Bananas

Woody Allen's adjustment of his own Viva Vargas! benefits greatly from the mise en scène of Le Vent d'est, a study of the Cuban Revolution by way of Freedonia. The revolution will definitely be televised, the junta in San Marcos receives the Wide World of Sports treatment, Howard Cosell is at hand to interview the slain president ("Well, you've heard it with your own eyes"). The New York schnook has upheavals of his own, mauled by an exercise machine in a whiff of Chaplin. Buying porn at the newsstand is one kind of courage, standing up to Sylvester Stallone in the subway is another, taking down a dictator is something else. The insurrectionary spirit is awakened by the politicized girlfriend (Louise Lasser), sort of, not really. "The meaning of life, death, why we're here and everything. You like Chinese food?" Guerrillero duties, assembling rifles and sucking out snake poison and turning the local cantina into a deli. The rebel leader is seen along the lines of Hitchcock's Topaz, crazy in his faith in the gringo's greatness and then just plain crazy. "Perhaps one day you will be a tiger." "Don't hold your breath. If you ever need a squirrel, call me." The storming of the palace comes complete with a Potemkin pram, U.S. response is duly noted: "The CIA isn't taking any chances this time, some of us are for it and some of us are against it." The great trial back home, with guest appearances by Miss America and J. Edgar Hoover. (A lateral pan notices one of the jurors with a straw sipping from a fishbowl, Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker avant la lettre.) Hapless in city and jungle alike, Allen triumphs at last by reaching his sweetheart, even if through a clip-on beard. With Carlos Montalbán, Nati Abascal, Jacobo Morales, Miguel Ángel Suárez, Jack Axelrod, Roger Grimsby, and Allen Garfield.