Word: comically
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...what? The fact is, Efil4zaggin is an entire open season for negative stereotyping. That's the classic rap posture, black male division, of course: turning the comic-book white fantasy of the black male as a murderous sexual stud into a hyperbolic reality. Rappers like N.W.A. and Public Enemy want to scare the living hell out of white America -- and sell it a whole mess of records -- by making its worst racial nightmares come true...
...same token, it would be hard to imagine a funnier, better modulated comic performance from Robin Williams than the Babel of Slavic accents he brings to a Russian folktale called The Fool and the Flying Ship. Or a more touching turn by Sigourney Weaver than her reading of the pensive Japanese story Peachboy. Or a sprightlier showcase for Michael Palin's Pythonesque versatility than his rendition of Jack and the Beanstalk...
...handsome cast performs these epiphanies in grand, graceful comic style; the actors know this is not so much real life as ideal life. And Robert, whose reputation previously rested on slight farces such as The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe, presents the vignettes with an assured briskness the viewer barely has time to appreciate. They are like Marcel and his brother: eager and bright, soliciting our attention, trying to crowd each other out. But gently, no elbows. Again like Marcel, these films are at once playful and spectacularly well behaved...
...reward to be judiciously savored. "I consider myself a good soldier," he says. "You go to work, you do the job -- write joke, tell joke, get check -- and the world will pretty much take care of itself." After establishing himself as a Johnny wannabe, the glockenspiel- jawed comic was offered other talk-show slots, but, he says, "I wisely turned them down. To me, this is the only job in television. I'm kind of coming in as the new CEO. You don't really own it, you just hold it and try not to drop the ball when...
...Sets seems marginally more realistic -- or anyway more temperate -- than the lives of its performers. For Soapdish is something the movies rarely attempt: a flat-out farce, all slamming doors, thrown objects, misplaced emotions and terrific timing by a wonderful ensemble of actors. Field has an unsuspected gift for comic malevolence, and Kline has a way of putting a soft, almost endearing spin on egomania. No one has ever acted bad acting better than these two, and cool Michael Hoffman is a director who never misses the point or rattles on past...