Anora

The Girlfriend Experience (and Transactional Relationships)

or

"She Happened..." ('Tis a Pity...)
 

Anora—"Call me 'Ani'"—Mikheeva (Mikey Madison) is a Brooklyn stripper working in "The Tenderloin" section of Manhattan. She's very, very good at her job working as a "hostess" getting to know the clientele, encouraging their drinking and their desires, even going so far as to escorting patrons to the nearest ATM when they run out of cash. If the "mark" is really friendly, the "VIP" treatment might be suggested to an area upstairs where the stripper can do a lap dance to make some extra dollars. There's no touching during the lap dances, although given the near-privacy of the area, rules can slip as easily as a halter-top.

 

We learn a lot about "Work-place Ani" in the first few minutes of the film, which is short on exposition but long on nudity. We see her backstage where she has little patience with bullshit. She has one good friend, Lulu (Luna Sofía Miranda), but has a somewhat competitive relationship with the other girls. And she's good at acting: acting interested, acting sensual, acting like she cares, finding the weak spot, using rapier-like flattery, and is quite creative at it. You have to be to score a buck.

But it's only acting. Once the club-wear is off and she's out the door of the HQ Club, she's a dead-eyed street urchin in hoodie and sweats making her way back to her home in the Russian-American community of Brighton Beach, where she rooms with her sister (Ella Rubin)—their relationship can best be described as passive-aggessively strained—and her hobbies appear to be...sleeping. Being a sex-worker in Manhattan is exhausting work. 

So, she's less-than-thrilled when the owner of the club, Jimmy (Vincent Radwinsky) wants her to pay special attention to a "high-roller." This turns out to be 21 year old Russian student Ivan "Vanya" Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), who is in the United States for a college education, but that he spends, largely unsupervised, drunk, stoned, obsessively playing video games and shacking up at the huge Brighton Beach mansion owned by his Russian oligarch father. "Vanya" is a child with little impulse control and he falls head over heels for Ani, who, once she sees how free the kid is with Dad's money and doing a little negotiating, agrees to a week-long extracurricular activity at his place for $15,000 cash upfront.

Ani is rarely impressed, but she's awed by the Zakharov complex and the kid is putty in her hands. He gives her clothes, jewelry, the best wine, the best food, and she's charmed by "Vanya's" drunken joie de vivre and his generosity towards her—she could get used to this. She meets his friends, becomes part of a group, all bankrolled by "Vanya", who—impulsively, again—decides to take his posse to Las Vegas on a private jet.

The group stay at a high-end suite, living the highest of lives, when "Vanya" does the craziest thing yet—he asks Ani to marry him. She scoffs. But, he's serious; if they get married he can get a green card and stay in America—he won't have to go back to Russia and work for his father. They can live at his father's American property, and things will just go on as they have been. Ani agrees and they go to a Vegas wedding chapel and seal the deal. He buys her a very expensive wedding ring.

They return home and Ani quits her job at the Club; the other girls are thrilled, but there is the underlying suspicion: "give it two weeks." Things like this, they only happen in the movies. But, the two are clearly besotted with each other and they set up house at the mansion. Life is good.

Until...

 

Until, "Vanya's" parents get wind of the marriage all the way from Russia through social media, and they decide to travel to the States to take their son home. A frantic mother Galina (Darya Ekamasova) calls "Vanya's" Armenian godfather Toros (Karren Karagulian) to get the marriage anulled, get the ring back, kick "the prostitute" out and get their kid ready to get on a plane. Toros is the Zakharov lap-dog—he's been keeping "Vanya" out of trouble and being the family "cleaner" for any mis-deeds—so he sends his henchmen, his brother Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov), to get the ball rolling and Ani out.

And that's when things start to go South. "Vanya" won't let in the bodyguards, but he's so slight that they manage to get in, anyway. Ani begins to protest and Garnik and Igor try to cool things down, but still get things done...which doesn't actually happen. "Vanyas" lamely protests and fusses that he's not getting his way; Ani protests they're married and there's nothing anybody can do about that, then "Vanya" runs out of the house and Ani starts attacking the bodyguards, who, though they outweigh her by two can't seem to corral her—while doing some physical damage to the living room. Finally, Ani just screams and the two guys get so freaked out that they end up tying her up and gagging her.

 "Everything's going to be alright....Yeah."

And that's what the "godfather" sees when he manages to show up at the mansion. Everything's a disaster. They don't have his godson (and they need him to have the marriage annulled) and they have the most uncooperative person in the world as their only hope of finding him before the Zakharov's arrive (which won't be good even if Toros and crew manage to accomplish everything the parents want).

Anora is several things but running in ironic circles. It's funny, it's anarchic, it's dramatic, and it's a bit of a tragedy. It's also a character study. Because as finely drawn as the cluster of characters is, the whole thing revolves around Ani—Anora—and how she copes (and doesn't) with the situation while losing what she considers a good situation. She wants the fairy-tale (okay, he's an oligarch's son and not a king's, so the world's not perfect, okay?) and fights for it, even when she's way over her head. She's not a "hooker with a heart of gold" except for this one guy, and as cynical and worldly as she appears she's a sucker for her own happy ending. She's not helpless, not by a long shot, but she won't be anybody's victim, either. And as coarse and as conniving as she can be, you root for her all the way. Madison's performance goes a long way in accomplishing that.

This isn't Pretty Woman—it's a much more raw world, where few things are implied and the language is "persistent" (I think it gives The Wolf of Wall Street a run for its money in "f" bombs), not is it coy about sex, or even romantic about it. But, it has the verve and the sting of a Preston Sturges movie that pokes at your assumptions and makes you laugh at them at the same time. It's a comedy with the DNA of a drama and you may be questioning why you're laughing at what's being portrayed, but Sean Baker has made the kind of movie that keeps you on the fence while wondering about what could happen next.

 

Anora hooks you.

"Really? You ended with THAT line?"

Bob le flambeur

Bob le flambeur (aka Bob The Gambler)(Jean-Pierre Melville, 1958) Everyone wants to be Bob (Roger Duchesne), at least in the Montmartre section of Paris in which he regularly walks the night-streets like a ghost, like a rumor, like a legend. There are lots of stories about him, everyone has one, but Bob used to rob banks, even served time for it, and now wanders from poker game to poker game, where the risks are little and the rewards are paltry. And the casinos? He hasn't won in a long time. Too long.

Everyone wants to be Bob, except for Bob, who wants to be independently wealthy. And the Bob everyone else wants to be? His luck has run out. And he's on a losing streak that seems to never end. He even has a slot-machine in his closet that keeps coming up without a payline. "I'd even lose at hopscotch these days" he says ruefully.

So Bob Montagné—it's his mother's name, and he left home when he was fourteen—wanders around, getting older (looking at his reflection he sees "a real thug's face"), a pillar of his community even if it's been long since where he held anything up. But, he has the underworld community's respect. Even the police commissioner, Ledru (Guy Decomble), owes him something—Bob saved his life once, and it's never been forgotten, and Bob is good for scuttlebutt that the cops can't reach.

So, Bob walks the razor's edge between good and bad, but even he has his limits. When the pimp Marc (Gérard Buhr), whom he loathes, comes to him for help after beating up one of his girls, Bob refuses leaving him out in the cold. Then, meeting an ambitious young thing (Isabelle Corey) in a club, he invites her to his apartment...not for anything salacious, but the girl's been kicked out of her apartment and Bob wants her out of the way of creeps like Marc, steering her, instead, to Paolo (Daniel Cauchy), one of Bob's hangers-ons, who becomes smitten with her. Maybe too much.

Those contacts provide an opportunity. Through the grapevine, Bob hears that there's a big event happening at the Deauville casino—on the day of a big horse race the place is going to be holding 8,000,000 francs in its safe. Bob's safe-cracker pal, Roger (André Garet), has a friend on the inside and says that by 5 a.m. the money will be there for the taking. For Bob, who's been straight for 20 years, the temptation is too great and his luck's been too chancy, so he decides to set up a heist to rob the safe in the early daylight. He gets collateral from McKimmie (Howard Vernon) and sets up the heist like a military operation.

It's the jackpot of a lifetime and Bob is taking no chances. But, you know how things go with heist films, no matter how "New Wave" or cynically amoral they strive to be—something's got to go off-plan. In this case, it's Bob himself that's the crux of the problem; he's too ingrained and too well-connected to keep the machinery of the plot from gnashing its gears and gumming up the works. Plus, Bob's of a particular mind-set: he has a code that the rest of his circle may not, and though he may keep everybody carefully compartmentalized, Montmartre is a small section of town and people run into each other. And no matter what the cards show, you can't get into peoples' heads. Sometimes, not even your own.

Melville's less interested in the heist—you don't even see it, unlike, say, Rififi— than he is in the preparation (there's more suspense in seeing them trying to do it than doing it), but, more importantly is the mind-set of the participants, particularly Bob's. He's a guy who loves to take chances, but even a sure thing—like this robbery—could be bad luck, as it has in the past. Lots of surprises and chance encounters conspire to screw everything up, but the biggest surprise—certainly, to Bob—is the thing that really threatens the robbery. And he has to make a choice, depend on a sure thing...or keep pressing your luck.

Stylish—in a gritty sort of way—Bob le flambeur is one of those movies paying tribute to the past, even as it ushers in a new way of doing things, seeing as how it inspired the French New Wave with its natural lighting, it's long stretches of "play-it-as-it-lays" cinéma-vérité grit, and a cynicism about romanticism—the only kiss that matters is when a card hits the green felt—but codes of conduct define a person are inviolate.

Dinner for Schmucks

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day...

"It is Such a Pleasure to Laugh at the Misfortunes of Others"

Comedy is such a subjective thing. I don't know how many times I've quoted Mel Brooks' line that "Tragedy is when I cut my finger; Comedy is when you fall down a man-hole and die." And, as we are all individuals, one person's Bringing Up Baby* is another's Dumb and Dumber.** I know lots of fine folks who loved Date Night (Steve Carell's previous live-action movie), but I wasn't among them.

My tastes in comedy are not sophisticated; a good spit-take or prat-fall will make me howl with laughter. I like Jerry Lewis, as his movies will be guaranteed to contain at least one instance where I laugh 'til tears come out of my eyes. And I like good word-play, as my love for all things Marxian and Woody will attest. What I don't laugh at is regurgitation—recycled humor that is expected to be laughed at because, hey, it was funny the last time.  Thus, the charm of Mike Myers frequently eludes me.

Now, Dinner for Schmucks—the latest film by the "Focker" and "Austin Powers" franchiser Jay Roach—he also directed the very fine HBO film Recount—is based on the French film Le Diner des Cons, so there is a French charm to it spoken with a flat American accent. An up-and-coming executive Tim Conrad (Paul Rudd) is welcomed into the higher echelon of the investment firm that employs him (run by Bruce Greenwood) by being invited to an executive dinner in which the firm's hoi-polloi bring along "idiots"—persons of a certain unique, and frequently inept, "talent" for the ridiculing entertainment of the host ("No mimes. It's a cliche").  Whoever has the best idiot is guaranteed a certain prestige position in the company, complete with corner-window office.

The idea horrifies his gallery contractor girlfriend (Stephanie Szostak) and only reinforces her instinct to refuse Tim's frequent marriage proposals.  He's just about to sacrifice his career and opt out of the dinner when Fate steps in front of his Porsche in the nerdly form of Barry Speck (Steve Carrell), an IRS drone whose hobby is to make bucolic fantasy dioramas using stuffed mouse road-kill, which he calls his "Mouse-terpieces." ***

Tim's destiny seems set, but the acquisition of the bone-head Speck turns his life upside-down in a series of "Incredible Mess" scenarios that seem to nullify everything he might gain from winning the dinner game.  The film is a self-defeating trap that could have used a more harried leading man than Rudd (or more dead-pan, in which case, hey, Ron Livingston's in the cast!) that might have had more of a comedic pay-off, or at least have produced more dramatic risk out of the situations. As it is, everything feels a little safe, nowhere near creating the sort of comedic frisson this film so desperately needs.

For a movie specializing in cruel humor, it lobs only soft-balls, whether it's at the clutch of crazies at the dinner, a nastily predatory ex-girlfriend of Tim's (Lucy Punch), or the what-comes-around come-uppance of the stuffy execs. Everything should be more manic, more crazy, and have a few more bite-marks that actually draw blood.****

Points, though, for filling the cast with an array of good comedic talent including Kristen Schaal and Jemaine Clement of "Flight of the Conchords" (series and group, respectively), Zach Galifianakis, the afore-mentioned Livingston, and Larry Willmore. The improvisational power of the cast is formidable, and (like Date Night) it feels a little too improvised at times as there are so many scenes that are barely gelled. However, a business lunch that is the definition of "awkward" is a highlight, as is a conversation between Speck and Clement's self-absorbed satyr-like artiste ("There are only two things that matter in life: wonderful, visceral sexy sex...and Death"), that benefits from the two comedians' off-kilter rhythms to big pay-offs. Such moments are few and far between.

* ...which I love.

** ...at which I didn't crack a smile.

*** The most charming part of the film is the title sequence, set to The Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill," of Speck putting the finishing touches on an out-sized version of his hobby.

 **** 2023 Update: Well, with that choice of words, maybe if they combined Dinner With Schmucks with The Menu. That would be...interesting? Maybe even "tasteless?"

"I hate tasteless!"

White Noise (2022)

Let's Face the Music and Dance

or

"That's a Little Stupid." "It's What Happens to Desperate People."

White Noise (noun) Merriam-Webster

1 : a: a heterogeneous mixture of sound waves extending over a wide frequency range

compare pink noise

b: a constant background noise

especially : one that drowns out other sounds

2 : meaningless or distracting commotion, hubbub, or chatter

 

Wikipedia page of White Noise (novel) sub-section: Analysis

"White Noise explores several themes that emerged during the mid-to-late twentieth century, e.g., rampant consumerism, media saturation, novelty academic intellectualism, underground conspiracies, the disintegration and reintegration of the family, human-made disasters, and the potentially regenerative nature of violence. The novel's style is characterized by a heterogeneity that utilizes "montages of tones, styles, and voices that have the effect of yoking together terror and wild humor as the essential tone of contemporary America."

 

One could mistake Noah Baumbach's film of White Noise as a meditation on current times with pandemics, conspiracy theories, and just plain crazy people...if the film weren't based on a Don DeLillo novel written in 1985. Funny how really good writers "get it right." Not funny how the human collective keeps making the same mistakes over and over and over (and over)...as if we were crazy or something.

The protagonists are the family of J.A.K. Gladney (Adam Driver, ubiquitously), an academic at "The College On the Hill" teaching an "Advanced Nazism" course—he's not "pro," he's "con" but does deep-dive analysis on the self-proclaimed "Thousand Year Reich" (they got that wrong, too!)—and his analyses (and those of his peers at the college) sound an awful lot like that Wikipedia "analysis" of DeLillo's novel. His wife, Babette—call her "Baba"—(Greta Gerwig)—"We're each other's fourth"—has (as a colleague notes) "important hair," and focuses on self-improvement, running the steps of the college's stadium and taking "posture classes." They have four kids from four marriages, but seem to be settling in to the chaos, despite the constant conversation, the randomness, and the clash of personalities and interests.

They are white, liberal, self-satisfied and pretentious, the latter being honed to a fine art, as Gladney's lectures on the rise of Nazism border on performance (Driver is brilliant at this) and life is good. It's so good, that any trivial subject can be analyzed and micro-scoped for nuance and monlogued over where, if done right, it can scrape raw hints of guilt and self-loathing. The inherent capacity for human beings to be fascinated by car crashes, for instance—as is lectured about by Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle) in the opening sequence. We, as a species, seem to be drawn to disaster.

 

Well, as the saying goes: "Watch Out What You Wish For." In fact, that sounds like a lecture, too.

White Noise is split into three parts, the first of which is:

1. Waves and Radiation

It serves as an introduction to the characters when times are good and we see them at their best and most convivial. Things are so good that one can be a bit jejune and deprecating about it, while feeling superior at the same time. But, things are simmering under the surface and all it will take will be some catastrophic event to test the rigor of the self-satisfied complacency of the extended nuclear family.

2. The Airborne Toxic Event

Some rando truck driver carrying explosive chemicals is reaching for his bottle of Jack Daniels, distracted just enough that he doesn't see the guard-rail come down for a crossing train—that is also carrying explosive chemicals—and plows into it, derailing it, and causing a massive explosion with a resulting cloud of burning schmutz, that causes the evacuation of nearby towns.

The Gladneys make a run for it to one of the camp-grounds stipulated as evacuation sites for the populace. But, so is everyone else, so the resulting snake of traffic keeps them in place for a much longer time than one can be complacent about. They are refugees from suburbia, displaced with as few comforts as they can carry. It's a far-cry from the comforts they are used to, with a looming chemical waste that can kill you if you're not sheltered in place. Of course, there are theories and fears and resentments that bubble up among the many strangers lumped in together without the comforts of drywall and fences.

For J.A.K.—that's "Jack"—this merely exacerbates his growing unease of death which haunts his dreams with sheeted figures in his bed that have replaced his wife and which strangle him with scarred hands, granting him no peace. And, there is the fear that the toxins have poisoned him, as well, since he left the safety of the get-away car for the 2½ minutes it took to fill it up with gas. The government officials who analyze and herd the evacuees give little comfort ("You are not to leave the facility. That means if you come up to me later and ask 'Can I leave?' the answer will still be no"). By the time, they get home, J.A.K. is starting to obsess about his 2½ exposure and seeks medical advice. But, there's something wrong with Babette, too.

3. Dylarama

Well, you've got to have some surprises, so the less said the better. But, it wraps up a lot of things that have been brewing in Parts 1 and 2, concentrating on the domestic drama tilting the seemingly self-satisfied and stable Gladney house. 

Baumbach keeps things off-center with long takes without too much directorial show-boating, but making sure everything's paced briskly and usually with a comedic punctuation at the exit. The tone is set by a lush Danny Elfman score, that, at times, evokes Randy Newman's score for Baumbach's previous film. The performances are uniformly excellent and manage to make the characters less insufferable than they could be.

I loved it, but, then I tend towards the dark, finding it cheering (and probably as I also tend to the pretentious, finding it amusing). In fact, I was quite thrilled with it, having to recommend it heartily to whoever would hear it. Probably because in the course of a film with heavy themes and dour prospects, it is so optimistic.

Bridesmaids

Written at the time of the film's release...

"The Miss of Sisyphus"

or

"Wiiging Out"

First off, Kristen Wiig is scary. She's scary funny. And scary smart. It's an almost sure thing that she'll be the best thing in whatever she appears in (certainly that was true of MacGruber). She has no Dolby and no squelch in her comedy, the filters are off, and she's not afraid to look like a doofus. In fact, I don't think she's afraid of anything.

And because she co-wrote this and is primarily the focus for the vast majority of Bridesmaids, it is a pretty funny, raunchy comedy of the "incredible mess" variety. And who doesn't want to see a wedding fail (especially if its not yours)? That's the premise behind this film (for better and for worse), and I've been to and/or been involved in enough weddings to know that this could easily have been a documentary.* The various rituals and ceremonies that precede, pre-function and prevaricate the actual hitching of one individual to another, are enough to wreck any marriage before it begins, and I'll frequently pontificate that if you survive the wedding, the marriage just might make it.**
And I've been to one wedding where in the course of the pre-functions, the Maid of Honor was replaced in the Bride's affections by another friend, as happens here. It happens.

Said Maid of Honor, who by herself is an "Incredible Mess," is Annie (Wiig), who has zero self-esteem, is dating a self-absorbed creep (naturally, as he's a man, played by an un-credited Jon Hamm—who, bless him, seems to be having fun)—except it's not really dating so much as an empty sexual convenience, she's lost her specialty bakery business, and is working at a jewelry store, where her tirades about the impermanence of all relationships has a tendency to drive the customers away. Her mother (Jill Clayburgh—her last role before she died of cancer) wants her to move in with her "before she hits rock-bottom," because her room-mates are British and creepy. At least she has her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph), who is always good for a meltdown de-briefing.

That is, until Lillian announces her engagement and asks Annie to be the M of H.  Then, like a black hole, the downward spiral that is Annie's life starts to suck in the wedding arrangements, as well. She gets together the other bridesmaids: Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey), a bitter wife with two problematic kids; Becca (Ellie Kemper) a chirpy newlywed; Megan (Melissa McCarthy—hilarious and fearless), the groom's sister; and Helen (Rose Byrne), a trophy-wife, who is needy, tries too hard, and is aggressively perfect. This eclectic gaggle of women are tough to corral and all approach life and their duties to the bride-to-be differently, leaving the slightly scattered Annie dishonored and in their wake of agendas. In her desperate attempt to get them all on the same page (or even in the same dress-style), she only makes things worse, especially for herself.

The only non-crumbling structure in the whole disaster area that is her life is a state patrol trooper (Chris O'Dowd—think the looks of Tim Allen, the charm of Judge Reinhold, and the accent of Craig Ferguson) but that gets doused as well. Pretty soon, rock-bottom seems like a pretty stable place to be, as she loses everything, even an invitation to the wedding.

This would be intolerably sad, if the cast and writers didn't make it so hellaciously funny, in a surprising, raunchy manner that rains humiliation down on everyone, the highlight (possibly) being the visit to a posh, expensive bridal shop after a dysentery-inducing exotic pre-function. It's cruel...like watching a train-wreck, where all the passengers were caught in the bathroom, but it is funny—humor, one must caution, being subjective.

I'd be heartily recommending this movie*** if it didn't go all-"Oprah" in the last section, with a tone-scrambling heart-felt ending that one is just not prepared for, and it also coasts on my most hated of rom-com tropes—"all she needs is a good man. Really? I'd've said a good psychotherapist.

But, until that time, Bridesmaids is the most snortingly funny disaster movie I've seen in a long time.

* I just had a two-hour conversation with someone who participated in a recent June wedding, where everything went flawlessly, but the backstage story was an on-going apocalyptic disaster from start to finish.

** That's an incredibly sunny view, considering I've been married twice.  On the other hand, there was one wedding I went to where the bride and groom were already arguing...at the altar.  The reception was dominated by placing wagers on how long it would last.

*** And have, to two gals who wanted a movie-night and were, understandably, less-than-thrilled with the current movie selection.  They couldn't be two more different people.  Both loved it.

Booksmart

Booksmart (Olivia Wilde, 2019) Two preppie straight razors, Amy and Molly (Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein), reach the end of their senior school-year with a shared world-shattering epiphany: for all their efforts to be nose-to-the-grindstone students and at the top of their class, many of their fellow graduates will be going to the same prestigious colleges, but with the bare-minimum amount of work.

 

This is bad. Superbad, in fact. But, better.

 

Their reputations as by-the-book wonks firmly embedded in the zeitgeist of the student body (who have no idea they have a zeitgeist), the two decide that on the party-filled night before graduation that they will prove that they are party animals and try to fit in a night of fun to make up for all the time they spent in the library—the college library, for which they have bogus 24 hour access cards (that's as "radical" as they get).

Their goal on their penultimate school-night is to attend a party being tossed by student council VEEP Nick' (Mason Gooding)—Molly being president—who's aunt isn't coming home from her cruise because the ship's many heads have gone tail's-up. They plan to show all the popular kids that they can be just as wild and reckless as they can. Trouble is 1) they don't know where the party is and 2) they have no transportation. They tell Amy's parents (Will Forte, Lisa Kudrow) that they're going to the library. That's what they usually do, so no prob'!

They'll eventually hit three parties, become perpetually embarrassed in front of peers and mentors, ingest accidentally, trip badly, have their romantic hopes realized only to have them dashed irrevocably, get thrown in the slammer, and actually be late for something for the first time in their lives. And at the end of it, of course they graduate. They've earned it.

It sounds a lot like a lot of teen comedies from American Graffiti to Porky's to American Pie to all those terrible Cannon films nobody can find anymore to Superbad, but this is the teen Bridesmaids, where, instead of focusing on horny guys, it focuses on ambitious horny girls. You've come a long way, sista's, but one should make note of it, especially suffering through their male-centric predecessors for oh-so-many years. Sure, you can point to precedents, but one cannot deny that Booksmart is faster and more furious than any of those others, like one of those coming of age movies with an "Incredible Mess" storyline* at the pace of the original Deadpool, with performances that fall more in the Strangelove-Zero Mostel type of intensity. Credit must go to the screenplay writers, but also heavily to the cast (encouraged to ad-lib their lines at every opportunity) and the anything-for-a-joke direction of Olivia Wilde.

Wilde fills the frame to bursting at the same time that she's optimizing the "great-but-do-it-faster" style of directing. There's no hesitancy for laugh-pauses, no stuttering momentum. This is a pell-mell blitzkrieg of humor and if you miss a joke, then, well hell, that's why there's DVD's, slow-poke. And MVP awards should go to Deyer and Feldstein for their comedic pairing which has the same schlemiel/schlimazel drive of Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel in The Producers. 

Laugh? I thought I'd hemorrhage.

 

* Usually reserved for comedies—but they can be dramas, too—"Incredible Mess" movies are one where the protagonist or protagonists, for reasons of their own, get into a situation that makes their situation worse, which only becomes more intricately worse when they try to resolve it, leading to an escalating series of calamities that seem insurmountable. Good example? It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Dr. Strangelove. Risky Business. After Hours. Don't Look Up. Incredible Messes. But very good films.