|
"Still dead." Oedipus Wrecks, as Allen would have it, a question of mind over mater to give a full surreal snapshot of New York City a year ahead of Little Murders. Carl Reiner sets the properly calm, plaintive pitch right away: The frazzled schlub (George Segal) drags himself out of bed and slips into a gorilla costume, the fright for his mother (Ruth Gordon) is answered with a wallop to the nutsack. "You almost scared me to death!" "Almost doesn't count." His Kabuki mask of scrunched, slump-shouldered filial despair lightens up at the sight of the caretaker from Illinois (Trish Van Devere), in each other's eyes she's the perfect bride while he dons knightly armor astride a stallion. Standing in their way is Gordon's addled kewpie doll, a tiny bulldozer with a yen for Coca-Cola-soaked cereal and pulling down her son's trousers in the middle of a dinner date. "I want you to know that if you mess this one up for me, I'm gonna punch your fucking heart out. Got it?" "Such a nice boy." Manhattan harmonies, attuned to the warmongers and draft-dodgers in the courthouse and the Naked Prey adventure that is crossing Central Park at night. Segal's inspired neurosis is complemented beautifully by Ron Leibman as the henpecked brother who's deeply touched when the undercover policeman he's just buggered sends him a bouquet of roses. "I never got flowers from anyone..." Matricide, rape, incest, racism and soiled beds out of the family trunk, a long way from Griffith (What Shall We Do with Our Old?). The vaudeville blurring of scabrous raunch and Jewish melancholia is also a vital crossroads of comic traditions, Brooks in Mother takes a more analytical outlook. With Bernard Hughes, Vincent Gardenia, Rae Allen, Paul Sorvino, Rob Reiner, Joe Keyes Jr., and Garrett Morris.
--- Fernando F. Croce |