Word: plot
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...CHARACTERS in Handle With Care are simply cardboard caricatures. What is most surprising about this film is that such a stereotyping detracts little from the comic narrative; Demme provides just enough twists in the plot to sustain suspense despite these superficial characterizations. Like the television show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Demme uses stereotypes self-consciously, parodying them at the same time that he favors them to enact his story. Demme only occasionally falters on the tight-wire between moderation and excess, when he over-ambitiously turns on the small-town ideology of the American Dream. Stereotyping works well...
...liners in Richard Benner's brilliant comedy about a female impersonator's rise to stardom and the whacked-out woman behind his success. Craig Russell's unabashedly gay hairdresser has graced us with a character we will not soon forget, completely stealing the show in the movie's plot and the movie itself. His series of famed singers and actresses belting out "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" will bring down any house, so carefully honed are his Channings and Ellas. Co-star Hollis McLaren is inevitably overshadowed by Russell's stagewise presence, but the delicate treatment she gives...
...dialogue interspersed with songs and chants. Beginner's Luck, a new play based on the Biblical tale of King Saul and David now running at the Reality Theater in Boston, employs such an approach, but rather than adding a new dimension to the narrative, it breaks up the plot's continuity and mars some of the play's best-written scenes...
...PLOT OF THE PLAY generally follows the Biblical narrative: Samuel chooses Saul when the Israelites clamor for a king. Saul, a study in kingly ineptitude, disappoints Samuel in war and in government; consequently, Samuel shifts his favor secretly to David. David lives with Saul, who comes to love him as a son; but alas, David schemes to take power, aided by Samuel. A growing rivalry between the two leads David to defect to the Philistines, a belligerent tribe. David wins the battle, then drives the Philistines out, and feigns a sense of bereavement over the death of Saul...
...fairly simple plot--had Lipsky not chosen to interrupt the flow of the narrative with digressions and, in one case, an audience sing-along in the especially feeble Act I. At times Lipsky contrasts very well for comic effect the modern simplicity of Saul's words with the more formal diction of the other characters. For example, in the middle of a long tirade by Samuel, Saul interjects, "You know, you're a very gloomy person." But after a while, the wide-eyed stuff gets a bit grating...