Swarms of African humdinger bees infiltrate a Texan Air Force principle, stinging a billion of missile button-pushers to death. But relax; in their wake strolls Caine, an able entomologist who has in his billfold the phone number of cardinal immunologist Dr Krim (Fonda). He also has the taste of a presidential advisor, and was passing with the aid with a truckload of miracle cheat-relief called Cardio-animation. ‘Cardio-pep?’ breathes the doctor (Ross), strangely frenetic. Their eyes see. Interim, the bees have brought down a couple of helicopters, sharply curtailed a family picnic, and…At this decimal point a number of journalists, rolling in the aisles with laughter, were ejected from the impel screening. All they missed was the sleepy death of a risibly unqualified for debecle cinema.

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Heat



Review by

Carrie
Gorringe

Directed and Written by

Michael
Mann.



Starring

Al Pacino,

Ashley Judd, and Diane Verona.


B

oiled down to its essentials,

Heat

is the tale of Vincent the detective (Pacino) and Neil the bank robber (De Niro), who
discover that they have a apportionment in common, so much so, in in point of fact, that, after a visage-to-standing
meeting in a coffee shop, each determines that the other, below normal circumstances,
could be a close friend. But these are not normal circumstances, or perhaps they are within
the confines of a Michael Mann film. To parodist: in the rent scenes, Neil and his unite have
just knocked on the other side of an armored car, stealing bearer bonds from a salesperson with ties to an
unnamed group of South American drug dealers. In addition, a rogue member of the group
made the arbitrary decision to accomplishment as judge, jury and executioner on behalf of the three
guards stationed within the transport, thereby adding to begin-station murder to armed pinching
charges. As if this weren?t enough, Neil is trying to put together one more score –
this loiter again and again a bank with twelve million on hand — so that he can pasture to Hip Zealand with
his new be partial to, Edie (Brenneman), while simultaneously keeping Vincent at bay and getting
even with the trader who has been trying to kill him. Compounding all of this are
weaknesses within Neil?s crew: Vincent has them all second to more or less changeless
surveillance, while Neil?s in a beeline-guardianship man, Chris (Kilmer) is having troubles with his
wife, Charlene (Judd); uxorious to a peccadillo, Chris has to account for the sake every penny from each
heist from a wife who is both money-hungry and resentful of his gambling habits. Meanwhile,
things are not looking any rosier on Lt. Vincent Hanna?s home soil: thrice-married,
he is not having too much fortune with his current wife Justine (Verona) who is an
unsatisfied depressive with a suicidal daughter from a anterior to marriage. Is everyone
unruffled with me so incomparably?

Uncomplicated the plot is not, and Mann (and the audience) have to juggle these
sometimes disparate narrative fragments for the better part of a running time of nearly
three hours. The length may sound off-putting, but the effect on-screen is not. Amazingly,
Mann succeeds in making this seemingly unwieldy contraption get up and spin smoothly, with
very few interruptions in movement. It helps that Mann knows the pedigree of the crime
film genre and mines it to great effect: the script borrows elements from such great films
as

Criss Cross

(1948),

High Sierra

(1941) and

Rififi

(1955),
among them the fatal love connection (from

Criss Cross

and

High Sierra

)
and the big score that goes horribly wrong (from

Rififi

and

Criss Cross

).
What separates Mann from other filmmakers who indulge in these extra-textual borrowings is
that Mann has an instinct for knowing exactly when the borrowing has to stop so that his
own creativity can take over. Mann gives the audiences nuances of what came before rather
than entire scenes replicated whole cloth, with scant reinterpretation save for updating
the time and place; he has reverence for the past, rather than seeing it, as certain
unnamed filmmakers do, as a source from which they can shamelessly plunder, relying upon
either the inside knowledge of film buffs or a perceived ignorance of contemporary
audiences in order to operate with impunity. Brilliantly-executed rapid-fire editing makes

Heat

move like an exquisitely engineered machine, but Mann uses his extra screen
time for constructing expositions about the characters, and this personal information is
absolutely fascinating and hardly perfunctory. Rather, Mann makes each nugget of
information absolutely essential to the narrative. He manages to be economical with
excess, and that?s a difficult thing to do.

It helps that Mann?s cast is one that many directors would kill for. Pacino and De
Niro literally command attention when they are on the screen, although they do so in
entirely different ways. De Niro?s Neil alternates effectively between a life of
crime carefully orchestrated to the nth degree and a feeling of ennui which seems to have
no boundaries; he seems not to know what he is looking for, until he finds Edie. As the
ennui breaches the previously unassailable dike between his private and personal lives,
Neil breaks the cardinal rule by which he has lived most of his life: "Have nothing
in your life that you cannot walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you see the heat coming
round the corner." Neil?s love for Edie is one that will kill him, and it is De
Niro?s gift to invest Neil?s personal demeanor with an eerie ambiguity that
suggests that Neil really doesn?t care if he lives or dies now that he has loved. For
his part, Pacino goes to the opposite end of the spectrum, opting for bombast, and
sometimes it works. Mostly, however, Pacino?s take on Vincent is almost
embarrassingly reminiscent of his role in

Scent of a Woman

. But even Pacino is
saved from himself. De Niro and Pacino have only two scenes together in the entire film,
and only one allows them to actually interact. It does not occur until halfway through the
film, but it is worth the wait. Their subtle sparring in a coffee shop has all the
hallmarks of an elegantly-staged pissing contest. Both contestants project a wry demeanor
about their shared fate, but each is also deadly serious about his goal and determined to
best the other, even if one of them must die. The meeting is short (less than fifteen
minutes), but the scene establishes beyond any doubts why De Niro and Pacino, under the
right circumstances, are the best screen actors of their generation and of all time.

The rest of the cast rounds out De Niro?s excellent performance and Pacino?s
sometimes-excellent performance nicely. Kilmer guides his character deftly within the
confines of a love that threatens at any time to fall into real self-abnegation. Yet,
Kilmer?s Chris has a patina of dignity surrounding him; no matter how angry Charlene
makes him, Chris knows that there is no one else, so he must do whatever it takes to make
her happy, regardless of the cost. Chris has no illusions, but he is strained; his every
act of crime could potentially separate himself from what he needs most. At times the
restrained but unmistakable sense of irony in Kilmer?s performance nearly cause him
to walk away with the picture.

Unfortunately, the women in the cast don?t fare as well in this
testosterone-driven genre film — like most action directors, Mann has never been
traditionally adept at crafting roles for his female actors, but they do reasonably well
with what they?re given. Edie wants so badly to believe in Neil at any cost, and
Brenneman gives her just the right combination of vulnerability and strength. Judd, in her
much-touted debut, doesn?t live up to the hype, (she spends much of her on-screen
time in a state of terminal petulance) but she has enough presence to show promise,
especially when Charlene is forced, under the threat of losing her child, to betray her
husband. For just one moment, and a beautifully-rendered one at that, Judd lets the
audience see Charlene?s complex vulnerabilities and fears. Unfortunately for Venora,
her character is the least sympathetic of the three; the third Mrs. Hanna is nothing more
than a self-absorbed whiny wife who can?t understand why Vincent has to deal with the
"detritus" of society The word "detritus", uttered rather
incongruously at a cocktail party, is Mann?s cue to the audience that Justine is an
effete "artiste" who is simply unsuited to be the wife of such a vital like
Vincent. As the film progresses, Mann constructs the relationship between Vincent and
Justine as a series of binary oppositions, all of which are designed to make the
work-obsessed Vincent Hanna into Saint Vincent the Domestic Martyr. He doesn?t use
Prozac (although he seems to need it badly); she does. He cares about his stepdaughter;
she seems indifferent to her daughter?s fate. Incontrovertible proof of her
unworthiness comes when Vincent breaks the news of her daughter?s suicide attempt to
her, and Justine cries out, "How could she do this to us?" True, Justine?s
relationship with Vincent has lots of heat, but it?s of the self-immolating variety.
It?s a really ugly role, and Verona, understandably enough, doesn?t seem
comfortable enough with it to play it for what little it?s worth, so regrettably she
becomes the weak link in this film through no fault of her own.

It has its weaknesses ("detritus" isn?t the only example of laughably
tendencious language in this film) but

Heat

generates enough of its own to keep
you entertained. Certainly the stunning cinematography by Dante Spinotti (he was also
responsible for the super-saturated. literally scintillating, images in Mann?s

Manhunter

in 1986) should be enough to keep your eyes glued to the screen. Disregard Neil?s
advice, and don?t run when you see

Heat

coming round the corner.

IF YOU enjoyed “The Full Monty,” you’ll probably enjoy “Calendar Girls,” despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that it is little more than a distaff version of the 1997 hit about out-of-shape British steelworkers who turn to stripping when they lose their jobs.

Having already been dubbed “The Full Auntie” by certain media wags — darn them for taking my best line! — the only gently amusing comedy-drama by Nigel (”Saving Grace” ) Cole tells the real-life story of a stodgy English women’s club that put out a calendar a few years back showing its less-than-bootylicious members in the almost-buff in order to raise money to buy a new couch for the local hospital’s visitor’s lounge. Needless to say, the not-quite-naughty pictures, in which the women older than 50 are shown hiding behind suggestively shaped baked goods, strategically placed flower pots, homey skeins of yarn and the like, is a runaway bestseller, leading not just to an appearance on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” but to marital discord and jeopardized friendships.

Wait a minute. That sounds serious.

Yes. Perhaps the only surprising thing about this cut-and-dried tale of pluck and inspiration is just how much of a downer it really is. Despite the laugh-out-loud yuk-fest it seems destined to be packaged as, “Calendar Girls” has shockingly few giggles, thanks to the fact that it opens with — and lavishes too much attention on — one of filmdom’s biggest bring-downs: the death of a loved one from cancer.

That’s right. The whole idea for the calendar doesn’t arise until Annie (Julie Walters) loses her beloved husband, John (John Alderton), to leukemia, and her best friend, Chris (Helen Mirren), hits upon the notion of slightly tweaking their charitable women’s organization’s custom of publishing an annual calendar picturing scenic local bridges or still lifes, including jars of jam. Although the scenes revolving around the actual shooting of the calendar are undeniably funny, much screen time is devoted to scenes of Annie at the hospital, Annie at John’s graveside, Annie answering mail from sympathetic widows and Annie arguing with Chris about how all the media attention has overshadowed what this thing is all about. Which, as we know, is love, marching to the beat of your own drummer and the ability to find beauty in the bodies of mature women.

I know, I know. It’s meant to create a kind of tension, and it is, after all, faithful to the facts of the original case. Dramatically speaking, though, the lingering echoes of tragedy and the growing dissension between Annie and Chris serve not to enrich but mainly to sour what little surefire humor is contained in the sight of wrinkly women stepping out of their modest brassieres and sensible knickers.

Waters and Mirren are, of course, excellent in their roles, doing their best to make Annie and Chris more complicated than this slight story deserves. “Calendar Girls” wants to inspire us, to make us laugh and cry. In the final analysis, the cumulative effect of racy humor mixed with disease-of-the-week melodrama is this: The film ends up feeling neither sizzling nor sobering, but like a warm and slightly insipid cup of artificially sweetened herbal tea.

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CALENDAR GIRLS (PG-13, 108 minutes) — Contains largely — but not entirely — obstructed views of naked body parts, a tiny bit of rude language, thematic sexuality and the smoking of what turns out to be oregano, all in heavily Yorkshire-accented English that could stand to have a subtitle now and again. Area theaters.

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Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A black comedy about an upper-class gentleman would-be murderer,
who is always thwarted before the crime. It’s the last film of Luis Buñuel’s
(”Nazarin”/”The Exterminating Angel”/”Él”) Mexican period and though
minor it still has a few witty bizarre touches and some great imagery to
hang its hat on (a toy music box that supposedly can kill, a wax mannequin
of our hero’s girlfriend Lavinia (Miroslava Stern) that goes up in smoke
after our hero fails to murder his spiteful loved one he puts on a pedestal,
and the mirror in a room, acting as a look into our hero’s soul, reflecting
his unfaithful bride Carlota’s rendezvous with her suave married lover
Alejandro).

The wealthy, well-bred pottery craftsman, Archibaldo de la Cruz (Ernesto
Alonsa), tells the chief of police about all his intentions to kill women
that were thwarted. He reminisces when as a child of five, in Mexico City,
to soothe the bratty child his pretty governess (Leonor Llansas) concocted
a tall story about a king who had the same music box like the one in his
house that has the power to kill his enemies. It was the night of the revolution
and his governess was killed by a stray bullet after the spoiled child
played the music box and as a test of the music box’s powers wished for
her death. This incident, whereby he remembers her skirt flying upward
to reveal her bare legs, left him traumatized for life with a sense that
killing is a pleasing sexual thing. As an adult, Archibaldo accidently
finds and buys the same music box in a shop (during the revolution his
house was ransacked). This brings on an urge for him to kill women. The
attempts made on his hospital nurse Sister Trinidad (Chabela
Durán), the upward striving innocent Carlota (Ariadna
Welter), the fickle kept society woman temptress Patricia (Rita
Macedo) and the untruthful model Lavinia, provide some room for
Buñuel to poke fun at his machismo hero while having some fun by
also turning the suspense genre on its heels by reducing it to a tale of
sexual politics.

Buñuel has some laughs at the expense of the decadent hypocritical
bourgeoisie, dumb Yankee tourists, the complacent priests, the capricious
artist and at the Latin male lover image, while including his obsession
with foot fetishism. It never amounts to more than a cheaply made one macabre
joke movie that was only slightly amusing and only somewhat more effective
as satire, but it paved the way for his later more productive period of
creating many masterpieces. 

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Frank Capra (”Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”/”State of the Union”/”It’s
a Wonderful Life”) directs this Depression-era populist newspaper comedy
with his usual schmaltz over class differences and winning one for the
underdog. Regular Capra writer Robert Riskin is the main screenwriter on
the team. The bleak romantic comedy is miscast (the Harlow and Young roles
should be reversed) and suffers from a slight story and a trite message
about hard work paying off for its working-class hero as opposed to the
wasted life of the idle rich; nevertheless, it’s entertaining, fast-moving,
has some fairly realistic newspaper workplace scenes, features snappy dialogue
and gets a great performance by Robert Williams–in his last performance
before dying from a ruptured appendix at age 35 just a month after the
film was released, thereby cutting short a promising career. 

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The working-stiff reporter, Stew Smith (Robert Williams), earning
a mere $75 a week, marries a spoiled and fickle heiress named Ann Schuyler
(Jean Harlow), who tries to reform him to fit in with her society crowd
and that gives the poor bloke second thoughts about the marriage. 

Stew’s boss is the hardboiled editor Conroy (Edmund Breese), who
assigns him to report on a “breach of promise” lawsuit and sends him to
the blueblood Schuyler mansion in Long Island to get the facts. The wisecracking
reporter is bribed with $50 by the family lawyer (Reginald Owen) not to
report the story that the family gave $10,000 to a blackmailing chorus
girl to recoup the love letters the wealthy cad Michael Schuyler (Donald
Dillaway) wrote to her. Stew refuses the bribe and calls in the story in
front of the family. Only Stew returns the next day with the six love letters
he swiped from the chorine and turns down a $5,000 bribe from the brother’s
attractive younger sister Anne Schuyler (Jean Harlow) and instead gives
her the letters for gratis because he finds her beauty overwhelming and
he feels he’s doing the right thing. 

In the newspaper office, the down-to-earth reporter Gallagher (Loretta
Young) is Stew’s gal-pal and secretly has a crush on him and would be a
perfect soul mate; but Stew, a month later, elopes with Anne. The editor
calls Stew a “bird in a gilded cage,” and will be from now on known only
as the husband of Anne Schuyler. This phrase becomes the film’s main metaphor,
as it reverses genders on the Cinderella fairy-tale story. 

The rocky marriage has the prole living with her snobby elitist family
in the left wing of the Schuyler mansion and, furthermore, wifey hires
him a valet–who is promptly fired by the uncomfortable prole. Feeling
trapped with people he doesn’t like, Stew invites his plebian colleagues
and artistic friends over to the mansion for a wild boozy party. Returning
home unexpectedly, an upset Ann lays down the law about cavorting with
the riff-raff. 

When the bossy society conscious Anne tells the loose living Stew
to get garters to hold up his socks and he refuses, we know it’s only a
matter of time before the marriage is over. Capra makes this trivial difference
the comical point where Stew exits from the marriage, as he holds to not
wearing garters as a symbol of his freedom and tells her he’ll wash behind
his ears for her and do almost anything else but never wear garters for
her. 

Predictably, since Anne wants nothing to do with his working-class
friends and he wants nothing to do with her society acquaintances, the
restless Stew flies the coop right into the arms of a consoling Gallagher,
whom he has loved all along without realizing it, and tells her after he
gets his divorce that they’ll marry.

Halliwell Hobbes is amusing as the family’s snooty butler, while
Walter Catlett is comical as the corruptible reporter for the rival paper
the Tribune. Young has too little to do to make an impact, Harlow is not
given many funny lines and is therefore just adequate rather than giving
her usual splashy performance, and Louise Closser Hale gives a one-dimensional
performance as Harlow’s heavy-handed bigoted blueblood mom.

Still, with all its usual Capra faults, it holds up as a slightly
above average breezy newspaper comedy, as one of many such films that were
the rage in the 1930s.

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THE MOVIE

Clint Eastwood isn’t well-deserved a cop, he’s a cop “on the edge” (one of the taglines of the film, which got parodied in a famous David Letterman/Bruno Kirby bit) in Tightrope, a movie that is perhaps chestnut of Clint’s most suitable, yet rarely gets mentioned when people discuss his greatest movies.

Set in Rejuvenated Orleans, Clint plays detective Wes Hunk, a divorced father who is trying to introduce two daughters (the older of the two is played by Clint’s own daughter, Alison), and, unlike his Dirty Harry self, seems to be a pretty level headed guy. But a serial killer is stalking the big apple, murdering prostitutes and women who are fast, and Wes gets assigned the in the event that.

We’ve all seen Clint in other movies where he’s tracking down a bad youth, so that depart isn’t new here…but what is new is the actuality that Wes Bar has a dim side – his investigation leads him into the seedy side of town, and he finds himself pinched to the kind of queer skirmish that goes on there. Meanwhile the relationship between Wes and his two daughters may be the most spellbinding part of the film. As viewers, we literally care about Wes and his family…which, of course, provides more nervousness for the audience as his family is threatened later in the movie.

What doesn’t quite work in Tightrope is Wes’ relationship with a girlfriend named Beryl Thibodeaux (Genevieve Bujold), who is a ravaging counselor for the borough. While Bujold is a fine actress, there is no real chemistry between her and Clint, and she seems simply put into the storyline so Wes can comprise a romantic relationship that contrasts with his kinkier side.

But whole, Tightrope is intriguing, well-written and anxious, and one of the better crime-dramas of Eastwood’s career.

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Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Robert Wise (”The Sound of Music “/”The Body Snatcher”/”Blood on
the Moon”) helms this entertaining but slick melodrama about intrigue in
the boardroom of a big business concern. It’s based on the book by Cameron
Hawley and features a crisp screenplay by writer Ernest Lehman in his debut.
The all-star cast gets about as much out of the obvious boardroom tale
than can be expected.

When 57-year-old Avery Bullard, President of the Tredway Corporation,
a highly successful furniture manufacturing concern whose central headquarters
is located in New York, suddenly dies of a stroke, it results in a power
play between some of his vice presidents on the company’s board to see
who will emerge as president. McDonald Walling (William Holden) is the
decent young family guy married to the wholesome suburban wife (June Allyson)
and with a precious Little League playing son, who is the idealistic designer
chief wanting to build a better furniture product but who can also be practical,
ambitious and make good speeches promoting himself; Loren Phineas Shaw
(Fredric March) is the oily manipulative money-pinching controller, who
is the efficiency expert that is favorite to get the presidency due to
all his manueverings to take charge of things but who has enemies because
he’s so ruthless and uncaring about anything but the bottom line; Josiah
Walter Dudley (Paul Douglas) is the weakling sales manager who doesn’t
want to make waves and wants only to be popular, but the married man is
being blackmailed for his vote by Shaw because he has a love nest with
his secretary Eva (Shelley Winters); George Nyle Caswell (Louis Calhern)
is the high roller who sold the stock short upon the boss’s death only
to find the stock went up and he doesn’t have the liquid assets to pay
his broker and is now beholden to Shaw to get him out of this mess; Frederick
Y. Alderson (Walter Pidgeon) is the tired senior vice president who was
Bullard’s best friend, but doesn’t have what it takes to be top dog; and
Jesse Q. Grimm (Dean Jagger) is the old-fashioned production head old-timer
who doesn’t like any of the new hotshots and is about to retire. Ms. Julia
O. Treadway (Barbara Stanwyck), the company’s biggest stockholder, is the
disenchanted daughter of the company founder and the ex-lover of Bullard.
She could never reconcile that even though Bullard saved the company after
her father’s suicide and was there for her when she had a nervous breakdown,
that he could not devote himself fully to her needs. Julia now wishes to
divest her interest in the company and doesn’t care about the company to
the point that she has allowed Shaw to vote for her through proxy. 

To be company president, one needs four votes from these seven board
members. Erica Martin (Nina Foch) is the loyal executive secretary to Bullard,
who counts the ballots and shows the greatest outpouring of grief over
the boss’s death than anyone else in the boardroom. 

It turns out to be a battle between Walling and Shaw for the presidency,
as the slight story has the two-dimensional executives back-stabbing each
other and jockeying for power with various insider moves–though the viewer
is led to believe that Walling is the man most suited for the job because
he’s less smarmy, the most energized and preaches togetherness. The dramatics
are riveting, though it’s all superficial with no particular point made
or corporate secret let out of the bag . 

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One day, George’s daughter is in pigtails, shooting baskets in the overdue renege yard, and all is advantageous with the world. He’s the man in her life. Period. End of sentence. The next day, she’s in a slinky flagitious tucker, talking about this fabulous gentleman she’s met in Rome, this man who, she tells Daddy, she’s going to marry.

What? he says, the room spinning. She’s going to what? All of a sudden, he feels ancient, useless, a shapeless lump of nothing hurtling though empty space. How could she do this to me?

This is the premise of “Father of the Bride,” the slight but delightfully sweet-natured new comedy starring Steve Martin. The movie, which director Charles Shyer and his wife, Nancy Meyers, have updated from the 1950 Spencer Tracy-Elizabeth Taylor classic, is a panicky catalogue of the nuptial slings and arrows that every father must endure to make his daughter’s dream come true. Each step along the way is a disaster, from his first meeting with the groom-to-be (George Newbern), who, at least in George’s eyes, can’t keep his hands off his little girl, to the catastrophic lunch with his future “in-laws,” who discover that he’s been snooping through their bankbook after first fishing George out of their swimming pool.

Annie’s announcement rocks George (Martin) to the marrow. He’s not ready for his little Annie (played by Kimberly Williams) to grow up. And men? Forget it. Still, she seems deliriously happy, and his wife, Nina (Diane Keaton), seems happy. So, after experiencing some initial reluctance … he experiences even greater reluctance. If George has any say in the matter, this thing isn’t happening.

Of course, George — like all fathers — has no say at all, not about the marriage or the wedding or anything else. His sole function is to pay the bills, and he isn’t happy about it. In particular, he’s not happy about the $1,250 he is supposed to lay out for the cake, or the swans that are supposed to amble around in the front yard. And he’s especially livid about Franck (Martin Short), the wedding coordinator, who takes a kind of David-Wolper-halftime-at-the-Super-Bowl approach to the event.

This is far from Martin’s best role, but it is one of his loosest, and it does allow him to display his talent for bug-eyed hysteria. From the moment he hears about the wedding, George is totally out of his gourd, a patriarchal loose cannon. And Martin’s reactions are painfully but hilariously overblown. The movie is unapologetically sentimental, and there’s a touching dollop of pathos in his performance; behind his skinflint penny-pinching over the wedding costs is a palpable sadness over the loss of his daughter. If he’s freaking out, it’s because his heart is breaking.

It’s Keaton’s Nina who keeps George from flying into a million pieces; she’s the steady, levelheaded half of the couple. Yet while the actress is likable in the role, the part she plays is rather colorless. And because she isn’t even given a comic highlight of her own, who can’t help wondering what she’s doing here or why the filmmakers thought that a star of her gifts was necessary.

The movie’s true runaway performance is given by Martin Short, who’s beginning to specialize in stealing the show with his sublimely otherworldly cameos. This is another of his blissful caricatures, and light-years beyond eccentric. As Franck, he plays a fey autocrat of unfathomable origin. Just possibly he’s from Denmark, but if so, he’s Danish by way of Pluto. Franck is a style fascist; every wedding is a work of art with the distinctive signature of its behind-the-scenes genius, and to get into the role, Short twists his voice and his body into unimaginable contortions. His work here is inhumanly funny.

The movie, as a whole, isn’t nearly so original. Though it’s not a literal updating of the earlier MGM film, it’s close enough to the original to hold very few surprises. Still, it’s a pleasing, well-crafted, surprisingly satisfying diversion. It’s eager to entertain and has a quality that’s genuinely rare these days, a spirit of gentle modesty.