PRIZZI'S HONOR

Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner

PRIZZI'S HONOR (1985). Director: John Huston. 

Hitman Charlie Partanna (Jack Nicholson), who used to be engaged to the disgraced Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston of Crimes and Misdemeanors), meets and becomes instantly smitten with Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner) at a wedding. The two fall in love and get married, even after Charlie finds out Irene has a husband whom Charlie murders. Irene is hiding a deadly secret, and it isn't long before both husband and wife are being told by different factions to off the other. Now the question is: will they actually be able to murder their own spouse, and which one of them will get it first?

Anjelica Huston and Nicholson

Prizzi's Honor is a black comedy that hasn't worn well with time, although I think it was quite over-rated, even by me, when it was first released. Nowadays there are far too many movies with rather loathsome "heroes" or anti-heroes that we're supposed to care about, even though in real life most of us would do our best to avoid them. The innocent victims in the movie are shunted aside as if they had no importance, which they don't in the world of the Prizzi's and their associates. If this film, based on Richard Condon's novel, is meant to be an indictment of these sleazy people, it doesn't come off that way -- it just doesn't have that much on its mind.

Stealing the movie: Lee Richardson

Nicholson and Turner are okay in the leads playing impossible parts. Although Huston won a supporting Oscar, which she didn't really deserve, she's not that memorable. (I thought she was terrific on Smash, however.) The supporting cast of more experienced actors is much better, with Lee Richardson [The Fly II] taking top honors and John Randolph [Seconds] a close second. The best I can say about William Hickey as Huston's vengeance-filled grandfather is that he's quite odd, and I liked him better in his appearances as the crazy and annoying old man on episodes of Wings. 

Verdict: One of those movies that makes you wonder what you ever saw in it. Still, it is entertaining. **3/4.

PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED

Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage

PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED  (1986). 

Director: Francis (Ford) Coppola. 

Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) is separated from her husband, high school sweetheart Charlie (Nicolas Cage of Ghost Rider), due to his adultery. She has mixed emotions about going to her 25-year high school reunion, but her daughter, Beth (Helen Hunt), importunes her to attend. After being crowned queen, Peggy Sue passes out and wakes up a quarter century in the past. She has an adult mind in a teenager's body! Trying to figure out if she's dead or simply going crazy, she has to determine if she wants to make the same mistakes -- such as marrying Charlie -- that she made before. 

Nicolas Cage

The basic premise of Peggy Sue, while not especially original, is compelling. Unfortunately, what the screenwriters have come up with doesn't do nearly enough with the material. Peggy Sue boasts some fine acting -- Turner and Cage are especially good if imperfect -- Jordan Cronenweth's photography is first-rate, and whenever the film seems emotionally moving it's undoubtedly due to John Barry's evocative scoring. The movie is a typical Hollywood "concept" picture which does as little with the concept as it possibly can. What could have been an especially affecting sequence when Peggy Sue goes to see her long-dead grandparents is turned into a weird bit of nonsense involving the old man's lodge brothers. (We never learn if her parents were still alive 25 years later.) It's as if the movie was merely a sequence of bits thrown together in the hopes it will turn into a cohesive whole. By the ending, nothing is really resolved. Peggy Sue is right back where she started. The whole time travel business is handled too prosaically anyway. 

Barbara Harris

A disturbing aspect of the picture is that more than once Peggy Sue mentions how much she loves and misses her two children (we only see one). This begs the question: how can she not marry Charlie when it means her beloved children (at least one of them) will no  longer exist -- but this never seems to occur to her. The superficial script doesn't wrestle with metaphysical issues in any case. So we're left with some interesting casting: Barbara Harris [Family Plot] as Peggy Sue's mother; Leon Ames and Maureen O'Sullivan as her grandparents; Barry Miller as the high school geek who makes good; John Carradine as a lodge member; and Kevin J. O'Connor [Deep Rising] as the romantic, mysterious school poet. While Barry's score adds a lot to the movie, it is not as good as his work on Somewhere in Time or Out of Africa. 

Verdict: Well-acted and reasonably entertaining, this is still a perfect example of how Hollywood can screw up fantasy-type movies. **1/4.