Malevolent mime

Film Nathan is disappointing harsh about the underrated Paul Mazursky's underrated Scene from a Mall, featuring the LA Woody Allen. I mean for goodness sake, it's better than bloody Miami Rhapsody: "Through it all Bill Irwin’s malevolent mime (is there any other kind?) serves as Allen’s mocking shadow, lampooning his actions in pantomime until Allen finally musters up the courage to punch him. As Roger Ebert points out in his one-star review of the film, this is the moment Irwin’s entire performance has been leading up to yet it barely registers. Neither does the comic incongruity of setting a domestic psychodrama in a mall—that sad, soul-sucking cathedral of capitalism at its most impersonal and homogenous."

No comments: