Big Trouble (1986)

Sadly Over-hyped

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Leonard Hoffman (Alan Arkin) is an insurance agent with a suburban family. His three sons all get accepted into Yale. His boss Winslow (Robert Stack) refuses to help him with any scholarships. His work mate is the hard-nosed O'Mara (Charles Durning). He goes on a sales call to the drunken rich trophy wife Blanche Rickey (Beverly D'Angelo). She complains about her gambler husband Steve Rickey (Peter Falk). Desperate for money to pay for his kids' college, he joins Blanche to murder her husband for the life insurance.This is the last film of John Cassavetes and he apparently hated it. The plot is so close to Double Indemnity that this is basically a spoof. Of course, none of it is funny because every moment of the movie, I'm asking if this is deliberate. It's hard to tell since Double Indemnity is not watched all the time. In order for a spoof to work, the audience must know all the beats in the original and what the filmmaker is doing to satire each moment for a joke. Then the last third of the movie goes bonkers. It becomes non-sense. The actors are trying for some wacky physical comedy despite the noir story. It's frustrating to watch a movie where the jokes don't work. One can see that everybody is trying but I don't understand what the film is trying to do.

Total parody of "Double Indemnity", with some added twists. The awesome, hilarious team of A. Arkin and P. Falk are together again, seven years after the under-rated "In-Laws". Beverly D'Angelo is "Blanche", the Barbara Stanwyck wife, looking to knock off the husband. Arkin is "Leonard", the insurance salesman, trying to put his sons through Yale. Falk is "Steve", the husband. Robert Stack is Leonard's boss, who refuses to help with the college bills. If you're a big fan of Falk and/or Arkin, you'll LOVE this film; they spend the whole time trying to outdo each other in the over-acting department. Also keep an eye out for Richard Libertini, also from the In-Laws; others will know him as the guru in All of Me (Edwina, Back in Bowl ) and Charles Durning (Tootsie). Written (copied/parodied ?) by Andrew Bergman, who certainly knew comedy... he had written the original In-Laws, Blazing Saddles, Soapdish, and Fletch! Directed by John Cassevetes, who had done a bunch of stuff with Peter Falk already. Seems like quite a departure for Cassevetes... he had always done serious, pretty rough dramas. Fun stuff. On DVD. Never see this one shown on TV for some reason.

I worked on this film in 1986, in a scene that was ultimately left on the cutting room floor. When I auditioned for the film, I met with the director, who was in fact, Andrew Bergman (credited solely as the writer). Several weeks went by before I actually worked, and by that time, Bergman had been replaced by John Cassevetes. What I was told at the time, was that Bergman had been fired, and that Falk, a friend of Cassevetes, recommended that Cassevetes come in to finish the job. I don't know how much of the film was already in the can at that point, but I know that Cassevetes changed the script a bit. In the scene I was involved in, Falk and Arkin go into a hardware store to buy dynamite to blow up a building (An insurance office, as I recall). I played the Hardware store clerk. I remember the script being pretty much thrown out the window, and improvising much of the dialog, which included Falk explaining that the dynamite was need for a luau. "My Wife," he said, "makes a suckling pig, that'll knock your eye out. First you baste it––" "With clarified butter," Arkin chimes in. "Then blast the sh*t of it with dynamite." As the clerk, I apologize that the store doesn't carry dynamite, and end up selling them a hundred pounds of charcoal briquettes instead. Funny. And you will likely never see this scene. Ah well.

This comedy according to Cineaste magazine was not directed by John Cassevettes but was lent his name after a young inexperienced director colleague of his fell into big...well, you know. This article went on to say that he was pretty grumpy on his deathbed knowing that this would be his last "credit". Well, that's a shame, because for a man who only made one comedy, a loopy one at that, this movie might have rounded out a legacy of angst, disillusionment and good old-fashioned middle-class American self-torture.If that last labyrinthian sentence did nothing to sway you then consider this: the supporting actresses Beverly D'Angelo and Valerie Curtin are quite funny, too, enough to make this silly and completely unimportant take on one American's attempt to "send the boys to Yale" worth a watch. There is an unusual amount of improv in certain scenes that actually give the movie a satirical bite, hey folks,I heard on the radio yesterday that 60% of all Americans have $4500 of debt or more! Anyone who's lost sleep wondering "where will I get that kind of money?" will relate to Big Trouble.