Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
31	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	1	2	3	4

Funny Bones (1995)

Posted By: Efgrapha

Date: 30 Jul 2014 17:11:44

Funny Bones (1995)
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | PAL, 16:9 (720x576) VBR | 02:02:39 | 7.84 Gb
Audio: AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps English; AC3 5.1 @ 384 Kbps (each): French, Spanish
Subs: English, French, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Dutch
Genre: Comedy-Drama

Tommy Fawkes (Oliver Platt) is a struggling stand-up comedian who has tried for years to get out from under the shadow of his father, George Fawkes (Jerry Lewis), himself a famous humorist. Tommy finally scores a showcase spot at a major resort in Las Vegas, but when opening night rolls around, Tommy's act is an unqualified disaster, with the failure made even more painful by his father's presence in the audience. In search of a fresh start, Tommy heads to Blackpool, England, where he was born and raised, to look for a new act. Hoping to buy material from local performers, Tommy auditions a large number of acts, most of whom are utterly hopeless, until he sees a hilarious vaudeville team, the Parker Brothers. Their act seems more than a bit familiar, however, and Tommy soon realizes that they're doing his father's old material. But they have every right to be doing George's schtick – it seems George stole his act from the Parkers ages ago. What's more, the younger and more eccentric of the Parker Boys, Jack (Lee Evans), is actually Tommy's half brother, the product of a fling with a Blackpool showgirl years ago. Veering between comedy and drama, Funny Bones has more than its share of effective moments on either side of the fence, and features fine supporting performances from Oliver Reed, Leslie Caron and Harold Nicholas.

Synopsis by Mark Deming, Allmovie.com

Comedy is the most fragile flower of show business, the one that wilts with the slightest change in the weather. Tommy Fawkes knows that better than most. He must once have been funny; how else could he have won a booking in Vegas? But can he be funny on his opening night, with his father sitting in his audience - his father, the world-famous comic? He's going to die. He knows he is. Not just die on stage. Die dead.

Tommy is played by Oliver Platt, a burly young actor who has played Paul Bunyan and one of the three musketeers. This time, stripped of beards and broadswords, he emerges as a worrier, a deep thinker, a kid who has made the worst possible decision by following in his father's footsteps.

His dad, you see, is naturally funny. "Some people just have funny bones," the old man explains. "We didn't have to tell funny stories; we were funny." It doesn't help that old George (Jerry Lewis) is still a scene-stealer who subtly draws attention to himself in the Vegas crowd and then "allows" himself to be coaxed onstage, where he tells one of the same jokes that poor Tommy tries later.

Tommy bombs. Badly. So badly that he walks offstage and out of the hotel and escapes to Blackpool, a British seaside resort known as a cradle of vaudeville. His father comes from there, and Tommy was born there before being brought to America. Maybe if he returns to his roots he can find his funny bones.

It's here that "Funny Bones" takes a strange turn. The director, Peter Chelsom, obviously feels on firmer ground in Blackpool than in Vegas. He's British; his previous film, "Hear My Song," was also about a showbiz legend whose past conceals a secret.

In Blackpool, Tommy tries to buy an act, and there's a funny audition scene where a manager tries to sell him one (we see a saw player, a knife thrower, a pianist who works with a dog, a backward talking man, and a guy who does a dance wearing biscuit tins). None of these acts seems likely to succeed in Vegas.

George follows his son. And now the past begins to be plumbed for its secrets, as we meet Jack (Lee Evans), a weird young man who does have funny bones, as well as a secret in his past. Jack reminded me a little of Arnie Grape, Gilbert's brother: He's slightly autistic, and likes to climb things, and finds himself at the tops of masts and the Blackpool Tower. As the plot deepens, Jack's mother (Leslie Caron) may have the key to everyone's questions.

Evans is a gifted performer who does a nightclub act of instant improvs spun from bits of random radio broadcasts. But all of the Blackpool performers seem oddly out of keeping with the movie's premise. Although the story argues that one could indeed buy or steal this material and make a living with it, I doubt if it would be understood by American audiences, and certainly nothing in the Jerry Lewis character indicates his showbiz roots are in Blackpool, or anywhere else east of Atlantic City.

My suspicion is that if "Funny Bones" had been left to find its own way, it would have been set entirely in Britain, and would have been the better for that. The artificial introduction of Vegas and Jerry Lewis are attempts to disguise the movie as American, or at least mid-Atlantic; maybe the picture's Hollywood backers insisted on that angle. "Funny Bones" is entertaining and absorbing for what it is. But what it isn't could have really been something.

Review by Roger Ebert

IMDB 7,0/10 from 2 849 users
Wiki

Director: Peter Chelsom

Writers: Peter Chelsom, Peter Flannery

Cast: Jerry Lewis, Oliver Platt, Lee Evans, Leslie Caron, Richard Griffiths and other