Two Of A Kind Falls Flat
TWO OF A KIND
Twentieth Century-Fox, directed and written by John Herzfeld.
Cast: John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Oliver Reed, Charles Durning, Beatrice Straight, Scatman Crothers, Castulo Guerra.
Rating: PG
Ernest Lubitsch, Frank Capra and the 1940s comedies are really up for grabs this season. And if those dear and departed film makers are looking down from the big directors’ chairs in the sky, they are probably about to end the film world.
In To Be or Not to Be, Charles Durning observes of Mel Brooks’ ham actor: “What Hitler did to Poland, he’s doing to Hamlet.” You might say the same thing about two new comedies, Two of a Kind” and “To Be of Not to Be”.
Two of a Kind is the most painfully boring of the two to watch as it imposes big city cynicism over nostalgia and schmaltz.
A number of cinematic comedies have used the device of a divine or other worldly intervention: the angel in Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”, the boxer who dies and comes back to earth in “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” and the sympathetic devil in Lubitsch’s “Heaven Can Wait”.
Two of a Kind posits the rather improbable proposition that God, a vague cloud complaining to four of his angelic subjects, is so angry with the selfishness in the modern world that he will end it and start all over unless some altruistic acts are performed.
The unlikely candidates are you guessed it Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta as two of a narcissistic kind. In the words of a film-going companion: “Why don’t they just let them do what they’re best at?” Good question.
Unfortunately, there is no singing and dancing and little of the romantic pizazz of either “Grease” or “Saturday Night Fever”.
Travolta plays an inventor who is driven to rob a bank after getting in trouble with the mob. Newton-John plays the teller he tries to rip off until she turns the tables on him. Making these two fall in love and sacrifice for each other is the task of the four angels trying to convince God to hold off on the apocalypse.
This is bad enough, but the entire plot proceeds mainly by the flashback/flash-forward device. It almost makes you want to keep Travolta eternally fixed in mid air as he is plummeting onto a Manhattan street.
Oliver Reed, with his twisted mustache and satanic blue eyes, makes a clever devil. But who can believe in a God who grumbles when nobody recognizes his references to Shakespeare (“Doesn’t anybody read any more?”)?
To Be or Not to Be is nearly as disappointing, though Brooks aficionados undoubtedly will die hard defending it. This is a specific homage to the Lubitsch To Be or Not to Be, starring Carole Lombard and Jack Benny, about a troupe of Polish actors who outwit the Nazis during the occupation of Warsaw. Of course, Brooks is top banana with the ethnic joke. When his character observes, “Without gypsies, Jews and fags there is no theater,” it has just the right bittersweet ring.
There are a few nicely choreographed bits done by Alan Johnson of Springtime for Hitler fame and an extended gay joke, but otherwise To Be or Not to Be relies too heavily on a borsch belt version of Germans and Nazis.
Anne Bancroft’s Anna Bronski, wife to Brooks egocentric, but good-hearted, troupe leader, is elegant if not really svelte. It makes you wonder how she managed to keep her dignity through all the silliness.
By Marsha McCreadie
SECOND OPINIONS:
By Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune
“Two of a Kind” is frothy entertainment, heavy on special effect sight gags that will please younger audiences. It’s unfortunate there are not more scenes between Newton-John and Travolta. They have a genuine prom queen and king chemistry.
Bill Cosford, Knight-Ridder, on “To Be or Not to Be”.
“One of the problems is that, in Brooks’ hands, material that would benefit from a light touch is instead asked to groan under the burden of industrial-strength mugging. And we should have seen this coming: Put Brooks at work on scenes involving Nazis, and we are soon going to be watching the kind of stereotypes that make Hogan’s Heroes appear measured and wry.”