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Reviews |
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Source:
rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating:
 
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Andrew Bergman has been around making comedies for a long time, but in HONEYMOON IN VEGAS he seems more like a new and talented amateur than a seasoned professional. Bergman wrote and directed SO FINE and THE FRESHMAN, both of which jabbed at bad taste in American popular culture. With HONEYMOON IN VEGAS he has stopped his little jabs and pulled out a meat slicer to go after the cult of Elvis worshippers. Not that his basic plot has anything at all to do with Elvis: he uses Elvis just to create a comic background for his real story.
Jack Singer (played by likably goofy Nicholas Cage) has been a diffident lover to Betsy (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) due to a deathbed promise to his mother (played by Anne Bancroft in cameo) that he would never marry. Finally Betsy overcomes the promise and the two head for Las Vegas for a quick marriage. That is where Betsy is seen by tough gambler Tommy Korman (played by James Caan). Betsy has a very strong resemblance to the wife Korman lost to skin cancer, and Korman decides to snare Betsy for himself. He lures Jack into a high-stakes poker game, takes him to the tune of $65,000, and then makes a deal with Jack: Jack's debt will be forgiven if Betsy will be Korman's platonic companion for the weekend. Korman wants to use charm and his rather comfortable lifestyle to win Betsy. Meanwhile, Jack is becoming increasingly frantic to break up the pair as Korman spirits Betsy off to Maui.
What does all this have to do with Elvis? Nothing really. But the background of the story is a Las Vegas having a convention of Elvis impersonators. Bergman constantly comments on the story with carefully chosen Elvis songs and shows us an army of gaudy Elvis lookalikes, Elvises of many races and sizes. The film is just two Elvises short of pushing the gag too far.
The usually reserved James Caan and the never reserved Nicholas Cage each seem to have a field day chewing up the scenery. It is very rare to see Caan putting this much expression in a role and clearly enjoying himself. Smaller roles go to the always enjoyable Pat Morita and Peter Boyle as an unnatural naturalized Hawaiian.
The photography is surprisingly spotty. At least two scenes appeared totally washed out in the print we saw. Some scenes of natural beauty in Maui and natural beauty (?) in Vegas owe more to William Fraker's camerawork. The cartoon credits were amusing and usually made sense. Overall this is an amiable but unexceptional comedy. I rate it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
By : Mark R. Leeper
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Source:
rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating:
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HONEYMOON IN VEGAS is a romantic comedy with an excellent cast and a first-rate director-writer. Andrew Bergman was once called by New York magazine "The Unknown King of Comedy" for writing some very funny comedies, such as BLAZING SADDLES, THE IN-LAWS, and SOAP DISH, inter alia. In 1981 he stubbed his toe directing SO FINE, but in 1990 he did the wonderful THE FRESHMAN, a much neglected and underappreciated gem that starred Matthew Broderick and Marlon Brando (in one of the boldest and bravest self-parodies I have ever seen).
Then we've got the considerable talents of the cast. James Caan, looking slim and healthy, an actor who broke my heart by being brilliant in THE GAMBLER and then pissing away his career for years, is perfect as the charming, vicious gambler. Nicolas Cage, mercifully minus his most mannered affections, is the straight man and plays it without a single wink at the camera. Sarah Jessica Parker, who impressed a lot of people in last year's L.A. STORY as the spacy, hyper-kinetic beach girl, SanDeE, is a lot smarter here, but still the slightly dense, slightly innocent love interest of Caan and Cage.
The situation -- a boobish everyman caught up in the wiles of a gangster and an increasingly absurd solution -- is familiar Bergman territory. As if the basic situation were not absurd enough, Bergman goes over the line with a running joke about Elvis impersonators that culminates in a scene so full of plot holes and so unlikely as to qualify as a contemporary version of the deus ex machina who has solved so many dramatic and comedic situations throughout the history of theater. There is also a problem with way Bergman handles his villain, Caan's Tommy the gambler. He sets him up as a sympathetic, if unprincipled, character, not unlike Brando's Godfather parody, and then in the last ten minutes turns Tommy into the blackest and most vile of men, destroying the dynamic and ambiguity that had made the rest of film complex and interesting.
I recommend HONEYMOON IN VEGAS for its virtues and for its interesting flaws, but you should go to a discount matinee to see them and it.
By : Frank Maloney
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