For pure silliness, Woody
Allen’s back in the driver’s seat with The
Curse of the Jade Scorpion , an affectionate wink at those noirish 1940’s
comedies in which a doofus like Bob Hope and a good-sport lady sidekick like
Dorothy Lamour are pursued by Nazis, Oriental gumshoes and Peter Lorre. In
period clothes and timeless confusion, Bob (er, Woody) plays a grungy, myopic
little insurance investigator who cracks cases with tips from ex-cons, street
urchins and assorted Damon Runyon rejects, and Dottie (er, Helen Hunt) is the
office efficiency expert who makes his life miserable, wrecking his reputation
and his filing cabinets while having an affair with the bulbous boss (Dan
Aykroyd). Although the office worm and the lady automaton hate each other, they are coerced into being hypnotized by a sleazy nightclub
magician dressed like a swami (the Boris Karloff role). While they’re in a
trance, they are given key words which, whenever spoken, return them to their
somnambulistic state long enough to (1) believe they’re lovers and (2) pull off
a series of daring jewel robberies under hypnosis.
If
you’ve lost the thread of concentration, not to worry. The plot is as valuable to your enjoyment as a
60-year-old ration coupon for Oxydol. The real fun is watching them switch
personalities. Whenever the phone rings and the swami says, “You’re in the
power of the Jade Scorpion,” the mousy schnook and the Our Miss Brooks from
hell become cat burglars whose lives intertwine in ways forced and predictable
enough to make you yell “Ouch!” He finds jewels in her chic bedroom; she finds
gems in his bachelor hovel; they both suspect each other, while withholding
evidence from the cops and propelling the film along with insults (“Germs can’t
live in your bloodstream-it’s too cold”).
This is not Woody’s
sharpest writing, and his direction lulls so often that I found myself nodding
off. But there are enough funny bits to make you want more. Woody wisely spares
us the details of their heists and cuts to aftermath; the period style and
butterscotch color of the great Zhao Fei’s cinematography are not overdone; the
source music is by Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller and Harry James; and there’s
even a sultry, amusing cameo by Charlize Theron as a dame in trouble that
brings back delicious memories of Veronica Lake, Lizabeth Scott and other 40’s femmes fatales . All good reasons to
consider this sweetie-pie nod to the old Hope-Crosby-Lamour Road pictures a nice antidote to the contemporary idiot farces we’ve had
this summer. Everybody involved appears to be high on rye old-fashioneds. Like
Mr. Webster’s dictionary, they’re Morocco-bound.
O Captain! Miscast Captain!
Unlike the long,
flatulent and unendurable novel by Louis de Bernières on which it is based, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (now there’s
a title to make them line up at the malls!) does not say “The End” at the end.
It would at least have been something to applaud. John ( Shakespeare in Love ) Madden’s bloodcurdlingly overproduced movie-as
one British critic observed when this epic flop opened in London in May, to
disastrous reviews-could only be improved by scrapping the text altogether and
adding a few tap-dancing penguins. You gotta love the Brits. Sometimes they say
it all.
This bloated mess tells
the complicated-beyond-belief story of one Captain Corelli, a fun-loving,
mandolin-plucking Italian army officer (played by the disastrously miscast
Nicolas Cage) who is sent to the idyllic Greek island of Cephallonia during World War II. There he falls in love with a local girl (Penélope
Cruz) at about the time the Germans attack. There is much sitting around the
dinner table sucking olives at night, much frolicking in the Mediterranean surf
by day, and much serenading by the Italian glee club in the market square
before Ms. Cruz’s father (John Hurt, hidden behind a white hedge of facial hair
as the wise old village doctor) says, “The history of Cephallonia is
earthquakes and slaughter for 2,000 years.” The excitement is a long time
coming, but when it arrives, the debris scatters and so do the extras. As the
languid Italian invasion force (more like a Malibu beach party with land mines instead of croquet
mallets) faces a full-throttle Nazi attack, there’s chaos and confusion.
Warships roar toward the coastline; people are executed; a woman is hanged from
a tree; and the Italian Lotharios who have been romancing the local girls find
themselves face down in the Greek dust, wearing their brains for berets.
In the fracas, Ms. Cruz’s
fisherman boyfriend (Christian Bale) returns from fighting the Germans on the
Albanian border and joins the Communist resistance. Mussolini surrenders. The
Germans conquer. Captain Corelli rushes home to Verdi and lasagna on the Via
Veneto. When he returns to Cephallonia a few years later, like a tourist
revisiting an old postcard, he finds that Ms. Cruz’s character has discovered
women’s lib and become a doctor (we know this because she’s traded her sandals
for a white uniform). A sappy fade suggests that the mandolin player has become
the American-Italian-English Patient. Did I fail to mention that nothing in
this absurd film is remotely convincing?
Despite the lush
cinematography-an intoxicating blur of blue ocean, gold beaches and green
foliage that drips with natural beauty and unnatural production values-the
movie is a dense haze of ouzo, mangled beyond salvation by a ridiculous script
by South African writer Shawn Slovo (“It is a beautiful night. All we should
think of is falling in love”; “When you
fall in love, it is a temporary madness”) and ludicrous miscasting from top to
bottom. Nicolas Cage is a million miles away from the flawed urban action
heroes he plays best; grappling with an accent that comes and goes like a wave,
he seems to lose confidence right before your eyes. There’s no chemistry
between him and Ms. Cruz (whose Spanish accent saddles her with problems of her
own trying to pass for Greek). When Mr. Cage is forced to look desperate, he
merely looks desperate for the nearest cell phone. When he’s singing the
Fascist songbook with his buddies, he seems to have been parachuted in from a brauhaus on Beverly Drive.
He’s not alone in his
discomfort. As father and daughter, Ms. Cruz and John Hurt share a crisis in
suntan continuity. For a feisty piece of work, Ms. Cruz just mopes around,
looking martyred in a peasant head scarf while hanging out the wash. They all
seem to have scarcely been introduced before the cameras started rolling. Then
there’s poor Christian Bale, who has descended from an astonishing hunk (in American Psycho ) to an anguished
afterthought. As Ms. Cruz’s jilted lover, he wears a haystack for a beard and
looks like a brawny Cephallonian Che Guevara with remote-control body odor. The
only authentic Greek face and voice in the whole cast is that of the great
actress Irene Papas, who brings to her scenes as Mr. Bales’ mother the dark
passion that is missing everywhere else.
The parallels between
this oafish opus and Mediterraneo -Gabriele
Salvatores’ 1991 film, based on a true story, of Italians stuck on an Aegean
island during the war-are inevitable. But Mr. Madden’s fiasco is pure Hollywood: The tangential characters are as wooden as palm
trees, the stars are there for the paychecks, and the fudged love story, set
against a backdrop of war, is on the same dismal par as the soap in Pearl
Harbor . At a running
time of more than two hours and a budget that could save the rain forests and
finance the next 20 years of embryonic stem-cell research, can’t they get
anything right?
She Sings, She Swings
Musically, Karrin
Allyson-one of the best American jazz stylists-has arrived in New York from her
native Kansas City in time to cool off the summer with a dreamy new CD called Ballads: Remembering John Coltrane
(Concord Jazz) that goes perfectly with that cosmopolitan you’ve got in your
hand. Rediscovering forgotten gems like “Say It (Over and Over Again)” and
refurbishing classics like “What’s New” and “Why Was I Born?”, Ms. Allyson has
a creamy, hypnotic style, smoky as a seasoned veteran from Stan Kenton’s cool
school but wholesome as a bobby-soxer. She appears more relaxed in pink angora
sweaters than strapless sequined dresses, and there’s a beautiful Technicolor
photo inside the CD to prove it. No wonder she sings “Too Young to Go Steady”
with such wistful longing. I always associated this moody song with Nat King
Cole, but it seems to be finding its way into the repertoires of several lady
chirps these days (Jane Monheit also sings it on Terrence Blanchard’s excellent
new collection of Jimmy McHugh songs, Let’s
Get Lost ). Karrin’s unique rendition is more rueful.
She also swings.
Classically trained, she accompanies herself admirably on “I Wish I Knew,” the
old Harry Warren ballad introduced by Betty Grable, but on the other 10 cuts
she is cradled in a hammock of perfection by some of the most talented
musicians on the planet, led by her superb pianist-arranger, James Williams.
Collaboratively, they create a mood of intimacy that honors the heartbreaking
saxophone solos of John Coltrane, yet her interpretations remain imaginative
and very personal. There’s a misty, uncomplicated quality in the way she sings,
talks and looks. As a jazz singer vocally re-creating the smoldering sounds of
Coltrane, she is something of a paradox, for she has a scrubbed, young-girl
look instead of the torchy, been-around appearance of most hard-edged jazz
stylists, and she exudes a carefree ambiance of playfulness onstage. You can
hear it on this remarkably mature CD, and then see it for yourself when she
makes one of her rare personal appearances at Birdland on Aug. 24 and 25.
Experience Karrin Allyson’s vocal magic; she’s a singer for settling back and
sort of melting into. Special stuff, indeed.
