Box Office Alternative Column
Box Office Alternative is a weekly look into additional/optional choices to the big-budget spectacle opening up at your local movie theater every Friday. Oftentimes, titles will consist of little-known or underappreciated work from the same actor/writer/director/producer of said new release, while at other times, the selection for the week just happens to touch upon the same subject in a unique way. Above all, this is a place to revisit and/or discover forgotten cinematic gems of all kinds.
Just when it didn’t seem like there was any other place for the saga of Rocky Balboa to go, along comes Creed, which places the focus on Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), the son of Apollo, who turns to the now-retired Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) for guidance as he faces the biggest turning point of his young career.
Creed is both a fresh take and most welcome addition to one of the most beloved and compelling film series of all time. It’s interesting to see the different places Stallone takes what is undoubtedly the most iconic character of his career, while also showing that he is more than willing to inhabit new on-screen personas as an actor, a trait most forget about when it comes to Stallone. If any of the actor’s naysayers should doubt this however, they need only look at the actor’s work in the 1991 ensemble farce, Oscar.
Oscar opens on Angelo “Snaps” Provolone (Stallone), a 1930s New York gangster who has come to say his last goodbyes to his dying father Eduardo (Kirk Douglas) and make him a deathbed promise that he will give up his life of profitable crime and go straight. A month later, Snaps is intent on keeping his promise to his father by intending to embark on a new career as a banker. With a group of the city’s most prominent bankers arriving at noon to finalize the deal with Snaps, the former gangster wants everything to go perfectly. However, Snaps’ hot-tempered wife Sofia (Ornella Muti), spoiled daughter Lisa (Marisa Tomei), crafty accountant Anthony (Vincent Spano), quirky linguistics professor Dr. Poole (Tim Curry), and two right-hand goons Aldo and Connie (Peter Riegert and Chazz Palminteri), as well as a slew of other oddball characters, are intent on making the former gangster’s rise to respectability anything but easy as they all present him with one unexpected crisis after another.
From the get go, Oscar was conceived as an energetic throwback to the great farcical comedies of yesteryear. This is a film where characters believe something to be a certain way when it actually isn’t, leave out details of important information, and generally appear at places they aren’t supposed to. In Oscar, even the most minor of characters are painted as memorable figures with individual moments of hilarity. While this would serve to make most films feel busy, the truth is that each and every person gets eaten up by the audience, who can’t wait to see what kind of character will be put in front of them next and what kind of confusion they will add to the pot. In keeping with the tradition the farce blueprint, the only player who has all the information is the audience, and while the detail-filled script does give those watching Oscar plenty to keep track of, the end result is never once boring.
Plenty of scenes and lines stick out as hilarious, such as Snaps instructing Connie to clear his pockets of weapons, which includes a wide assortment, from brass knuckles to a slingshot, while Lisa (midway through lying to her father about being pregnant) sits bored and impatient in the background. “It’s like disarming Germany,” Snaps states. When Anthony reveals that he has been secretly dating Snaps’ daughter after meeting her in a speakeasy, the latter begins to choke him as he exclaims: “You couldn’t even pick one that sold my beer?!” Yet nothing beats the film’s on-going gag of three identical black suitcases which change hands repeatedly throughout the course of the film, containing jewels, cash, and lingerie, respectively. The sight of Snaps opening what he thinks is cash or jewels, only to repeatedly be faced with underwear, never loses its comic potency.
The reason Oscar works so well as an enjoyable farce is because director John Landis approached the style of filmmaking as if he were making a film from the 1930s. Shots of character reactions to startling plot revelations are elaborate, over the top, and accompanied with loud music, while the dialogue itself is so zippy and fast-paced that only a director of Landis’ enthusiasm could have handled so many specific elements. In many ways, Oscar fits perfectly into Landis’ filmography of loving tributes to many genres of the past. Whether it be buddy comedies with Trading Places, crime capers with Into the Night, or creature features with An American Werewolf in London, Landis’ specialty as a filmmaker has always been the ability to translate such a unique and deep appreciation of cinema into his work.
A script as fun as Oscar’s naturally needs a talented cast ready and willing to play, which it gets, with a few specific standouts. Riegert and Palmenteri are both more than game as Stallone’s go-to thugs, while Curry (enjoying what may be the film’s most colorful role) is a true hoot as a language-obsessed professor. Tomei nearly steals every scene she’s in and, in a one scene cameo, Douglas scores huge laughs as Snap’s stern father.
While he’s known primarily as an action star, many people who know Stallone have remarked on his sharp, yet little-known sense of humor, which is at its best in Oscar. His delivery of lines, such as when Snaps’ wife says she’s just come from their daughter’s bedroom, to which he replies, “You and everybody else,” is perfectly deadpan. Meanwhile, his looks of exasperation, frustration, annoyance, and defeatism are ones only found in those actors with a strong grasp on what makes comedy work.
Critics have always questioned it when any high-profile star dares to break free from the kinds of roles that made them famous in favor of something new. This was certainly the case with Oscar, which brought back a slew of unfavorable reviews. The movie had two very vocal supporters however in Siskel and Ebert, who found Oscar’s enjoyability factor to grow as the film went on. Audiences, however, seemed to side with most of the negative reviews and showed no interest in seeing one of their favorite action stars of all-time in a farcical comedy, making Oscar a bona-fide flop.
The film may only be a blip on Stallone and Landis’ resumes these days, but it’s tough to ignore its assortment of riches. From the zippy dialogue, to the physical comedy, to the overall skilled and dedicated approach to reviving a beloved genre, Oscar may not have been a film for the masses, but for many a film lover, it charms and delights in just the way its makers hoped it would.
