Readers, you have lied for! Film History is full of unfairly malignant classics, whether critics were too keen to review the creation of rather than the finished product, or the suffered from underwriting advertising campaigns or general disinterest. Let’s revise our hold of some of these movies from erroneous to the right opinion.
When Paramount Released “Weas No Angels” as his Christmas movie from 1989 (and the last movie in the decade), reviews were mixed and the cashier’s office weak. Difficult as it might be to believe in after- ”Fockers“Era, the audience was just not interested in seeing Robert De Niro in a broad comedy, even (especially?) One with Sean Penn and written by David Mamet.
As the years went by, the film’s reputation never really improved, with one’s manufacturer who acknowledged their shortcomings. In his 2023 Hollywood Memoir, “Everywhere an Oink Oink”, the Mamet blamed the director Neil Jordan to destroy his script; In an interview with The Observer, Jordan seemed to agree and said, “I should not be allowed to make comedies.”
Now “Weas No Angels” is recently available in a beautifully composed special edition Blu-ray package of boutique label Film photo. Watch the movie removed from its time – and from the divorce procedures in Penn and Madonna who vacuumed up the attention that the media was prepared to assign the film – its intermediate reputation is puzzling. Elegantly structured, fantastically mounted and anchored by De Niro and Penn’s funny performances, “We are no angels” will be close to being a kind of classic.
The movie Den Remade, a comedy from 1955 directed by Ace Craftsman Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca”), Don’t be Exactly a classic despite the presence of Humphrey Bogart. Still, it had a premise that the mother could run with: Three prison escape (quickly decreased to two in the mother’s resale when James Russo divides from Penn and De Niro) is in a picturesque village where they poses as sincere citizens and gradually become absorbed in the local community.
This prerequisite is pretty much the beginning and the end of the similarities between Curtiz’s film and Jordan and Mamets, which introduces the brilliant idea that De Niro and Penn have to pose as travel priests to hide from the law. Much of the comedy in “We’re No Angels” originates from the connection between a couple of Mamet Tough Guys (although Penn is more an unfortunate doofus) and a spiritual environment. Whether the mother and Jordan would have received even more mileage from this condition, Paramount had not decided that it must be a PG-13 edition late in the game, we will never know.
As fun as the movie is, the mother does not really squeeze on laughter, often reveals away from the obvious comic opportunities in favor of a genuine consideration of spiritual issues. In its really silly way, “We’re No Angels” asks the same question as Kurt Vonneguts “Mother Night”: If you spend all your time pretending to be someone else, are you actually that person?
For De Niro’s down, the answer is quite clear no (although he stops saving a life with a little seemingly divine help in the film’s climax), but Penn’s Jim is in his way an applicant. Even before the prison break, he annoys Jim in their cell by thinking about spiritual issues because Russo’s character is prepared for the electric chair. As the film progresses, he becomes more and more comfortable among the other priests – which leads to some very fun exchanges between him and De Niro, who just want to get out of the city.
Despite his image as one of the great cynics of the film and theater, the mum deals with the spectrum of religious faith in the film-from John C. Reilly’s wide-eyed pious monk to the sex worker Demi Moore’s well-deserved Atheism-with Open respect, honor contradictory views which he weaves together in a construction as well as his very much more right. Together in a construction almost as labeled as his much more right screen to honor the contradictory view. This is a stupid comedy that takes their characters seriously, which makes them all more fun when the situations become absurd.
That said, the biggest laughs in the movie do not come from the man’s script. They come from De Niro and Penn’s more-to-more attitude towards physical comedy, where both actors swing for the fence with robbery as a critic generally mocked after the film’s first edition. To dismiss De Niro and Penn’s performances for being too Hammy is like criticizing the “red shoes” for having too much color, or “John Wick” for being violent; The surplus is the source of the pleasure.
Fortunately, for De Niro to the same audience that was not in the mood for his comic, in 1989, it was 11 years later when he revived the approach for “Meet the parents.” But you don’t even have to think “we are no angels” is fun to appreciate its other significant virtues; Jordan may not think he was very good at comedy, but he was inevitably the right guy to play the fabulous characteristics of the mother’s story.
Jordan beautifully calibrates the spiritual component of the mother’s script, which subtly increases it to give a feeling of Christmas magic without ever doing it too openly or explicitly. The beauty of the film is not surprising considering collaborators such as Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot (“Dangerous Liaisons”, “Interview with Vampire”), composer George Fenton (a Jordan’s favorite) and production designer Wolf Kroeger (“Caster of War”.
Kroeger is particularly important, and the creator of the person who is inevitably good in “Weas No Angels”: its place, a border city between America and Canada that Kroeger built from the ground up. Kroeger was an ace on buildings like this – his set for the city in Robert Altman’s “Popeye” is another example of a lively fictional society that is fully realized in place.
The city in “Weas No Angels” is reminiscent of another Altman movie, “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” in its detailed, inhabited quality, and it is emblematic for the film’s overall greatness. The filmmakers may have activated their own creation after it flopped, but there is no doubt that every single actor and head of department at “We are no angels” treated it with the greatest commitment during the production.
There is none of the Slapdash movie creation that so many comedies have, where the filmmakers think (not entirely wrong) that as long as they get the camera directed in the general direction for something fun, the audience will be satisfied. From the elaborate prison set that opens the film to its lyric finale, which expertly weaves the tribes of the history of romance and cynicism together, “We are no angels” is a film of the highest artistry and crafts.
Cinématographes Blu-ray, with its beautifully composed brochure (which contains several thought-provoking analyzes of the film) and enlightening special features (including a sincere new interview with Jordan), is in itself a finely designed artifact-and a good way to meet a movie that always deserved much better than it got.
Cinématography Blu-ray by “We’re No Angels” is now on the label Website.
