TRAPPED IN PARADISE
A film review by James Berardinelli
Copyright 1994 James Berardinelli
Rating (0 to 10): 1.6
Date Released: 12/2/94 Running Length: 1:51 Rated: PG-13 (Language, mind-numbing stupidity)
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Jon Lovitz, Dana Carvey, Florence Stanley, Madchen Amick, Donald Moffat, Angela Paton, John Ashton Director: George Gallo Producers: Jon Davison and George Gallo Screenplay: George Gallo Cinematography: Jack N. Green Music: Robert Folk Released by Twentieth Century Fox
If you've seen TRAPPED IN PARADISE, you have my sympathy. (Or would condolences be a more appropriate term?) One piece of advice, though: in no circumstances, even under threat of torture, admit to anyone that you were suckered into seeing this, one of the worst movies of the year. Then again, if you actually endured all one-hundred eleven minutes of this motionless picture, there's probably little anyone can do to you that would be less pleasant.
Okay, so perhaps that's overstated, but words like "bad," "ill-conceived," "unforgivable," and even "putrid" don't do the film justice. Except for one laugh--and a pretty feeble one at that--TRAPPED IN PARADISE is devoid of any characteristics that even the most undiscriminating movie-goer hopes for in a film. On top of all this, the production is unnecessarily long. In this case, less would have been a whole lot more--or at least a whole lot more easily endured.
The storyline is a sloppy and ineffective mixture of failed slapstick, humorless jokes, stock characters caught in predictable situations, and feeble attempts at mawkish sentimentality. TRAPPED IN PARADISE centers on an inept bank robbery pulled by the three Firpo brothers (Bill, played by Nicolas Cage; Dave, played by Jon Lovitz; and Alvin, played by Dana Carvey) in the small, postcard-perfect town of Paradise, Pennsylvania. Masked to avoid recognition, Bill and Dave burst into the bank, while Alvin waits behind the wheel of the getaway car. Things immediately start going wrong, and they get worse during the high- speed chase that ensues. Alvin crashes the car and the trio finds themselves without an escape vehicle. But the citizens of Paradise are a neighborly lot, and the car-less brothers are invited to Christmas dinner by the man who rescues them from the accident, and who also happens to be the son of the man whose bank they just robbed.
The quality of this film, with its formula car chases, endless running around, and incredibly moronic protagonists, is an all-time low for a Three Stooges takeoff. None of the actors acquit themselves even passably. Even the normally-reliable Nicolas Cage looks like a man aware that he's on the deck of a sinking Titanic.
Actually, Cage's presence, along with the repeated use of the sign "Welcome to Paradise," may conjure up images of the far superior RED ROCK WEST, which was also about being stuck in a small town. The best solution for anyone intrigued by the premise of TRAPPED IN PARADISE would be to rent the John Dahl noir thriller. It would certainly save a lot of grief. TRAPPED IN PARADISE is, after all, a horrible misnomer. Even Dante's seventh circle of Hell isn't this inhospitable.
- James Berardinelli (blake7@cc.bellcore.com)
The above represents the opinions of the author, and not necessarily those of Bellcore or any organization within Bellcore.
.
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