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 “Madhouse“A comedy about a happy married couple besieged by guests outside the control house was released early 1990It met immediate hostility from critics. How hostile were they? So hostile that “Madhouse” is currently in the selected group of films that are uncomfortable at 0% on Rat tomatoesNot a single positive review of its name.
The irony is that not only is “Madhouse” not bad, it is fantastic. And not only well, but all the time, a comedy so flawless in its construction and so precisely in its time it is ranked along with the best work with Howard HawksBlake Edwards, or any other Master of Screwball Farce you can name. Its pleasures are as immediately obvious and accessible as they are abundant (this is not one of the amazing films that makes you work for it in any way), which makes one wonder what puts the critics in such a bad mood in February 1990.
The film’s condition is simple: stockbroker (John Larroquette) and news anchor Jessie (Kirstie Alley) has just bought his first home when Mark’s long lost cousin Fred (John Diehl) and his pregnant wife Bernice (Jessica Lundy) arrive for an unexpected visit. They are the house guests from hell, which would be bad enough of themselves – but then during the film’s 90 minutes they are united with a parade with even worse tenants, as the circumstances force land and Jessie to take a varied range of relatives, neighbors and an indestructible cat in their home.
“Madhouse” has a lot in common with another comedy that had been released a few months earlier, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” Like that movie, “Madhouse” mines laugh from the relentless escalating horror of spreading house guests, and it has a number of surprisingly specific parallels – both films have comic sets related to convicted felines, both have scenes centered around home films, both open with animated title sequences and so on. (Titte -signed film in “Madhouse”, by the way, was created by one of the masters in the form, Sally Cruikshank – her work can also be seen in the 80s favorites “Retecine people”, “Mannequin” and “Loverboy.”)
While “Christmas Vacation”, like “Madhouse”, received lots of negative reviews at the time of publishing, it was a big hit and has been anchored as a classic thanks to its holiday environment, which assures its heavy rotation every December. “Madhouse” is largely forgotten, but the fact is that it is even better than “Christmas holidays” smart, less strained (“Christmas holidays” have some too many gags-as Clark Griswold forgets to bring their motor saw on a tree hunt Expedition expedition-which is not worth the time it takes to build to them) and at the same time more controlled more controlled more controlled and More rough.
Writer director Tom Ropelewski does not waste any time in the film’s compact 90 minutes, clearly and briefly establish land and Jessie’s perfect life with some expertly written scenes before spending the rest of the film dismantled it in an increasingly funny and terrible sequence after another. “Madhouse” has the Bunnage structure in a classic comedy by Leo McCarey or Preston Sturges, with hundreds of small visual details that all pay off, although many of them are so subtle that it takes three or four views to catch them all.
Just to give a small example: early in the movie Bernice, which spends most of the story that is bedridden with watching shopping channels, discovers a horrible clothing advertised on TV. The picture is fun in itself, but Ropelewski does not remain on it; It is just one of the film’s many entertaining pieces of business in the background. An hour later Bernice wears the dress and has clearly ordered it in the meantime. Ropelewski does nothing to emphasize the joke, or remind us when we saw the dress before – it’s just a laugh that is there to take for everyone who is attentive.
“Madhouse” is filled with gags like this, and their frequency and subtlety speak to Ropelewski’s confidence as a director – he doesn’t have to force or pay attention to any of the jokes because he has an endless selection of them. He also has a rich collection of fantastic comic actors to perform his material, starts with Larroquette and Alley, who are not just pitch perfection to nail the time for each individual line, gesture and reaction, but gives the film a sneaky emotional resonance.
“Madhouse” is, among other things, one of these rarities in American films: a compelling and engaging depiction of a happy married couple. Larroquette and Alley immediately convey an easy romantic charm that anchors the entire movie; Although Ropelewski orchestrates the escalation of comic situations with careful care, there is nothing mechanical with the effect thanks to Larroquette and Alley’s Breezy naturalism. Again, they evoke the big couples of classic Hollywood – believe Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, or Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.
It is a bold statement, but Larroquette and Alley serve the comparison. When “Madhouse” came out, they both went high on TV in “Night Court” and “Cheers”, they show them who allowed them to hone their comic chops to perfection. Ironically, their preference on television may have had something to do with the negative reception for “Madhouse”; On these days, there were much clearer boundaries between film and television, and the view was that a movie with two TV stars was in some way cheaper or less -a reason for another brilliant TV comedian, John Ritter, never had the career he should have on the big screen.
Larroquette and Alley had both other chances to shine in functional comedies – Larroquette mainly in “Stripes” and Blake Edwards “Blind Date”, Alley in “Summer School”, “Sibling Rivalry” and “Drop Dead Gorgeous” – but no other director or script they ever had here they ever had they for the possibilities. They go both wide and deep and show a style for physical comedy with low brown accompanied by related, nuanced behavioral humor that gives more laughter per minute than almost any other movie.
How is this movie at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes? Is the answer simply that critics are humor-deteriorated? Regardless of the explanation, it is a crime against cinema that Ropelewski did not continue to direct more comedies. Although he is credited as a writer at “Loverboy” and “Look who is talking now” and reportedly did a certain unredred poll on “Blind Date”, when it comes to directing Ropelewski was one and done with “Madhouse”; His only director’s credits afterwards are on documentaries.
It’s a shame, but then again, how many amazing movies does anyone need to do to be considered a great director? With “Madhouse”, Ropelewski reached a comic perfection once, and it is once more than most filmmakers can hope for.
