Word: wind-up
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That whiny, petulant exemplar of aching self-pity, Littlechap (Everyman writ exceeding small) is back on Broadway after 16 years of blissful absence. This time the wind-up toy clown is played by Sammy Davis Jr. As thimbleful-deep in wisdom as it is mountain-high in pretentiousness, this musical means to imply that he is life's clown, as aren...
...knew what he was doing -- and kicked and threw his arm around across his body very fast ("remember to snap your wrist" the coach always said) and popped the ball from his hand. It arced high high high and Foster, deceived by the apparent force of Bobby's wind-up and throwing motion, started to swing too early. When he saw the pitch bloop, he checked his swing and tried to begin again. But his feet were already crossed from his first effort and he hacked away spastically, twisting his ankles and falling down...
...predictable from start to finish, though it detoured along the way to poke fun with elephantine subtlety at ballet, tap, show-dancing, stage mothers and theater people in general. Small girl, repulsively well-scrubbed, trips off to dance class. Glitteringly costumed dancers enter to whir through various routines like wind-up toys. Small girl joins them, they acclaim her: fantasy fulfilled. Suddenly, hints of menace. Small girl is abandoned. Bunny dancer/mother rocks her to sleep. Moral: something about not getting carried away by choreography, it may be quite good: you couldn't tell from the derivative Broadway hodge-podge exhibited...
...Scorcese has him encounter comes off very wrong. It seems that Scorcese figures that anyone who isn't down and out these days has turned into a plastic offspring of Madison Avenue. (Hence Cybil Shepard as the Tab-drinking campaign worker DeNiro falls in love with and the slick, wind-up presidential candidate he tries to assassinate.) So with nothing else but Barbies and Kens to identify with, Scorcese saves the film by throwing DeNiro into the arms of today's real myth-maker, the ever-violent tube. The gorey ballet of blood that follows DeNiro's foiled assassination...
...under both bond and bondage, decides that like other wild creatures - Jonathan Livingston Seagull, for instance - she must roam free. He encourages, even effects her escape. As she flies off into the sun, Alex stands at the side of the runway, barechested, waving his orange gypsy shirt like a wind-up Zorba, vowing to follow her. They deserve each other...