Weekly Top 10: The Worst Accents in Movie History, Part 2
3/21/2007 4:37:55 PM
Angelina Jolie, Alexander
When it comes to compiling Worst of lists, Oliver Stone’s epic and utterly misguided stinkbomb is the gift that keeps on giving. There are so many things wrong here it’s hard to pick just one, but if a junkie Viet vet film director with a history of arrests and a mean streak the size of Idaho pressed a gun to our head and asked us to choose, we’d probably have to go with Angelina’s downright Pythonesque attempt at something that resembles Russian. These scenes rank high on the unintentional comedy scale and give further weight to Screengrab’s recent nomination of Ms. Jolie as the acting equivalent of a nagging toothache.
Steve Martin, The Pink Panther
Remember when Steve Martin used to create unique, original characters who were really funny? Neither do we, but our dusty reference books confirm that it was true, once. These days, all we can remember is his tired white-guy-talks-black shtick in Bringing Down the House, and his hitting the money well over and over again for such “fambly-friendly” fare as Cheaper by the Dozen 14: Die Cheaper. Lame, and harmless enough…but when Mr. Martin chose to play Inspector Clouseau, popularized by the late Peter Sellers, for the Pink Panther, the situation became serious. Now, Sellers was a one of a kind Englishman with a particular talent for accents, and the bumbling Clouseau, with his clogged-nasal-passage-French-tinted English, was his crowning achievement. You don’t just mess with this sort of stuff. The notion of Steve Martin stepping into Peter Sellers’s shoes is about as well advised as Dr. Phil trying to improve Louis Pasteur’s rabies virus: he can’t succeed, and people will surely die in the process. Okay, maybe that’s carrying it a bit too far — Dr. Phil never made Roxanne, after all — but Martin’s version is still awful. It’s a copy of a copy and not a very good one, like something out of the reject pile at West Ridgeville Hill County High School’s Annual Talent Show and Bake Sale. To be honest, unless someone told us, we wouldn’t even know what country’s affectations he was trying to mimic. And yes, we understand his accent is supposed to be goofy. But this shit is downright actionable.
Tommy Lee Jones, Blown Away
In the mid-nineties, for some reason known only to coke-addicted high-level executives, the negotiators in the Irish Peace Process and possibly the Kennedys, Hollywood movies were awash with bad Oirish accents — from Brad Pitt and Richard Gere’s over-emphatic brogues in The Devil’s Own and The Jackal respectively, to Julia Roberts’ half-assed attempt to pronounce “bluuuuuid” in Mary Reilly. But the worst of the lot must certainly be Jones, who cackles and singsongs his way through his first post-Oscar role in this action howler. Like Kevin Costner, Jones tends to be at his best at his least affected, and any obvious accoutrements of performance only get in his way. Unfortunately, he seemed to forget this when essaying the role of the mad-bomber Sean Gaerity, forever building Rube Goldberg-style bombs and toying with cop Jeff Bridges. The character is embarrassing enough, and when Jones whips out his accent, you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve mistakenly stumbled onto the actor’s audition tape for Leprechaun 8: It’s a Long Way to Tipper-Scary.
Danny Nucci, Titanic
“Eeeh, I go to Ah-MEEEEEE-riccaaa!” With all-a the subtlety of a that-a guy who-a served tha Lady and-a the Tramp-a, Danny Nucci brought to Leo Di Caprio’s friend Fabrizio that certain special “I no no-a wha’” that made some of us in the audience stare at each other briefly and ask, “Is this guy for real?” Yes, the spectacular romantic tragedy that won the hearts of millions around the world was eventually able to overcome his goofy overacting, but still, amid our stifled tears we couldn’t help but give a slight little yelp of joy when a portion of the ship finally broke away and landed on poor Fabrizio. Rest-a inna tha piece, my friend-a!
Mickey Rooney, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
True, without Audrey Hepburn’s charm and Henry Mancini’s music, Breakfast at Tiffany’swouldn’t be nearly as beloved as it is. However, it could be Citizen friggin’ Kane and it still couldn’t wash off the stench of Mickey Rooney’s absurdly racist performance as Mr. Yunioshi, one of the most vomitous creations ever committed to film. Had Mickey Rooney ever even seen a Japanese man? Donning yellowface and buckteeth and constantly bumbling around his flat, Yunioshi comes off not so much as an Asian stereotype as a cross between a caricature and a mouse. His role exists solely to be annoyed by downstairs neighbor “Miss Gorightry” and to constantly threaten to call the police. Watching him bang his head innumerable times on the paper lantern above his bed, we couldn’t help but think that Rooney makes Krusty the Klown’s “me so solly” bit look positively enlightened.
HONORABLE MENTION:
Here are two accents that didn’t make the final ten. In one case, it was because we still carry fond memories of the performance itself, and in the other because we’re not exactly sure that the actress was even trying to do an accent.
Dick Van Dyke, Mary Poppins
Compared to Mickey Rooney’s Mr. Yunioshi, Dick Van Dyke’s Burt in the Disney classic is a distinct improvement — at least both character and actor are white. However, taken on its own merits, Van Dyke’s accent is pretty dreadful, barely worthy of a road-company performance of Oliver! Attempting to capture Burt’s Cockney background, Van Dyke leans heavily on “guvna” and “mate,” occasionally dropping his h’s and adding s’s to his verbs. But it never really works, since Van Dyke never really makes it part of the character. And because it’s so bad, it becomes a distraction, taking the audience completely out of what is otherwise a perfectly good film, and inadvertently schooling several generations of kids in How to Make Poor Fun of the English. (Incidentally, in a film that’s largely cast with British actors, who thought it a good idea to make Burt the exception?) Still, we’re inclined to cut him just a wee bit slack, cause he sings so well.
Jessica Simpson, The Dukes of Hazzard
It was only a matter of time before some genius in Hollywood decided to package Ms. Simpson’s generous T&A and stick it in a movie. Well, that chance came along in the brown stain Warner Brothers called The Dukes of Hazzard. Now, while there are many other things in this movie perhaps more worthy of criticism (they should have brought back the original Roscoe P. Coltrane dammit!!!) and any man with a pulse would be a fool to complain about Jessica in a peach bikini, we found it more than a little disheartening that a girl born to a Baptist minister in Dallas, Texas couldn’t pull off a believable Southern accent. Which also begs the question: when they decided to go with an all new cast for the straight-to-DVD sequel, is it possible the studio was actually trading up?
— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Bryan Whitefield
PREVIOUS WEEKLY TOP TENS:
- March 14, 2007: The Kinkiest Films Ever Made
- March 7, 2007: The Most Dangerous Films of All Time
- February 27, 2007: The Best Nude Scenes of 2006
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Weekly Top 10: The Worst Accents in Movie History, Part 1
3/21/2007 3:10:56 PM
The bad movie accent is a most mysterious phenomenon. Sure, some regular offenders, like Keanu Reeves or Kevin Costner, just don’t seem to have that je ne sais quoi that allows them to speak with the lilt of another land. But then there are actors — your Kingsleys, Malkoviches, and Brandos — who really should know better. Either way, watching these performers — be they outmatched pretty boys or master thespians — fall on their faces is one of the most exciting and entertaining spectator sports in the film world. But we also have to give these poor souls some props. In our list of bad accents, we are not including those actors who simply chose to stick with their own intonations for inappropriate roles. So, you won’t find Tony Curtis talking Brooklynese in the swashbuckler Black Shield of Falworth here, even though its mythical (and non-existent) line “Yonda lies duh kingdom of my fadduh” has become something of a rallying cry for bad movie accents. Nor will you find Harvey Keitel’s Noo Yawk Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ here. No, these are all actors who decided to go with an accent. They trained and rehearsed and researched. Some of them probably even hired dialect coaches. And they failed. Oh dear, sweet god how they failed. Without further ado, here are our choices for The Ten Worst Accents in Movie History.
Kevin Costner, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
We don't know what's more grating — Kevin Costner speaking with an abysmal, pretentious British accent, or Kevin Costner speaking with his own Southern California drawl while playing a Medieval British outlaw. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for note-taking, schadenfreude-addicted cynics like us), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves gives us both, resulting in a catastrophic now-you-hear-it-now-you-don't mishmash, some of which might have been the result of reshoots and post-production infighting between Costner and his friend, director Kevin Reynolds (the two would split for good during the production of Waterworld). Then again, Kevin Costner actually sticking with an accent is in another realm of cinematic pain altogether: witness his comically thick Boston Irish accent in the political thriller Thirteen Days, where he played real-life Presidential adviser Kenneth O’Donnell and made him sound like Diamond Joe Quimby from The Simpsons. And now that we think of it, that 19th century Yankee twang he had in Dances with Wolves ain't so hot, either. Y'know, it may simply be that Kevin Costner is simply a bad accent unto himself.
Keanu Reeves, Bram Stoker’s Dracula
If a close reading of film history proves anything, it’s that Francis Ford Coppola has a massive set of balls — from his peopling The Godfather with a cast of relative unknowns, to his transforming a corner of the Philippines into his own drug-addled, war-engulfed fiefdom for Apocalypse Now, to his staking everything he had in the world on a mega-budget musical comedy starring Teri Garr. But perhaps the greatest risk our man ever took was casting Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker, the affable 19th century clerk who travels to Transylvania and comes face to face with Gary Oldman’s vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. “Ted” had already proven he wasn’t exactly cut out for period pieces through miscast roles in films such as Dangerous Liaisons and Much Ado About Nothing. Still, some of us had hope: we went into that darkened theater convinced that Coppola, who after all had discovered so much young talent throughout the 70s and 80s (think Pacino, Cruise, Cage, Swayze, Dillon…um, Macchio), would be able to fix whatever was wrong with Keanu. Then the lights dimmed. And we heard how he pronounced “Byuuda-pesht.” And “You-rope.” And, “I say, is the cahstle fahh?” All we could do was stare blankly. Here’s how bad Keanu’s accent was: he made Gary Oldman’s and Anthony Hopkins’ similarly outrageous accents in the same film seem okay.
Delroy Lindo, The Devil’s Advocate
How can Keanu Reeves playing a Southern lawyer and Al Pacino playing Satan himself in full-on “Hooo-aaah!” mode both be upstaged by a brief cameo appearance from an otherwise-reliable character actor? It happened here: 28 minutes into Taylor Hackford’s over-the-top classic, we get an uncredited Delroy Lindo, with an impenetrable Cajun twang and stealing the show right out from under its megawatt stars. If you can understand him, let us know. We’re still wondering just what the hell he said.
Ben Kingsley, Sneakers
He played Gandhi and that Iranian dude in House of Sand and Fog, and he even rocked a weirdly compelling Greek in Pascali’s Island, so we know the man can do an accent. He’s a knight, for chrissakes. (Then again, so is Roger Moore.) So how in hell do we explain what happens about halfway through Sneakers, when Robert Redford’s security expert character wakes up to discover that the villain he’s been fighting all along was his long-lost college hacking buddy, now played by Sir Ben Kingsley sporting what must be the strangest inflection imaginable (not to mention the Ponytail from Hell). For starters, we’re not even sure what it’s supposed to be: it appears to be a weird mixture of British, New England, Brooklyn, and Jewish, with possibly even a bit of Indian tossed in. Or, as Kingsley’s character himself might call it, a “dizeas-tah” of Costnerian proportions. But still, Sir Ben is smarter than this: we can’t quite shake the notion that he might be doing it all on purpose. Which would qualify this as not just one of the worst accents ever, but also one of the scariest.
John Malkovich, Rounders
Malkovich is one of those performers — like Brando, or some kind of tormented actor-superhero wrestling with his sociopathic alter ego — who can use his ability to go over-the-top for good or for ill. (See this week’s release of the engaging Color Me Kubrick for an example of “Malkie” goofing around with his well-known propensity to overact.) Sometimes he knocks it out of the park, as in In the Line of Fire or Dangerous Liaisons. And then there’s John Dahl’s gambling drama Rounders, in which our man played the villainous Russian loan shark Teddy KGB with such a thick Russian accent that it stopped the film dead. Forget bluffing a flush, how Matt Damon kept a poker face sitting opposite Malkovich in these scenes we’ll never know.
— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Bryan Whitefield
(Part Two will appear later today.)
PREVIOUS WEEKLY TOP TENS:
- March 14, 2007: The Kinkiest Films Ever Made
- March 7, 2007: The Most Dangerous Films of All Time
- February 27, 2007: The Best Nude Scenes of 2006
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Stars and the Long Arm of the Law: An Update
3/21/2007 1:45:00 PM
- Woody Harrelson’s father Charles, who was convicted of the murder of a Federal Judge back when the actor was only seven, has died in prison.
- Keanu Reeves may have hit a paparazzo with his Porsche. Now say that ten times, real fast.
- Take a look at the prospective juror questionnaire for the Phil Spector trial.
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The (Pre-)Dating Game
3/21/2007 1:00:00 PM
In the sort of absurdly self-centered insider news that can only come from the Los Angeles Times, Josh Friedman on Monday discussed the serious business of timing in box office openings. The next James Bond film with Daniel Craig, for example, has no title, no script, no screenwriter, no supporting cast, no plot, no setting, no director, no filming locations, and no producer – but its opening day is already set in stone, nearly two years ahead of time. Similarly, the next Indiana Jones film, which also at this point barely even has a cast or a title, has an opening date as well.
This may not be news to most film viewers, but it did remind us of this great quote from back in 2001, when Tim Burton, recalling all the meetings he had with the studio before making Planet of the Apes, remarked, "The first time they showed me the poster and on the bottom it said: 'This film has not yet been rated.’ I said why not be accurate and say 'This film has not yet been shot'?"
— Leonard Pierce
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“There's a Leap Between 'I Would Like to Act' and 'I Am Going to Act.’”
3/21/2007 12:15:00 PM
The Guardian, already a daily must-read for political coverage and opinion that rarely cracks the media mainstream in the US, is fast becoming the British daily of record for top-drawer film interviews. (Heck, like 70% of ScreenGrab’s Quotes of the Day have come from Guardian interviews.) The latest and greatest is this interview with John Hurt, who reflects on his curious journey from unconfident amateur to living film icon with biting English humor and vigorous self-analysis.
The interview, with Harriet Lane, contains lots of hilarious and terrifying tidbits: his first meeting with Lawrence Olivier found them sharing the information that they were both beaten by the same schoolmaster as boys; his career-making turn as Caligula in Herbert Wise's I, Claudius hinged on a delightfully perverse piece of improvisation during rehearsal; and, in one of the all-time backhanded self-compliments, Hurt finds the most bizarre way imaginable of claiming he was only a moderate drinker at his most decadent: "I was never an Ollie Reed," he claims; "I was more a Peter O'Toole". Oh! Well, that's all right then.
— Leonard Pierce
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Videos of the Day: Remembering Freddie Francis
3/21/2007 11:30:00 AM
I interviewed Freddie Francis years ago about Dune. We had first met at a film convention in Manchester with John Landis attending. A real gentleman and someone who really had a love for the craft. He thought I was mad about liking the one David Lynch film everyone else hated and commented that a possible re-cut of the film was akin to "flogging a dead horse".
Freddie had arrived into cinematography from wanting to become a director and was assistant on films with John Huston and Michael Powell before becoming the DP of choice for the angry British new wave brigade of Karel Reisz and Jack Clayton. After winning an Oscar for Sons & Lovers he went on to become a director for hire on a number of horror movies and TV shows for nearly two decades before David Lynch tempted him back to lens The Elephant Man. Among the films he directed are such cult classics as The Creeping Flesh, and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, seen in this below clip:
Francis's career as a director shouldn't be dismissed; it was the main reason that Martin Scorsese asked to work with him on Cape Fear, and the last time I met him, he was still talking about Scorsese producing a horror film he'd been nurturing, with Tak Fujimoto (Silence of the Lambs, Badlands)on camera. He also would do the odd pop promo; my biggest surprise was learning was that he had shot a video for the then-emerging band All Saints.
So it was a shock to learn that he had died this past weekend, his final film being The Straight Story for David Lynch. Here’s another clip, this one the trailer for one of the many masterpieces Francis lensed, Jack Clayton’s 1961 thriller, The Innocents.
— Faisal Qureshi
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Fade to White: Turning Greg Rucka's Indie Comic Into a Studio Flick
3/21/2007 10:45:00 AM
As regular followers of this blog know, the line between indie film and mainstream movies is often very thin and easily smudged. And though there's far more domination by the two biggest 'studios', the same applies to comic books: while it's the superhero titles put out by corporate behemoths Marvel and DC that get the most attention (and supply the most material for silver screen adaptations), it shouldn't be forgotten that there are dozens of viable independent comic book publishers, such as Dark Horse (the original home of 300 and Hellboy) and Fantagraphics (which put out Dan Clowes' Art School Confidential and Ghost World before they were films).
While novelist and comics writer Greg Rucka is currently working on a number of projects, including Checkmate and the weekly comic 52, for Time/Warner subsidiary DC, his first work in the medium – and the one that will be the first to hit the big screen – was for the tiny Oni Press. Whiteout, the gritty anti-noir revolving around the adventures of US Marshal Carrie Stetko, the only law enforcement agent on the entire continent of Antarctica, is currently in production with Joel Silver at the helm, Dominic Sena behind the camera, and Kate Beckinsale in the lead. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Alex O'Loughlin and Columbus Short have likewise joined the cast, and while it's still an indie film in spirit, like Rucka, it straddles both worlds, with the company currently signing his paychecks – Time/Warner – handling the distribution.
In an engaging interview with Comic Book Resources, Rucka himself displays a healthy skepticism about the process of adaptation: "Every couple of years, somebody would come along and want to pay us money for the right not to make the movie," he laughs, but now that it's actually happening, "they're going to make a movie called Whiteout with a character named Carrie Stetko in it and probably most of the similarities are going to end there, and you know what? I'm fine with that, because it's a movie, it's not a four-issue mini-series and if you mistake the two you'll get what you deserve."
— Leonard Pierce
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Morning Deal Report: Score One for the MPAA's Dogs
3/21/2007 10:08:04 AM
- Lucky and Flo, the MPAA’s pirate-DVD-sniffing black Labradors, have helped the Malaysian government unearth “nearly 1 million illegal DVDs and CDs on Tuesday in a building where optical disc pirates hid them.” The dogs are being loaned to Malaysia for a month.
- Juliette Binoche will appear in Israeli director Amos Gitai’s Disengagement, “ the first dramatic portrayal of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.”
- The Girl Next Door and Alpha Dog star Emile Hirsch is getting ready to star in the Wachowski Brothers’ big-budget Speed Racer movie.
- The long-rumored, long-delayed Green Hornet film might be happening after all. Columbia has acquired the rights to the superhero, and to his sidekick Kato.
- Tom Cruise was already going to be producing Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie’s recently-announced WWII thriller project, through his United Artists studio. But now it looks like he’ll be starring in it as well.
- In a shocking departure that will no doubt recast his image in an entirely different light for a new generation, 50 Cent will star in the drag-racing flick Live Bet,“a heist film…set in the world of underground clubs and illegal car racing. “
— Bilge Ebiri
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More Controversy: Joe Roth vs. Julie Taymor
3/20/2007 5:00:00 PM
Well, we spoke too soon when we made that whole David O. Russell YouTube breakdown our Controversy of the Week. Because Joe Roth has apparently taken Julie Taymor's Evan Rachel Wood-starring psychedelic romance Across the Universe out of her hands. Sez the NY Times:
"After Ms. Taymor delivered the movie to Joe Roth, the film executive whose production company, Revolution Studios, based at Sony, is making the Beatles musical, he created his own version without her agreement. And last week Mr. Roth tested his cut of the film, which is about a half-hour shorter than Ms. Taymor’s 2-hour-8-minute version.
"Mr. Roth’s moves have left Ms. Taymor feeling helpless and considering taking her name off the movie, according to an individual close to the movie who would not be named because of the sensitivity of the situation. Disavowing a film is the most radical step available to a director like Ms. Taymor, who does not have final cut, one that could embarrass the studio and hurt the movie’s chances for a successful release in September."
I'm sure they'll eventually come to some sort of agreement, if only because Taymor is one of the film's main draws (they're already pimping her name in the film's wacked-out trailer) and there's a big difference between "the visionary genius who brought you The Lion King" and "the anonymous pseudonym whose last film was An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn." But for now, let the blood flow.
— Bilge Ebiri
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DVD Tuesday: Comics, Christians, and Captives
3/20/2007 4:30:00 PM
Here are some of this week’s more notable DVD releases. Those first three, especially, are highly recommended.
- The Naked City is, of course, Jules Dassin's supposed noir from the late 1940s. It's been on DVD before, but not with the attention to detail and the supplements that the Criterion Collection has brought to the film. Naked City isn't really noir — it’s more a gritty, realistic police procedural, but no one on the disc really addresses that issue. Noir is such a high-selling genre these days so all manner of unlikely films get squeezed into it, just so the distributors can give them that tag.
- Meanwhile, Koch Lorber is offering Alain Resnais's Muriel ou Le temps d'un retour, with the late Delphine Seyrig. Resnais’s 1963 film, his third feature and first in color, takes on the residue of Algiers on the French memory and unconscious. It's probably his least appreciated masterpiece, in a long line of great work that has run for decades. The disc features the trailer, and a video interview with a Resnais scholar.
- Also from Koch Lorber is Alain Robbe-Grillet's 1983 surrealistic sex fantasy La Belle Captive. Robbe-Grillet's fantasies are notable for their S&M tilt, and this one is no exception. Here, though, one finds the fantasies married to themes from Magritte, the Surrealists, and, in anticipation, late Kubrick.
- Notable documentaries of the week include Addiction , a 4-disc set of the HBO series, three of the discs being supplementary material. Unseen by this reviewer, Addiction supposedly takes a more refined and expansive view of its subject. Meanwhile, Genius is releasing Mana: Beyond Belief an unusual documentary from 2004 that takes a page out of What the Bleep Do We Know?’s book, exploring the spiritual quality of things (that's what the Polynesian word of the title means). Eye Weekly offers a review.
- Gearing up for Halloween (it's only eight months away!), Lionsgate offers up Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave, from 2005. Didn't know that they were still doing Living Dead sequels? Number four was subtitled Necropolis. In a detailed review JoBlo says that this film "murdered the franchise."
Meanwhile, for the second week in a row comes a documentary about horror films, this one called Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film: Unrated from ThinkFilm, and featuring the likes of John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Gregory Nicotero, and Rob Zombie, plus a healthy selection of excerpts.
The Hunt for the BTK Killer, from 2005 (Columbia), may be a TV movie, but it has a terrific performance by Gregg Henry as the eponymous character, and from Robert Forster as the cop on his trail. The film makes an interesting contrast to Fincher's Zodiac.
- TV Releases: It seems like more TV than movies get released on DVD from week to week, but maybe it’s just pure bulk. In any case, this week comes Maude: Season One, a 3-disc set from Columbia that pits Norman Lear's liberal harridan against all who deviate from her strict political correctness, including the young and luscious daughter, played by a robust Adrienne Barbeau …If you still think that the original show was better than the recent cinematic remake, here are the bleak later seasons of the cottony, pastel Miami Vice, numbers three and four, both 5-disc sets from Universal. Season Three is the famous "dark" season, but the pale blues and pinks returned with season four. Unfortunately, few of the writers and the show's great composer did not, leading to such dead end plots as Crockett going all amnesiac and thinking that he really is Sonny Burnett, while romancing Sheena Easton…NewsRadio was a terrible show with a great cast — Dave Foley, Maura Tierney, Phi Hartman, and others. [Some of us beg to differ on the “terrible” part – ed.] Now Season Five, on a 3-disc set from Columbia, follows the adventures of the dysfunctional radio station that probably reflects the reality of a sitcom writers' room more than a real workplace. Supplements consist of a gag reel and some deleted scenes.
- Among high-profile, big studio releases: It turns out that Mike Rich, author of the Finding Forrester script, is a devout Christian, as his latest film, The Nativity Story (from New Line) makes clear. Even more surprising, the film is the unlikely directorial effort of Catherine Hardwicke, of Thirteen fame … Though it won no Oscars, Blood Diamond enjoys a Special Edition 2-disc release from Warner, featuring directorial yak track, making of, trailer, and music video. One might shed a real tear over the plot when seeing the film on a small screen …Also more acceptable on the small screen might be Rocky Balboa the presumed last entry in the series, from MGM. The film's one clever element was to mimic an HBO broadcast for the fight itself, and that might come across terrifically on television itself. The disc comes with three making ofs, deleted scenes, and an alternative ending.
And finally, Universal offers up The W.C. Fields Comedy Collection: Vol. 2, a 5-disc set that includes the acerbic misanthrope's more obscure but no less important early works, including You're Telling Me, The Old Fashioned Way, The Man on the Flying Trapeze, Poppy, and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. Despite a recent new biography of the comedian, Fields has fallen out of favor of late, and what is needed is a fresh look at his films from the viewpoint of the comic as an auteur, whose very physical presence dictates a visual style, not just a performer.
— DK Holm
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