leeper@mtgzy.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) (02/27/91)
SCENES FROM A MALL
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: If you think it is funny to see adults
argue in public, perhaps this comedy is for you. Then again,
if you do think so, who knows what else you would like?
Another Beverly Hills comedy that makes this Easterner wonder
if he is missing the point. Rating: -1 (-4 to +4).
Somebody once told me they thought they could listen to and watch Woody
Allen reading white pages out of the phone book and it would be funny. His
facial expressions are just so funny that anything he does is just naturally
hilarious. Bette Midler can also be very funny. So the question is, how
long can this couple play a loving and quarreling couple walking around a
mall and still carry the film on their innate cuteness. Well, based on the
results in Paul Mazursky's SCENES FROM A MALL, the two of them might be able
to carry the premise for up to about ten minutes. After that, they
definitely need an assist from a script and the script in SCENES FROM A MALL
by Roger Simon and director Mazursky does little to help. At least it does
little unless you think that everything connected with Beverly Hills is
really cute. If your idea of a good joke is seeing a line of cars with each
driver talking on a cellular phone, perhaps you will enjoy this film, but I
would bet you will find far more on-target and funny in L.A. STORY.
On their sixteenth wedding anniversary, lovey-dovey couple Nick (played
by Woody Allen) and Deborah (played by Bette Midler) go to a mall on an
errand. There they get into a fight over fidelity and decide to break up.
They reconcile and decide they still love each other. They fight again and
break up. Then they get together again. Can you figure the plot from that
point on? Yes, I thought you could. All this fighting and loving is done
in front of random strangers. That's what there is. It is a film with a
beginning and a middle, but no end. It is just arbitrarily cut off at the
end of a cycle. It would be one thing if these people were at least great
conversationalists. But this is no MY DINNER WITH ANDRE. About all you
learn from the conversation is that these are two very ordinary and
superficial people. Do you really care where they got their roll-top desk
and which of them is going to get it in the divorce settlement? I know I do
not. You could easily save the admission price by going to your local mall
and eavesdropping on the people there.
There are some things that Mazursky is more anxious to show us than
others. We do get to see the names of a lot of stores at the mall, many of
which--surprise! surprise!--are chains that you might find at your own local
mall. How fortuitous for the financing of the film! Considerably less care
is taken to show us what the characters are doing with their packages. At
one point each has bought a complete change of clothes which they are
wearing. No explanation is given for what happened to the clothes they had
been wearing. I guess in Beverly Hills, everything you own is considered
disposable.
If you genuinely find great humor in the awkward situation of seeing
adults argue in public, this predominantly one-joke comedy might be for you.
If not, it offers you surprisingly little considering the names involved. I
give it a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzy!leeper
leeper@mtgzy.att.comfrankm@microsoft.UUCP (Frank MALONEY) (02/27/91)
SCENES FROM A MALL
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
SCENES FROM A MALL is the new Paul Mazursky film starring Woody
Allen, Bette Midler, and the Beverly Center shopping mall. Paul Irwin,
the "new vaudevillean," appears as the mimic.
It's an incongruous casting idea putting Woody Allen, the ultimate
New Yorker, in a Southern California mall with Bette Midler, who may
just be the last word in ditzy rich California. If it had worked, it
would have been brilliant; it didn't and it ain't. All that is left to
us the audience is assigning the blame.
First off, there's Mazursky, who when he's good is very, very good.
However, he seems constitutionally incapable of making two good movies
in a row. Now, he's done nothing quite as wonderful as his early NEXT
EXIT GREENWICH VILLAGE, but his last Beverly Hills movie, the name of
which escapes me just now, had a wonderful zany chaos about it, a kind
of kitchy UP STAIRS, DOWN STAIRS, that approached at least the lost art
of the screwball comedy. SCENES, on the other hand, instead of opening
up Beverly Hills to satire and humanization, traps us in its own
self-referential claustrophobia. Several times, Nick and Deborah, the
major characters, almost succeed in breaking out of the mall, only to be
dragged back in by some circumstance or other. Their failure to leave
is the movie's failure, too.
Then, there's Woody Allen looking and sounding as natural and
naturalized as a Martian at a Ku Klux Klan rally. He's got a
preposterous tuck of hair gathered in a teeny tiny ponytail. That's the
signal that he's a real California sports agent/lawyer. Allen is too
familiar to us to be anything but Woody Allen, and no one who knows
Allen thinks that he would ever be a Californian. Neither is there
anything in his performance that in any way makes it possible for us to
make the leap of faith to enable us to forget ANNIE HALL and a lifetime
of slamming L.A.
Finally, there's Midler, fussy and over-upholstered as usual, but
totally unable to convince us that she is a licensed psychologist and
successful self-help author. She's not the Beverly Hills princess she
was in her previous B.H. films -- the one with Nick Nolte and company
[DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS] or the one with Danny DeVito [RUTHLESS
PEOPLE]. Neither is the vulgarian with the heart of gold that she's
played opposite Shelley Long [OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE] or in BEACHES. What
is she, who is she, how does she succeed either professionally or
personally? She hasn't a clue how the play Deborah and we haven't a
clue how to read her.
If this is satire, it is a cold, uncaring kind. If it is a tribute
to SoCal culture, it misses altogether. I think of SCENES and then of
L.A. STORY as the portrait of Lotus Land. Steve Martin's got this movie
beat all hollow because there is love behind his movie. There is
nothing behind Mazursky's.
I can recommend this film only to those fans who have to see
everything with Allen and/or Midler in it. The rest of us would be
better off shopping.
--
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloneyeggimann@bu.edu (Scott Eggimann) (03/06/91)
SCENES FROM A MALL
A film review by Scott T. Eggimann
Copyright 1991 Scott T. Eggimann
Capsule Review: A terrible movie about marriage and
infidelity. Woody Allen and Bette Midler go to the mall for
a quick errand. Instead they take us on a trek of their
sixteen-year relationship. There's only so much humor in
watching these two people fight. Rating: -3 (-4 to +4); I
wouldn't recommend renting this on video, even a free one.
I'm not a big Woody Allen fan, although I did like SLEEPER and TAKE
THE MONEY AND RUN. I wasn't hoping for a SLEEPER-quality film, but I
was expecting something much better from a "master" such as Allen.
SCENES FROM A MALL is a very boring movie. I'll go further than that,
this was a terrible movie; stay home and save your money.
This movie has nothing good to say about relationships. Very much
like WAR OF THE ROSES, this movie continues on insisting to find
something funny about healthy relationships falling apart. It's
depressing to see a loving couple married sixteen years fighting.
People go to the movies to escape, if your relationship is in trouble
you would be better off not to see this film.
This movie was billed as a comedy. If anything I left the theater
wanting to ensure that my relationships never get to the sorry state
that Nick (Allen) and Deborah (Bette Midler) were in. Couples argue
enough in this world, I don't need to pay full movie rates to see them.
Not only that, but this show was just under an hour and a half. I
counted an hour and twenty minutes, but I was told it was longer than
that. Given how short the movie was, it seemed like a three-hour movie.
No plot, no action, no lessons to be learned. Just two people
arguing and taking low blows at each other.
I suppose to be fair I should comment on the scenes that were
entertaining. Allen walking through a crowded mall with a (s)lime green
surf board is funny. Although, this also got boring. The first ten
minutes of carrying the board was funny, after that I kept trying to
figure out the symbolism of the board. I decided that whoever carred
the board was the person trying to put the relationship back together.
When the board switched hands, the feelings of both persons changed.
When they finally lost the board, the relationship appeared to be back
to normal.
Maybe it was just me, but I failed to see much of the humor in the
movie. The audience seemed to think that the Santa sled on Allen's roof
was pretty funny and again with the twin Saabs in the garage. I was
probably so depressed from all the fighting that the humor went right
over my head, but I don't think so.