Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.
Thanks a lot acorns!
Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!
Mining the spoof genre he helped reenergize with the “Scary Movie” franchise, Marlon Wayans comes up short with a well-worn scattershot approach that rarely connects with audience funny bones.
Most problematic is the absence of a storyline. Barely connected sequences fly by in every direction without consideration for structure or any kind of narrative arc.
Newbie director Michael Tiddes rides out the obligatory found-footage trope of the "Paranormal Activity" movies.
A lusty bisexual spirit is ensconced in a suburban Los Angeles house inhabited by newlyweds Malcolm (Wayans) and Kisha (Essence Atkins).
The best thing the movie has going for it is its ensemble’s unabashed affinity for ribald humor. Fart jokes and uncomfortable sexual shenanigans abound. Arguably, the funniest bit in the movie occurs via a rotating camera that captures the erratic, and erotic, secret habits of the home’s Hispanic maid Rosa (Marlene Forte).
Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.
Thanks a lot acorns!
Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!
Dedicated to “the Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock,” “Mel Brooks’s “High Anxiety” (1977) arrived as a polished comedy behind Brooks’s successful preceding spoofs, which included the Western genre (“Blazing Saddles”), James Whale’s “Frankenstein” (“Young Frankenstein”), and silent film comedies (“Silent Movie”). “High Anxeity” marked Brooks’s debut as a producer and his first speaking lead role—Brooks was appropriately tongue-tied in “Silent Movie.”
For the cinematographer responsible for emulating Hitchcock’s gifted director of photography Robert Burks, Brooks used the laudable Paul Lohmann, with whom he worked on “Silent Movie.” Lohmann’s compositional contributions to “High Anxiety” cannot be overstated. From start to finish, everything about the look of “High Anxiety” harkens to Hitchcock’s golden era of Technicolor films. Not-so-subtle visual references evince an amalgam of atmospheres from Hitchcock’s “North By Northwest,” “The Birds,” and most justifiably, “Vertigo.” A clever set piece attraction makes great fun of the unforgettable shower sequence from “Psycho.”
Mel Brooks is no Cary Grant, and he knows it. Purposefully playing against type, Brooks throws down the comic gauntlet as Dr. Richard Thorndyke, a height-fearing psychiatrist called upon to take over as the new head of The Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous. Accompanied by his new assistant and chauffeur Brophy (Ron Carey), the jittery Dr. Thorndyke is greeted at the Northern California cliffside establishment by its devious staff members Dr. Montague (Harvey Korman) and Nurse Charlotte Diesel (Cloris Leachman). Nurse Diesel’s pointy-breasted white uniform and noticeable mustache is a tip-off to her double life as a dominatrix of questionable hygiene to Dr. Montague. “Too much bondage, not enough discipline” is Dr. Montague’s amusing complaint during the couple’s hilariously staged closet spanking session.
As in Hitchcock’s films, murder plays a part in Brooks’s imaginative satire. Blasting rock music from a car radio causes a driver to expire from an ear hemorrhage. Complete with orange-tinted viscous blood, deaths occur with an amount of surprise that belies their comic context.
A speaking engagement before a psychiatric convention in San Francisco demands that Dr. Thorndyke stay at its skyscraper Hyatt Hotel where, despite his requests to the contrary, he’s placed in a room on the top floor. The “high-anxiety”-suffering doctor meets Victoria Brisbane (Madeline Kahn), the wealthy daughter to a peculiar patient at the institute. The couple strikes up a romantic relationship in light of their analogous proclivity for “blowing hot and cold.” Brooks and Kahn effortlessly play off one another to rib-tickling delight.
Mel Brooks’s flair for comic riffing against a stylized background of plot devices draws on a long tradition of spoof movies that date back to the first days of sound cinema. The Marx Brothers’ 1932 parody “Horse Feathers” is a prime example. Mel Brooks paved the way for the genre to be broken wide open three years later with a very special parody film called “Airplane!”
Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.
Thanks a lot acorns!
Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!
While it doesn't live up to the quirky physical comedy the incomparable Rowan Atkinson is capable of, this follow-up to his 2003 spy spoof functions well enough as a worthy PG-rated comedy for kids.
Atkinson's James Bond knock-off finds himself pulled back into the service of MI7 after spending five soul-searching years in a Tibetan monastery where he has perfected such arcane skills as dragging a large rock by a string tied to his nether region.
Upon his return to London, English is shocked to find that Toshiba has taken over corporate control of the top-secret spy agency.
A nod to the Pink Panther films occurs whenever Mozambique comes up in conversation, sending Atkinson's rubbery face into a fit of eye-twitching spasms. Gillian Anderson takes over as MI7's leader, code-named Pegasus. A window ledge incident involving a pussy cat gives rise to one of the film's sillier moments when Jonny English mimes holding a feline that may have met with a tragic end.
The movie delivers earnest "Rush Hour" references when English is sent to Hong Kong with an African British junior agent assistant named Tucker (Daniel Kaluuya). A chemical weapon called Vortex serves as the story’s driving plot MacGuffin. Vortex can only be enabled with the use of three keys, each held by a different person whom English must track down before the keys fall into the hands of a MI7 mole.
Screenwriter Hamish McColl mixes up a random mish-mash of spy movie influences for a sporadically funny comedy that children will appreciate more than adults.
