I Saw A Film!

A contender for least funny comedy ever. A middle class couple with a new house end up with a pile of unwanted guests, first just mildly taking advantage of politeness, but soon the savagery and outrageous hi-jinx build, resulting in our brows furrowed in disbelief, strained by the sorts of jokes and gags left out of Three’s Company (granted, I loved Three’s Company as a wee lad, but I’d be hard pressed to reference it as comedy gold now, and I preferred the Normal Fell seasons).

John Larroquette and John Diehl are genuinely talented enough and the ladies, over-the-top nutty enough, to just about manage to be icons of issues, fake and incredibly fussy pregnancy to obvious gold-digging among them. One halfway decent gag, though cruel and sociopathic in its execution, is the death and resurrection of a pet cat (literally viciously blown up by a young tow-headed monster). It seems all is forgiven each time the cat manages to return, apparently no worse for the ferocity.

The problem with comedies like this one, in which no particular behavior or being is directly impugned but the characters are presented as so exaggerated that they resemble no human being alive, is that this lack of resemblance removes subtlety and since we can’t recognize ourselves or others in the comic characterizations, everyone just comes across as completely alien. A film like this may have worked as a cartoon, where the noisy and doubtful could be given features that would make them as clearly boiler plate as Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd. Though, having said that Bojack Horseman flows with better representation of human folly.

I wondered why I’d never heard of this thing with Kirstie Alley and Larroquette, but having just painfully sat through it, working on my taxes seemed a better entertainment. I will say it’s about the cutest I’ve seen Kirstie behave, her little dance with the drapery was endearing.

Running free on Prime (USA) and by the same lout who wrote Look Who’s Talking Now.