Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976) We'd classify this one in the same category as the 1967 "Casino Royale", "Barbarella" and "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World".........
Movies that bring a smile to your face just thinking about them.........movies you tend to remember with a sigh of nostalgia.......("Oh right......what a hoot that movie was...")
.........and are usually an excruciating, punishment from hell to sit down and actually watch.
'Won Ton Ton', a knockabout, slapstick farce about old Hollywood in the silent era of the 1920's, sounds irresistible when described.......
A fledgling, would-be screenwriter (Bruce Dern) and struggling would-be actress (Madeline Kahn) find themselves caretakers of a brilliantly talented dog. The pooch, signed up by a blustering studio chief (Art Carney) quickly becomes America's most beloved canine movie star.......similar to...uh....Rin Tin Tin.
Except this dog came out of a Chinese restaurant, so he's.....uh....you get the idea.
Chases, pratfalls and assorted Tinseltown chaos occur, punctuated by cameo appearances of dozens upon dozens of elderly, vintage actors and comedians from the Golden Ages of 30's, 40's and 50's Hollywood......
.........many of whom would count this film as their farewell screen appearance before passing on. Yes, this is the movie where the bulk of the voluminous supporting cast had one foot in the grave.
Not that it isn't fun for any true film buff to spot and identify all these folks as they take their final turns before the camera.......(some of them for only a few seconds worth, so you need an eagle eye to catch sight of them all....)
The incredible cameo roster remains the film's one saving grace. The rest of it? A shapeless mess, far more strenuous than genuinely funny.
And it's easy to see why: this movie, which desperately needed a a veteran Hollywood comedy director to bring off its mixture of nostalgia and farce, fell into the grasping hands of the whirlwind Brit Michael Winner, whose career turned red hot with the '74 release of 'Death Wish'.
Winner carved out a filmography of swift brutal thrillers like "Scorpio" and "The Stone Killers" but neither he nor his films ever showed any detectable sense of humor.
And just like Stanley Kramer's "Mad, Mad World", "Won Ton Ton" displays what happens when a comedy's directed by a fundamentally humorless filmmaker.
So beyond watching the piles of geriatric performers pop up before hitting the death parade, there's no fun in sight here.......just aimless running around.
The buffs among you would no doubt love the cameo spotting and for that alone, we'll bark up 2 stars (**). But don't say we did warn you about the movie itself......it's no winner from Winner. More like a woof woof.
No comments:
Post a Comment