, John Cusack, Harvey Fierstein,
Chazz Palminteri, Mary-Louise Parker, Rob Reiner,
Jennifer Tilly, Tracey Ullman, Joe Viterelli,
Jack Warden, and Dianne Wiest
MPAA Rating "R" (presumably for language)
Running Time 99 minutes
Reviewed at Colony Theater, Raleigh (5NOV94)
==
"It's a tragedy."
"I'll say."
- Palminteri back to Tilly
Let's face it, Woody Allen never changes and his yearly movies never disappoint. That much we know. His films always open with the same nondescript titles, they always star an great ensemble cast, and, lately at least, they always comment on the role of the artist.
BULLETS OVER BROADWAY is set in the 1920's and stars John Cusack as a young Village playwright with a mob boss as a backer. The catch: the boss's mistress (Jennifer Tilly) has to get a part. The girl can't act, but she's no worse than the material--dialogue that a needs doctor and needs one badly. Help arrives in the form of the bodyguard (Chaz Palminteri), who has a better ear than the author and who starts suggesting rewrites to the playwright.
Light, loose, and a little bit overlong, BULLETS OVER BROADWAY has several side-splitting sequences. The best, by far, is the first meeting between the playwright, the mobster, and mistress. Who else but Jennifer Tilly can pronounce "hors d'oeuvres" as "horse dervs" and sound so natural? Then there's Dianne Wiest, enormous fun as an aging theater queen who bears no small resemblance to Norma Desmond. Her great line: "Don't speak."
OSCAR WATCH: Wiest and, maybe, Tilly and Palminteri.
BOTTOM LINE: Weighted with just a handful of heavy themes, BULLETS
OVER BROADWAY is Woody Allen's lightest film in years.
Grade: B+
-- Michael J. Legeros Raleigh, North Carolina
.
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