Director Report Card: John Landis (1991)

12. Oscar

In the late seventies and early eighties, John Landis directed several classic films. Then he indirectly killed three people. His career rightly took a hit after that but he still managed to finish out the decade with one more definite classic and a few mildly funny films with small cult followings. However, at the start of the nineties, he would direct “Oscar.” This is a movie that would fail with both critics and  audiences. Afterwards, Landis' name would become attached to more and more flops in the coming years. As we look back on his career as a whole, one can't help but wonder: Is “Oscar” that bad? Did it deserve to fail so soundly and begin its director's (perhaps deserved) tumble from the A-list?

Angelo “Snaps” Provolone is one of the most notorious gangsters in 1930s Chicago. As his father lays dying, he makes Angelo promise him that he'll go straight. Several weeks later, Provolone has committed to the decision to end his criminal activities and become a banker. In the course of one day, his life begins to get very complicated. An accountant working for him says he's been stealing from him and that he wants to marry his daughter. Angelo forbids it but his daughter, Lisa, then tells him she's pregnant. (Which is actually a lie, a scheme to get her out of house.) It turns out the accountant isn't in love with Angelos's actual daughter, but another girl who claimed the gangster was her father. Lisa's actual boyfriend, and the presumed father of her non-existent child, is Oscar, Snaps' chauffeur that recently enlisted in the military. This is just the beginning of the screwball entanglements that overtake Provolone's life on this very confusing day.

On paper, John Landis is a reasonable choice to direct a movie like “Oscar.” The film is a throwback to two genres that were popular in the thirties. That would be the screwball comedy, that type of film were goofy misunderstandings pile up in a zippy fashion, the characters constantly having to deal with more contrived silliness. This type of humor is mashed-up with the classic gangster movie, where rough customers in fedoras and fancy suits brandish Tommy gangs and speak in a particular slang. Landis is, of course, a scholar of classic cinema and has shown himself more than capable of emulating vintage film styles. While it's not the greatest joke ever told, contrasting tough guy gangsters with increasingly wacky comedy could lead to laughs.

Something, however, is off. From its opening minutes, “Oscar” informs us that it's a live action cartoon. The film's opening credits play over a stop-motion animated image of an opera singer. Elmer Bernstein's score continues this motif, playing an increasingly frenzied and obnoxious version of “The Barber of Seville” throughout the rest of the movie. The script piles on the contrivances, Angelo's day getting more hectic and more unexpected miscommunications coming his way. Yet the energy so vital to screwball comedy, the breathless zippiness that makes these kind of stories amusing, is missing. Without that sensibility, “Oscar” comes off as more manic and annoying than funny.

“Oscar'” characters are utterly cartoonish too and that is part of the problem. In the best screwball comedies, we relate to and like the characters. The events around them may be nuts and out-of-control but the protagonist are always understandable. In “Oscar,” everyone is wacky. “Snaps” Provolone is pulled between his past as a rumbling gangster and his future as a legitimate businessmen, the two not correlating. His various employees and henchmen are all equally exaggerated stereotypes of old-timey gangsters. His wife is fiery to the point of ridiculousness. The daughter is a bundle of impulsive teenage desires. So on and so forth. There's no “in” into “Oscar's” world, all the characters being too outrageous to relate to or understand.

Further causing laughs to elude “Oscar” is its frequently weak excuse for screwball antics. The movie seems enamored of lame running gags. Throughout its opening half-hour, Angelo is repeatedly called away to new meetings because it's “a matter of life and death.” In hopes of maintaining his new serious image, he repeatedly asks his mobster henchmen not to refer to him as “boss.” More times than I count, a bag that is supposed to contain jewels is overturned, only for ladies' underwear to fall out instead. Even without the limp execution, these probably wouldn't be gut busters. A running gag has to make the audience laugh the first time for it make them laugh on repeat visits, a simple fact “Oscar” can't seem to grasp. 

As I overlook my notes for “Oscar,” I find the movie made me laugh exactly twice. The first occurs after Angelo has told his accountant that the men fitting him for a suit are vicious hitmen. As they proceed to brag about their clothing business, the man assumes they are talking about murder instead. The conversation with two meanings is a reliable gag and it's well executed here, one of the few times “Oscar” builds successfully on the information it has set up before. If that seems unimpressive, the second laugh is even more underwhelming. It occurs when Angelo grabs a chicken leg from his right-hand man, mistaking it for a gun. I can only assume that made me laugh because the image of Sylvester Stallone posing with a  drumstick like it's a pistol is mildly amusing.

At the time of its release, much of the disdain that greeted “Oscar” was directed at its star. One must consider where “Oscar” appeared in Sylvester Stallone's career to understand this. Sly was one of the biggest movie stars of the eighties. The excesses of films like “Rambo III” and “Tango and Cash” were still recent memories. As the eighties started to fade, and cynical Gen-X sarcasm started to dominate the new decade, these kind of over-the-top action fantasies were starting to look rather ridiculous. Perhaps Stallone recognized this and decided to make the leap to intentional comedy. Critics, who rarely liked Stallone's turn towards campy action theatrics, were ready to attack. Mass audiences weren't ready to except the shift in Stallone's persona. (It's notable that his biggest hits that decade were “Cliffhanger” and “Demolition Man,” far more traditionally Stallonian spectacles.) This was after “Rocky V” flopped as well, meaning blood was already in the water.

Yet the truth is, Stallone is the least of “Oscar's” problems. After all, Sly could be very funny in his action movies. And it's not like a grumbly gangster is outside of the guy's wheelhouse either. “Oscar” even has the right idea, to largely utilize Stallone as a straight man against the wackier supporting cast. Yet in a world where everyone is ridiculous, “Snaps” Provolone has to be a very goofy character too. That kind of exaggerated clowning around is a harder fit for Sly, who doesn't seem entirely comfortable when performing with broad gags. (Such as when one of his enforcers removes a growing number of weapons from his jacket, a joke better suited to a Z.A.Z. style parody.) At the very least, “Oscar” doesn't resort to humiliating its star the way “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!” did, the even bigger comedy misfire Stallone would star in the next year.

What's stranger about the lack of laughs in “Oscar,” or how off-putting many of its characters are, is how utterly stacked the supporting cast is. There's a lot of actors in this movie that are funny people. Tim Curry plays Angelo's foppish dialect couch. Harry Shearer is one of the suit makers. Don Ameche is a priest, Kurtwood Smith is a cop spying on “Snaps,” and Marisa Tomei is the impulsive daughter. Yvonne De Carlo and Arleen Sorkin have smaller parts. Some of these performers even come close to being funny. Tim Curry is always a welcomed presence and attacks his painfully unfunny dialogue with enough gusto that it almost makes it funny. The same could be said with Smith, who is very good at reacting with bafflement to the things happening around him. (“Oscar” probably would've been funnier if it had been about those cops, honestly.) Tomei is entertaining, even if the material she's given is too wretched to be funny. The script just lets them all down.

“Oscar” is, in fact, not the first time this material was approached. The movie is a remake of a 1967 French film of the same name, which was itself adapted from a stage play. Those stage bound roots are still obvious. Much of the movie takes place in only a few in-door locations, with most of the scenes being devoted to characters talking to one another. Maybe that's part of the problem too. John Landis' films were once extremely well edited and directed, the visual presence of the film contributing to the comedy. The energy required to make zaniness of this level work is at odds with “Oscar's” built-in staginess. And Landis could have done more to make the material more cinematic.

Then again, I don't know how plugged into his films John was at this point in his career. The trademarks that define his best films – a sarcastic disregard for authority, likable bonds between male characters – are almost totally absent here. A group of greedy bankers, one of which is played by William “Dickless” Atheron, is mocked throughout several senses. If that was a bigger part of the movie, I might be able to credit “Oscar” with some anti-authority subtext. But it's really not. As for the bromances, everyone in “Oscar” is so exaggerated, you can't recognize much human emotion. Worst yet, nobody even says “See you next Wednesday!”

At the beginning of this review, I asked if “Oscar” was as bad as its reputation implies. The movie isn't really aggressively bad. It's more mediocre than anything else, with potentially funny moments and characters badly mishandled by an off-center tone. It's certainly a little less embarrassing than some of Stallone's other misfires. Then again, what bigger crime can a comedy commit than not being funny? As with some of Landis' other flops, the director has expressed some fondness for the film. (Though he also noted that Al Pacino was originally intended to star, yet I can't imagine that would have made the movie much better.) I can't share those feelings, as so much about the movie just doesn't work. [Grade: C-]