Noises Off (1992) True confession......even before we laid eyes on this movie, we were already predisposed to enjoy the hell out of it.....
That's because BQ spent the better part of a decade as a playwright for a professional children's theater company. As this often involved attending auditions, rehearsals, and performances, we had a front row seat to the wildly chaotic world of live theater and all its mad, mad, mad, mad denizens......actors, directors tech crews and audiences.
We wouldn't have missed it for the world. Some of the fondest, nuttiest and most hilarious moments in our life come from that joyously creative era......
'Noises Off', based on a frantic British farce that became a hit in both London and on Broadway, manages to pack all of that beloved, breathless lunacy into one 103 minute package.
In its clever play-within-a-play conception, we're thrust into disastrous rehearsals of 'Nothing On', a deft imitation of the kind of British sexless sex romp that often migrated over to Broadway after a successful London run.
An American company of actors, (all trying out their wobbly Brit accents) are about to start their long, arduous tryout tour through smaller U.S. cities, hoping to improve and hone the show before it hits it ultimate goal - a smash hit opening on the Great White Way.
But to watch their increasingly hysterical British director (Michale Caine, superbly funny), they've got a long way to go.
This not-ready-for-Broadway company is enacted with brilliance and awesome comedic timing by John Ritter, Christopher Reeve, Nicolette Sheridan, Marilu Henner, Julie Hagerty, Mark Linn-Baker and Carol Burnett. And as a bonus addition, there's the cast's one authentic Englishman, Denholm Elliot, playing an aging, addled, alcoholic who barely knows where he is or who he is. (Sadly, Denholm's last screen appearance before passing away from AIDS.)
Director Peter Bogdanovich, who'd already proved his facility with breakneck physical slapstick in "What's Up Doc", once again showed he's an abled ringmaster for this long lost art of screwball absurdity. Like a virtuoso conductor, he leads his orchestra of actors through a perfectly timed symphony of silliness.
Watching this film brought back all our laugh out loud memories of our days in theater.......filled with actors nursing bloated, easily deflated egos, petty rivalries, instant hook-ups and just as instant break-ups, tantrums, walk-outs, deliriums.....and oh yes, a falling down drunk or two.
As you may have already surmised, we loved every every frenetic moment our own experience and this film's amped-up version of it. A perfect respite from the darkest world we're all heading into......
4 stars (****). Catch up with it soon.
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