Then A ropey ex-rental copy from 1998 bought at the Lark Lane Flea Market at the old police station early this decade. I was attracted by the cast, by the fact that it was the second film directed by Stanley Tucci and I’d enjoyed his first, Big Night, very much and the quote on the cover, from Empire Magazine, “a genuine success … a package of unexpected delights”.
Now The Imposters, the story of a pair of out of work actors who become mixed up in some mad-cap, crazy adventures aboard an ocean liner seems to be Tucci and Oliver Platt’s attempt to recreate the old Hollywood double acts and 30s screwball comedies, primarily Laurel and Hardy but using modern (well modern in the late 90s) film editing and techniques.
We’re in Purple Rose of Cairo territory with a sprinkling of Grand Hotel as a great ensemble turn up for a series of scenes. Which is rather the problem; including the double act no one has too distinct a personality, everyone is symbolic of a certain type of old actor and any sympathy we have depends on how much we like the given actors. Even in the 30s, screenwriters, who had predominantly come from theatre knew which buttons to press in their audience.
Frankly, I don’t know which film Empire were watching, but The Imposters is a film length jokeoid. It has all of the constituent parts of a comedy without actually being funny. The performances are good, as is the art direction and it’s shot really well, but somewhere in editing the timing has dropped out, so scene after scene passes in which you can see what the joke is but you’re not actually laughing, and the less laughing you’re doing the more disappointed you become.
Initially I thought it was the PAL conversion on the video which was at fault (sometimes when films were transferred to video they would be sped up slightly annihilating the slender margin for error in comedy) or I was in the wrong mood but in truth it’s because Tucci can’t quite decide how to pitch the comedy so everything becomes too over emphatic, rather like the original version of Don’t Drink The Water. Plus the best comedy films have the capacity to entertain no matter your mood.
Woody’s cameo is in the third scene as a neurotic theatre writer/producer who auditions the two actors. Predictably, perhaps, his is the funniest moment as he watches startled as the two actors murder his script, then rudely takes a phone call from his wife in the middle and has an argument over financing whilst our “heroes” are trying to act. Perhaps his participation was reciprocation for Tucci appearing in Deconstructing Harry. Either way, it’s an enactonism which works better than most of the rest of the film.
Here’s the trailer. You have to earn Oliver Platt in a dress, Stanley.
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