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Reviews
Kansas City (1996)
It could have worked!
WARNING!The plot and the end of the movie are revealed!
This movie started out very promising. Great actors, great setting and a good basic story-line. On one level a gangster movie, with a small-time white crook who tries to doubledeal a slightly mysterious black mobster, who is also a bit of a philosopher. The white crook fails almost immediately. The question becomes if he will die horribly to set an example, or if there is some alternate use for him. On the other level it is a movie about two women. The wife of the small-time crook decides to rescue him by kidnapping the wife of a prominent Kansas City politician. The politician will have to use his influence to save her husband as ransom. Both women have problems apart from the kidnapping. The wife of the crook is good-natured and beautiful, and though she is tough she isn´t violent. Her problem is that she is dedicated to the crook, who isn´t worth being dedicated to. The politician´s wife is a junkie, apparently because she is bored with living alone in their great house in Kansas City while her husband is in Washington. Life is passing her by, because she lets it pass her by. It sounds like the premise for a great movie. In the gangster story all sorts of harsh adventures and wise but dark monologues. Regardless of whether the small-time crook ends up walking into the sunset with his gal at his side or dying in her arms it ought to be good. It isn´t. Far too many rambling monologues, far too little action. And the final solution, after so much big philosophical talk is a cheap-shot disappointment. The two women spending the night and a chaotic election day together ought to be good too. The thrill and the practical problems of being kidnapper/kidnapped combined with the politician´s wife seeing the world outside her house and her regular social circle. This part of the movie is quite good, until the strange ending. If mrs Stilton is prepared to blow out her kidnapper´s brains when she could just have walked away, why didn´t she run away from her at one of the previous opportunities? Perhaps the movie suddenly ran out of money, so they had to settle for only showing Harry Belafonte in the gangster scenes and stitching together a sudden ending for the movie as a whole?
Unhappily Ever After (1995)
A masterpiece!
WARNING! There might be one or two spoilers in this text!
This show isn´t as deep as "Married With Children", where you could sometimes feel almost sad for Al or Bud. Al had his moments of tragic greatness, for example when he explained to a despondent member of his family that "We Bundys are losers, not quitters!". Who can forget the episode when he had been out-witted, out-manoeuvred and out-voted by the Ever Victorious Yuppies on the subject of the beer tax, and he inspired a crowd of fellow hoi polloi to a riot that saved the day. Bud was a deeper and richer character than Ryan, but at the same time also slightly tragic, because Bud was intelligent. ( "Ma, I made ´Dean´s List´!" "Well, that´s nice, honey. But who is Dean?" )
Ryan Malloy is sufficiently unintelligent to be almost constantly cheerful. Jack Malloy´s cynism is usually more content and easy-going than Al Bundy´s. His solutions to problems and existential issues are corrupt and violent in a pleasant, simplifying manner.
But the star of the show is without any doubt Mr Floppy, who makes the Killer Rabbit ( "Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail" ) seem like Barney the Dinosaur. "You hate hard, Mr Floppy. That´s one of the things I like best about you." How true! The character Mr Floppy truly followed the exhortation of Richard Nixon "to see it like it is, and tell it like it is". Unfortunately I don´t have the VCR necessary to get my floppyisms exactly right, otherwise I would immediately start adding to the quotation page. I will always think less of Drew Barrymore for choosing Tom Green when Mr Floppy was obsessed by her.
The Secrets of Love (1986)
A sovereign piece of eroticism!
"The spanking" is probably the best movie in the entire series.
At the same time as the erotic tension is strong, the story is vivid and interesting. The servant girl plays a complicated, but amusing game of intrigues which would be worth watching even without the finale.
Erotic costume dramas often become the kind of dull, contrived coyness that "Saturday Night Live" slaughtered so masterly in their late 1980:s parody ( "Tales of Ribaldry", presented by Jon Lovitz ). This movie, on the other hand, is alive, kicking and worthy of being sold in PAL-videoformat. ( It makes you wonder what the war was fought for! )
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