THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
Bill Murray is a wonderful comic who has trouble picking decent scripts. At his best, as in GROUNDHOG DAY, his delicious brand of wry humor provides one delightful moment after another. But without the right material, as in LARGER THAN LIFE and many other recent pictures of his, he tries to ham it up too much in order to make up for the film's lack of natural humor. In these latter movies, the result is bad slapstick.
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE, which bears no relationship to THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, provides the perfect vehicle for Murray's talents. Clearly enjoying his part, Murray takes this one-joke movie and milks the joke for all it's worth. Although the hilarious GROUNDHOG DAY was a classic one-joke movie, comedies with a single idea are the hardest to sustain.
When the story starts, Wallace Ritchie (Murray) has just arrived in London to visit his brother. Blockbuster Video clerk Wallace with a tartan hat and bad tourist clothes goes to visit his upscale brother James. Peter Gallagher plays James with all of the genuine horror of someone who has an uninvited guest arrive at an inopportune moment.
James is hosting a large dinner party of Germans to pitch them a big deal. Having his country-bumpkin brother on hand would be a disaster, so James attempts to solve the problem by signing Wallace up with a "Theater of Life" company. They stage pretend murders in real houses, and the participant gets to live a fantasy criminal life. Since the theater lasts until almost midnight, this seems the perfect mechanism for James to rid himself of his unwanted brother.
The one joke is that there is a real crime afoot, and Wallace, as a sunglassed, pretend secret agent, gets in the middle of it by mistake. Wallace never realizes that he is in any danger so he has great fun shooting and getting shot at. When he finds a dead body, he compliments the corpse on how real he looks. Nothing fazes Wallace including a real mugging.
The purposely overcomplicated plot involves stolen letters of a call girl named Lori, played by Joanne Whalley, who is blackmailing a high government official. The most dastardly deed comes from two groups of secret agents, one British and one Russian. As a job security program, they plan on bombing the delegates in town to sign a world-wide peace treaty. After the explosion, they figure that the heyday for the spooks, the cold war, will be back in full swing.
With any actor other than Murray, the audience would probably grow tired of the story within the first half hour. But his subtle and serious approach to the humor provides at least one big laugh every ten minutes and lots of little ones in-between. Murray makes Wallace so believable that it is easy to live his secret agent life for a night vicariously with him.
Whalley, one of the most beautiful actresses working today, has talent that is rarely utilized effectively. Her performance in SCANDAL, a film about the real Christine Keeler and John Profumo scandal in the British government, shows what a tremendous actress she can be. Even in bad films, such as TRIAL BY JURY, she has managed to stand out. In THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE she complements Murray's part perfectly without ever trying to upstage him.
"Do you think I look silly in this outfit?" Lori asks demurely when Wallace first sees her in a slightly revealing maid's outfit with a big heart on it. "I could take it off if you like." The occasional sexual innuendo never gets much stronger than this, allowing director Jon Amiel to bring in the picture with just a PG rating. Given that his last film was the excellent, but hard R picture, COPYCAT, Amiel shows more versatility than most directors.
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE is a film more to be savored in person than discussed after the fact. Wallace himself says it best when asked by a policemen what it is like to be a secret agent. "They pay all your expenses and your 'license to kill,'" explains Wallace. "But there's a downside. Torture." Well, actually not, but one must keep up one's image.
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE runs 1:33. It is rated PG for language, innuendo, and comic violence. Kids need to be ten to appreciate the humor but the film would be acceptable for those a bit younger as well.
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