Word: viewer
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...that the plot is complicated is a severe understatment. Refusing to cater to the audience's lowest common denominator, The Two Jakes forces the viewer to pay very close attention while the plot unfolds onscreen. Towne returns to his former scripting glory (with a little bit of help from Nicholson) after sinking to an all-time low with the recently released Days of Thunder. The Two Jakes is a great detective story, with all the clues, (intelligent) action, and philosophical narrative voice overs that accompanies the best in the genre. But more than that, the film is about persons...
...Freshman, written and directed by Andrew Bergman, is likely to leave the viewer with the same bittersweet taste as the coffee. This film is a well-scripted comedy overwhelmed--flawed, even--by the commanding and disconcerting presence of veteran actor Marlon Brando. Despite its failings, though, this is not a movie to leave the viewer grimacing...
Understandably, the viewer is not exactly sure what to make of the work--it is hard, after all, to imagine a film suffering from too much talent. But there is an obvious incompatability between the writing talents of Bergman (proven in the past by his works Blazing Saddles and Fletch) featured in this taut, very funny script, and the monolithic acting abilities of two-time Academy Award winner Brando. Matters are complicated further by the fact that The Freshman is largely a parody of the mob ethos engendered by The Godfather and its central character, Don Corleone, immortalized by Brando...
...familiar with the subject being ridiculed; in the case of The Freshman this is a doubled-edged sword. No one who has seen The Godfather will, without great difficulty, be able to successfully separate Brando's characterization of Don Corleone from his characterization of Carmine Sabatini. In the viewer's mind Brando's various incarnations of the mob boss blur, and along with the confusion goes The Freshman's hopes for a separate successful identity...
...nagging feeling of deja vu that plagues the viewer throughout The Freshman obscures some of the film's considerable accomplishments. The Freshman is about the rather rude introduction Clark Kellogg gets to the big city. Eager to start his first year at NYU Film School, he arrives at Grand Central Station and is immediately conned out of all his money and possessions by Victor Ray (Bruno Kirby). Kellogg meets up with Ray again and in order to make up for his past wrongs, offers him a job working for his uncle, Carmine Sabatini, a prominent importer with dubious business dealings...