Director: Francis Coppola
Writers: Jerry Leichtling and Arlene Sarner
Stars: Kathleen Turner,
Nicolas Cage, Barry Miller, Catherine Hicks, Don Murray, Barbara Harris, Jim Carrey, Wil Shriner, Joan Allen and Kevin J. O’Connor
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Index: The First Thirty.
Here’s a film that both my better half and I thought we’d seen before, albeit a long time ago, but discovered that it was new to us. Why I have no idea, because it seems like the sort of film we’d both have watched, even if it would have been for different reasons.
At the time, it was a Kathleen Turner movie, at a point when she was a huge star and so was able to pick her roles, but before she got truly interesting in films like Serial Mom. Nowadays, I’m watching for Nicolas Cage, who is, as far as I could tell, the worst thing about the film. If I had been watching in 1986, though, and you’d asked me who would become a big star, I may well have told you Jim Carrey, even though I have never been a particular fan of his.
And, of course, it’s a Francis Coppola movie, sans his Ford middle name again. And yes, that does mean that Sofia Coppola shows up again as a younger sister. Cage has said that he had no intention of doing the movie, but his uncle asked so many times that he agreed, but only if he could be over the top. Which he is. He’s Crazy Charlie the Appliance King, the star of a set of over the top commercials for his family appliance company as an old man and also the owner of an awkwardly high voice as a young one, a voice that makes him sound like he’s on a dose of helium. He has said that he based it on Pokey in The Gumby Show. It was a Bad Idea and Kathleen Turner knew it.
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