What Year Did Easy Money With Rodney Dangerfield Come Out
Movies | SCREEN: 'EASY MONEY'
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/08/19/movies/screen-easy-money.html
SCREEN: 'EASY MONEY'
- Easy Money
- Directed by James Signorelli
- Comedy
- R
- 1h 35m
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August 19, 1983
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Section C , Page
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''EASY MONEY'' is strictly for the easy laughers, or at least for those who find Rodney Dangerfield an irresistible card. Mr. Dangerfield has some funny moments here, but he also has a screen presence that's decidedly strange. He won't stand still, being given to constant jerking motions, and neither will he refrain from eye rolling and mugging at the slightest opportunity. Almost never, during the course of a very long 95 minutes, do these tics have anything to do with what is ostensibly going on.
''Easy Money,'' which was directed by James Signorelli and opens today at Loews New York Twin and other theaters, casts Mr. Dangerfield as a baby photographer named Monty Capuletti who'd rather be out boozing, gambling and otherwise cavorting with his buddies than coaxing recalcitrant toddlers into saying ''cheese.'' He cheerfully misbehaves throughout the first third of the movie, to the chagrin of his middle- class family, until receiving the news that his mother-in-law (Geraldine Fitzgerald, wearing sensible shoes and a blue-white wig) has been killed in an airplane crash. She has left this ne'er-do-well pots of money, but only on the provision that he can reform.
Most of the jokes (in a screenplay by Mr. Dangerfield, P. J. O'Rourke, Michael Endler and Dennis Blair) are ones that might be expected. The more unusual touches tend to backfire, like a subplot which has Mr. Dangerfield's demure blond daughter (Jennifer Jason Leigh) marrying into a Hispanic family. So little is made of this idea that it comes dangerously close to turning into an unfunny ethnic joke, although Taylor Negron (as Julio, the groom) appears to be trying to make something of the material. A number of the performers, also including Joe Pesci as Monty's buddy and Candy Azzara as his wife, take an earnest approach to roles that hardly seem to warrant one.
The only extended gag that works has to do with Mr. Dangerfield's wardrobe, which somehow becomes the basis for a new high-fashion concept. ''The Regular Guy Look'' it is christened, and it involves a number of eye-catching outfits in pure polyester. Mr. Dangerfield himself appears in a pair of swim trunks decorated with dollar bills, during a sequence that finally shows him rolling in loot. This is a lot funnier than an earlier scene, in which he has been confined to a hospital room with his injured rump hoisted in the air, apparently in an unusual form of traction. ''Easy Money'' has a lot more of the latter kind of humor than the former.
For Dangerfield Fans EASY MONEY, directed by James Signorelli; written by Rodney Dangerfield, Michael Endler, P. J. O'Rourke, Dennis Blair; director of photography, Fred Schuler; edited by Ronald Roose; music by Laurence Rosenthal and Billy Joel; released by Orion Pictures Corporation. At the Rivoli, 49th Street and Broadway; New York Twin, Second Avenue and 66th Street; 34th Street Showplace, near Second Avenue; New Yorker, Broadway and 88th Street; Waverly, Avenue of the Americas and Third Street and other theaters. Running time: 95 minutes. This film is rated R. Monty Capuletti Rodney Dangerfield Nicky Cerone Joe Pesci Mrs. Monahan Geraldine Fitzgerald Rose Capuletti Candy Azzara Louie Val Avery Paddy Tom Noonan Julio Taylor Negron Belinda Capuletti Lili Haydn Clive Barlow Jeffrey Jones Allison Capuletti Jennifer Jason Leigh
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1983/08/19/movies/screen-easy-money.html
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