Change Your Image
badass-6
Reviews
Radioland Murders (1994)
Try "My Favorite Year" instead.
Going in, Radioland Murders has some key elements that could of made for an entertaining story: all-star cast in a screwball comedy and an nostalgic storyline that could put to use a colorful set.
But it all failed. The joke delivery was flat and some of the casting choices were peculiar. Watching Mary Stuart Masterson struggle through the lead female role made me long for Jennifer Jason Leigh's brilliant, high-spirited, cigarette-chomping, Hepburn-inspired career girl in the Coens' Hudsucker Proxy.
Also Brian Benben, most notable from HBO's "Dream On" series, doesn't give viewers any of maligned everyman he popularized in the older series.
This movie attempts many times to emulate that 40s-era world, with its Art Deco imagery, but the characters come off more cartoonish than swashbuckling.
There are far better period comedies, I suggest "My Favorite Year" starring Peter O'Toole; "Radio Days" by Woody Allen and the aforementioned Hudsucker just to name a few. Those films succeed where Radioland fails, pulling viewers into these bygone eras to feel an inkling of what those times felt and sounded like.
Blue Hill Avenue (2001)
Nothing a complete re-write couldn't fix.
I see a number of viewers gave this film such high praise and I ask, for what?
The story of boyhood friends falling into the world of drug dealing could have been told in a number of realistic ways but the screenwriters of this flick didn't use any of them. The story arch about a bunch of 14-year-old novice criminals successfully gunning down their drug dealing rivals just didn't ring true.
But my biggest critique of this film is the dialog. I don't care what ghetto you grow up in, people must speak in a realistic way and the cast didn't. I feel sorry for the cast of pretty good talent having to try to make this script palatable, and failing miserably.
EXAMPLE: ACTOR 1: "What do they call this?" ACTOR 2: "They call it crack."
Awe-inspiring stuff, right? And the dialog in the opening drug deal scene was flat and formulaic, not to mention corny.
I know you must toss in a liberal use of the word "fuck" in any gritty-urban drama *yawn* but it seems a little ridiculous here.
So to recap, keep most of the cast (Maybe recast Allen Payne for someone who actually appears like they could have come from the streets), but re-write the lines for every single scene and you might actually have something.