Word: comically
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...brackets, federal, state and local bureaucracies collect larger revenues without having to put tax increases to a vote. Every 1% increase in inflation results in a 1.5% growth in personal income tax revenues. Consumers and politicians waging war on inflation might adopt a motto of the late great comic strip character Pogo: "We have met the enemy...
...Middle European cockatoo. Kenneth Ryan excels himself as Alan B. Lebow, a hip filmmaker; Jeremy Geidt is startling as Pittsburgh, the Black saxophonist cum hustler--he uses a gurgling accent that sounds like the rapid pour of a bottle of bourbon. Thomas Derrah takes off brilliantly with a comic interpolation of Richard III--it is this sort of magical appearance of the impossible that makes Lulu so consistently interesting and amusing. Tony Shalhoub is chilling in his flat, langourous portrayal of a pimp, although not as chilling as Harry Murphy, who comes straight out of a John Carpenter movie...
This film's premise is simple: contrive, however flimsily, to get Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor into standard comic peril-a barroom fight, a mistaken-identity bank heist, a kangaroo court, a venal prison system, a convicts' rodeo, a speeding car-then watch them wriggle out with their resourceful wit and eloquent body language. Wilder moves with the psychotic serenity of someone who believes everything will turn out O.K.; Pryor trembles with the neurotic certainty that everything has already gone wrong. Wilder's is the fantasy of the liberal do-gooder; Pryor's is the reality...
...screen. Goldie Hawn will remain the put-upon pixie into her twilight years. And for Chevy Chase, as for the most miserable sinner, there is always hope of redemption. One wonders, though, about Charles Grodin. Here, as in Heaven Can Wait and It's My Turn, this marvelous comic actor filches attention from the stars with his maddeningly reasonable response to every crisis. But how long can he play second banana, on whose sleek skin the other actors do pratfalls? Perhaps his next film will give him the break, and the shining costar, he needs: Muppet Movie II, with...
...deposits). When Newhart meets the Gormese, the two men cannot understand each other, which makes for five minutes of ennui. They are not the only odd couple in the film. In scene after scene, behavioral comedy attempts to engage in a dialogue with slapstick satire. But these are different comic languages, and the two forms finally fall silent in defeat. Maybe Henry should appear on TV less and watch it more. Any episode of M*A*S*H, Taxi or The Muppet Show has more laughs and pathos per minute than this impeachable farce...