Content tagged with “comedy”

This is a comedy, but not a spoof. Spy, that I watched last week, was a spoof. It was character-driven — really just an excuse for Melissa McCarthy to be (very) funny. You could have dropped her into anything else and it would have worked the same.

But The Man with One Red Shoe is a comedy, driven far more by story than characters. The spy angle of the plot is what makes it work.

It’s an early role for Tom Hanks. He plays a violinist from Washington DC who’s mistakenly identified as a witness who will testify against Dabney Colman’s corrupt CIA executive. Colman’s team of spies is trying to investigate and neutralize him, while another team is trying to protect him. Both sides are working against each other, while Hanks’s character stays largely oblivious (he’s not actually what anyone thinks he is).

There are some great performances here — Colman has never been better — but it’s a genuinely inventive and interesting story that results in some unique situations. There’s a funny subplot involving Jim Belushi going slightly crazy after unwittingly witnessing several espionage-related events.

And, of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the line that has for some reason become iconic in a circle of me and a couple friends:

Does anyone here remember how to kill a man?

I don’t know why that’s funny, but it is.

I was reminded of the bit player from three consecutive James Bond movies who witnesses something surreal and subsequently questions his sobriety. He was uncredited, but IMDb lists him as “Man with Bottle” twice and “Man with Wine Glass” once.

The official YouTube channel compiled all three clips into this short video.

One hopes that he’s stopped drinking by now.

True Lies came to the historic theater in our local downtown. I last watched it in the theater fully 32 years ago when it originally released.

I still remember seeing “Tom Arnold” in the opening credits and thinking, “Aw, this is going to suck…” But his character turned out to be one of the best things in the movie.

I’ve always liked the intersection of action and human stories. The marriage angle is kind of fascinating, and the ending is fulfilling. And Bill Paxton does a great job playing a slimy used car salesman trying to bed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife, played by Jamie Lee Curtis.

The entire film holds up really well. The sound, in particular, was absolutely incredible. There was supposed to be a sequel, but terrorism was a problematic subject after 9/11, and then Arnold was elected governor of California in 2003. Apparently a TV series was written, cast, picked up… and then ultimate canceled.

My wife even liked it, which I did not expect.