Average customer rating:
- Something Funny Happened in the Editing Room!
- Editing, writing & directing
- Brilliance
- A simple plot with sublime execution
- Overlooked Martin
|
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Starring:
Brad Baird ,
Jean Beaudine ,
Eugene Brezany ,
Dieter Curt , and
Kent Deigaard
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
ProductGroup: DVD
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ASIN: 0783232063
Release Date: 1999-03-16 |
Amazon.com essential video
This is one of the best parodies of the '40s hardboiled detective genre, with a very clever conceit: weaving the plot and production design around memorable movie clips (The Killers, The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, White Heat, This Gun for Hire, Sorry, Wrong Number, Notorious). Steve Martin plays the cool Rigby Reardon, who tries solving an incomprehensible mystery with the assistance of Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Burt Lancaster, Fred MacMurray, Ingrid Bergman, and Ray Milland, among others. It's all silly hokum with Rachel Ward as the pretty moll and director-cowriter Carl Reiner as the nefarious villain. Miklos Rozsa takes us back to yesteryear with his lush score, and, fittingly, Edith Head handles the period costumes in her final production. --Bill Desowitz
Customer Reviews:
Something Funny Happened in the Editing Room!.......2007-08-23
When I first saw this movie, I thought it was so clever and hilarious. It has many recognizable film noir moments in it. It's a classicly funny story and Steve Martin is great.
Editing, writing & directing.......2007-08-08
This is such a fun film as well as a work of art. I am old enough to remember the original films "cut" in and still able to totally enjoy this film. How Edith Head (her last movie) was able to replicate the clothing, accessories and total mood is truly Acadmy Award winning material and kudos to writing, directing and set design. Worthy of inclusion in any collectors library.
pcuserbabe
Brilliance.......2007-06-14
Steve Martin and Carl Reiner sat through hundreds of hours of classic films to find the footage they needed to splice in to "their" movie. The results were pure genius.
The editing and set designs were so flawless that it actually appears as though Steve Martin was starring in a film with the likes of Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart, Vincent Price, James Cagney, Veronica Lake, Joan Crawford, the list goes on and on.
The premise and plot are wacky, but it doesn't matter. This movie is so refreshing that you are able to overlook the rediculous plan of the major villain and the outlandishness of the situations that Martin constantly finds himself in (in one scene, he pours coffee grinds into a pot for two minutes and eight seconds!).
Martin geniously portrays a street-savvy, deadpan, hard-boiled private eye and still manages to make you laugh hysterically while maintaiing his straight-line, tough-guy persona . How he didn't crack himself up while filming these scenes is beyond me.
The film itself is very enjoyable, but it's also fun to try and pick out the scenes from the "classic" films and try to idenify who the actors are and what films the scenes were taken from.
If you don't want to buy the DVD, please, by all means, RENT it! This movie will please comedy fans, Steve Martin fans, and real movie buffs.
Steve Martin (in voice-over): "The one thing I liked about Jimmie-Sue was the fact that the words 'I can't' weren't in her vocabulary. (to Veronica Lake) Hi, Jimmie-Sue. I need you to do something for me.
Veronica Lake: "I can't."
Steve Martin (in voice-over): "Well, I guess she'd added them since the last time I'd seen her."
A simple plot with sublime execution.......2007-05-19
Steve Martin stars in this satire of 1940's film noir detective stories. The plot is simple, but the execution is sublime. Steve Martin's character is hired by a beautiful and mysterious woman who thinks that the death of her famous scientist father was no accident, despite what the police and newspapers are reporting. The movie is filmed in black & white and employs creative editing to splice in scenes of the great actors of the Golden Age: James Cagney, Veronica Lake, Burt Lancaster, Humphrey Bogart, Charles Laughton, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Barbara Stanwyck, Betty Davis and more.
The action teeters between melodramatic and pure slapstick, with sharp dialog. The photography is stunning, and I remember being amazed at the glow in the actors eyes', even with black & white film. Costuming was done by Edith Head, the winner of more Oscars than any other woman. Head was the perfect choice to match the modern actors costumes to those in the classic film footage.
Overlooked Martin.......2007-04-28
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (DMDWP) is probably Steve Martin's most overlooked film. Coming at the time when Steve was still "Wild & Crazy", many were turned off by this movie. But this is actually one of his best. The seemless interplay between Martin and the great actors/actresses from the 30's and 40's is genius. Filmed in black & white, Martin plays a gumshoe detective. Rachel Ward plays the love interest. Filmed before computers allowed you to insert anything into a scene, the editing must have been a nightmare. But the end result is worth it. The comedy is dark and satirical. It is Martin's tribute to the great detective and murder mystery films of Hollywood's golden years. Best way to view this film; Wait till it's nighttime, stormy and have a large popcorn. This film is simply great entertainment.
Amazon.com
Steve Martin's funniest three films, The Jerk, The Lonely Guy, and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, are collected in the Wild and Crazy Comedy Collection with some corny bonus material that pales in comparison to Martin's stunning comedic performances. In The Lonely Guy, Martin's dejected character wanders New York streets with his fern plant searching for a lady to love. Scenes in which Martin calls his lady from his rooftop amidst scores of other lonely guys, or jogs into a diner wearing fake, spray-on sweat, seem more slapstick with each viewing. Martin's masterpiece is The Jerk, about Navin Johnson, a white guy born a "poor black child," who sets out for the city to become somebody. Navin, with hobo rucksack in tow, takes his dad's three rules--Don't trust whitey, Lord loves a workin' man, and See a doctor and get rid of it--to an extreme, after becoming a millionaire from inventing a reading glasses apparatus. Co-starring Bernadette Peters, The Jerk's bizarre humor still feels fresh in its satirical examination of race and class. Watching Navin change from a poor black child, to a gas station attendant, to a millionaire, to a drunken egomaniac, to a homeless bum, illustrates Martin's sheer talent for character sketching. If this Wild and Crazy Comedy Collection is a cake, The Jerk is definitely the icing. --Trinie Dalton
Customer Reviews:
lost in shipping.......2007-03-13
The first shipment got lost in the mail, so it took a little longer for me to get it but, once I got it the product was great. Thanks
Great movies!.......2007-03-10
If you enjoy Steve Martin , as I do, you will love these classics.
Customer Reviews:
Unique Comedy.......2007-03-29
Given that this movie is nearly thirty years old, much of the content is dated. That being said, this movie is still hilarious. It all centers around Larry Hubbard played by Steve Martin, who on looking for love in NYC. The misadventures and mayhem that ensue can be gut wrenching. This film is similar in flavor to Airplane or Naked Gun. So if you like slap stick and sarcastic comedy, this flick may be a good fit.
Clever.......2007-01-27
Early Steve Martin films can be uneven, but the brilliance shines through in his understanding of human relationships.
This is a silly film. It has a number of 'throw away' gags. It als has a great love story behind all the silliness. It also helps that Steve Martin's silliness is genuinely funny.
Unfortunartly this DVD edition is not anamorphic widescreen. It is letterboxed, but the black bars are part of the picture, and the film transfer isn't very good.
Brilliant in spots, but quite uneven........2006-05-07
There were parts of this movie that were brilliant, others that were pretty good, and some that faltered a bit. Still, it addresses an aspect of life that is too often ignored in popular entertainment because it can be, well, awkward. The recent hit "The 40 year old Virgin" is a cousin of this movie, but not the same thing.
Steve Martin plays Larry Hubbard who is certainly no alpha male. He is a good enough guy and goes after the women society tells him he should pursue. This leads to him being walked over and pushed around by, in this movie, Danielle, but the name matters less than the type. As he leaves with all his belongings (he can carry them all plus the two bags of trash she asks him to take with him as she beds Raul), he ends up in a park. Warren Evans (played brilliantly by Charles Grodin) shows up with his meager belongings and asks Larry how long he has been a Lonely Guy. Larry is unaware of this term and slowly learns the pain and suffering the life of this class of persons endures unseen by most of society.
There are flashes of brilliance in this movie. My favorite is when Larry goes to a busy and upscale restaurant and asks for a table for one. The whole restaurant becomes instantly quiet and all attention is focused on him. As the captain leads him to his table a spotlight that could be used in an air raid shines on Larry all the way to his table. There are many other wonderful moments like this and I am sure you will have your own favorites.
The love story with Iris (delightfully done by Judith Ivey) is very good until they actually get together. Then things become quite awkward and artificial. In fact, the moment we learn she has had six husbands already, well, we leave wit and dive into shtick.
However, it is the relationship and insights shared between Warren and Larry that are really the heart of the movie and make it worth seeing. Grodin's Warren is the embodiment of the poor souls doomed to this existence and is an absolutely memorable character.
Good movie, but its unevenness keeps it from being great.
He's just a wild and lonely guy.......2006-02-05
While The Lonely Guy is first and foremost a comedy, one that descends into comic incredulity on a number of occasions, it really hits a few solid line drives in terms of the lonely guy angle. Steve Martin may be the star of this film, but Charles Grodin steals every scene he's in. He's the true lonely guy in this movie. Larry Hubbard, Martin's character, is really just a guy with really bad luck with women. After coming home to find his current girlfriend in bed with another man, Hubbard finds himself out on the street, struggling to get his bearings. That's where Warren Evans (Grodin) comes in. Warren really knows the ropes when it comes to loneliness, so he is more than qualified to instruct Hubbard in the art of living and being alone. Not all that much later, Larry meets up with Iris (Judith Ivey), a woman who tickles his fancy despite the fact she's been married more times than Larry has fingers on one hand, isn't all that attractive, is obviously lying through her teeth when she says she's thirty, and turns out to be something of a romantic psycho. Larry, of course, loses her phone number, beginning a whole series of misadventures serving to keep the two apart. Once he does meet up with Iris again, the world's most dysfunctional relationship begins. Iris, to grossly oversimplify things, doesn't want to be with a man she loves because she's afraid of being hurt again. All sorts of zany adventures ensue.
But what of Warren? Here's the guy I can identify with. While regular people are out having fun, Warren's playing chess with a sarcastic computer. He has life-size cut-outs of famous people all over the apartment so that it looks like someone is actually there when he throws a little party. He's a shell of a man who is never far from joining throngs of other lonely guys throwing themselves off the bridge downtown. Charles Grodin is just wonderful in this role. I must admit, though, that the two best scenes feature Martin. In one, we see him so desperate to find Iris again that he ends up going to the rooftop and shouting her name - only to be joined by lonely guys on all the nearby rooftops shouting the names of their own lost beloveds. In the other, we watch as Larry suffers the indignities of dining out alone. As he enters the restaurant, heads turn to stare as all conversation stops, and then a spotlight comes on following Larry all the way to his table. That's exactly what dining alone feels like.
The film ended up being a little sillier than I would have liked, particularly in terms of the relationship between Larry and Iris, and putting Steve Lawrence in your film is never a good thing (although we should all be thankful Edie wasn't with him), but The Lonely Guy is certainly a funny movie that should resonate with everyone who has ever been lonely (and I think that's just about every one of us).
Man, did I really need this film........2005-11-29
Thank you Steve Martin, after watching this film, I will be hanging from a light fixture.
Amazon.com essential video
This is one of the best parodies of the '40s hardboiled detective genre, with a very clever conceit: weaving the plot and production design around memorable movie clips (The Killers, The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, White Heat, This Gun for Hire, Sorry, Wrong Number, Notorious). Steve Martin plays the cool Rigby Reardon, who tries solving an incomprehensible mystery with the assistance of Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Burt Lancaster, Fred MacMurray, Ingrid Bergman, and Ray Milland, among others. It's all silly hokum with Rachel Ward as the pretty moll and director-cowriter Carl Reiner as the nefarious villain. Miklos Rozsa takes us back to yesteryear with his lush score, and, fittingly, Edith Head handles the period costumes in her final production. --Bill Desowitz
Customer Reviews:
Something Funny Happened in the Editing Room!.......2007-08-23
When I first saw this movie, I thought it was so clever and hilarious. It has many recognizable film noir moments in it. It's a classicly funny story and Steve Martin is great.
Editing, writing & directing.......2007-08-08
This is such a fun film as well as a work of art. I am old enough to remember the original films "cut" in and still able to totally enjoy this film. How Edith Head (her last movie) was able to replicate the clothing, accessories and total mood is truly Acadmy Award winning material and kudos to writing, directing and set design. Worthy of inclusion in any collectors library.
pcuserbabe
Brilliance.......2007-06-14
Steve Martin and Carl Reiner sat through hundreds of hours of classic films to find the footage they needed to splice in to "their" movie. The results were pure genius.
The editing and set designs were so flawless that it actually appears as though Steve Martin was starring in a film with the likes of Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart, Vincent Price, James Cagney, Veronica Lake, Joan Crawford, the list goes on and on.
The premise and plot are wacky, but it doesn't matter. This movie is so refreshing that you are able to overlook the rediculous plan of the major villain and the outlandishness of the situations that Martin constantly finds himself in (in one scene, he pours coffee grinds into a pot for two minutes and eight seconds!).
Martin geniously portrays a street-savvy, deadpan, hard-boiled private eye and still manages to make you laugh hysterically while maintaiing his straight-line, tough-guy persona . How he didn't crack himself up while filming these scenes is beyond me.
The film itself is very enjoyable, but it's also fun to try and pick out the scenes from the "classic" films and try to idenify who the actors are and what films the scenes were taken from.
If you don't want to buy the DVD, please, by all means, RENT it! This movie will please comedy fans, Steve Martin fans, and real movie buffs.
Steve Martin (in voice-over): "The one thing I liked about Jimmie-Sue was the fact that the words 'I can't' weren't in her vocabulary. (to Veronica Lake) Hi, Jimmie-Sue. I need you to do something for me.
Veronica Lake: "I can't."
Steve Martin (in voice-over): "Well, I guess she'd added them since the last time I'd seen her."
A simple plot with sublime execution.......2007-05-19
Steve Martin stars in this satire of 1940's film noir detective stories. The plot is simple, but the execution is sublime. Steve Martin's character is hired by a beautiful and mysterious woman who thinks that the death of her famous scientist father was no accident, despite what the police and newspapers are reporting. The movie is filmed in black & white and employs creative editing to splice in scenes of the great actors of the Golden Age: James Cagney, Veronica Lake, Burt Lancaster, Humphrey Bogart, Charles Laughton, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Barbara Stanwyck, Betty Davis and more.
The action teeters between melodramatic and pure slapstick, with sharp dialog. The photography is stunning, and I remember being amazed at the glow in the actors eyes', even with black & white film. Costuming was done by Edith Head, the winner of more Oscars than any other woman. Head was the perfect choice to match the modern actors costumes to those in the classic film footage.
Overlooked Martin.......2007-04-28
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (DMDWP) is probably Steve Martin's most overlooked film. Coming at the time when Steve was still "Wild & Crazy", many were turned off by this movie. But this is actually one of his best. The seemless interplay between Martin and the great actors/actresses from the 30's and 40's is genius. Filmed in black & white, Martin plays a gumshoe detective. Rachel Ward plays the love interest. Filmed before computers allowed you to insert anything into a scene, the editing must have been a nightmare. But the end result is worth it. The comedy is dark and satirical. It is Martin's tribute to the great detective and murder mystery films of Hollywood's golden years. Best way to view this film; Wait till it's nighttime, stormy and have a large popcorn. This film is simply great entertainment.
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