Word: comically
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...Land--a sharp-eyed character study and virtuoso acting class masquerading as a violent melodrama--he is played by Sylvester Stallone. This time Hollywood's longest lived action star is not battling Apollo Creed or the Vietnamese or a killer mountain, but his own rep as a stolid, vaguely comic, pre-Modernist hunk-lunk. Freddy is surrounded by guys who think they're men because they carry guns in the big city. But Sly is crowded too--by an intimidating gang of quality thesps, including Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Ray Liotta. They've been doing the heavy acting...
...unfortunately, never break out of their papier-mache molds. One wishes that Mohr, a former stand-up comedian who played Tom Cruise's slick-talking, backstabbing nemesis in "Jerry Maguire," could have lent a little more comic verve to his appealing but bland Mr. Nice Guy. Bacon merely drifts in and out as the perverse Mr. Wrong in one of his most forgettable roles. If anything, the movie could have used more of the potential spice of the two supporting females: there isn't nearly enough of Illeana Douglas or Olympia Dukakis as Kate's anxious, marriage-obsessed mother...
...Steve Coogan, crafts intricately layered, well-observed, heartfelt plays in a realistic vein about contemporary relationships. McDonagh is more a folkwriter in the tradition of J.M. Synge. His macabre, wildly funny and over-the-top tragicomedies are slightly absurdist, set in remote parts of rural Ireland and peopled with comic grotesques--or literal grotesques, like the title character in Cripple, whom a young actor, Ruaidhri Conroy, plays with a convulsive total body limp of hideous and breathtaking precipitousness...
...Shall We Dance?" is a light-footed, sweet crowd-pleaser of a movie that's guaranteed to appeal as much to American audiences as it did to the Japanese. It's easy to see why: as entertainment, it pulls off just the right blend of the comic and the earnest, and dance movies have always had a certain charm, from Fred Astaire to "Strictly Ballroom." But what makes "Shall We Dance?" really interesting is its subtle illustration of the social-cultural fabric of its story, so different in crucial ways from that familiar to most Western viewers...
Though it doesn't quite match Ang Lee's wonderful gift for rendering social conventions hilarious, "Shall We Dance?" is bound to tickle the most staid viewer. It makes abundant, admittedly effective use of stock comic devices and characters. Eriko Watanabe cuts a droll figure as the experienced but caustic and somewhat unattractive dancer whom Sugiyama agrees to partner in an amateur competition; Naoto Takenaka hams it up as a painfully self-conscious colleague who dons a wig and hurls himself with fiendish gusto into the rhumba; Sugiyama's two fellow dance-pupils--one short and hyper...