The Michigan Daily - Monday, April 9, 1990 - Page 9 The life of Brian and Charlie 1 Nuns on the Run dir. Jonathan Lynn by Alyssa Katz Last week I read the great cover story by Mark .rispin Miller in the April Atlantic Monthly, which essentially explained that Hollywood is going to hell in a handbasket because virtually every major American film of the past few years has all the profundity of a .McDonald's commercial. After finishing it, all misty- eyed and remorseful over the demise of this nation's cinematic glory, I consoled myself with the thought that at least films from overseas would save us stupid Americans from ourselves. But my optimism is dimming. The thoroughly ;derivative English film Nuns on the Run completely re- jects that country's great tradition of daring, wacky comedy capers and trades it in for some all-American sitcom "humor." Don't let Eric Idle's presence as hap- less gangster Brian/charming Sister Euphemia of the Five Wounds fool you: this film has almost nothing to do with the creative dazzle of Monty Python, The lGoon Show, the Ealing con game romps or even Benny Hill. Every time there's some possibility for Nuns to go off the deep end and get really funny, Idle and his co-star (the much funnier, frog-faced Robbie ,Coltrane) just get put through another costume change, for some new adversary shows up. They end up being pursued by a Hong Kong drug gang (a British equiva- lent to the paranoid depiction of Cubans in American films), some boring English mobsters, a nun who catches on to the men's real identity, Brian's girl- friend's pissed-off brother and so on, ad nauseum. This sort of thing worked in The Blues Brothers because that movie did it parodically; in Nuns the who-will- chase-them-next device is played completely straight. It's not funny. Countless opportunities to make fun of the Catholic Church are thrown down the tubes. Idle and Coltrane - the former acting as bland as baby food, the latter almost bursting out of a constraining role - have one brief discussion about the Trinity, with the big joke being that Idle knows nothing, Coltrane knows everything, and Idle has to teach a religion class in five minutes. One truly funny moment is hardly no- ticeable in this tedious set-up: Coltrane teaches Idle the sign of the cross by incanting "spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch" while making the gesture. One last caveat, for those who must see a Python alum movie, no matter howsbad: the music, most of it by that scourge Yello, is terrible, a m6lange of the worst of cop flick suspense noise and Eurobeat ca- siotone. NUNS ON THE Showcase. RUN is playing at Briarwood and Ha ha ha! Guess what! These aren't really nuns! They aren't even women! Ha ha ha! What do you mean that's not funny? The people who made Nuns on the Run seem to think it's a premise worthy of a whole movie. )EATH Continued from page 8 ;Teath, what they were thinking #while walking out of the movie the- * ter after I Love you to Death, and ',hat they said about I Love You to peath to their friends at a cocktail party: The Audience- before seeing the movie: Boy oh boy oh boy. rook at this cast. Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman, William Hurt, Keanu Reeves, River Phoenix, Vic- toria Jackson, Phoebe Cates. And it's even directed by Lawrence Kas- * an. I better go see this one, because :f I meet Larry at graduation, I'll have something to chat about. Should I get Milk Duds or Jujubes? OK, popcorn it is. Can men actually control their sex drives? The Audience during the Movie: OK, it has to get funny. Sooner or later, a good joke will come along. I just know it. I just love that TV show of Tracey Ull- man's, so I know this movie will get funny. It has to get funny, go- damm it, I paid five bucks to see this movie. The people sitting in front of me are actually laughing. Are they stoned? Can it really be true that Kevin Kline is this bad at faking an Italian accent? Why does Tracey Ullman's American accent change geographical regions every 15 min- utes? Tracey Ullman's character's mother is trying to fake a Yugosla- vian accent. This plot is totally im- plausible. I don't think it's ever go- ing to get funny. Did I turn the iron off before I left the house? When is Kevin Kline going to get the clue that dark blue whitey-tighty under- wear does not cut it with sheer beige pants? Get a load of William Hurt and Keanu Reeves trying to act like stoners. This might be funny if it had some jokes. I'm so disappointed that Lawrence Kasdan actually di- rected this. Maybe I won't even go to graduation. No, maybe I won't even graduate. Can men actually control their sex drives? The Audience after the movie: Did I miss the laugh track? Can men actually control their sex drives? The Audience at a cocktail party: so anyway, I went to see this new movie I Love You to Death. It was one of the worst movies I've seen in a while. It was about this Italian guy who always cheats on his wife, but she doesn't find out until she runs into him at the library necking with some bodacious ta-ta. Then she gets really pissed and de- cides to kill him with the help of her Yugoslavian mother. But there's a catch, see, because he's indestruc- tible. Nothing she tries works. It was unfunny, unintelligent, un- worthwhile, and the mise en scdne sucked. Can men actually control their sex drives? I LOVE YOU TO DEATH is playing at Briarwood and Showcase. BOOKS Continued from page 8 that Fante was his favorite author. Fante, however, had long since re- sorted to writing screenplays to pay his bills and had contracted diabetes, which blinded him and took both his legs. The renewed interest in his work after Bukowski's aside inspired Fante to write again, this time by dictation to his wife, but he finished only one novel before his death in 1983. Ask the Dust is the third novel in the loosely autobiographical saga of Fante's fictional alter ego, Arturo_ Bandini. Torn between sincere ro- mantic longings and the burdens of Italian machismo, between the re- spect of his literary idol J. D. Hackmuth (the curmudgeon H. L. Mencken) and public appreciation, between his mother's devout Catholicism and his father's cynical realism, Banidini is full of contradic- tions that cannot be reconciled. He is tested often and, like any torn soul, he fails, whether blowing his mother's pension on a prostitute he can't bring himself to sleep with, degrading his lover to win her re- spect, or slipping into robbery, stealing milk which ends up filled with detested butter. For Bandini, greatness and misery go hand in hand; his moments of literary and tangible triumph are consistently offset by personal and moral tur- moil. While such a structure certainly adheres to covention, the clarity of Fante's prose is a wonderful depar- ture from the norm. Fante disdained the cultural games played by the symbolists and let his emotions run raw on the page. His advice to those intoxicated by the coast: ...So get youselves a polo shirt boys, and a pair of sunglasses, and white shoes, if you can. Be collegiate. It'll get you anyway. After a while, afte~r big doses of the Times and the Examiner, you too will whoop it up for the sunny south. While the novel is marred by a hasty conclusion, Ask the Dust is powerful, deeply emotional, impas- sioned storytelling. Bukowski lik- ened his discovery of the book to "finding gold in the city dump," and one is strongly encouraged to dig. -Mark Rosenberg u v Retail McKids & You, A Perfect Fit! 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