1980 Week: Wholly Moses!

Unfunny, uninteresting, and unmemorable, this half-assed comedy set in Biblical times offers a drab Hollywood counterpart to the previous year’s Life of Brian, a controversial satire created by the madmen of Monty Python. Whereas Life of Brian is a deliberately offensive movie that asks provocative questions about the nature of religion, Wholly Moses! is a brainless compendium of sketches posing as scenes. Dudley Moore, trying but not succeeding to slide by on charm, stars in a modern-day wraparound sequence as Harvey, a New York City history professor taking a low-budget tour of the Holy Land. While exploring a cave with fellow tourist Zoey (Laraine Newman), Harvey discovers an ancient scroll that tells the story of a man named Herschel. Most of the movie depicts that story. Born to corpulent slave Hyssop (James Coco), Herschel (played as an adult by Moore) was set adrift on the Nile at the same time as Moses, but, by an accident of timing, led a life of little consequence instead of finding a grand destiny. Thus, the central joke in the movie is painfully similar to the central joke in Life of Brian—a schmuck’s existence runs parallel with that of a Biblical icon. Director Gary Weis and screenwriter Guy Thomas use this scenario as a framework for a string of uninspired gags, occasionally juicing the mix with cameos by familiar actors. (Dom DeLuise, John Houseman, Madeline Kahn, and Richard Pryor are among those who appear.) Typical of the lame gags in Wholly Moses! is the S&M-laden puppet show in the city of Sodom, or the throwaway reference to a graven-images store called “Chock Full of Gods.” Moore’s appeal isn’t nearly strong enough to make Wholly Moses! bearable, and Newman, of Saturday Night Live fame, is a non-presence. The only time the movie sparks briefly to life is during John Ritter’s droll cameo as Satan, even though Ritter wears a cheap satin costume and carries a plastic pitchfork. Despite the tacky trappings, Ritter injects amusing world-weariness into his role, at one point whining, “Well, here come the damned—they’ll be expecting me.”

Wholly Moses!: LAME

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1972)

An opulent adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s famous novel about a little girl encountering fantastical creatures, made with actors in deliberately artificial animal costumes, and featuring sets so two-dimensional they seem borrowed from a stage production, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland feels like an attempt to create a British companion piece to The Wizard of Oz (1939). From the myriad musical numbers to the use of comedy performers in supporting roles, the picture echoes many elements of the MGM classic, yet doesn’t come close to emulating the magic of Dorothy Gale’s journey to a land over the rainbow. One issue is the malevolence inherent to Carroll’s narrative—whereas the beloved Disney cartoon made from this story, Alice in Wonderland (1951), replaced some of the creepier aspects of Carroll’s book with whimsical flourishes, this version accentuates the frightening nature of Alice’s experiences inside the rabbit hole. (Intense surrealism and lighthearted children’s entertainment aren’t exactly the best mix.) Other problem areas include John Barry’s score and Fiona Fullerton’s leading performance. Barry employs his standard idiom of sweepingly romantic strings, and the resulting music feels way too heavy for a lark about a little girl imagining that drinking magical potions can alter her natural size. As for Fullerton, she’s a pretty young woman whose looks are similar to those of Kirsten Dunst, but she seems too grown-up for this material even though she was a teenager when the film was shot. She’s also highly forgettable. Several English notables are wasted in featured roles as the Caterpillar, the Door Mouse, and other weirdly anthropomorphic Carroll creations; those zipping in and out of the movie without making much impact include Michael Crawford, Spike Milligan, Dudley Moore, Ralph Richardson, and Peter Sellers.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: LAME

“10” (1979)

          It’s not difficult to identify some of the reasons why writer-director Blake Edwards’ sex comedy “10” struck a nerve during its highly successful initial release. The story of a middle-aged man who can’t stand the fact that young swingers are having wild sex while he’s stuck in a frosty monogamous relationship, the picture spoke to a whole generation of squares who felt like they were missing out on the erotic perks of the counterculture.

          And then there was the Bo factor. Although she had appeared in a couple of minor films previously, sun-kissed starlet Bo Derek made a huge splash with “10,” instantly becoming one of the most iconic sex symbols of the ’70s. The key image, featured in ads and posters everywhere, depicts the actress jogging along a beach in long-lensed soft focus, her cornrow-braided hair bouncing around her apple-cheeked face, and the rest of her, well, just plain bouncing. Epitomizing a certain fantasy ideal of California sexiness, she was the perfect object for the fixation of dirty old men circa 1979, and her casting is a major part of why the movie works as well as it does—which, it must be said, is not all that well.

          The problem isn’t so much the story, standard wayward-male stuff about Hollywood songwriter George Webber (Dudley Moore) skipping out on his lady to chase after a dream girl; the problem is Edwards’ execution. Instead of focusing on his forte of intricate physical comedy, Edwards tries to make a statement on American manhood that’s about as deep as a Playboy editorial, and nothing drags comedy down like shallow social commentary. Thus, the slapstick bits are often very funny—as when Moore tries to walk across a beach toward Derek but keeps hopping up and down like a dolt because the sand is too hot for his delicate tootsies—but the talking bits are tedious.

          Scenes of George arguing sexual politics with his Broadway-star girlfriend, Samantha (Julie Andrews), are pretentious and, now, quite dated. Even worse are the conversations between George and Jenny (Derek), who comes across not as a real character but as Edwards’ judgmental idea of an airheaded free spirit. To be fair, Edwards is just as harsh in depicting George, but that raises another question—if we’re not rooting for George to have a sexual adventure or rooting for Jenny to steer clear of a horndog, whose story are we following? Given that the picture meanders through a needlessly long running time, and given that the takeaway is a trite love-conquers-lust message, it seems Edwards never quite answered that question.

          Still, there are things to enjoy, and not just the ogling shots of Derek (which, in the context of the movie, seem appropriate instead of gratuitous). Robert Webber is funny and touching as George’s (gay) lyricist, working through his own difficulties with a decades-younger love interest; Dee Wallace is affecting as a lonely woman whose near-miss romantic encounter with George reaffirms her self-loathing; and Brian Dennehy dishes out 100-proof wisdom as a beach-resort bartender. A handful of comedy pros show up for enjoyable bit parts, with Max Showalter standing out as a reverend who wants George to hear the little romantic ditty he’s composed.

          These strong elements underline the frustrating thing about “10”—in many ways, Edwards was at the top of his game when he made the picture, but his grasping attempts at “significance” merely reveal the limits of his talent for cultural observation.

“10”: FUNKY

Foul Play (1978)

          Easily the best-fitting star vehicle that Goldie Hawn made in the ’70s, comic thriller Foul Play is also the first movie that Chevy Chase made after bailing on Saturday Night Live to pursue a big-screen career. The actors’ enjoyable chemistry and the breezily entertaining machinations of writer-director Colin Higgins’ deeply silly script helped make Foul Play one of 1978’s biggest hits. A lighthearted riff on the Alfred Hitchcock formula featuring an innocent character who gets embroiled in a conspiracy, the picture is lavishly produced but so insubstantial that it sometimes threatens to float away. Yet for those who set their expectations appropriately, it’s a tasty serving of empty calories.

          Hawn stars as a San Francisco librarian who stumbles upon plans for an assassination attempt, and Chase plays a smart-aleck police detective who slowly discovers the scheme based on sketchy evidence she brings to his attention. The two fall in love, naturally, to the tune of Barry Manilow’s bombastic theme song “Ready to Take a Chance Again”—which is to say that Foul Play is a loving throwback to old-school Hollywood romance. And while Higgins falls short in terms of visual style, evincing no special gift for camerawork in his directorial debut, he compensates with a imaginative and playful storyline. After all, he earned the opportunity to helm this project after scoring as the screenwriter of Harold and Maude (1971) and Silver Streak (1976), the latter of which provided something like a template for Foul Play.

          From the smoothly handled opening scene to various comic setpieces, some of which land more effectively than others, Higgins serves his script well with brisk pacing and the good sense to keep his actors from playing the material too broadly, notwithstanding some over-the-top villainy toward the end. Unsurprisingly, special care was taken to ensure delightful leading performances. Hawn achieves a winning transition by playing a grown-up intellectual instead of the airhead stereotype that made her famous, and Chase is uncharacteristically warm even though his signature cockiness bubbles beneath the surface. Key supporting player Dudley Moore nearly steals the movie as a diminutive lothario who keeps crossing paths with Hawn, and the long scene in which he unveils his tricked-out bachelor pad is a great example of a comedian humiliating himself for the sake of a joke. Burgess Meredith is lively as Hawn’s eccentric landlord, and ace character players including Billy Barty, Don Calfa, and Brian Dennehy pop up in smaller roles.

          Though it gets a bit windy at 116 minutes (the climax in particular gets draggy), Foul Play is both a respectable homage to classic Hollywood piffles a fine maiden voyage for a promising screen duo. Alas, Chase and Hawn only did one more movie together, the intermittently wonderful Neil Simon romp Seems Like Old Times (1980), which is reviewed here.

Foul Play: GROOVY