Big Night (1996)
A film review by Dave Cowen
Copyright 1996 Dave Cowen
"My brother is a world above you," says Secondo (Stanley Tucci) to Pascal (Ian Holm) about his idealist brother Primo (Tony Shaloub). Primo makes subtle, authentic Italian food and refuses to serve watered-down, traditional fare at his restaurant. "I'm a businessman," retorts successful but commercial restauranteur Pascal, "what are you?" One of the many maddening things about BIG NIGHT is that we never do get to find out who Secondo really is... and a lot more is missing as well.
Primo and Secondo have come over from Italy in the 50's with the dream of making it big in America by doing what they know best: making the greatest Italian cuisine known to man. After two years of preparation, they've just opened their restaurant and found that the patrons in the unnamed east coast city they've settled in don't seem very interested in genuine Italian cuisine, preferring instead the "spaghetti and meatballs" style of "Italian" food available down the street at Pascal's restaurant. The bank has demanded a payment by the end of the month on their loan, and the brothers don't have the money. Pascal, in a seeming fit of goodwill, has recommended the brothers' restauarant to jazz great Louie Prima to hoist the brothers out of debt and into the restaurant spotlight. BIG NIGHT covers the boys on their quest to serve the greatest meal ever on the last night their restaurant is open. In doing so, the film brings up the themes of brotherly love and the myth of the American dream.
Unfortunately, the movie doesn't stick to that quest, instead bringing in puzzling subplots about the romantic affairs of the brothers. Primo's affair with Ann (Allison Janney), a widowed Florist, is cute but brings little to the plot. Secondo's relationship with his girlfriend Phyllis (Minnie Driver), however, borders on the nonsensical. Secondo refuses to make physical advances to Phyllis, instead telling her that he wants to wait until they are more financially secure. Throughout the film, Secondo ignores Phyllis, showing little attraction or desire for her, and all of the exchanges between the two are awkward. We later find out that Secondo is having sex with Gabriella (Isabella Rosellini), Pascal's mistress. At the end of the film, Secondo seems genuinely distraught that Phyllis, after seeing Secondo and Gabriella together, wants nothing to do with him -- something that I really had a hard time believing.
I don't mind not liking a character, but Secondo's motivations in BIG NIGHT make so little sense that I truly had no idea why he was doing the things he did. It's not that his character was an enigma, but that his actions are never adequately explained. Later in the film, Secondo insists that he will stay in America, after his brother reveals that he's lined up a job for both of them at their Uncle's restaurant in Rome. Why? It's explained only in the vaguest of ways. While the plot expresses Primo and Pascal's motivations clearly in the script, Secondo, the focal character, wanders through the action making idiotic choices for no explained reason. Some of the most sympathetic characters in film are shown as having made poor choices in life -- and it's easy to sympathize with a character if they make a bad choice as long as they had a good reason at the time to do so. I don't even mind characters who make completely arbitrary decisions provided that the character's poor judgement is explained in the film. However, I get the feeling that Tucci wants us to sympathize with Secondo, and to like him -- and other individuals upon seeing the movie seem to have found him a "likable" character -- but I found the character to be so idiotic and unlikable as to spoil the rest of the film.
Ian Holm's portrayal of Pascal verges on the ridiculous. Every other word out of Holm is an obscenity filtered through an obviously fake accent, and he comes off as being entirely unconvincing as an Italian restauranteur. The comedy in the film is played as being extremely broad -- overstated reactions are the norm (the "heavenly" reactions of those biting into Primo's food are extremely overdone, and by the end of the film, had me wincing every time any character had anything to eat). Other than Tony Shaloub's sublime and noble Primo, the rest of the characters have little depth.
While some of the food prepared by Primo looks truly delicious, pictures of food are not enough to make me enjoy a film. While the static camerawork is acceptable, tracking shots and zooms seem hesitant and jittery, strange for a film that lists a Steadicam operator in its credits.
It seems equally strange for a movie that seems to value Primo's sense of subtlety and richness in flavor of food so highly to play the comedy in such an over-the-top way, to make only the basest of observations on the topics it brings up...while supplanting the film with shallow characters, little plot and less than amazing camerawork. So I ask the viewer of this movie, as the choices this film makes seem less like Primo's artistic virtuosity or Pascal's commercial mechanations, and more close to the arbitrary decisions of Secondo, "What is BIG NIGHT?" To that, I answer, "confused" -- a quality that left me with a bad taste in my mouth after the BIG NIGHT.
Dave Cowen (esch@fische.com) Eschatfische. ---------------------------- http://www.fische.com
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