reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (11/19/84)
Well, *I* didn't ask for another "Oh God" movie, but someone
must have, because here it is, "Oh God, You Devil". What a clev-
er idea, to have George Burns play both God and the Devil in this
one. Isn't it amazing what wonderful ideas the folks in Holly-
wood can come up with when they put their acorn-sized minds to
it? Perhaps someone murmured something during lunch at Spago's
(goose liver sausage and goat cheese pizza, no doubt) about new
improvements in double exposure technology, this was picked up by
an eavesdropper, and one of Hollywood's great idea men said,
"Why, we haven't done anything like this since Haley Mills!
There may be a buck here!"
Given that George Burns is such a great comic performer,
maybe there will be a buck here. Burns is the only reason to
bother with "Oh God! You Devil?" (or some other punctuation,
perhaps; I'm satisfied with just *spelling* titles correctly, my-
self). Burns takes lines that are barely even amusing and
transforms them into moderately funny lines. But even alchemists
have limits. They must have lead before they can turn it into
gold - manure won't do. Most of Burns' lines are pretty bad, so
the best he can do is make them sound respectable.
If there were more of Burns and less of Ted Wass, the film
might still be worthwhile. Wass was really funny in "Curse of
the Pink Panther", but this role is certain death for almost any-
one. It makes you appreciate the low key charms of John Denver
to see poor Wass struggling with this part. He plays an unsuc-
cessful song writer who makes a deal with the Devil (George
Burns). The deal results in his taking the place of a famous
rock star Burns has just foreclosed on, giving Wass lots of the
rewards of success, but separating him from his wife. Eventual-
ly, inevitably, George Burns as God shows up to have it out with
George Burns as the Devil over Wass' soul. Not very long ago
Disney got iced at the box office with much the same plot ("The
Devil and Max Devlin"), so no points for originality.
No points for much of anything else, either. "Oh, God? You
Devil!" is very predictable. We all know what will happen, which
is the peril of this kind of plot. The screenwriter must try and
fit in little surprises to make up for predictability at the
higher level, and the screenwriters here fail. Real ho-hum stuff
fills out the borders. Paul Bogart is a hack director ("Skin
Game" was his only good film, though some of his TV work is OK),
and he puts in another hack job here. No mistakes, no inspira-
tion. Ron Silver is good in a small role as a record producer,
but we're not talking picture-saving, film-stealing good here.
The bottom line for "Oh, God, You? Devil??" is that your en-
joyment of the film will depend entirely on how charming you find
George Burns, and how much nonsense you're willing to sit through
to get to him. I sort of like George Burns, so I almost enjoyed
the film. "Oh! God You Devil" is a real good film to catch on
cable TV when you have nothing better to do.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher